Aleksandar Obrenović

Aleksandar Obrenović (around 1901)

Aleksandar with his wife Draga (around 1900)

Aleksandar Obrenović ( Serbian - Cyrillic Александар Обреновић ; German mostly Alexander Obrenowitsch , born August 2, ^jul. / 14. August  1876 ^greg. In Belgrade , † May 29 ^jul. / 11. June  1903 ^greg. Ibid) was from 1889 to 1903 King of Serbia .

youth

Aleksandar was the son of King Milan I of Serbia and Queen Natalija . When they divorced in 1888, Aleksandar lived temporarily with his mother in Wiesbaden in the German Empire , but returned to Serbia in the Wiesbaden prince robbery in July 1888.

Takeover of government

Due to violent conflicts of competence between King Milan and the elected government, the king abdicated in March 1889 in favor of his son Aleksandar. The twelve-year-old was placed under the tutelage of a Regency Council that was secretly in contact with the former king who lived abroad. In April 1893, Aleksandar deposed the regents in a coup and took over the government himself.

Both the reign and the first years of Aleksandar's reign were marked by a conflict between two parties: the pro-Russian over the queen mother Natalija and the pro-Austrian over the previous king Milan. After an apparent reconciliation with Natalija, Milan returned to Belgrade in January 1894 and exerted considerable influence on his son, who, among other things, repealed the liberal constitution of 1889. In 1897, Aleksandar even appointed his - temporarily re-exiled - father commander in chief of the Serbian army, which he reformed in the following years.

Marriage and murder

In July 1900, Aleksandar married the widowed and scandalous Draga Mašin . Milan, who refused this marriage, now lost all influence on his son and was finally banished from Serbia. The loss of the commander-in-chief was badly received in the officer corps , which was compounded when Aleksandar named his brother-in-law Lunjevic, who was very unpopular in the army, as heir to the throne because of the childlessness of his marriage . Together with his pro-Austria attitude, the marriage made the king increasingly unpopular among the political and military elites .

Finally, in June 1903, Aleksandar and Draga Obrenović fell victim to an officer conspiracy around Dragutin Dimitrijević , known as Apis. The murder of the royal couple temporarily broke off diplomatic relations between some of the major powers with Serbia. With the heirless Aleksandar ended dynasty of the house Obrenovic .

supporting documents

1. ↑ Christopher Clark : The Sleepwalkers. How Europe moved into World War I. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2013, pp. 24–25

Web links

Commons : Aleksandar Obrenović  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Aleksandar Obrenović in the catalog of the German National Library
• Grave monument in St. Mark's Church , Find a grave

predecessor	Office	successor
Milan I.	King of Serbia 1889–1903	Peter I.