"In my youth's days I longed ardently to pierce the hearts of others with my own heart, to shine before the nations, to rise, I myself knew not where…."        Byron, Manfred                                                                                                     

"I do not forget her (Greta); Schiller's line always comes to my mind: "Oh, dass sie ewig grünen bliebe, die schöne Zeit der ersten Liebe." (Oh, that it might remain forever green, the beautiful time of first love). The first love is the deepest, and that is why the memory of it is sacred to me. All this is fleeting. I doubt I ever loved anyone as deeply as I loved Greta; and yet it passed – I remember it, it ennobled me, but one can live without it too."           Ivan Mertz                                                                                                        

 Ivan Merz was born in 1896 in Banja Luka, the only son of his parents, raised in a liberal, bourgeois spirit. He, too, grew up in Banja Luka, in a family and social environment in which greater care was given to civic and worldly values, while Christian ones were more a matter of formality and tradition. He was a soldier in the First World War. He studied in Vienna, Paris and Zagreb. He earned a doctorate. He was a professor of French language and literature. He had a broad culture. He was one of the leaders of the Catholic movement, worked extensively with young people, and wrote many valuable texts. He died in 1928 at the age of 32, with a reputation for holiness. His grave is in Zagreb, in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on Palmotićeva Street. Pope John Paul II declared him blessed.

At the age of sixteen he fell in love with his peer, Greta Teschner. He experienced this falling in love very intensely. But soon Greta, during a brief stay with her parents in Travnik, became involved with a young Muslim man who exploited and then abandoned her. She experienced this very traumatically and tragically, and in that disappointment took her own life: „When I learned of her death, a fracture occurred in my soul, not all at once but over time… My youth, it seems to me, has lain down in the grave with her; everyone else can laugh from the bottom of their heart, I cannot. I look at girls, I like them, but if I think of her, everything else vanishes. The only comfort I find is in art, which I love intensely, and in nature. Her soul has shaken off transience and departed. Where to? Into eternity. But God, horror seizes me when I think that she took her own life.“

His parents were not particularly devout. He therefore considered it his duty as a son, and his mission, to lead them more deeply into the faith: "The happiest day for me would be the day my father and mother became good Christians, when our family became a Catholic family; for the family is the holiest thing on earth. Prayer can achieve a great deal. With my father, logical arguments work well…And with my mother, love for me will be able to work." This truly bore fruit, and after twenty-five years his father received Communion: "I hope that the love which binds us will now become even deeper and greater, and that after the struggle we have had, we shall be united in God in this life."

To his mother he writes of how important it is that the family fulfil its spiritual calling, since it was she who wanted, and cared most, that her only son should be well and have a good life here on earth: "You force me to admit how sacred my love for Father and for you is to me. And yet I would wish that our mutual endeavour should not be directed only towards our wellbeing, our health, but that we should regard family life as a means to one end: that is, to act within our own circle for the honour of God and the happiness of our neighbour…besides the bonds of natural love, which nature and gratitude strengthen, a spiritual kinship must also be established."  And his mother, like his father, was converted towards the end of her life and underwent a kind of transformation after Ivan's death.

He received his first instruction in the faith at a kindergarten run by religious sisters. In primary and secondary school he took up numerous activities: he learned English and French, played the violin and the piano, took up gymnastics and skating, and played tennis and chess. All this helped him organise his own time, and gave him discipline and dedication. As he matured, he came to see that this was not enough, and that something was still missing for him to build himself as a person – the spiritual and moral dimension. In this respect, as well as in his love for his homeland, the greatest influence on him was his professor of art and literature, Ljubomir Maraković, of whom he said that he had "saved him for eternity". From that time he forged for himself a motto: "to live for truth, goodness and beauty", by which he would strive to live.

Soon Greta took her own life, and this determined the course of Ivan's life and his reflections on the essential things of life: " Darkness seizes me when I think that Eternity has lost her. God, most good God, hear the prayer of a feeble little worm who is afraid to look at You, whose heart the devil has poisoned; grant, Eternal God, grant Greta Eternity. Forgive me too all my wrongs and show me the way of justice! I long from the depths of my soul to see her there, in the other world. Yes, my God, I understand You: life – You say – is a short, hard trial – and whoever overcomes it steps at once into a life full of splendour and colour…If she were alive now, perhaps everything would be different, or perhaps not. Perhaps I too would still be a child of the twentieth century. Who knows? The Almighty orders all things best.

I think of my first love. What a fall from Eternity into transience. But what was evil and fleeting in it has vanished, while what was noble and lofty lives on in my heart, lifting it up and nourishing it, perhaps sowing good seed too. Almighty, I pray that it may be so! Perhaps she breathed her last at that very time. I did not even know it. I prayed fervently to God to keep her alive, and I was convinced my prayer would succeed, but it was too late. She had already ceased to be. Her soul shook off transience and departed. Where to? Into Eternity. Life is a struggle for Truth, and she cowardly gave up that struggle. She is a child of the twentieth century, of light convictions. If she were alive now, perhaps everything would be different, or perhaps not. Perhaps I too would still be a child of the twentieth century. Who knows? The Almighty orders all things best.

My first love is the deepest, and that is why the memory of it is sacred to me. I did not take flowers to the cemetery, for feelings would be dulled if brought out before the world. Her father and mother perhaps weep, and it is hard for me when I call the images to mind. She was cleverer than her other friends, always read books and captivated people. But no one gave her any depth. Her life passed monotonously; she thought, day comes, day goes, waiting for it to pass too. Perhaps she would have married, had children, and died. Such is life. She did not know why she lived. Perhaps she did not even know that Eternity exists, and that all the wonders of the world, all of nature, lead to the knowledge that all this comes from the immeasurable Spirit, from the Ideal of humanity, from Truth, Goodness and Beauty. It has passed, and I too shall pass, like all this, but we shall all still be. Perhaps she is too! Let us return to people. Life is a struggle for Truth, and let us consider it."

About six months after Greta's death he began to keep a diary, which he dedicated to her and in which he describes what he experienced in everyday life, especially concerning his love for Greta: "This is my wreath, which I lay upon her grave, to the holy and honoured memory of a first love which regenerated me."

"Last night I dreamed of Travnik… I was looking for Greta's flat. When I woke, her image hovered before my eyes as she walked cheerfully with me, in short sleeves and everyday dress, from the house in Travnik to the shop. She was cheerful. She is no more, her body is no more, but the memory remains. God, forgive her soul. My suspicion as to why she took her own life has a psychological explanation. The world saw her only as a girl who attracted men erotically, and she too behaved openly, so that she fed that judgement of herself. But the foolish world did not truly know this girl of good heart, sincere, naturally gifted, well-read, and far cleverer than her friends. In Travnik she found no one who understood her, and she was dissatisfied, without even knowing it herself. While she was here, she loved me, because she knew that in her I found not only a woman, but a person. She called me her friend. Our spiritual bond rested – I must admit, looking back on it now from a distance – on a somewhat (not entirely) erotic basis. God knows whether so great a love for her would have arisen in me, had it not been formed in that erotic way.  Scripture puts it well: platonic love does not exist, it is bound up with love for the body and for the girl's own particular soul. This love may be called ideal. I lived my young days with her alone, days such as no longer exist in the world, and I remember her presence with sadness. It weighs on my heart when I picture her unique face and character, and I think: it was dust, and it has gone. What great comfort my faith gives me, that I shall see her again, the same, in body and soul. There is no woman like her, and so I destroy in the bud every deeper feeling that arises in my soul towards any other."

"Among the photographs I looked for her picture, to see her, but it was not there; Mother had surely put it away. I was sad. Today is a gloomy day, and I remembered how, on such a day, in spring if I am not mistaken, she came to us with her parents and Captain W. to the old railway station. König (a colleague) was there too, and we played forfeits. It was cheerful, and my turn came to count the stars – and that was when I first kissed her, and indeed any woman, for the first time. I hesitated, yet I was glad of it. I did not behave in the most gallant way toward her, even though I always loved her. I rode with her often in a hackney carriage, waited for her every day when she came out of school, walked her home and received a kiss at the door, and so on. My whole relationship with her was woven through with nothing but kisses. But when I returned from Travnik, I already realised that a person is not merely a body. I asked myself whether I had done well, and when I learned of her death, a fracture occurred in my soul, not all at once but over time.  But then again I ask myself: had there been nothing material between us, would that spiritual bond have existed at all? Through our kisses we were joined spiritually too. She is dead, I shall never see her again, she who is my comfort in life; and I long from the depths of my soul to see her There, in the other world. What I feel for her I cannot put into words, only my tears, which flow when I picture this noble and good-natured German girl. My youth, it seems to me, has lain down in the grave with her; everyone else can laugh from the bottom of their heart, I cannot. I look at girls, I like them, but if I think of her, everything else vanishes. The only comfort I find is in art, which I love intensely, and in nature."

For a long time he sought the causes of why Greta had taken her own life. In part he found them in her liberal upbringing: "As I was accompanying the ladies through the rain (Mrs Teschner and Mrs Supanek), a woman passed by and lifted her skirt enough to be seen. Since I instinctively turned away, they began to talk about erotic matters, saying that I would change, and so on. It was hard for me to hear this precisely from Greta's mother, whom I love a good deal, and I see that this erotic element in upbringing had also killed the innate religious life in her daughter, so that she could decide upon suicide. Or, more precisely: I let erotic thoughts run free, I live from day to day, without prayer or thought of eternity, and life becomes purposeless. In a moment of resignation and low spirits, a person then asks himself why he should not kill himself, and he can do it…Temptations assail one terribly, but prayer lifts me up."

A year after Greta's death, Ivan made a vow of chastity until marriage. He was convinced that Greta's death had come about because she had lacked family and marital ideals: " I saw Greta's image again in a dream – perhaps the second time since her death. God, my God, how terrible. Greta, dear, sweet Greta. When I saw those eyes, gentle and mild, that bowed head, that hair, ah, which I stroked so often, I remember that I ought to remain always faithful to her; that she was to be my idol for my whole life, whom I would celebrate in song. And every man needs to find that idol.. It seems to me this is a revelation: I am perhaps reconciled with nature forever; the feminine element has played in my life the role it must play. There is no woman like her, and so I destroy in the bud every deeper feeling that arises in my soul towards another. My purpose – my ideal – in life would be to give a good example through myself, and in this "mechanical age of technology" to contribute my own share to idealism. Let other women play in my life the role of a friend, especially a fine male friend. But it is terrible to think that I shall always have to move in a society full of sensuality. The other day I vowed chastity to the Blessed Virgin until marriage; perhaps it will last even until death". Greta's image crystallised in his soul so that she became for him an ideal towards which he would strive for a long time to come: "But what was evil and fleeting in it has vanished; what was noble and lofty still lives on in my heart, lifting it up and nourishing it, perhaps sowing good seed too. Almighty, I pray that it may be so!"

Although after Greta's death he met girls who attracted him, he never felt for any girl he later came to know a love such as he had felt for Greta: " I always remember Greta. When I see some girl laughing with a young man, it is hard for me. Someone like Greta I shall not find. And even if I were to find her, the memory of Greta would still cloud that relationship, and one could not be so sincere."

Woman, and all that is feminine – the Ewig Weibliche (the eternal feminine) – constantly occupied his thoughts; he felt the attraction of women and the sexual urge intensely, but he knew how to master it. Equally, he was occupied with the relationship between man and woman, theoretically and practically, and he knew well that, as he himself said, it takes a great deal of "bloody struggle not to sink into the ordinary world". Even as a young man he saw how degraded and subjugated woman was to man and his passions, which endangered her dignity and led to the breakdown of the family: "One of the most precise criteria for judging the moral level of an age is how woman is respected within a given people. We know that in earlier centuries she was esteemed, and writers dreamed of ideals and pure beauties – young people fantasised of some unknown and enchanting beauty – whereas today the ideal of society and of youth is the naked woman on the cinema screen, who is neither sister, nor mother, nor a person."

Because of his struggle for feminine dignity, women and girls themselves called him the "knight of women's honour", and Marica Stanković, on the tenth anniversary of his death, says: "For him woman is something great and lofty. She is for him a copy of his beloved mother; even more, she is for him a sister of the Virgin of Lourdes, whom he would love his whole life long with the ardour of the medieval mystics. That is precisely why he was offended not only by any slight against a woman's honour and dignity, but was deeply offended by the frivolous behaviour of that part of the female world which forgets what value it carries within itself…And this only because he saw clearly what a good woman means for the life of a family and a nation, and how the influence of a wicked woman leaves unhealthy traces and destroys families and nations." This significance of woman for shaping the whole of society and the stability of the family is stressed repeatedly by Merz himself: "Contemporary experience has shown that woman has had a beneficial effect in countries where she has had influence on legislation, particularly on laws concerning health, working conditions, the regulation of wages, the protection of children, and the fight against alcoholism. A noble-minded young man begins, at a certain age in his life, to feel a kind of loneliness. Within him awakens a longing for a companion who, by her gentle, good, cheerful being, will beautify his life. She will understand him, will take an interest in everything he does, will support him in his work and console him in life's difficult hours. She will become the queen of his home, in which he will gladly dwell. His work will be lighter, for he will know he is working for a beloved woman with whom he recovers after hard labour. Without a woman's true piety, neither the husband nor his children will be happy. Every family is beset by cares, sufferings, misfortunes. Only a devout soul can find its way through every difficulty and will not falter under the burden of life."

This experience, through the tragic end of his first love, helped Ivan to fight effectively for the purity of his own soul and to emerge victorious, as will be seen later. On the other hand, it is clear from the diary how the experience of his first love, with its tragic ending, directed his thoughts and his soul towards God, and so contributed to his maturing in faith, in which he sees quite clearly that love between man and woman must be directed towards marriage and the family, where it can mature fully.