Endowments and Benefactors of Smederevo in the 19Th Century

Snežana Cvetković

Review of the National Center for Digitization, Tome 46 (2025), p. 24

Résumé

In the second half of the 19th century, Smederevo underwent significant modernization processes, which were reflected through intensive economic and industrial development and a flourishing of trade and construction. In the middle of the century, the Church of Saint George the Great Martyr was erected in the city centre. So far, between 1883 and 1888, shortly after the proclamation of Serbia as a kingdom, King Milan's Wharf was built on the Danube, along with the Smederevo – Velika Plana railway line, and the District Administration and Court building designed by the royal architect Aleksandar Bugarski. In 1865, on the estate of his ancestors in the vineyards of Smederevo, Prince Mihailo Obrenović commissioned the construction of a summer residence that would, until 1903, serve as a prominent centre of the city′s social and cultural life. The economic and cultural life of the city was elevated to a higher level - through steam-powered production and the cultivation of grapevines, as well as the establishment of primary, craft and workers’ schools, a gymnasium, women’s emancipation associations, music and sports societies. Alongside this dynamic development, the practice of endowment giving flourished, eventually becoming regulated by law. The foundation for this paper consists of the books “Testaments of the Benefactors of the Municipality of Smederevo” (1927) and “For Those Who Will Come into the World after Us: Endowments and Benefactors in the Archives of Serbia” (2015). An integral part of this work is a critical review of the current condition of endowments and the graves of their founders at the Old Smederevo Cemetery, reflecting a broader issue of collective neglect.

Détail

Keywords: Smederevo, endowments, benefactors, testament, Old Cemetery, modernization