Smederevo

Smederevo ( Serbian - Cyrillic Смедерево ; German Semendria ) is a Serbian town and municipality at the confluence of the Jezava into the Danube , 46 kilometers from Belgrade . It is the main administrative seat or the capital of the Podunavlje district ( Podunavski Okrug ) and has about 110,000 inhabitants.

history

Partial view of the fortress

town hall

Church of St. Georg on the town square

Fortress where the Jezava flows into the Danube

The oldest known mention of Smederevo is from the year 1019, in a document of the Byzantine emperor Basil II. Smederevo is mentioned as a diocese of the Archdiocese of Ohrid . The city belonged to Byzantium, Bulgaria and then Serbia in the following centuries .

When the Serbian despot Đurađ Branković had to return the then capital Belgrade to Hungary in 1427 (according to the Tatra Agreement, in which Hungary confirmed the successor to Branković; in return, Belgrade was to revert to the Hungarian crown), he moved his capital to Smederevo, the in the following decades he had it expanded to become the largest fortified city in Serbia. The city, located at the mouth of the Jezava River into the Danube, also offered strategic advantages with regard to the approaching Ottomans because of its proximity to Hungary - only the Danube separated the two countries . The inner fortress, also known as the small town , was built by 1430, which is why the year 1430 is also considered the official founding date of Smederevo. In 1439 Smederevo was first conquered by the Ottomans after a three-month siege. In 1444, however, the Ottomans had to withdraw and Branković continued building the fortifications. The outer fortress, also called the big city , was expanded. In 1453 and 1456 two Ottoman sieges could be survived.

Until the final conquest of the Serbian despotate by the Ottomans in 1459, Smederevo remained its capital. Under the Ottomans it became the administrative seat of Sanjak Smederevo , but lost this position to Belgrade, which was conquered in 1521. After the Peace of Passarowitz , Smederevo belonged to the Archduchy of Austria from 1718 to 1738 , after which it was ceded again to the Ottoman Empire. In 1806 Serb insurgents captured the city in the First Serbian Uprising . Smederevo was to become the capital of rebellious Serbia until 1807, when it lost this position to Belgrade. In 1854 the Serbian Orthodox town church of St. Great Martyr George was completed after four years of construction.

During the First World War , the medieval fortress from the 15th century was used as a prisoner of war camp . In August 1919, Dr. Roger Steinmetz and Paul Schazmann from the Committee of the International Red Cross opened the camp and recorded their observations in the report Documents publiés al'occasion de la Guerre 1914-1919 . The camp was therefore in a catastrophic condition, both in terms of hygiene and supplies.

During the Second World War , the city was occupied by the Wehrmacht , who set up an arms store in the fortress there. On June 5, 1941, the fortress was damaged by a severe explosion, killing thousands of people in the city. The whole thing happened in the immediate vicinity of the station, in which a fully occupied train was parked. It has never been clarified how this accident came about.

On August 4, 1971 , another serious railway accident occurred near Lipe , 8 km east of Smederevo : On the single-track line , the driver of a freight train in Lipe station did not wait for a special trade fair train to pass through, but drove into the section of the line that was still occupied inside. In the following head-on collision, 35 people died.

economy

Today Smederevo is one of the most important industrial cities in Serbia. The largest steelworks in Serbia, formerly MKS, later SARTID, then US Steel Serbia, then Železara Smederevo is based there, as well as a large industrial port on the Danube. In 2003, as part of the privatization of the steelworks, political resentment arose when the American company USSteel acquired the steelworks for a small amount (approx. USD 25 million according to the press) after it had been extensively renovated with EU funds shortly before . In 2005 the production of the steel mill was doubled. For years, residents have been hoping that the disused exhaust gas cleaning systems will soon be reactivated. Due to the unprofitable situation, US Steel Serbia sold the steel mill to the Serbian state for a symbolic price in early 2012. After that, the steel mill was operated under the name of Železara Smederevo under the ownership of the Serbian State. In June 2016, the Chinese state-owned company HBIS bought the steel mill. According to Eurofer , Chinese state-owned companies are trying to get rid of 400 million tonnes of overproduction in Europe at cost, thereby endangering the domestic industry.

Metal processing has a strong tradition in the city. This includes metal construction and the production of art blacksmith products.

Wine has been grown in the Smederevo area for around 2000 years. The first vines were brought to Smederevo by the Romans. At the beginning of September, the Smederevska Jesen wine harvest festival (German: Smederevoer Herbst ) is celebrated in the city .

However, the greatest potential of the city and the region is still lying idle:

The good climate, soil and tradition in fruit cultivation result in rich and high quality harvests for which there is no organized purchase. The cold store of the former state combine "Godomin" and the wine cellar are out of order.
According to studies from the 1980s, the entire region is based on large reserves of mineral and thermal water. An early development is not in sight.
The duty-free zone that has been announced for years is only being implemented slowly.

Twin cities

Pale , Bosnia-Herzegovina
Volos , Greece
Herceg Novi , Montenegro

Personalities

Born here

Vuk Grgurević († around 1485), Serbian despot
Živorad Lazić (* 1933 in the Lugavčina part of the municipality), screenwriter and director
Zoran Janković (* 1953), politician
Slobodan "Boda" Ninković (* 1956), actor
Tanja Savić (* 1985 in the Radinac district), turbo folk singer
Zoran Dobrić (* 1960), journalist

Connected to the city

Dimitrije Ljotić (1891–1945), fascist politician

Web links

Commons : Smederevo - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Public Waterworks Company
Illustration by Mathias van Somer from 1665: Illustration of the Sendrae Province in Hungary 1665 ( digitized version )
A report by Mr. Paul Schazmann and Dr. Roger Steinmetz on their visits to the prisoners of war in Greece, in Thessaloniki in Macedonia and in Serbia scribd.com

Individual evidence

^ Peter WB Semmens: Catastrophes on rails. A worldwide documentation. Transpress, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-344-71030-3 , p. 177.
↑ orf.at China uses Serbia in the steel dispute with the EU, orf.at, July 13, 2016, accessed July 13, 2016.

[1] Peter WB Semmens: Catastrophes on rails. A worldwide documentation. Transpress, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-344-71030-3 , p. 177.

[2] rf.at China uses Serbia in the steel dispute with the EU, orf.at, July 13, 2016, accessed July 13, 2016.