SOMBOR
The monument to King Aleksandar Karađorđević in Sombor was erected in 1940 and is the work of sculptor Antun Augustinčić. Already in 1941, Horti's soldiers removed it, so that the bronze sculpture was cut into pieces and melted down by the new government after the end of the Second World War in 1947.
The monument stood opposite the entrance to the Old Town House, from the main street. A pedestal remained from the monument, and a mold of a horse was also preserved in Klanjec, Augustinčić's birthplace in Slovenia. The mold of the king was not preserved. It is unusual that Augustinčić presented the king bareheaded even though he was holding a drawn sword.
At the unveiling of the monument on Sunday, July 21, 1940, in Main Street and St. Đorđe in Sombor, more than 20.000 people gathered from the city but also from all over Vojvodina.
As Vladimir Mitrović writes in the work "Dynastic Monuments in the Kingdom of SHS/Yugoslavia 1919-1941", less than nine months after that, Nazi Germany attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and on April 12, 1941, troops of the Hungarian Honved entered Sombor. The monument to King Alexander was, during the first days of the occupation, covered with a tarpaulin provided by the owner of the Saracen shop, Merei. Before the ceremonial parade of the Hungarian army through Main Street, there was a panic because the soldiers would have to march in front of the monument, so they ran around looking for something to cover the monument and in the aforementioned store they got a tarp that the children threw on the monument.
A few weeks later, during the Hungarian military administration of the city, the bronze statue of King Alexander was removed. For some time, an empty pedestal stood on the square, covered with the Hungarian flag, and then it was broken and removed together with the bas-reliefs that were on it. During the occupation, the bronze statue of the king was located for some time in the corridor of the eastern side of the Town Hall, and after the liberation it was moved to the so-called landfill, i.e. to municipal waste.
By the decision of the municipal government, Augustinčić's statue of King Alexander was later taken to a foundry in Topola, where it was melted down, and the funds obtained from the sale of bronze from the monument were given, according to testimonies, to the city FC "Radnički". Thus, Sombor was left without its most impressive, but also the most short-lived artistic monument and the only monument to a Serbian soldier or statesman.
At the place of the former monument ten years ago, during the reconstruction of the main street in Sombor, an unaesthetic, even clumsy granite fountain (torn from the wider project of the author) was installed. Initiatives and petitions for the return of the monument have been going on since 2008, when the reconstruction of Main Street began, and currently it has reached the point where the city assembly supported the return of the monument and announced an award competition for the conceptual solution (2018), which was won by the work of Zoran Ivanović, a sculptor from Belgrade.
Before the Second World War, only two towns in Vojvodina, besides Sombor, had statues of horsemen: Pančevo and Zrenjanin.
TURIA
A particularly bizarre case is the monument to King Alexander in Turia, which was erected in 1936 in front of the current building of the Local Government, at the place where King Alexander first set foot on the ground during his visit to this Bačka village in 1919.
It was there until the occupation in 1941, when a few Turinese took it away and buried it so that the Hungarian occupation forces would not destroy it. It remained buried until 1992. Then it was unearthed by members of the People's Party led by Milan Paroški in December on the eve of the presidential elections (where Paroški was a candidate and won third place behind Slobodan Milošević and Milan Panić). It is quite certain that the sudden finding and excavation of the monument was part of his election campaign. By the way, in those days, Turia was dug in several places.
Apart from the members of the People's Party, the members of the SPO also tried to find and excavate the monument, but they did not have accurate information about its location, so their attempts were unsuccessful. As an authentic testimony of that unusual event, there is a VHS video on YouTube "How the monument to King Alexander was excavated in Turia". From 1992 until today, the monument has been standing in the premises of the Local Community of Turia because it is impossible to find funds for its re-erection.
......AND NOW IN DERONJA: Monuments to King Alexander
DERONJE
In another traditionally monarchist village in Bačka - Deronje, this was not the case. In front of the Orthodox church there is a monument to King Aleksandar Karađorđević the Unifier. The sign says that it was built in 2007 "with the help of God, the Serbian Reconstruction Movement, the Ministry of Culture and all people of good will".
The people of Deronje especially respected King Alexander the First, and the news of his death in Marseille in 1934 literally covered this village in black. Not long after that tragic event, in the desire to permanently preserve the memory of the beloved monarch, the citizens of Deronje launched an action to collect funds for the construction of the monument. Academic sculptor Dragutin Spasić created the monument, which was unveiled on May 8, 1938. That's when Deronje got the nickname "king's village". Milivoj Davidov told "Glas javnosti" in 2007 that he was only seven years old when the original monument was erected in 1938. "I remember that we were all happy in the house. My father Đoka especially because he served in the king's guard and was a seiz, that is, he took care of the king's horse. In the house, we also had pictures of the royal couple on the wall. Queen Maria was especially beautiful. After the war we had to hide the picture and I kept it until we demolished the house about thirty years ago. Then someone steals it from me. I can't regret that at all!" Grandpa Milivoj said at the time.
The people of Deronje could not even imagine that they would see the monument for only three years. When the Hungarian occupation forces came to Deronje in 1941, the monument was demolished and all traces of it were lost, which was the fate of most monuments dedicated to King Peter, King Alexander or Svetozar Miletić in Novi Sad in Bačka. After the war, a new time came when it was not very popular to mention the king. It took a full 60 years for the idea of restoring the monument to King Alexander to be feasible again. Academic sculptor Dragan Dimitrijević managed to create a faithful replica of the monument, which was unveiled by Prince Alexander on May 16, 2007, with the help of photographs. Every third inhabitant of this beautiful village came to attend the ceremony. They cheered tumultuously for Princess Katarina and Prince Alexander, who were brought to the central place in a tropreg. Before the solemn act, priest Slavko Stojisavljević, with the presence of several priests as well as the Roman Catholic pastor of Odza, Jakob Fajfer, served a memorial service for King Alexander.
KRAGUJEVAC
The monument to King Alexander, authored by Dragomir Arambašić, was consecrated with a great public ceremony and unveiled on Vidovdan 1936. It was located in front of the "Zastava" administrative building. It was six meters high and weighed more than two tons, and it was cast in Kragujevac from melted cannon barrels.
The monument was demolished after the Second World War with the help of Russian suicide bombers. According to some testimonies, the surviving Thessalonians continued to come to that place and light candles long after the monument was demolished. The fate of the monument itself is not known because some believe that it was melted down, while others believe that it is still buried in the grounds of the former "Zastava" factory.
The Ravnogorsk Movement and the Association of Refugees, Exiled and Vulnerable Persons of Serbia submitted an initiative for the rebuilding of the monument to King Aleksandar Karađorđević in Kragujevac, which was torn down and taken away by the post-war communist authorities in 1946.
NIS
There is a king's monument in Niš, it is located in the center, on the square of the same name, and it is the work of the academic sculptor Zoran Ivanović from Belgrade. It was cast in the "Kuzman" foundry in Smederevo. The inscription "King Aleksandar Karađorđević 1888–1934" is carved into the pedestal of the monument. The height of the monument is 4,5 meters and the pedestal is 7 meters, it weighs 3,3 tons.
The monument was unveiled by the mayor of Niš, Smiljko Kostić, and Prince Aleksandar Karađorđević on December 7, 2004, on the ninetieth anniversary of the Niš Declaration on the unification of peoples of Slavic origin in the Balkans. The monument was consecrated by the bishop of Niš, Mr. Irinej, who said that this act corrects the injustice inflicted on the people of Niš by those who tried to take away our memory, poison our roots and destroy our traditions.
The first monument was unveiled and consecrated on the king's birthday on December 17, 1939, but under unexplained circumstances, after the liberation of Niš in 1946, it was removed and destroyed. The original monument is the work of Radeta Stanković, one of the most prominent Serbian sculptors between the two world wars.
WHITE CITY
It sounds incredible, but in the capital of Serbia, the one where King Alexander I Karađorđević dined, there is no monument to him. According to the proposal of the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić from 2018, it should have been placed in 2019 opposite the monument to Emperor Nikolai Romanov. But that didn't happen until today, not even on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the assassination in Marseille.
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