Veselin Čajkanović

Veselin Čajkanović (Serbian Cyrillic: Веселин Чајкановић; 1881 in Belgrade – 1946) was a Serbian classical scholar, philosopher, ethnologist, religious history scholar, and Greek and Latin translator.

Čajkanović studied classical philology at Belgrade's Grandes écoles (Velika škola), and received an international scholarship, on the recommendation of professor Pavle Popović, to take post-graduate studies at the University of Leipzig and University of Munich (where he took his Master of Arts degree) and finished his doctorate under Karl Krumbacher. In 1908 he became a Latin lecturer at the Belgrade University School of Philosophy and published his MA dissertation, Quaestionum paroemiographicarum capita selecta, in Tübingen.

Čajkanović fought in both Balkan Wars and in World War I. He retreated with the Serbian Army through Albania in face of the 1915 anti-Serbian offensive of the Central Powers. He contracted diphtheria during the last two days of the retreat through Albania and was transferred to a hospital in Bizerte. Later he was at the Thessaloniki Front, where he described his activities in his Autobiography as "defending, together with other Balkan Christians, his country from foreign conquerors." Čajkanović was awarded the Order of the White Eagle with Swords and the Légion d'honneur. Shortly before the end of the war, Čajkanovic was sent to Paris and London on a mission "to show what Serbia is and who the Serbs are." There he participated in preparing lectures organized by the Serbian Legation and during his free time read and studied at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris and the British Museum library in London.

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