Encyclopedia > Kragujevac

  Article Content

Kragujevac

Kragujevac (population 200,000) is a city in Serbia and the capital of the Sumadija[?] region,. Is is located on the Lepenica River[?]. Kragujevac is known for its weapons munitions and car factory, Zastava, which produces Yugo automobiles. The University of Kragujevac[?] (f. 1976) is also located there. The first University in Serbia was founded in this city in 1838, as well as the first Grammar school(Gymnasium), Printworks (both in 1833), Theatre (1834) and Military school (1837). During the period of 1818- 1839, Kragujevac was the capital of a Domain of Serbia, during the reign of the Serbian prince Milos Obrenovic[?].

Kragujevac experienced a lot of historical turbulence, not always without severe casulties.First mentioned in Turkish documents from the 15th century as a "village of Kragujevdza" (the name comes after the bird griphon - "kraguj" in Serbian), Kragujevac has undergone a number of ordeals, and the worst must be the massacre of males and a number of schoolchildren in World War II, when Nazis shot 7000 people on October 21, 1941, retaliating for a partisan attack on German soldiers - 50 people for one wounded, 100 for a dead soldier. Among the killed was a whole generation of boys taken directly from the school. The monument for the executed pupils is a symbol of the city. This atrocity has inspired a poem Krvava bajka (Bloody fairy tale) by Desanka Maksimovic[?], a well known female poet from the former Yugoslavia.

The architecture of Kragujevac is rather interesting, displaying the fusion of two diametrically different styles -- traditional Turkish(nowadays almost completely gone) and 19th century German "secession" style. Modern conceptions have not passed by Kragujevac, but they were manifestly influenced by the architectural thought of Communist socialist realism.

  External links:
www.kragujevac.co.yu
            
    city insignia              city view                    Gymnasium



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
242

...     Contents 242 Centuries: 2nd century - 3rd century - 4th century Decades: 190s 200s 210s 220s 230s - 240s - 250s 260s 270s 28 ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 38.9 ms