Weddings of the dead: Ustasha funerals and life cycle rituals in fascist Croatia

Abstract

This paper seeks to thoroughly describe the 1941 Ustasha funerals of Mijo Babic and Antun Pogorelec, two of the most important early Ustasha martyrs, and to demonstrate the centrality of funeral practices in the Ustasha project to reconfigure Croatian society in the 1940s and its role in mediating the relationship between the individual and the state. Funeral practices are not seen only as cultural values imposed from above, but also as events of importance for the members of the movement as well as their supporters in the wider local community that participated in them.