Prigrevica

Prigrevica ( Serbian - Cyrillic Пригревица ) is a village in Opština Apatin in the West Batschka ( Zapadna Bačka ) district of the autonomous province of Vojvodina in Serbia with about 4,000 inhabitants. In German the place is called Batsch-Sentiwan , less common also Sankt Johann an der Schanze .

origin of the name

Both Scentyvan and the Zenthyvan mentioned in 1361 , both times reading Szentiván in Hungarian , mean Sanktiwan in German, derived from “Saint John the Baptist ”. Since there were other places consecrated to St. John in the county , Sentiwan was also given the nickname “next to the ski jump” - based on the small Roman hill at Apatin, which passes south of Sentiwan. The Roman hills mentioned by Ferdinand von Marsigli from 1726 could also or more likely be earth walls that were built in the 4th century against the constant floods of the Danube. The Serbian variant Sveti Ivan Prigrevica is a translation of "Saint John next to the hill", literally: Sveti Ivan pri grebenici . This later became Sveti Ivan Prigrevica. According to Cothmann, however, in 1763 - before the German colonization - there were already four independent communities in the district of Sentiwan: Sveti Ivan, Prigrevicza, Gyurity and Neority. From 1948 in Yugoslavia - with a few exceptions on the Adriatic - the holy names were omitted from place names, so that the place has only been called Prigrevica since then .

history

middle Ages

The place arose in the late Middle Ages in the densely populated county of the Kingdom of Hungary as a so-called ecclesiastical place and was first mentioned in 1318 as Scentyvan.

Ottoman Empire

Remnants of the Catholic Church

The Orthodox Church

The 150-year rule of the Ottomans led to the devastation and depopulation of the Pannonian Plain. Nomadic southern Slavs , tolerated by the Turks, took over existing settlements or founded new settlements. However, the turbulence at that time generally did not allow sustainable settlements. The traces of the first Slavic settlers in Sentiwan go back to the year 1554. According to Ottoman records (Defter), 17 Slavic families were already living (probably temporarily) in today's Sentiwan in 1590. In the county summary of 1698 Sentiwan is again listed as a desolate place (as one of 150 abandoned settlements). 50 years later, however, there must have been a larger number of Slavic families again, because in 1750 two “local Pravoslav priests” are listed.

Habsburg monarchy

After the victory of the Austrians against the Ottomans (1697) under Prince Eugene at Zenta and the subsequent peace treaty of Karlowitz (1699), the Ottoman Empire a. a. cede the Batschka to Austria. After the publication of the Imperial Impopulation Patent (".. for better support, re-elevation and population of the same"), the Viennese court chamber planned an immediate resettlement of the Batschka, but this was soon postponed due to the priority of the military border ( Pantschowa , Timisoara, etc.). The court chamber councilor Anton von Cothmann, who was appointed under Empress Maria Theresa, can be seen as the actual resettler of the "Batscher District" - as the official expression was now called. His activity falls in the time of the Second Great Swabian Train (1763–1773). In his letter of May 1763 to Pressburg , the then seat of the Hungarian Court Chamber, Cothmann repeated his suggestion to relocate the "Sankt Iwaner Raizen" (Serbs) to Stanišić, 25 km to the north, and to fill the place with German colonists. Cothmann justified his proposal u. a. so that 75 Serbian families would be too few to cultivate the four districts. The Empress Maria Theresa then wrote with her own hand that the Serbs should be “translocated with good manners and voluntarily”. In 1765 Cothmann was able to report a successful completion to the empress: "According to the aforementioned gracious royal decision, the orthodox Raizen have moved to other places".

May 13, 1763 is considered to be the founding day of the newly founded town of Batschsentiwan or today's town of Prigrevica. On this day, 41 German colonist families settled in Sentivan, who had previously come to Apatin with the Ulmer Schachtel . Five years later the community already consisted of 231 families with 500 souls. 62 families came from Lorraine alone . According to the “Summarium of 1768”, 139 farmers and 66 craftsmen were among the 231 families. 235 houses were built by the colonists themselves. The colonists were exempt from all taxes for the first three years, after which a tenth of the income had to be paid to the camera administration. In 1780 a land register was created. Sentiwan consisted of five streets with 330 house numbers. In 1788 the Catholic church was built with a steeple of 43 meters. In 1882 the sewage system began. In 1890 the cobblestone street from the train station to the end of Kirchgasse was completed. On January 1, 1905, the previous place name Prigrevica Szent Iván was changed by order of the Royal Ung. Ministry of the Interior changed to "Bácsszentiván". After the First World War, Sentivan fell to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia under the Trianon Peace Treaty. As a first official act, the Hungarian money was stamped and the place name was changed to Prigrevica Sveti Ivan. The first newspaper printed in the community, “Kleines Wochenblatt”, dates back to 1923. The editor was Johann Stefan. Ten years later the "Deutsche Volkszeitung" by Josef Blechl followed. In 1937 Sentivan was considered the media center of the Danube Swabians in Yugoslavia with seven printed newspapers.

Industry and craft until the Second World War

Before the German population was expelled, the following trades existed in Prigrevica:

26 academic professions (doctor, teacher, notary, ...)
22 industrial companies (including 13 hemp factories)
2 financial institutions
35 shops (including 6 textile shops)
277 commercial operations (including 10 inns and a ladies' hairdresser)

Prigrevica in World War II

With the beginning of the Second World War, all men of the village capable of military service were drafted into military service by the Yugoslav Army. After the surrender of the Yugoslav army, the German men switched to the Hungarian army, but were also called upon to volunteer for the SS. However, since this appeal was practically unsuccessful, all tangible men born between 1900 and 1924 were forcibly evicted. The youngest age groups were brought to Prague for basic training and then sent to the Eastern Front. Most of the older generation reported to the "Hipo" (auxiliary police) in order to avoid military service.

In April 1942 the 7th Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen" was set up, to which all conscripted German men of Vojvodina from the age of 17 to 50 were drafted, provided they were not indispensable in agriculture. With the establishment of the "Prinz Eugen", Himmler dropped the "racial selection" and the "voluntariness principle" for the Waffen SS for the first time. The Prinz Eugen Division operated mainly in Bosnia and Serbia, which is why their soldiers were later declared traitors to the country by the Yugoslav government.

Prigrevica after World War II

After the partisans drove out the German population, a vacuum developed in the administration. The Hungarians who remained in the village initially set up a village guard, but this was immediately disbanded by the Yugoslav People's Liberation Committee, which a Serbian shepherd appointed himself to chair. Due to unsuccessfulness and incompetence, however, he was soon replaced by partisan captain Nikola Popović, who then also organized the resettlement of the new colonists from the Lika . On October 29, 1944, Prigrevica awaited the first transport of its future residents from the Lika, where Serbian villages were first destroyed by the Ustaša and then by the Wehrmacht during the war. Among the new settlers, however, were also poor Serb citizens from Croatian villages, who had "proven themselves" during the war. As a rule, the colonists came from Gospić or its surroundings.

Demographics

1900: 5054 inhabitants, including 4812 Germans, 195 Hungarians, 47 others
1910: 5416 inhabitants, including a majority of 4514 German people
1991: 4842 inhabitants, including 89.3% Serbs and 7.4% Yugoslavs
2002: 4781 inhabitants, 95.6% of them Serbs

After 1991 the population structure changed again in favor of the Serbs , as many (especially young) Hungarians and Croats fled to Hungary or Croatia for fear of being recruited into the Yugoslav Army as a result of the Croatian War . In addition, Prigrevica, like most places in Vojvodina, had to take in numerous Serbs (Licani from the Croatian Lika) and Serbian refugees from Bosnia , later also from Kosovo .

Personalities

Stefan Augsburger (1856–1893), pastor of Sentivan (Prigrevica) from 1878 to 1893 and member of the Budapest Parliament for three legislative terms.
Željko Rebrača (* 1972), basketball player in the NBA and national player for Yugoslavia, born in Prigrevica in 1972.

Web links

Commons : Prigrevica - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

Ortssippenbuch Batschsentiwan, 1763–1827, by Jakob Schuy and Paul Scherer, Lappersdorf: Forschungsgemeinschaft Mittelbatschka, 1992
Heimatbuch Batschsentiwan, history of a large Danube Swabian community in the Batschka between Danube and Tisza, Anton Tafferner, Hans Gassmann, Heidelberg: Heimatortsgemeinschaft Batschsentiwan, 1980
Hans Gassman / Ernst Jäger: Our beautiful Batschsentiwan . Regensburg 1985
Milenko Beljanski: Bokcenovic-Vrenjesevo-Prigrevica . Sombor