Destruction and Renaissance of the Veljkovic family house

Story Natural
Country
Serbia
Year
2019
Storyteller
Katarina Veljkovic Beigbeder
Share:
Overview

Destruction and Renaissance of the Veljkovic historic house from 1944 to 2007

OLD SERBIAN HOUSES FAMILY VELJKOVIC HOUSE My great-grandfather had acquired the house at the very beginning of the 19th century. Since then, from our ancestor Knjaz /Prince/ Veljko, who had negotiated the armistice between the Serbian forces and the Turkish army, and who had followed Karageorge, the leader of the First Serbian insurrection, until the liberation of Belgrade after the Second World War, the Veljkovic family, in every generation had produced legislators, ministers of justice, finances and industry. My grandfather Vojislav Veljkovic had worked on the monetary unification of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, which became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1931, and created the Yugoslav Dinar as the national currency. On October 20, 1944 the Russian /Soviet/ Army entered Belgrade. A Russian tank had been deployed in front of our porch. Each shot did rock our old house. The clatter of soldier’s boots made us leave our rooms. In front of dumbfounded servants, soldiers were emptying the wine-cellar, under the indifferent eyes of my grandfather, an old cavalry officer who had seen this already in the past. After having drunk the wine, they attacked the gas lamps, and at the end my mother’s eau de Cologne. During the next few days there had been a continuous coming and going not of soldiers only, but also of local people who proceeded to a complete plundering; clocks, pictures, carpets, as well as kitchen wares, found their way out of the house. Soon afterwards, commissars of the district came to requisition the so-called surplus of rooms. We have reached the stage of a community center. Sharing the house with a dozen families. We were allowed to keep two rooms, for the seven of us. The key word of my mother: No comments – no conflict. My father had been arrested and put in jail. He would know numerous prisons. I remember that one of these jails, installed temporarily in an administrative building, had not been far from our house. It had been agreed that on a fixed days we should pass at a fixed hour by this prison so that our father could see us through the bars from his cell which had been on the pavement level. The house soon resembled the hall of an unkempt railway station: cigarette butts, beer bottles, filth and other dirt covered the floor, and nobody gave a dam for it. Then my mother took charge. One day we had received an unexpected visit: Pablo Neruda, a friend of Tito came to Belgrade. He went to visit Mosha Pijade, president of the State Council and painter who had occupied our “Museo” (the first private museum in the Balkans) confiscated by the authorities. He had shown interest for the house and had wanted to visit us. My mother who had just been cleaning and washing the staircase had been asked if she could call the lady of the house. The lady of the house is me, replied my mother, and with a bucket and broom in hands brought the visitor into the two rooms that had been allowed to us by the municipality. That is how we had made acquaintance with the Chilean poet. As the state had become the owner of all properties, by confiscating them, the authorities devastated the garden and proceeded with the construction of a huge building in concrete (at a distance of four meters from our house) which became, after completion, the Embassy of Eastern Germany. When all our properties had been confiscated, my father was released from prison. He had been able to get a job in the State Department for Arbitration. At that time there had been a great demand for lawyers who could speak several languages. But it did not last for long. He had been asked to join the Communist party, and when he refused, he lost his job. Two months later, my parents crossed on foot, illegally, the border in Slovenia, and emigrated. The house remained under the custody of an old uncle, who had been left in the kitchen, as his only dwelling. He fought to save the house, as well as some remaining pieces of furniture and prevented the “tenants” to make partitions in the rooms and succeeded in the efforts to put the house under the protection of the Institute for Conservation of Cultural Goods. However, although the walls were under protection, the interior was not. Water had flooded the first floor, and then the ground floor too. The “parquet” was severely damaged. Windows being broken and the roof being damaged, snow was falling in the tower and ruined the staircase. After having devastated the house, the occupants left it. The municipality wanted to bring other tenants, but they all refused seeing the ruins. Even refugees from Bosnia declined the offer to take it! `When my children came to Belgrade in 1991, they found a devastated house and a despairing situation. I was standing in front of the house. Looking at it and not recognizing it, but knowing that it had remained mine, that it was a part of me. Something was absolutely urgent; not to think, certainly not to evaluate necessary works and costs, but to act, undertake something, urgently, immediately: to repair the roof to stop leaking, repair electrical installations, do the plumbing, secure the water supply, sewage. To restore one room first? Which one? The bathroom! We could take showers, but had to wash our dishes in the bathroom wash-bowl as there was no sink in the kitchen. We had to scratch the floors doing it on our knees, in an effort to clean them. But, let us go on, we decided, no matter what it costs! But there were some limits, our savings dwindled down, evaporating, while all costs went up. In 2001 I got the permission of the Institute for the Protection of National Heritage to restore and remake the façade, but we had no funds anymore. Thanks to the Secretariat of Community Affairs, after preparing all necessary papers and a lot of bureaucratic entanglement, I succeeded in including our house in the Program of rehabilitation of facades of the City of Belgrade. The works were completed in 2007; twenty years were needed to save the house. Day by day, at any cost, without furniture, completely empty, but SAVED and STANDING UPRIGHT! On October 10, 2012 I created the association STARE KUĆE SRBIJE (OLD HOUSES OF SERBIA). In 2016, the Association became a member of the EUROPEAN HISTORIC HOUSES ASSOCIATION. The Veljkovic family house is now open for all Serbian and European cultural events: 2006 – Exhibition of caricatures of the impressionist painter Beta Vukanovic, in association with the National Museum in Belgrade; 2007 – The Belgrade City Archives presented in our house the family documents of the Veljkovic family; 2008 – In collaboration with the Museum of Theatre Art and the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade we had presented a collection of posters from 1914 which were found by miracle in the cave of our house, including some posters from the Museum itself; 2009 – Exhibition of Turkish letters from the 17th, 18th and 19th century, translated by the City Archives, together with the correspondence of Knjaz Jovan Veljkovic from the time of the establishment of Serbian internal autonomy in the 19th century; 2010 – “Open Door Day”; 2011 – Exhibition of “Tapije” – deeds of Serbian and Ottoman properties in the 19th century 2012 – Exhibition “Donations and Donors”; 2013 – Exhibition “Industrial Heritage” – 26 photographs and documents on the future of industrial heritage in Europe; 2014 – Vocal Ensemble – KUD inscribed in the National Register of Non-Material Cultural Goods; 2015 – Evocation of a lost collection of Vojislav Veljkovic; 2016 – Promotion of the book “Avram Petronijevic, politician and intellectual” by M. Radomir Petrovic; 2017 – “The Garden – a mirror of history and culture”, 24 large size photographs. The most beautiful gardens of Europe and their historical, political and cultural significance; 2018 – For the Days of Private Heritage, May 24 – 29, we have worked with schools in collaboration with the Institute for the Protection of Heritage organizing drawing workshops devoted to architectural heritage of Belgrade. The drawings were exhibited in the garden of our house during the Days of European Heritage. Eight houses of the Association of Old Houses of Serbia, members of the European Historical Houses Association, had devoted four days to children. Sixteen schools, 19 classes and 560 students took part in the program “Our house = Our heritage” Katarina Veljkovic Beigbeder Bircaninova 21 Belgrade, Serbia E-Mail: katarina.beigbeder@orange.fr

European Dimension

Ever since we joined the European Historic Houses Association, our philosophy and goals are the same i.e. to preserve the Serbian cultural heritage and promote it. Additionally we exchange our respective experiences with other European cultural associations