Ludwig Strommer was born into a German-speaking family in the
Hungarian city of
Kaschau or Kassa (today Košice,
Slovakia) on 8 December 1856. He came from a family of officials and teachers, his father Benedek Strommer was an imperial official who did not speak Hungarian. The Strommer family moved from Kassa to Buda where Ludwig went to Hungarian school. in 1877 he changed his name from Ludwig Strommer to Lajos (= Ludwig) Thallóczy for career reasons. Thallóczy took the Croatian-Hungarian aristocratic name Talovac / Thallóczy after completing his history studies in Budapest. He also graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy. Partly because of this interest Thallóczy was employed within
Austria-Hungary administration with title of court counselor to create one work on popular history of Albanians and one textbook. According to
Fan Noli Thallóczy proclaimed that opinions about
Skanderbeg's Serbian descent are legends.
Bosnia In 1884 Thallóczy was commissioned by Reich Finance Minister Benjámin Kállay to research the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the aim of promoting the development of a Bosnian national identity. After ten years of research, this resulted in a comprehensive collection of documents on the history of Bosnia. Thallóczy was transferred to Vienna at the request of
Béni Kállay. He was put in charge of cultural and educational issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina and responsible for Bosnian affairs in the joint finance ministry. Thallóczy became interested in
heraldry in a period when scientific circles became interested to select the "right" coat of arms for Bosnia and Herzegovina. His main interests were
Bosnian history, especially genealogy, heraldry and biographies of prominent individuals from its medieval period. Supported by Thallóczy's selective use of tendentiously interpreted sources aimed to satisfy the political aspirations of the empire by representing a historically connected fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary the government imposed his proposal for the official
coat of arms of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1889. He introduced ethnically neutral yellow and red combination of colors to confront "misuse of Serbian and Croatian colors". He published numerous Cyrillic and Latin charters, and also works about the duke
Hrvoje Vukčić, history of
Jajce and numerous other, Bosnia-related, subjects, with the main findings published in the book
Studien zur Geschichte Bosniens und Serbiens im Mittelalter, published in Munich and Leipzig in the year 1914.
Serbia During the
Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia of World War I, Thallóczy served as civilian commissioner of the
Military General Governorate of Serbia. Thallóczy died in a
train accident near Budapest while returning from the funeral of the emperor
Franz Joseph I. == Assessment ==