Town, city, capital

“Ti sjajiš kao iskopan stari mač”,

Lament over Belgrade, Milos Crnjanski

If we were to rely today on the opinion of travel writers from the 19th century, we could conclude that no city in Europe at that time was more intertwined with oriental and European influences and appearance than Beograd. And none degree he did not experience any more transformation of his inner physiognomy. In the 20s of the XNUMXth century, travel writers found Turks traveling from one end of the town to the other on camels (the duke's brother Jevrem Obrenović also had them in Šabac, until he replaced them with a carriage and carriage), and at the end of the same century they saw trams, a railway station and electric lighting throughout the city.

The identity and nature of Belgrade was determined by geography and history, as well as by all the peoples who lived in it for centuries, their lifestyles, their languages, their places of worship, their villages, their customs and traditions, all in one place with a diameter of one and a half kilometers, from today's Kalemegdan to the National Theater or the same amount from the Sava to the Danube banks, past Kalemegdan. It was never the capital of any empire, many peoples lived in it for centuries longer than the Serbs, but many empires considered it their "gateway".

For some enterprising Jews, Serbs, Cincars or people from Dubrovnik, the city on the border of two empires - Turkish (Ottoman) and Austrian (Habsburg) - for a long time was also a city on the border of two different worlds, two calendars, two legal systems, two value cosmos, so in times of wars, revolts and sieges, they crossed from one world to the other in order to preserve their lives and family, business and network of clients, and it was enough just to cross the Sava or pay Danube boat ride from Mali Kalemegdan to the town of Zemun.

Only in the last two centuries did Belgrade become the capital of the modern Serbian state. Through seven decades of the 1918th century (1991–XNUMX), it was also the capital of the state that was created on the ruins of the two mentioned empires, the Ottoman and the Habsburg, and it has preserved that pride and metropolitan spirit to some extent even in the XNUMXst century, although sometimes - both the city and the country it represents - behave like a man in an old-fashioned "wrong number shirt".

At the beginning of modern Serbian statehood, in the 1839th century, Belgrade was twice declared the capital of the new state, in 1841/10. moved from Kragujevac. It was in the midst of the civil war between the Defenders of the Constitution (the first political party in the Principality of Serbia) and Obrenović. From then until today, like no other city in Europe, it was the capital of as many as 13 states by title, in which, like no other city in Europe, in two centuries, as many as 11 national constitutions were adopted, out of 14 in total, which were changed on average every 15, 13 years, which spoke about the culture of the people's government, its state, loyalty to its laws, institutions and the identity crisis of all those concepts. Governments (ministerial councils) in it lasted an average of 1805 and a half months, and there were a total of 180 of them from 1804 to the present day. As the capital, it also changed two ruling dynasties, two ruling titles (prince, king) and two forms of government: monarchy (1945–1945) and republic (after 1804). During the time of the monarchy, the territory of the state whose capital was increased six times, and during the time of the republic it was reduced three and a half times. Of the entire procession of Serbian rulers, in the long and stormy history since Nemanjić, only one emperor, one king and three princes rest in it today. Of the ten modern-day monarchs (1945–XNUMX), only four remain in it, two of whom were killed. No voivode from the First World War, together with their commander-in-chief, rests in the Alley of Meritorious Citizens at the New Cemetery in Belgrade.

In the 1830th century, it was first the seat of the Turkish province Belgrade Pashaluk, and then the capital of the vassal Principality of Serbia (1878–1866), and at that moment it was divided into a town, where civilians lived, and a city, where the Turkish army lived together with its commander, the Belgrade vizier in the rank of general (pasha). Both the town and the fortress were surrounded by high medieval walls, with entrance gates, until the Serbian prince Mihailo Obrenović demolished the town walls and gates in 1867, and in 11 evicted the last Turkish garrison from the Belgrade fortress (Kalemegdan) and Serbia. Before that, his father, Prince Miloš, had already expanded the Serbian town to settlements outside the walls, in Savamala, Terazije, Tašmajdan, Palilulu and Vračar. Within the town there were XNUMX mosques, one synagogue and one each Orthodox and Roman Catholic church and four mahals: Serbian, Turkish, Jewish and Dubrovnik.

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The turning point in the Europeanization of Belgrade was 1830, when the Principality of Serbia was proclaimed, freedom of religion was proclaimed, and when for the first time bells were heard instead of clappers at the Cathedral. The previous Turkish administration of the Belgrade pashaluka was replaced entirely by the Serbian administration, and the prince and his officials took off their Turkish caps and costumes and put on Serbian uniforms and European suits. The official proclamation of the Serbian state also marked the end of the Serbian Revolution (1804-1830), which was started by Karađorđe and ended by Prince Miloš. Foreign consuls, artists, officers, the first photographers (1839) and engineers who build "German" buildings instead of the previous "Balkan profane" public buildings come to Belgrade. Soon Belgrade's alleys were cobbled all the way to the duke's residence (palace) on Terazije, street lighting (lanterns) was introduced, and in 1847 they received their first official names, which, both then and later, reflected the historical identity of both the city and the majority of the people: around the Cathedral, in the first circle, the streets were named after Kosovo heroes (Kosančić, Toplica, Obilić, Tsar Lazar, Empress Milica, etc.), after Nemanjići (Emperor Dušan, Emperor Uroš, Nemanja, Sveta Sava...) and by the heroes of folk songs (Marko Kraljević, Majca Jevrosima, Strahinjić ban, Jugović brothers, Jug Bogdan, Majca Jugovića, Starina Novak...), in the second round by the champions of the uprising (Karađorđe, Ilija Birčanin, Aleksa Nenadović, Vasa Čarapić, Pope Luka, Simi Marković, Proti Mateja, Petar Moler, brothers Nedić, Uzun Mirko, Kondi, Duke Mileti...) and battles (Mišarska, Deligradska, Ivankovačka, Loznička...), in the third by rulers, in the fourth by members of the prince's family (lord Jevrem, lord Jovan, grandmother Višnja), and later (in the XNUMXth century) by artists and poets, by newly liberated regions (Macedonia, Kosovo...) and cities (Prizren, Bitola, Nis...), holy places (Hilandar, Sveta gora, Dečani, Gračanica, Cetinje, Shkodër...), heroes and battles of the First World War (Kajmakčalanska, Kolubarska, Bregalnička, Kumanovska, Cerska, Albanian memorials, Vojvode Putnik, Vojvode Stepa, Vojvode Mišić...) and in that order, in cyclical circles throughout the entire XNUMXth and the first half of the XNUMXth century.

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The identity of the city was preserved by the monument culture, which always had its own strict rules contained in the answers to the questions: to whom is the monument erected (ruler, priest, soldier, citizen), what kind of pedestal is appropriate for an equestrian monument, what kind of pedestal, what kind of bust (bust), what kind of ambient whole is appropriate for what kind of monument, and even what kind of death (monuments are not erected to the living) did the hero of the monument experience (killed in battle - a horse with with crossed legs, killed in an assassination attempt – a horse with one leg up, died of natural causes – a horse with legs down), and all that down to the last detail. If we look carefully today at the monuments to Prince Mihail, Karađorđe, Vuk Karadžić, Dositej Obradović, Josif Pančić, Jovan Cvijić, Duke Vuk or Njegoš, we will see that they were made in the best manner of the city's European culture since the Renaissance. But we will also note that even two monuments were erected to some heroes (out of ignorance) and two streets were named (Stefan Lazarević) in the center of Belgrade and in the same municipality. There are more such examples.

The number of inhabitants of Belgrade, since the first censuses of the Serbian administration in the 12.000th century, grew from 90.000, less than 60.000 before the First World War (by the end of the war, that number dropped to even 300.000), 1918 before the Second World War and less than two million today (with a wider area of ​​the city). It is interesting to note that at the time of the proclamation of Yugoslavia (Kingdom of SHS) in 100.000, Belgrade was not the largest city in the country, but only the fourth in terms of population. Subotica (around 90.000), Zagreb (more than 90.000) and Bitolj (more than 12) had more inhabitants. Right behind Belgrade were Sarajevo and Skopje. The entire country, from the Soča in the west to the Black River in the south, had XNUMX million inhabitants at that time. Nevertheless, since then, Belgrade was seen as a metropolis, and only the "being of the city", as a subject, had such an experience: the capital of the state of all southern Slavs, which was created in the Balkan, Pannonian and Mediterranean areas of two defeated empires, Turkish and Austrian, which it symbolizes The winner on top of Kalemegrad.

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Also interesting are the concepts of "old" and "new" Belgrade throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, when New Belgrade, as a name, was established only for the part of the city created after the Second World War on the left bank of the Sava, that is, in the uninhabited part of Zemun and the Srem village of Bežanije. Before that, there were several "new" Belgrades in urban planning solutions, which descriptively referred to the periphery of the city, which was expanded by construction to the south and east, by the inclusion of Šumadija villages (Topčider, Banjica, Karaburma, Mokri lug, Mirijevo, Rakovica...) into an integral part of the city. Even today, sometimes, but very rarely, the "Turkish" and "Austrian" part of Belgrade is mentioned in everyday speech, more like an archaism in the vocabulary of historiographers.

Equally interesting is the notion of "old Belgraders", which rapidly and frequently changed over the course of two centuries, their mentality and urban culture that they protected from the onslaught of "foreigners" and the spaces through which that culture lost the battle or simply yielded to the waves of "new Belgraders". In the 1985th century, foreigners who came to Belgrade took baptismal glory and customs from the Serbs, in the 1831th century the newcomers mostly imposed their own rules and customs, to the detriment of the city's identity and spirit. When work on the final construction of the Church of Saint Sava in Vračar began (12.000), someone addressed the issue and found that the number of old Belgraders, who have been residents of the capital for more than three ancestral generations, was not greater than the number counted by the Serbian administration back in XNUMX - only XNUMX.

That "man in an old-fashioned shirt with the wrong number" today has half a million more inhabitants than when he lost his "empire", the state of all southern Slavs (1991), but it seems that, like never before in modern history, he is no longer struggling with his identity, cultural and aesthetic pattern, awareness of himself and others, urban style and style in general, government culture, aesthetics, institutions, and even with language and way of speaking.