THE MARTIN AND MIRASH IVANAJ FOUNDATION

Some Historical Facts

INTRODUCTION

Some of the documents of the Ivanaj family were saved by the Albanian government in the Archives of the State in Tirana. They consists of 55 dossiers for Dr. Martin Ivanaj and 44 dossiers for Prof. Mirash Ivanaj, which were cataloged and microfiched as recently as 1988.

This collection is in no particular order, as the residence was confiscated by the Italian occupying forces in 1939, and at the end of World War II the residence and its contents were appropriated when Prof. Mirash Ivanaj was arrested and imprisoned for political reasons. These papers consist of personal correspondence, some family photographs and household records, but the majority of the collection represents prepared works of all sorts by the Ivanaj brothers. They include some poetry, in Serbo-Croatian, done during their youth, a full length mythological drama in Italian, texts of teaching materials in various faculties, such as mathematics, literature, psychology, history, philosophy, and many legal proceedings in civil and penal laws.

The personal and private library of the Ivanajs, the only one of its kind in the country in those days, consisted of over 16,600 volumes, plus 20 private manuscripts. The manuscripts unfortunately are lost and the books dispersed everywhere, although many of them are now in the National Library of Tirana.

Most of the personal -- and now historical -- documents of the family were saved, however, by Giuseppina Ivanaj (Dr. Martin’s wife) for several years in Italy. Their daughter, Drita, eventually transferred them to the United States.

These documents will be sorted, organized, cataloged, and exhibited in the Ivanaj Institute in Tirana, hopefully in the not too distant future.

A sketch of the family tree, handwritten by Dr. Martin Ivanaj that traces the male generations of the Ivanajs back 500 years to the time of Skanderbeg, was found in the Archives in 1993.

In the meantime, more facts about the family history continue to surface including the discovery of relatives who lived since the turn of the 19th century in northern Albania and Montenegro. Martin and Mirash Ivanaj had a older brother, Zef, who died very young and has no apparent heirs. They had five sisters, who also lived in these northern regions. Some of them had children and grandchildren, now forming almost six generations. Mirash remained a bachelor, and the only daughter of Martin, Drita, seems to be the last one bearing the family name of Ivanaj.

PERSONAL DATA OF THE IVANAJ BROTHERS

	Dr. Martin	Prof. Dr. Mirash
Both were born in Podgorica (Montenegro)	in 1888	in 1891
They died respectively in:	Istanbul - 1940	while imprisoned in Tirana - 1953
Both earned degrees from the University of Rome (Italy):	Ph.D. in Jurisprudence 1921	Ph.D. in Letters in 1921 Ph.D. in Jurisprudence in 1923
During the early 1930's in Albania:	Dr. Martin was Chief of Cassation	Prof. Mirash was Minister of Public Education

PICTURES OF THE IVANAJS

(from left to right)Prof. Mirash and Dr. Martin Ivanaj, 1930's in Tirana

Drita Ivanaj, 1993 in Kruje