photo: Robert ChobanParis
The day after death Alexei Navalny in February of this year, under the monument Petru i Aleksandar Karađorevic in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, local Russians began placing flowers, candles and photos of a dissident who died under suspicious circumstances. Why the Russians chose this one among all the monuments in Paris as the place to honor Navalny, we will probably never know. Apart from the common Slavic and Orthodox origin, there may also be the fact that both Alexander and Aleksei were victims of assassination. There is no official proof for the latter, but his supporters deeply believe in it.
PARIS
The monument to King Peter I and King Alexander I in Paris is a joint monument composition, and it is dedicated primarily to King Alexander I Karađorđević, who was assassinated in 1934 in the territory of France, but also to his father King Peter I, who was considered a great friend of this country. The monument was unveiled on October 9, 1936, on the second anniversary of the Marseille assassination, and its author was the French sculptor Maxime Real del Sart.
Less than four years before the assassination in Marseille, on the anniversary of the signing of the German capitulation on November 11, 1930, in the presence of King Alexander I, the Monument of Gratitude to France was unveiled at Kalemegdan. During his official visit to France, King Alexander I was assassinated on October 9, 1934 in Marseille by Veličko Dimitrov Kerin, a member of the separatist VMRO, and the assassination was organized by members of the Ustasha movement. Together with him, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louis Barto, was also killed.
On the eve of Armistice Day, November 10, 1934, the stone death masks of King Alexander I and Minister Barthou were displayed at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. This was reported by the Belgrade daily "Vreme" on the front page, in a text entitled "Millions of Parisians parade throughout the night in front of the death mask of the Blessed King Alexander, displayed on the hearse in front of the Victory Gate". On the same evening, a prayer for the king's soul was held, and among those present were French President Albert Lebrun, Marshal Philippe Pétain, Marshal and Honorary Duke Louis Français d'Épère, Princess Olga Karađorđević, Yugoslav ambassador in Paris Dr. Miroslav Spalajković and others. The death masks were made by the French sculptor Maxime Real del Sart, a member of the monarchist French Action.
Although it was planned that on the model, at the bottom, there would be another sculpture of the lifeless King Alexander I in a shroud, over which a personification of grief is crying with a sword in his hands, in the final decision it was decided to glorify the king's statesmanship and warrior glory instead of his tragic death. On the front side of the pedestal is the inscription: "Kingdom of Serbia and Yugoslavia, Peter I the Liberator and Alexander I the Unifier", and below it: "Homage of Paris and France to great friends". On the sides are parts of the telegram that Regent Alexander sent to French President Remond Poincaré in December 1915: "Serbia is gone, but its army is preserved, we are ready to continue the fight on French soil", as well as the alleged last words of the king: "Keep Yugoslavia! Protect Franco-Yugoslav friendship!"
Maxim Real del Sart, who became famous for his sculptures of Joan of Arc, first made this grandiose composition in bronze in plaster, and this work was bought by the Museum of the City of Belgrade at the beginning of this year after it was discovered in a French antique shop by art historian Branka Đorđević Nakaniši. Today it is in the collection of this museum.
MARSEILLE
In Marseille, the city where the king was killed, there are two places dedicated to Alexander I Karađorđević. A board with information in French is located on a flagpole at the place where the assassins shot the king. The large Art Deco monument to King Alexander and Louis Barthou is located in the 6th arrondissement of Marseille and is the work of the architect Gaston Castel and the sculptors Antoine Sartori, Louis Bottinelli and Eli-Jean Vezien. Four tall female figures hold photographs of the two assassinated statesmen. Behind them is a monumental shield resting on two columns decorated with reliefs with the inscription "Pax" ("Peace") as well as the coats of arms of both countries. On those two pillars are two female figures representing Yugoslavia and France.
KINGDOM OF SHS/YUGOSLAVIA
From the mid-1940s to the end of XNUMX, that is, in a period of a decade and a half, on the territory of the Kingdom of SHS/Yugoslavia, nearly two hundred dynastic monuments dedicated to the kings Peter I and Alexander I were created, different in shape and size, from depictions of horsemen, standing figures , enlarged busts, portraits, reliefs with compositions from the monarch's life, memorial plaques and memorial fountains. Over time, memorial cemeteries, memorial objects of various purposes (schools, hospitals, sanatoriums), sokol homes, and finally, Orthodox churches joined this phenomenon, with which the official government wanted to confirm the unity and unitary structure of the new state.
As Vladimir Mitrović writes in his work "Dynastic Monuments in the Kingdom of SHS/Yugoslavia 1919-1941", for the creation of those monuments, mostly excellent academic sculptors were hired, so there were almost no amateur works. There is no doubt that the actions of erecting monuments to the kings throughout the country were planned and bureaucratically successfully managed, but, it seems, at that moment there were no particularly negative reactions to their erection. Nevertheless, quite rare, sporadic incidents, as well as the subsequent general non-acceptance of these monuments were, among other things, the main causes of their unique disappearance. In the period from May 1941 until, at best, the fall of the same year, about a hundred monuments were removed and destroyed only from the territory that became part of the NDH (Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina). Of a relatively serious and high-quality production, not a single one remained, just like in other parts of the country, when after the official disintegration of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, after the short-lived April 1941th War in 1941, the territory of the country was cruelly dismembered and divided. The new authorities, except to some extent in the so-called central Serbia, they didn't wait long to remove all the found monuments that remind of Karađorđević and Yugoslavia. The preparations for those events were very clear and quick - immediately after the organization of the authorities in the new state territories, all the remnants of the previous state union had to be removed, with special emphasis on dynastic monuments. In the northern territories of the country, in Slovenia, Dalmatia, Dubrovnik and Montenegro, the Italian occupation authorities officially remove the monuments through their local bureaucratic administrations. In the large, central part of the kingdom, included in the NDH, where the construction in the interwar period was very intense, the Ustasha regime took over the power and thoroughly demolished all the monuments of the royal regime. On the territory of Bačka, that role is taken over by the Hungarian occupation authorities, in Banat, which was officially part of Nedić's Serbia and essentially under the administration of local Germans - the German government; and in Macedonia, Bulgaria, and they deal particularly brutally with the found monuments, both those from the era of the kingdom and those from the Middle Ages. Thus, by the fall of 2018, all dynastic monuments and symbols of the Kingdom of SHS (Yugoslavia) disappeared from the face of the earth. To date, only a few of them have been restored - in Bjeljina, Zrenjanin, Sombor and Niš, while in Novi Sad, a monument to King Petar I Karađorđević was erected on Trg republike (!?) in XNUMX.
SLOVENIA
The first monument to Karađorđević on the soil of today's Slovenia was the one dedicated to King Petar I Karađorđević in Kranj, built in 1926, by Valentin (Tine) Kos. The monument to King Peter I Karađorđević in Ljubljana, erected in 1931, was made by the famous sculptor Lojze Dolinar, one of the most prolific Slovenian sculptors, who, among other things, spent a long time in Belgrade (1949–1959) as a professor at the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts. In addition to the monument in Ljubljana, Dolinar is also the author of the monument to King Alexander I in Skopje (in the Children's Home, 1935) and Visoko (1937).
Before the beginning of the war, the same author also created a monument to King Alexander I, also in Ljubljana, which was ceremonially opened on the birthday of King Peter II on September 6, 1940, in the presence of the young king, Prince Viceroy Pavle, members of the Royal House and high-ranking dignitaries from Belgrade. Zagreb, Ljubljana and all of Slovenia. A special group of dynastic monuments in Slovenia consists of monuments to King Alexander I in the form of massive busts on high pedestals - in Ljubljana, in the tobacco factory (sculptor Iva Despić Simonović, 1935), Jesenice (sculptor Petar Loboda, 1936) and a monument in the yard of the Civil School in Maribor (1936). As in other territories of the kingdom, in Slovenia there were many more modest monuments in smaller places, as well as numerous memorial plaques dedicated to kings Peter I and Alexander I.
CROATIA
Several dynastic monuments in Croatia created in this period deserve additional attention - either for their extremely high artistic qualities that often coincide with the works of famous Yugoslav sculptors or for some other specifics that set them apart from the general Yugoslav corpus of monuments dedicated to members of the Yugoslav dynasty. One of the first monuments to King Peter I was erected in 1923 in Darda near Osjek. It was a pyramidal structure, nine meters high, with a double-headed eagle on top holding in its claws the coat of arms of the Kingdom of SHS. The monument was erected on the site, and probably from the same material, of the previous monument to Maria Theresa with the Hungarian crown, which was demolished already in 1918. The monument in Darda suffered the same fate shortly after the beginning of the Second World War.
Only one year after the death of King Peter I, at the meeting of the citizens of Dubrovnik, it was decided to purchase the design for the monument from Ivan Meštrović. Two years later, on December 1, 1924, the day of Unification, a large stone relief was unveiled at a grand ceremony. It was placed in a place of honor (to the left of the staircase on the city walls) under the very statue of St. Blaise, the patron saint of the city. The king was depicted on horseback, draped in a large cape, with a falcon in his hand. Even on the reproductions of old photographs, it is obvious that the relief carried great artistic energy, and with its moderate stylization and extreme expressiveness, it belongs to the very top of Meštrović's works of a similar theme. King Alexander himself was very pleased with the Dubrovnik monument, so immediately after the official opening, he awarded awards to the participants in the process of building and unveiling the monument. Meštrović's relief depicting King Peter I was exhibited the following year in Paris.
...Varaždin, demolition of monuments
The famous Croatian and Yugoslav sculptor Antun Augustinčić created a series of monumental dynasties in the interwar period. In addition to the large monuments in Kragujevac (1932, the only one that still exists, and is not dynastic, but dedicated to the fallen in wars), Skopje (1937) and Sombor (1940), Augustinčić built three monuments in Croatia. The earliest was a simply conceived and executed commemorative plaque dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the liberation of the island of Krka with a stylized double-headed eagle, the national coat of arms in claws and a commemorative inscription (1931). The monuments in Varaždin and Sušak are significantly more significant and belong to the very top of the interwar dynasties. The memorial figure of King Alexander I in Varaždin was inaugurated on September 6, 1935, on the birthday of the young King Peter II, on the main King Tomislav Square, in front of the Town Hall.
Just a few weeks later, on November 17, 1935, the monument to King Alexander I on Sušak, which Augustinčić created together with another great Croatian and Yugoslav sculptor, Fran Kršinić, was officially unveiled. A bronze figure of the king at the helm of a (Yugoslav) ship is shown in a standing position on a wide platform from which a high pedestal emerges. The king is depicted in a parade general's uniform with a cape swaying in the wind. On the pedestal are bronze reliefs with figures that symbolize all the corners of the earth. Although only bad photos and photos of the model of the monument have been preserved, its monumental properties and pathos expressed in the figures of the king and the figures on the reliefs are visible. Frano Kršinić, the second author of the Sušak monument, was extremely active in the area of dynasties monuments throughout the country - Bosanska Krupa (1929), Novi Bečej (1937), Sarajevo (1938), as well as the busts of King Alexander I and Peter I in Zagreb (1934). and Bjelovar (1935).
Another sculptor who was very active in the field of dynastic monuments is Sreten Stojanović, whose works can be considered more successful monuments - Nevesinje (1928), Dvor na Uni (1929), Tuzla (1935), Ohrid (1937) and especially Udbine ( 1938). All the mentioned works of Augustinčić, Kršinić and Stojanović were never included in their official biographies, nor in encyclopedias or monographs. The same authors continued their brilliant sculpting and monumental careers during socialist Yugoslavia.
Among the other monuments of kings in Croatia, the monuments with depictions of the figure of King Peter I in Nova Gradiška in 1926 (sculptor Ivo Kordić) are worth mentioning; Otočcu in the same year (Josip Turkalj); Sisku in 1930 (Robert Žan Ivanović); Sušak in 1938 (Vinko Matković), as well as the monument to King Alexander I in Vukovar in 1936 (Marin Studin).
The memorial lighthouse dedicated to King Alexander I in Split was ceremonially unveiled on December 8, 1935 and was unique in the entire country. Conceived as a monument-lighthouse, therefore, an object of a utilitarian nature, it was placed in the city port, and it was carved from blocks of Brac stone (width 1,2 m, height 7,5 m). According to the evaluations of the press of the time ("Adriatic Watch"), the monument seemed pleasant with its simple geometric form that does not disturb the harbor ambience without getting lost in the details. Unlike other Yugoslav dynasties, the Split monument was not dedicated to the personalities themselves, but to the events related to their visits to Split. The occasions themselves - three historical events, engraved in the form of short inscriptions on this unique non-figurative dynastic of the kingdom - are rarely interesting - August 26, 1910, when "the (bright and refined) youth of Split greeted the future Yugoslav king Peter I for the first time"; November 29, 1925, when the king (Alexander I) said during his visit to Split at this same place: "Be from now on, as before, the eternal guardians of our sea, the united fatherland firmly stands behind you"; On October 14, 1934, when the remains of King Alexander I were brought from Marseille to Split, "the motherland, petrified by pain, received here the body of the martyr king returned from abroad, where he breathed his last with the words: Protect Yugoslavia for me." The memorial lighthouse designed and marked in this way inspired the speakers at the opening, who said that it will show shippers a safe place in the port and the people a safe future. The texts were removed by the Italian occupiers already in the spring of 1941, immediately after the founding of the NDH.
Dozens of dynastic monuments were erected in the area of the former Sava Banovina. These were mostly busts, portraits of kings in life size or slightly larger when placed on high pedestals. There is also a large number of memorial plaques, mostly made by trained sculptors. Revealed with great national celebrations and ceremonies, with festive parades, speeches and music, placed exclusively in the very centers of settlements and cities, these monuments, like all the others, were wiped off the face of the earth by the Ustasha authorities as early as 1941.
(it will continue)
