Seljan brothers' education

Mirko Seljan (Karlovac, 5. IV. 1871. – Peru, 1913.)
Stevo Seljan (Karlovac, 19. VIII. 1876. – Ouro Preto, Brazil, 7. VI. 1936.)

Mirko and Stevo Seljan were born and educated in Karlovac. Mirko completed four grades of Real-gymnasium after which he enrolled Cadet School from which he was expelled by the end of the fourth grade due to a disciplinary offence and he was sent to serve compulsory military service. He served the military service from 1889 to 1893 in Caransebes and Orsova in Romania. After that he worked as a land surveyor assistant, a land surveyor and as a land surveyor's accountant on the Danube River regulation in the city of Orsova. From 1897 to 1898 he worked in Budapest on the Chain Bridge over the Danube and in Soroksar on the construction of a Danube port, and then in Vienna on the regulation of the Danube near Linz in Austria and finally in Sankt Petersburg on the construction of a bridge across the Neva River. Gradually in Saint Petersburg Mirko started neglecting his job and became increasingly involved in athletics. Eventually he won a prize in a race. On 13/07/1898 he set off for a one hundred-day journey on foot from Saint Petersburg to Paris.

Stevo repeated the third grade of gymnasium and in the fourth grade, due to his poor behaviour he caused a consilium abeundi – in other words he was expelled from school. He completed the fifth grade of Real gymnasium in Zagreb in 1892. He completed the sixth grade in Real-gymnasium in Karlovac, he missed out the seventh grade of the Real-gymnasium in Rakovec and in November 1893 he set out for the wide world as an office clerk working for a wage. He served in the Austro-Hungarian navy as a volunteer for four years and by the end of 1898 he was employed at the chemist's in Metlika in Slovenia.

Source: Keler 1970: 411-412