Croatica’s hidden Sherlock Holmes brought to light at 2026 “Heritage at Hand at CroAtrium” event #5
The fifth event of the 2026 edition of Heritage at Hand at CroAtrium, the programme of the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) promoting Croatia’s national library collection, spotlighted the publications in which Sherlock Holmes’s Croatian impostor hid for decades.
In her lecture, Professor at the Department of English Studies of the University of Rijeka’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Antonija Primorac presented the research as part of which she “caught” the fraudulent hero and its findings.
The double trace of Sherlock Holmes in Croatica
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes officially made his first appearance in Croatia’s translational literature in 1894, on the pages of the first Croatian illustrated entertainment magazine (Dom i sviet). The biweekly then published the Croatian translation of Doyle’s The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, stating the translator merely as “A. R-ć”.
Thirteen years later his Croatian doppelgänger furtively followed him in a series entitled “Detective Sherlock Holmes and His World-famous Adventures” (Detektiv Sherlock Holmes i njegovi znameniti doživljaji), published in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital. Taken over from an earlier German edition (Detektiv Sherlock Holmes und seine weltberühmten Abenteuer), the stories of his adventures published weekly with rather provocative colour frontpages by Alfred Rollof were highly popular with the readers, who were willing to pay for them as much as four times the price of the dailies of the time / four times more than for the dailies of the time.
Fake, but famed – even as “Scherlock”
In addition to the parallel publishing of the series’ pastiches and new translations of Doyle’s works, another indication of Sherlock Holmes’s popularity in Croatian public sphere at the beginning of the 20th century is the then repertoire of the Croatian National Theatre. As well-liked and well-attended play – and that despite the critics’ displeasure with it – the available sources state a comedy entitled “Scherlock Holmes”, whose title reveals a German pastiche’s strong influence.
Also, Sherlock’s Croatian imitator has been documented as being used for political satire and social comments. Namely, the discovered Croatian pastiches served for mocking the political circumstances / conditions in Croatia in a 1908 issue of a Vinkovci newspaper, while they themselves were explicitly mocked in a 1920 novel by the great Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža.
Digitisation – a path to Croatica’s accessibility and its preservation
The event participants had the opportunity to see the selected copies of editions in which Professor Primorac discovered Sherlock Holmes’s Croatian double and learn of the significant contribution that her research has made to their improved accessibility to the public. All the editions preserved at NSK have been digitised and made available as part of the Library’s NSK Digital Collections website, while the interesting details about their content and the circumstances surrounding their publication will be presented on the NSK Online Exhibitions website.
Systematically digitising Croatica since 2004, NSK had been dedicatedly building The Croatian Digital Library, which along with material digitised as part of Professor Primorac’s research offers access to a wealth of additional digital content, ranging from digitised works of Croatian Glagolitic heritage and Croatian incunabula to born-digital heritage.
This huge and invaluable digital treasure trove may also be accessed via eCulture, Croatia’s national digital heritage platform, and its further development is indispensable – not only for ensuring of as wide as possible availability of centuries-old heritage preserved in NSK’s collections to all, but for its preservation as a physical collection for generations to come.
Photo: © NSK