Srećko M. Džaja

Srećko Matko Džaja is a historian, philosopher and theologian.

He attended gymnasium in Livno (1947–48), Dubrovnik (1948–49) and Visoko (1949–56), and after that a seminary in Sarajevo (1956–60) and Zagreb (1962–64). In Zagreb he gained his PhD from the Catholic Theological Faculty in 1971 with a thesis about Catholics in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 18th and 19th century.

He became a Franciscan in 1953 and was ordained a priest in 1962. Between 1963 and 1964 he was a chaplain in Kraljeva Sutjeska, and an educator between 1965 and 1967 in Visoko. He was named a professor of the Sarajevo Franciscan School of Theology, where the taught from 1965 to 1975.

In 1975 he left the service and enrolled at the University of Munich, where he studied history, Slavic philology and philosophy. As a scholar of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and later the Volkswagen Foundation and the German Research Foundation, Džaja researched history of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Department of History of Eastern and Southeastern Europe. He gained PhD in philosophy with a dissertation on religious and national problematic in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His dissertation was awarded by the Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft.