The “world’s greatest pedestrian,” as an old magazine once put it, may have been a farm boy born outside Zagreb, Croatia, in 1878. He has no Wikipedia page (yet!), though in his heyday his press coverage was abundant. “From childhood up he would watch the sun, a fiery ball, going down behind the western hills and wonder where it went,” the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette wrote in 1914. His name was Josip—later Joseph—Mikulec. He traversed the jungle in Brazil, the hills of Siberia, Tasmania, and Toledo, Ohio, all in the interest of circumnavigating the globe on foot, paying his way by selling postcards featuring his own likeness. He was said to have walked a hundred and twenty miles without sleeping. He became a brand ambassador for shoemakers. He wore gold rings that he claimed were given to him by Geronimo, and hoisted a fifty-eight-pound leather volume on his shoulder bearing the signatures of other witnesses to his exploits: Nikola Tesla, Prince Albert of York, Admiral Tōgō.
As he grew older, Mikulec began to realize that his aching joints weren’t as replaceable as his rubber soles. He sometimes allowed himself the comfort of trains and fashioned a stroller for his giant keepsake. It dawned on him that the baby in his carriage, containing the penmanship of tens of thousands of dignitaries during a period of rapid modernization, was perhaps more impressive than all the perambulation. In 1923, the Times reported on Mikulec’s trip to see a rare-book dealer about his prized possession, which he’d thought might be worth a million dollars. “This is probably the greatest collection of autographs in the world,” the dealer admitted, while declining to offer any money.
Mikulec died in 1933, in Genoa, penniless. The Depression had made itinerancy an unfortunate commonplace, no cause for celebration. Then—in Eastern Europe, at any rate—came Communism. “In Yugoslavia, it was really hard to travel,” Viktor Šimunić, a Croatian politician, said the other day, as a way of explaining Mikulec’s slide into obscurity. “And they maybe didn’t want to show the people it was possible to travel all over the world.” Šimunić is the mayor of Oroslavje, Mikulec’s home town, population six thousand, which erected a statue in the forgotten pilgrim’s honor last October. Dressed in a royal-blue suit, the mayor was in Manhattan for the first time, as part of an ongoing campaign to restore Mikulec’s celebrity. He was accompanied by three of his town’s councilmen, two of whom grimaced while lugging a square suitcase with a combination lock down the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, around the corner, and into Central Park.
“We have a big history in our city,” Šimunić said as they walked. “We had two castles, but unfortunately, eighty years ago, one was burned, and we now have only one castle. You can see it here.” He pointed at an image on a canvas bag that was held by the third councilman. Tourism is a big priority for Šimunić, who has a touch of wanderlust himself, having already visited more countries (forty) than he has lived years (thirty-four). He spoke of building a museum to go with the new statue, and mentioned that the contents of the suitcase, which he had just shown to a curator at the Met, would serve as its chief attraction.
Cartoon by Farley Katz
They settled in the shade, near a monument to the King of Poland. The councilmen shook their arms in relief. Šimunić bent over the suitcase, thumbed the combo, and removed a couple of foam pads, revealing a leather-bound book that looked to be about a foot thick, with nearly three thousand pages, many embossed with the stamps and seals of scattered municipalities: Mikulec’s baby.
The purchase of the book and some other Mikulec artifacts, from an autograph dealer named Nathan Raab, had cost the council two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Raab acquired it in 2021 from a descendant of Robinson, the founder of the Acme supermarket chain, who appeared to have documented some of his own roaming by affixing postage stamps from India, Lebanon, and Japan on pages Mikulec had left blank. “Not every person can see the value of this story,” Šimunić said, alluding to what he called a “loud minority” back home who questioned his spending. Spying some ants crawling around the margins, he shut the book. “They want, I don’t know, maybe to put asphalt on the roads or something,” Šimunić went on. “Of course we are making the roads, making the sidewalks, but this is the cherry on top. Mikulec went to walk and see the whole world. Now our goal is to make the whole world come and see Oroslavje.” ♦
