Hugo Klajn | Origin of Street Names

Dr. Hugo Klein (1894 - 1981) was a Yugoslav physician, director, drama pedagogue, and critic, remembered in theater circles as a director of domestic and Russian psychological classics, and in the field of medicine as the father of Yugoslav psychotherapy.

He was born in Vukovar, into a family of Croatian Jews who were long-time residents. He completed primary and secondary school in his hometown and then pursued medical studies in Vienna, as one of the students and followers of the great Sigmund Freud.

Under the influence of the creator of psychoanalysis, he himself chose to specialize in psychiatry. He then came to Belgrade and began years of work in a psychiatric hospital. Through translations and his own writings on the then emerging psychological and scientific disciplines, he laid the foundations for the development of psychotherapy in Yugoslavia.

Like all Jews, he faced the wrath of the Nazi occupiers during World War II. He survived thanks to his resourcefulness and the help of his relatives and friends, first by staging his own suicide and then by hiding in Belgrade under a false name.

As he served in a military hospital towards the end of the war, he gathered material for his probably most significant work, "War Neurosis of Yugoslavs," which was published many years later.

After World War II, recognizing the strong connection between psychology and acting as a great admirer of the latter, Hugo Klein turned more towards theater. His decades of experience as a psychoanalyst contributed to the creation of truly authentic characters from his pen. Becoming a permanent director at the Belgrade National Theatre, he directed in other major cities in Yugoslavia as well.

Among the most significant plays he directed are Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Krleža's "The Glembays," Tolstoy's "The Living Corpse," and others. Klain even tried his hand at television directing, signing the famous "The Diary of Anne Frank" from 1959. Additionally, he was the author of numerous books, essays, and critiques in the field of theater art, with his work "Fundamental Problems of Directing" being particularly notable.

Hugo Klein was married to Stana Đurić Klein, the first female musicologist in Serbia, and they had a son, Ivan Klein, a renowned linguist and co-author of "The Comprehensive Dictionary of Foreign Words and Expressions."

A great intellectual and a man with two equally successful careers, Hugo Klein passed away in Belgrade at the age of 88. Symbolically, today there is a street named after him in the Bežanija neighborhood of Belgrade.