Tour Vojvodina cycling gives me the opportunity to see better than most on the field the extent of our neglect cultural heritage; in many villages, a third of the houses are abandoned or demolished. It is as if corrupt (or just careless and incompetent) decision-makers at the local, provincial and national level, greedy investors, insufficiently aware locals and finally - the ravages of time conspired against cultural heritage.
Apart from the current demolitions of historically important houses in Vojvođanska Street in Sombor and Villa Šmit in Vrbas, which I wrote about in the past weeks for the "Vremena" portal, in Vojvodina we find examples of destruction and neglect of cultural heritage at every corner.
photo: Robert ChobanHouses at Jevrejska 6…
NOVI SAD
So let's start from Novi Sad in which most citizens (as well as journalists) have the opportunity to see these cases - but, pressed by existentially more important topics, they simply do not pay attention to them. Everyone seems to be guided by that sentence of Kostunica's minister Dragan Jočić:Hilandar it's burning, and you ask me if I visited newsagents". When in mid-September the media published the news about the fire in a one-story house at Jevrejska 6 in Novi Sad, several friends wrote to me that I was apparently crazy: how do I announce that a building needs to be renovated, a fire breaks out in it, the protection is removed, and soon a multi-story building sprouts up there.
A year ago, I photographed a house with a sculpture of an angel above the facade, which is located right across the road from Novi Sad Synagogues, to which a friend commented to me: "I can already see how 'Angel Residence' is sprouting here", alluding to a similar case in Petrovaradin. The same thing happened with the one-story building next to the Synagogue, in which a fire broke out a few years ago and was soon demolished. In the plan from seven years ago, it is stated that if Jevrejska 6 is not declared a protected building, then it is allowed to merge with the plot in Šafarikova, as well as to build a building with a garage, three floors and an attic, with a note that the height must not exceed the height of neighboring buildings. Also, it is prescribed that the new building must have an identical facade, the preserved angel from the existing building at Jevrejska 6, and other conditions are also prescribed.
The house from the interwar period in Vojvoda Bojovića Street was demolished, although it was one of the few preserved residential buildings in Novi Sad in the modern style.
photo: Robert Choban…and Pope Paul
The nearby Pap Pavla Street has also been the target of investors for the past two years. The even side of the street has so far resisted demolition. At the beginning of 2024, several old houses were found under the impact of excavators and pickaxes, some of them with valuable facade plastic. They soon gave way to five-story buildings, which in the past 30 years have completely changed the face of Grbavica, Salajka, Jovanski kraj, Podbara, but also Petrovaradin. It's as if we don't live in a plain, as if according to Rumenka and Futog, there are not enough lots for new buildings, 5 to 10 minutes by car from the city center.
REDHEAD
Recently, while riding a bicycle in the north of Bačka, in the village of Riđica on the very border with Hungary, I came across the Kovač Castle. Unfortunately, I had to state: if the Trianon ruler on the map had gone down a few millimeters in 1920, today this would be a luxury hotel with a winery (Riđica is a wine region), because that's how all the castles in Hungary, but also to Croatia, Slovenia, Romania... Only we loathe the legacy of the "hateful invaders" and let it decay.
The castle was built by Imre Kovač, who bought the Riđica manor in 1801, which gave it noble status and the predicate "of Riđica", that is, "Riđički". Of course, the lord had to have his castle, that is, the castle. The one located in the center of Riđica was built by a builder from Baja named Bischof, with the kuluk (forced labor) of all the subjects on the estate, and it was completed and occupied in 1806.
The castle consists of 16 rooms, three of which were halls, and the rest were side rooms. It is surrounded by a brick wall, two meters high and 70 cm thick. Behind the castle, a wonderful English-style park was built, through which the river Kidjoš flows.
For a time, the building was used as a local office, technical drawing classes were held there for elementary school students from Riđica, and the park was turned into a playground and a concrete sports field, where the "Dalmatinac" handball club played their matches, since Riđica was inhabited by colonists from Dalmatia. Today, the castle of the Kovač family is abandoned, it has been completely neglected for decades. The building is in a very bad condition and it is necessary to carry out serious construction works in order to restore the representativeness and original appearance of the building. Vandals looted it and completely devastated it. It's covered in graffiti and everything is broken. It serves to collect hooligans. A large part of the roof was damaged, the doors and windows were broken, so the deterioration of such an unprotected building accelerated. The city of Sombor took over the castle in 2017 in a ruinous state that has been in ruins for decades and has not done anything about it so far. For this reason, the Citizens' Association "Gvozdeni most" from Riđica sent a letter to the leaders of the city of Sombor with a request to urgently stop the further deterioration of the castle, to take the necessary measures to secure the building, which poses a threat to the safety of citizens, and propose its restoration.
The graffiti "Sešelja for the Predecessor" in one of the rooms of the castle best depicts the mental state that led the building to decay.
VLAJKOVAC
I found Bissingen Castle in a similar state at the very other end of Vojvodina, in the east Banat, in the village of Vlajkovac, not far from Vršac. In this castle, according to my recommendation, some of the scenes for the second season of the series were filmed Besa (the rack where the character played by Milan Marić keeps his kidnapped victims).
Although it was announced exactly one year ago that the castle will enter the restoration process as part of the "Castles of Serbia: Protection of Cultural Heritage" project, which I initiated and in 2020 it was supported by the Ministry of Culture and Information and that certain funds were allocated, apparently nothing happened during that time.
"For the castle in Vlajkovac, which is endangered, 5,5 million have been allocated, namely for the project of research and conservation works and the project documentation for the rehabilitation of the building. We have not carried out any work on this castle, the damage is extensive, and preventive protection would in the first phase entail the removal of the existing roof, as well as the construction of the upper mezzanine structure. This is a big job that will be carried out for years, for which huge funds are needed, and it is also necessary to resolve property rights relations. The castle was built in 1859 in the classicist style by Count Đerđ Močonji on his estate!" Grozdana Savčić Milenkov, director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Pancevo, told "Politika" in March last year.
BEOCIN
The only (perhaps) good news when it comes to cultural heritage in Vojvodina comes from Beocin. That is where, last weekend, in the building of the former post office, and before that Willy Spitzer, I found craftsmen removing rubble. I wrote about this villa and the even more famous Spitzer Castle for "Vreme" in April last year, in the text Girls from Brazil, as it became the building of the Old Post Office, on the floors of which inventory remained scattered: there was still a price list of postal services on the wall, as well as a box with compartments in which a few, never delivered letters remained. I remembered then a surreal scene: a tree growing on a massive stone balcony above the main entrance to the mansion.
Earlier this year, a friend from Beochin sent me a photo showing that nature had triumphed over architecture – a tree's roots had spread so far that it tore off a balcony and collapsed onto the front lawn.
The workers I met last weekend say that they are fixing up the villa, they don't know for whom, they think it was bought by a private person.
