Jaša Tomić

Jakov Jaša Tomić Јаша Томић
Statue of Jaša Tomić in Dunavska street, Novi Sad
Born	(1856-10-23)October 23, 1856 Vršac, Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar, Austrian Empire
Died	October 22, 1922(1922-10-22) (aged 65) Novi Sad, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
Occupation	politician, publicist, journalist and man of letters

Jakov "Jaša" Tomić (Serbian Cyrillic: Јаша Томић; 1856 – 1922) was a Serb politician, publicist, journalist and man of letters from the Serbian region of Vojvodina, which was part of Austrian Empire when Jaša Tomić was born. Modoš, is town in Serbian Banat was renamed for his honour in 1924.

When Jakov Jaša Tomić was born at Vršac in 1856, this town was part of the Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar crown land in the post-1849 Habsburg monarchy. Tomić's family, Serbian Orthodox Christian, was well-to-do having thrived significantly in trade in the region. He attended elementary school in Vršac, then gymnasium in Timişoara and Kecskemét. He was a volunteer in the Herzegovina Uprising, after which he attended medical faculties in Vienna and Prague, but later transferred to the faculty of philosophy and philology. Thereafter, Tomić was involved in Serb politics in Habsburg-controlled parts of present-day Serbia (Serbian Vojvodina). Combining interests in socialism and Serbian national politics as did many of his generation, namely Svetozar Marković, Mihailo Polit-Desančić, and Nikola Pašić, he eventually found himself much less of a socialist than an ardent Serbian patriot.

Tomić was the editor of Srpsko kolo and Zastava magazines and founder of the People's Freethinker Party (Narodna slobodoumna stranka), which in 1891 became the Radical Party (Radikalna stranka). In 1889, following a drawn-out series of provocations regarding the honour of his wife, Tomić stabbed to death a liberal political rival, Miša Dimitrijević, the editor of Branik magazine, in Novi Sad. He served seven years in prison for murder, emerging in 1896 with no loss of political zeal. Not only political but economic issues had far reaching importance to him. Tomić, then the most vociferous opponent of the hierarchy, the leader of the Serbian radical party and son-in-law of Svetozar Miletić, blamed the clergy for driving people away from churches because of its insistence on controlling church and autonomous finances: Whoever has to worry about how to spend so much money has no more time to care for the church and people.