"It's not about the stable. It's a shame to demolish the stable. Sectarian buildings should be demolished everywhere!", "They should have mined it! 100 of ours for one Swabian, let me remind you if you've forgotten!", "I don't understand, what's the point? And what should we do, stone by stone and pray each time?"; "Just demolish! The Swabians have demolished and killed too much to be respected. Let these modern young Internet analysts and know-it-alls moan, that's all they know!"...
The video of the demolition of the temple of the German Evangelical Church in Titel on my Instagram profile was viewed by 1.252.924 people in seven days. Out of over 1.500 comments, 50 percent of them condemn the demolition of the cultural heritage and whose church it is, about 25 percent find justification in the fact that the building posed a danger to passers-by, as well as in the fact that the owner of the church himself gave consent for its demolition. About 25 percent of them approve the demolition because it is a "sectarian building" and the like.
When we see this, we should not be surprised that out of 118 castles, as many as were found on the list of the "Castles of Serbia, protection of cultural heritage" project, as many as 80 percent are in bad condition, similar or worse than this church in Titel. Many of them also belonged to Serbian families - Stratimirović, Dunđerski, Karađorđević, Obrenović, so that's where the argument that "everything that belongs to someone else should be demolished" falls away.
The statistics should not be surprising that during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995) 534 mosques were demolished in the territory under the control of the Army of Republika Srpska, and 80 mosques in the territory controlled by the Croatian Defense Council. In the book by Slobodan Mileusnić Spiritual genocide 1991-1995 it says that 125 Orthodox churches were destroyed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the publication of Slobodan Praljak Demolished and damaged Catholic churches and buildings in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1991 war-1995. we come across the following data: the number of completely destroyed parish churches is 65, and of that number, 64 were destroyed by the Serbian army and Muslim forces. Of the 60 other churches that were demolished, 53 were demolished by Serbs and seven by Muslims. Serbian armed forces also completely destroyed eight monasteries.
Those who destroyed, mined and burned the place of worship on all three sides during the war have an identical attitude towards the heritage, their own and other's, in peace 30 years later.
CASTLES OF SERBIA
I initiated the aforementioned "Castles of Serbia" project at the end of 2020, and the Ministry of Culture and Information, headed by the then Minister Maja Gojković, understood the idea, so a Working Group under that name was established with the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure in order to approach the solution of this problem. The working group first made a list of 118 legally protected castles, summer houses and manors on the territory of the Republic of Serbia, classified them by type of ownership: state (Republic, AP Vojvodina, local governments), private (less than 10 percent) and the third, most disputed category - "in the process of restitution".
I took the project to the then ambassador of France in Belgrade, Jean-Louis Falconi, as I believed that his country has the most experience when it comes to the restoration and sustainable use of castles. A few months later, when Minister Maja Gojković went on an official visit to the then Minister of Culture of France Roseline Bachlot Narcan, she told her that she had received an interesting project from the embassy in Belgrade that she would like to support. The plan was to send a group of French experts who would inspect the 30 castles on the list and make suggestions on how to restore them and use them later. She also offered France's help in finding funds from EU funds for their restoration. After several delays due to the pandemic, the experts finally came, visited some of the castles, sent a report and their proposals, but that was it.
In the meantime, in 2022 we also organized a round table on the topic "Castles of Serbia" at the Cultural Center of Serbia in Paris; Minister Maja Gojković, Princess Jelisaveta Karađorđević and Jelena Medaković, director of the Museum of the City of Belgrade, which includes the oldest palace in Belgrade - Konak of Princess Ljubica, took part in the conversation that I moderated. Frédéric Mitterrand, former Minister of Culture of France and nephew of François Mitterrand, attended on the French side. Frédéric Mitterrand explained how the French maintain their castles, stressing that it is a fortunate circumstance that they have been in private ownership for the past 250 years. During numerous changes in state and social arrangements, the ownership of the castles was not touched. The attitude of the French state towards the preservation of its cultural heritage has not changed either.
photo: Robert ChobanKarachonji Castle,…
THE DECLINE BEGINS AFTER 2000.
In our country, all castles, manors and summer houses were nationalized after the Second World War, during socialism most of them were in solid condition, they housed schools, agricultural combines or cooperatives, and their decline began in the nineties, and especially with the transition after 2000.
The most picturesque case is the Karačonji Castle in Novi Milosevo, which was built in 1857 by the lord Laszlo Karačonji. At the entrance to the village there was another castle, even bigger and more beautiful than this one, built by Laszlo's brother. The castle was demolished after the Second World War, and the locals say that there are still underground lagoons that connected the palaces of the two brothers. Towards the end of the First World War, the castle was abandoned by Laszlo's great-grandson Aladar Karačonji. At the end of 1918, during the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a mob broke into the property and looted the palace and looted the inventory. Next, in 1919, Mihail Rodzjanko, a Russian emigrant and former president of the Russian Duma, moved into the castle, who lived there until his death in 1924. The castle was sold to the municipality of Beodra in 1938, which used it as an elementary school. During the Second World War, when Banat was under German occupation, the castle housed a mental hospital. After the war, it housed a home for the children of fallen fighters, a "home for carefree female youth" (whatever that meant then), and since 1960 the "Miloš Popov" elementary school, as evidenced by the drawings of children's motifs on the wall next to the central staircase. In 1980, based on someone's crazy idea, the chemical industry "Hinom" moved into the castle and stayed there until 2000, when the company went bankrupt. There are still cisterns with acids and other chemical substances in the ballrooms and dining rooms of the Karachonji palace, and freight elevators for goods were subsequently installed. A palace like in France, Germany, Austria and even Hungary, Romania and Poland would attract thousands of tourists and employ the local population - here it served as a factory.
In earlier articles for "Vreme", I wrote about the state of the castles Kovač in Riđica, Bissingen in Vlajkovac and Spitzer in Beocin, which I recently visited. There is no (good) news when it comes to the fate of Fantast, the most famous castle in Vojvodina. Namely, on March 1, 2021, MK Group announced that it was withdrawing from it because they do not want to invest in a facility for which there is a request from Matica Srpska to be returned to it in the restitution process. Before World War II, Bogdan Dunđerski, the owner of the castle, stated in his will that he was leaving Fantast to Matica Srpska, with the obligation to establish an agricultural academy there. I wrote about what happened afterwards for "Vreme" in 2021 in the text "Requiem for Fantast". In the meantime, there is no longer any security around the castle that the MK Group initially left, the trees between the castle and the chapel where Bogdan Dunđerski was buried were cut down, and the horses in the stable were slaughtered. Matica srpska got Fantast back in a first-instance verdict a few months ago, however, the officials at its head seem to have no desire to tackle the renovation and putting into operation the castle that was bequeathed to it by a Becej landowner more than 85 years ago.
It is a question of the day when, as in 1943 in the tumult of war after the death of Bogdan Dunđerski, the holy people will break into the castle and tear apart what is still left in it. After that, the well-known fate of Spitzer Castle and other similar buildings awaits him. "The Huns and Avars are amateurs for what will be left behind by our generation when it comes to cultural heritage!", a friend who, like me, is also an amateur in raising awareness about this problem, told me resignedly.
photo: Robert Choban…Baba Pusta Castle
I'm afraid that the only legacy of this project will be the website www.dvorcisrbije.rs which contains information, history, photos and videos about all 118 protected castles, manors and summer houses.
A group of residents of the village of Aleksa Šantić near Sombor tried to organize the rescue of the Baba Pusta castle in the atar of that village, which overgrown with vegetation looks like some kind of Pannonian Angor Wat. However, even there there was no understanding of the City of Sombor, on whose territory it is located. If you know how the city's fathers treat Vojvođanska Street in the very center of Sombor, where architecturally and historically significant houses from the end of the 19th century are being demolished, how can you expect them to do something with a neglected castle in a remote village.
While in France in the past 250 years, during two empires, two kingdoms, five republics and two German occupations, the state's attitude towards cultural heritage has not changed - it has always been protected, in our country it was enough for Minister Maja Gojković to leave for another position and for the project "Castles of Serbia, protection of cultural heritage" to end up at the bottom of a drawer.
Sources say that Nikola Selaković, who took her place, is only interested in the Cyrillic alphabet and Orthodox monasteries. Motivating him to get involved in the protection of the castle in Vojvodina that was built by some Hungarians, Germans or Austrians, and even "pretenders" like Dunđerski, would be the same as trying to convince the authors of the comments at the beginning of the text to change their position.
