Omer Nishani

Omer Nishani (5 February 1887 – 26 May 1954) was an Albanian medical doctor and political figure: foreign minister of the People's Republic of Albania from October 1944 to March 1946 and first Chairman of the Presidium of the People's Assembly — thereby the country's first head of state — from 16 March 1946 to 1 August 1953, a post he held without membership of the ruling Party of Labour. ^{1 2}

His career ran through three struggles: against Ahmet Zogu (later King Zog) in the 1920s and 1930s, against the fascist occupation in 1942–44, and in the building of the post-war republic. ²

Nishani was born in Gjirokastër in the Janina Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire; his brother Beso was a teacher whose pupils included the young Enver Hoxha, also a Gjirokastër native. ²

He studied medicine in Istanbul, graduating but not practising it as his sole profession: he worked as a physician in Vienna, as municipal physician at Ballsh from 1915 to 1918, at the Tirana hospital from 1920, and as physician to the Durrës municipality in 1923–24, after wartime service as battalion physician at Gjirokastër and Vlorë in 1914 and a government posting to the Vienna clinics. ^{2 3}

In early 1924 he took part in an assassination attempt on Ahmet Zogu in parliament and was imprisoned for two weeks; he then supported Fan S. Noli's June Revolution, which overthrew the conservative order backed by Zogu, and sat in the trial held against Zogu in absentia; when that government fell in December 1924 he fled abroad. ^{2 3}

In 1925 he co-founded KONARE, the anti-Zog, Comintern-backed National Revolutionary Committee, and ran its Geneva newspaper "Liria Kombëtare" (National Freedom) with the Albanian Communist Halim Xhelo from 1925 to 1932; he settled in Vienna, married the Austrian Rozvita von Woler, and was sentenced to death in absentia in Albania, spending 1933–1939 as a political emigrant on Zante in Greece. ^{2 3}

After the Italian invasion of 1939 Nishani returned and at first joined the collaborationist government's Council of State; he told Hoxha afterwards that he had done so because he had nothing to live on and a wife to keep, that he regarded the involvement as a mistake, and — in the same conversation — that "I am not a communist, but I have lived and worked with them, I have respected them and they have respected me". ²

He joined the National Liberation Movement on its formation in September 1942, became Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Liberation General Council in September 1943, and at the Congress of Përmet in May 1944 Chairman of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council in charge of foreign affairs, working in the mountains with the resistance until the country was liberated. ^{2 4}

On 11 January 1946 he became Chairman of the Constituent Assembly, which on 16 March was transformed into the People's Assembly of the People's Republic of Albania, and he served as the first Chairman of its Presidium — the head of state — until 1953, though not a member of the ruling Party of Labour; in 1947 he represented Albania at an Allied consultation in Paris. ^{2 4 1}

In 1952 his brother Besim was arrested for "propaganda against the people's government", and contemporary press reports said that his wife had been forced to leave the presidential palace to live under house arrest and that Nishani himself was virtually a prisoner. ²

Officially, Nishani requested to resign on 24 July 1953 for health reasons — the Arabic article describes the resignation as forced — and he was succeeded by Haxhi Lleshi on 1 August. ^{2 1}

He died at Tirana on 26 May 1954; the Albanian article's lead misprints the year as 1956, while its body and every other source give 1954. ^{2 3 5}

The circumstances of his death are reported in conflict, and the museum sets them out attributed, without a verdict: according to a dossier of the Albanian Ministry of Interior, the autopsy on his body concluded that he committed suicide, and the German article likewise gives suicide; the Albanian article reports two gunshot wounds near the heart, officially reported as suicide, against testimony that he was killed by the eldest son of M. Peza; the Arabic article notes that later reports indicate he was shot. ^{2 4 3 1}

The dailies "Zëri i Popullit" and "Bashkimi" announced his death very briefly, ascribing it to a grave illness; on 13 October 1989 the Gjirokastër hospital was named after him, and in 1988 a compilation of his articles and speeches from the socialist period was published under the title "Për Shqipërinë e popullit" (For the People's Albania). ^{3 2}

• English Wikipedia article on Omer Nishani (revision 1379238549); Albanian Wikipedia article (revision 2858271); German Wikipedia article (revision 247250851); Arabic Wikipedia article «عمر النيشاني» (revision 76476949); Wikidata item Q560630.
• Recorded conflicts: the death year in the Albanian article's lead (1956) against its body and all other sources (1954); the circumstances of his death, set out attributed above; the end of his Council of State service under the occupation (January 1944 in the Albanian article).