William Klinger
William Klinger was a Croatian historian who specialized in modern Croatian and Yugoslav history as well as history of communism and nationalism.Biography
Klinger was born on 24 September 1972 in Rijeka, SFR Yugoslavia, but his family roots are reportedly in Pakrac and of German ethnics descent. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Trieste in 1997 with a BA in history, while attending also the University of Klagenfurt due to a stipend he received from the Austrian government. He gained master's degree at the Central European University in Budapest and doctoral degree at the European University Institute in Florence, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation titled "Negotiating the Nation: Fiume, from Autonomism to State making 1848-1924".
Klinger lived in the Italian town of Gradisca d'Isonzo. An independent researcher, he was employed by the Centro di Ricerche Storiche di Rovigno. Aside from Italian and Croatian Klinger also spoke German, English, Friulian, Russian and Slovene.
He was found with a gunshot wound to the head on 31 January 2015 in Astoria Park in Queens, New York, where he had been attending a conference on former Yugoslavia, the Second World War and the post-war Balkans. He died the same day at Elmhurst Hospital, where he was taken after he was found lying near the park's public pool. His acquaintance Alexander Bonich was questioned by the police on the following day, when he admitted to killing Klinger.
