For more than twenty years, from 1988-2010, Radio Zagreb and then Croatian Radio broadcasted a series called People of the 20th Century, authored by Aris Angelis. Around five hundred persons, some of them great personalities, others ordinary men, made their appearance in its eight hundred shows. Angelis’ collocutors included politicians and spies, artists and scientists, sportsmen and actors, diplomats and bums, victors in war and losers in peace or vice versa...
Nonagenarians and even centenarians, rich and poor, those who were well known in public and those who remained in shadow their entire lives, secretive and unassuming, told various stories from their eventful lives. Some of them were small encyclopaedia in their own right, living almanacs who could tell about the bygone days and past times better and more interestingly than any book. At the time when they were born, there was no radio, no television, no telephones or airplanes. Horse-drawn trams drove through the city, while zeppelins and dirigibles ruled the skies.
From this multitude of stories, Angelis has selected twenty six people from the 20th century:
- Petar Čučić - an American from Žumberak
- Namik-beg Teskeredžić - the last Bey from Istanbul to the Mirogoj cemetery
- Ante Ciliga - revolutionary and dissident, communist and anticommunist, internationalist and nationalist
- KarloŠtajner - from Vienna to Zagreb over Siberia – 20 years of imprisonment
- Ivan Hus - the Stradivari of Zagreb
- Nada Pogačnik - Miss 1926
- Antun Ulrich - architect and mason
- JosipButurac - guardian of Kaptol’s secrets
- ŽarkoDolinar - champion and professor
- Vladimir Prelog - Nobel prize winner from a Swiss lake
- Vladimir Velebit - the first diplomat of Tito’s Yugoslavia
- Maksimilijan-MaksBaće - Marxist and anti-Marxist
- MilivojBoroša - Hitler’s and Stalin’s pilot
- Marko Zeljak - a man from Varaždin in Russian captivity
- StevanDedijer - scientist and bodyguard
- ZvonimirJurišić - captain, American commando, and poet
- JakobGaon - the angel doctor
- MirkoMirković - Herman Friedmann – concentration camp detainee in war and peace
- Alfred Pal - concentration camp detainee on Rab and convict on GoliOtok
- AntunBogetić - bishop and missionary
- Ivan Mišković - head of Tito’s counterespionage
- MarijanFilipović - father of Bobi and Rudi
- Katarina Carić - African Mami
- Mia Oremović - "having a heart is essential"
- Vladimir Devide - haiku mathematician
- Ivan Supek - physicist and philosopher, humanist and heretic
