Canada Slim and the Author’s Apartment 2: Suffering

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Sunday 17 November 2019

I have often believed that you can tell a lot about a person by the manner in which they live.

For example, if you, my gentle readers, wanted to comprehend the conundrum that is Canada Slim, yours truly, you would need to visit the apartment I share with the Mrs. here in the wee hamlet of Landschlacht.

 

 

It is cluttered.

I like to physically surround myself with books in the dim hope that I will somehow absorb into my system the knowledge within these tomes.

 

 

Two subjects dominate my library: travel and history.

Though there are certainly books connected with teaching and languages, more space is taken up with travel and history.

Half of the volumes of these dominant topics have a personal connection with me, for I have done some travel and the history of the places I have visited has always fascinated me.

For example, I spent a week in Serbia, primarily in Belgrade, and I possess an entire shelf of literature dedicated to that week.

 

Above: Belgrade by night

 

I long to understand what I have seen and love to share what I have understood.

 

Every person has their interests to which they gravitate towards when they travel.

I know those who belong on beaches and others who seek sanctuary in pubs and watering holes.

Some need to actively exert themselves in a sport or recreational activity, while others simply wish to sit or lie about.

 

My wife has a morbid fascination with all things funereal like cemeteries, ossuaries and hospitals, while I seek to educate myself on the culture and literature of the new found land I am visiting.

 

Above: Braque Triptych, Rogier van der Weyden

 

I must confess to being a bit of a barbarian vis à vis the world of art so I often may miss museums that others rave on and on about.

But tell me of a writer once living and/or dying in a place and I make my way to that site as quickly as I can.

And I linger therein until the constraints of a tourist’s schedule and the limits of a museum’s patience are tested.

 

Above: William Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, England

 

As I have said, you can tell volumes about a person when you view how they live, for one’s lodgings show one’s life priorities, what he chooses to remember and what he prefers to forget.

 

“Life is such that we must often be ashamed of the best things it holds, hiding them away from everyone, even from those closest to us.”

(Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside)

 

 

A while back I began to write about the Memorial Museum and the fascinating life of Ivo Andric.

 

Above: Ivo Andric, 1961

 

Ivo Andric (1892 – 1975) was a Yugoslav novelist, poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961.

In the years following Andrić’s death, the Belgrade apartment where he spent much of World War II and the rest of his life was converted into a museum and a nearby street corner was named in his honour.

A number of other cities in the former Yugoslavia also have streets bearing his name.

 

Above: Flag of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia (1945 – 1992)

 

In 2012, filmmaker Emir Kusturica began construction of an ethno-town in eastern Bosnia that is named after Andrić.

 

Above: Andricgrad, Bosnia-Herzegovina

 

As Yugoslavia’s only Nobel Prize-winning writer, Andrić was well known and respected in his native country during his lifetime.

 

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, beginning in the 1950s and continuing past the breakup of Yugoslavia, his works have been disparaged by Bosniak literary critics for their supposed anti-Muslim bias.

 

Above: Flag of Bosnia – Herzegovina

 

In Croatia, his works were long shunned for nationalist reasons, and even briefly blacklisted following Yugoslavia’s dissolution, but were rehabilitated by the literary community at the start of the 21st century.

 

Above: Flag of Croatia

 

He is highly regarded in Serbia for his contributions to Serbian literature.

 

Above: Flag of Serbia

 

I have written about Andric and continue to do so here and in two further posts to come, because I am fascinated by his life and how he lived that life.

I have written about how Andric was raised and educated in the Balkans and abroad.

 

 

Everytime I think of Andric I recall a conversation I had once with Nesha Obranovic, my Serbian host in Belgrade.

He spoke of his reluctance to wield weapons for the Serbian military, because for him the idea of Serbia being separate from a united Yugoslavia seemed somewhat strange.

Because we must remember that the nation of Serbia as we now know it is a recent invention that resulted after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 2000.

 

Above: Map of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918 – 1941) and map of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia (1945 – 1992)

 

Yugoslavia, for all its many faults and flaws under the iron rule of Josip Broz Tito (1892 – 1980), was a union of Slovenes, Croatians, Bosnians, Montenegrese, Macedonians and Serbians, with more in common with each other than different.

 

Above: Josip Broz Tito (1892 – 1980)

 

And though the drive for self-destiny led to the inevitable break-up of Yugoslavia into the modern states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, it was nonetheless for many unnatural to wage war against those who had once upon a time been brother Yugoslavs.

 

 

Certainly Andric was born a Bosnian and died a Serbian, but his writing is simultaneously both and neither Bosnian and Serbian but rather universal.

 

“I believe that if people knew how agonizing living my life has been, they would be more willing to forgive my wrongdoings and all the good I have failed to do, and still have a shred of compassion left over for me.”

(Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside)

 

Above: Ivo Andric, 1951

 

Nesha was born in Yugoslavia, but because of historical forces beyond his control he is Serbian.

Nesha does not feel the need to automatically hate Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Montenegrese or Macedonians, because, in their desire for independence, blood was shed copiously by Serbian and non-Serbian alike.

 

Under Slobodan Milosevic (1941 – 2006), much violence was committed in the name of Serbia against fellow Yugoslavs.

But not all Serbians were / are like Milosevic.

Nesha certainly is not.

 

Above: Slobodan Milosevic, 1988

 

Nesha is one of the most honourable men it has been my privilege to know as a colleague and friend here in Switzerland.

He is Serbian, but he isn’t all Serbians.

He was born in Belgrade, but he is not the government.

Like many Americans who are proud of America but are ashamed of their political past, Nesha is proud of Serbia but not always enamored with all aspects of Serbia’s past.

Just as I try to judge others on a case by case basis, Nesha similarly does the same.

One of the reasons we get along so well.

 

Above: House of the National Assembly, Belgrade, Serbia

 

It is this universality of thought and behaviour that attracts me to the life and works of Ivo Andric.

To be able to write universally one must be at one with the world, and it was the experiences of Andric between the two World Wars that would lead him to write works that would be universally understood and loved.

 

 

Come with me now, back into the Memorial Museum of Ivo Andric and let us look at what makes a man of letters….

 

 

Belgrade, Serbia, 5 April 2018

I have already written of how Ivo Andric, the only Serb to ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born into a family of a Catholic father and an Orthodox mother near Travnik in present day Bosnia.

I wrote of how he studied philosophy, Slavic history and literature, and how following his graduation he took to writing poetry regularly.

 

Above: Birthplace of Ivo Andric, Dolac, Bosnia

 

The year was 1914 and Europe was dominated by ambitious imperial states.

A series of wars in the 1860s and 1870s established Germany as Europe’s superior military power.

In the 1890s France and Russia formed an alliance to counter the might of Germany and its close ally, Austria – Hungary.

In the first decade of the 20th century, Britain, feeling threatened by the growth of the German navy, abandoned its traditonal isolationism and formed an entente – a loose unofficial alliance – with France and Russia.

Peace was maintained by a balance of power between the two hostile alliances.

The European states expanded their armed forces and equipped them with the latest technology.

They developed plans for the rapid mobilization of mass conscript armies that threatened to turn any confrontation into full scale war.

Every country felt that the side that struck first would hace a decisive advantage.

 

 

The behaviour of Germany’s leader, Kaiser Wilhelm II, was aggressive and erratic, particularly during the Moroccan Crisis of 1911, but the spark that ignited war came in the Balkans, where states, such as Serbia, had become independent of Ottoman Turkish rule in the 19th century.

 

Above: Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859 – 1941)

 

(The Agadir Crisis, Agadir Incident or Second Moroccan Crisis  – also known as the Panthersprung in German –  was a brief international crisis sparked by the deployment of a substantial force of French troops in the interior of Morocco in April 1911.

Germany did not object to France’s expansion, but wanted territorial compensation for itself.

Berlin threatened warfare, sent a gunboat and stirred up angry German nationalists.

Negotiations between Berlin and Paris resolved the crisis:

France took over Morocco as a protectorate in exchange for territorial concessions to Germany from the French Congo, while Spain was satisfied with a change in its boundary with Morocco.

The British cabinet, however, was alarmed at Germany’s aggressiveness toward France.

David Lloyd George made a dramatic “Mansion House” speech that denounced the German move as an intolerable humiliation.

There was talk of war, and Germany backed down.

Relations between Berlin and London remained sour.)

 

Above: French troops on the move in Morocco

 

Russia had ambitions to spread its influence in the Balkans as the champion of the Slav peoples.

This led to hostile relations with Austria – Hungary, which was at odds with restless Slav minorities within its own borders.

 

Austria – Hungary’s ruler, Emperor Franz Joseph, has come to the throne in 1849.

His regime was splendid in its public ceremonies but shaky in its political foundations.

In 1908 Austria – Hungary annexed Bosnia – Herzegovina, a province with a mixed Serb, Croat and Bosnian Muslim population.

This annexation angered Serbia, which had its own ambitions to unite the region’s Slav population under its rule.

The Austro – Hungarian government felt the rising power of Serbia was a threat to its authority over its restless Slav subjects in the Balkans.

 

Above: Franz Joseph I (1830 – 1916)

 

Franz Ferdinand was the nephew of the Emperor.

He became heir apparent to the Habsburg throne in 1889.

His relations with the Emperor were soured by his insistence on marrying an impoverished Czech aristocrat, Sophie Chotek, in 1900.

He was forced to agree to humiliating terms in order to marry her.

She was denied royal status and any offspring would be barred from inheriting the throne.

Franz Ferdinand’s political position varied over time, but he was viewed by the Austro – Hungarian establishment as dangerously liberal on the key issue of Slav nationalism.

 

Above: Franz Ferdinand (1863 – 1914)

 

Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s 28 June 1914 visit to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia – Herzegovina, was a blunt assertion of imperial authority in the recently annexed province.

Even his timing was provocative:

28 June was a day sacred to Serb nationalists as the anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, in which a defeat by the Turks had cost Serbia its independence.

 

Above: Battle of Kosovo, Adam Stefanovic

 

Bosnian Serb separatists, who were armed, trained and organized by shadowy nationalist groups and military intelligence officers in Serbia, had been carrying out attacks against the Austro – Hungarian authorities in Bosnia – Herzegovina.

The Austrian government had received specific warning of a planned assassination attempt against the Archduke, but the visit went ahead regardless.

To cancel it or even mount a heavy-handed security operation would have been an admission that the Habsburgs did not fully control one of the provinces in their empire.

The Archduke’s planned route and schedule were publicized in advance of the visit.

 

Above: Flag of the Habsburg Monarchy (1804 – 1918)

 

 

As the motorcade drove along the quay by the Miljacka River, one of the conspirators, Nedjelko Cabrinovic, threw a bomb that bounced off the back of the Archduke’s car and exploded.

This injured a number of bystanders, including a police officer.

 

Above: The 1911 Gräf & Stift 28/32 Double Phaeton in which Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were riding on 28 June 1914

 

Cabrinovic then swallowed a cyanide pill and jumped into the shallow river, where he was arrested, the cyanide proving non-lethal.

 

Above: Nedeljko Cabrinovic (1896 – 1916)

 

Angered and shocked by the incident, Franz Ferdinand continued making his way to the town hall.

The conspirators dispersed into the crowds, their assassination bid having seemingly ended in failure.

 

Above: Franz Ferdinand and Sophie leaving Sarajevo Town Hall, 28 June 1914

 

Gavrilo Princip (19) went into a delicatessan to buy a sandwich.

Coming out of the shop, Princip found the Archduke’s car stopped directly in front of him.

Franz Ferdinand had decided to visit the injured police officer in hospital, but his driver had taken a wrong turn and was trying to reverse.

Seizing his opportunity, Princip pulled out his pistol and fired twice, hitting the Archduke in the neck and his wife in the abdomen.

 

 

“Sophie, Sophie, don’t die!

Stay alive for our children!” were the last words the Archduke spoke.

The couple died within minutes while still in the car.

 

 

Princip tried to kill himself but was overpowered by onlookers and arrested.

 

Above: Gavrilo Princip (1894 – 1918)

 

The news of the couple’s death was a shock to the Habsburg court.

There was no state funeral.

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were interred side by side in a private crypt at Artstetten Castle in the Danube valley.

 

Above: Arstetten Castle, Austria

 

Emperor Franz Joseph was privately relieved that he would never be succeeded by a nephew he neither liked nor trusted.

“A higher power has restored that order which I could unfortunately not maintain.“, the Emperor said.

 

Above: Portrait of Franz Joseph, 1899, Philip de Laszlo

 

But the public affront to the Austro – Hungarian state was gross.

Although there was no clear evidence that the Serbian government had been directly involved, the operation had definitely been planned and organized in Serbia.

The planning of the operation was traced to the head of Serbian military intelligence, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic.

This was enough.

 

Above: Drazutin Dimitrijevic (1876 – 1917)

 

A band of assassins, with Serbian backing, had killed the heir to the throne.

Austro – Hungary’s honour, prestige and credibility required that Serbia be made to pay.

 

Above: Route of the assassins, Belgrade to Sarajevo, 1914

 

Austro – Hungarian ruling circles were split between warhawks and doves.

Chief of the General Staff Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf had long sought a war with Serbia.

He saw the assassinations as an ideal pretext for military action.

 

Above: Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf (1852 – 1925)

 

Other important figures, including Count István Tisza, Prime Minister of Hungary, were more cautious, preferring a diplomatic solution.

 

Above: István Tisza (1861 – 1918)

 

In the first week of July 1914, Austria – Hungary sought the opinion of its ally Germany.

Kaiser Wilhelm II had been outraged by the assassinations.

His advisers, including Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann – Hollweg, agreed that Austria – Hungary should be encouraged to take decisive, but unspecified, action against Serbia.

Whatever the Austro – Hungarian government chose to do, it could be assured of Germany’s support.

 

Above: Theobald von Bethmann – Hollweg (1856 – 1921)

 

This loose guarantee of German backing – often referred to as “the blank cheque” – put the warhawks firmly in control of Vienna.

Austria – Hungary then drew up a series of demands deliberately designed to prove unacceptable.

Their rejection by Serbia would provide a pretext for an attack by the Austro – Hungarian army.

 

Above: Flag of Austria – Hungary (1867 – 1918)

 

No one was planning for a full scale war.

The idea was for a swift punitive invasion followed by a harsh peace settlement to humiliate and permanently weaken Serbia.

However, nothing could happen quickly.

Much of the army was on leave, helping to bring in the harvest.

After some hesitation, the date for delivery of an ultimatum was set for 23 July.

 

Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Serbia (1882 – 1918)

 

On 23 July 1914, at 6pm, the Austro – Hungarian ambassador delivered an ultimatum to the Serbian government, starting the world on the road to war.

The ultimatum demanded that the Serbs suppress anti-Austrian terrorist organizations, stop anti-Austrian propaganda, and allow Austro – Hungarian officials to take part in the investigation of those who were responsible for the Sarajevo assassinations.

The Serbians were given 48 hours to accept the demands of the ultimatum or face war.

Serbia accepted most of them but, assured of support from Russia, rejected outright the idea of Austrian officials operating on Serbian soil.

 

Above: Kingdom of Serbia, 1913

 

Kaiser Wilhelm, returning from his holiday cruise in the North Sea, enthused over the humiliation of Serbia and suggested that war was no longer necessary.

 

 

The dominant elements within the Austro – Hungarian military and political establishment did not want a diplomatic triumph.

They wanted a military victory to dismember Serbia and bolster Habsburg authority.

Thus on 28 July 1914 Austria-Hungary formally declared war on Serbia.

 

 

To stand by while Serbia was defeated by Austria-Hungary would have been a severe humiliation for Russia.

It would have signified the end of the long-nourished ambition to expand Russian influence in the Balkans and towards Istanbul.

So, that same day, Russia declared the mobilization of its armed forces in those regions facing Austria-Hungary.

 

Above: Flag of the Russian Empire (1721 – 1917)

 

Suddenly the great European powers faced the prospect of war spreading to engulf them all.

The insecurity and crises of the last decade had strengthened rival alliances and hardened mutual suspicions.

France and Russia felt that they must stand or fall together.

 

Above: Flag of France

 

On 31 July Kaiser Wilhelm asked his Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke:

“Is the Fatherland in danger?”

Moltke answered in the affirmative.

 

Above: Helmuth von Moltke the Younger (1848 – 1916)

 

On 1 August, Germany declared war on Russia.

 

Above: Flag of the German Empire (1871 – 1918)

 

Britain was a guarantor of Belgian neutrality under the Terms of the 1839 Treaty of London.

To attack Russia’s ally France, Germany’s plan required the army to cross Belgium.

On 2 August, Germany demanded right of passage through Belgium for its troops.

When German troops entered Belgium on 3 August, Britain responded with an ultimatum demanding their withdrawl.

 

 

A German declaration of war on France followed on 3 August.

A British declaration of war on Germany followed on 4 August.

The war had officially begun.

 

Political cartoon titled “Der Stänker” (“The Troublemaker“) that was published in the German satirical magazine Kladderadatsch on 9 August 1914, depicting the nations of Europe sitting at a table.
(1st panel) The Central Powers hold their noses in distaste as tiny Serbia joins the table, while Russia reacts with joy.
(2) Serbia stabs Austria-Hungary, to everyone’s apparent shock. Germany immediately offers support to Austria.
(3) Austria demands satisfaction from Serbia, while a relaxed Germany with hands in its pockets doesn’t notice Russia and France come to agreement in the background.
(4) Austria manhandles Serbia, while an alarmed Germany looks to an angry Russia and presumably makes an agreement with the Ottoman Empire, and France tries to talk to Britain.
(5) A general brawl erupts with Germany and France immediately confronting each other, as Britain looks on in dismay. To the right, another combatant threatens to join from the darkness.

 

Upon hearing the news of the assassinations, Andrić decided to leave Kraków (Poland) and return to Bosnia.

Leaving his few belongings with his landlady Andric went straight to the Station.

 

Above: Kraków Station

 

He travelled by train to Zagreb, and in mid-July, departed for the coastal city of Split with his friend, the poet and fellow South Slav nationalist Vladimir Čerina.

Andrić and Čerina spent the rest of July at the latter’s summer home in Split.

As the month progressed, the two became increasingly uneasy about the escalating political crisis that followed the Archduke’s assassination and eventually led to the outbreak of World War I.

 

Above: Vladimir Cerina (1891 – 1932)

 

“As the years go by, even in the most turbulent of lives, certain phenomena become habitual, occurring in symmetrical and repetitive patterns so that even the most unwilling and barely conscious of souls cannot help but notice them.

And, thus, one can observe his own life in advance.

He knows what October will bring, assuming the same for March, and he can also foresee the summer months.

No spiritual hygiene nor prophylactic measures (which come with time) can be of assistance nor is there any escape or fading into obscurity.

Even the greatest efforts are in vain or of very little assistance.

Diametrically opposed spiritual states, such as fear or dangerous joy or fruitful peace, shift with a calendar-like continuity occurring ineviatably, in line with the changes on Earth.”

(Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside)

 

 

(For a description of Kraków and Zagreb, please see Canada Slim and the Author’s Apartment 1 – Learning.)

 

Split is a city in Central Dalmatia, Croatia, and the seat of the Split-Dalmatia county.

It is one of the Adriatic’s most vibrant cities – an exubrant and hectic place full of shouting stall owners and travellers on the move.

 

Above: Images of Split

 

At the heart of the city, hemmed in by sprawling estates and a modern harbour, lies the crumbling old town, which grew out of the former Palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (a palace/fort built for the retired Roman emperor Diocletian) where the locals sought refuge centuries ago.

The Palace remains the central ingredient in the city’s urban fabric – lived in continuously since Roman times, it has gradually been transformed into a warren of houses, tenements, churches and chapels by the various peoples who came to live here after Diocletian’s successors had departed.

Wandering the historic centre of Split you can still clearly see the Roman walls, squares, and temples.

 

Above: Diocletian’s Palace

 

Modern Split is a city of some 220,000 inhabitants, swolled by post-WWII economic migrants and post-1991 refugees – a chaotic sprawl of hastily planned Suburbs, where factories and highrise blocks jangle together out of an undergrowth of discarded building material.

As Croatia’s second city – (25% of Croatians live in the capital, Zagreb) – Split is a hotbed of regional pride and disparagement of Zagreb dwellers is a frequent component of local banter.

The city’s two big industries – shipbuilding and tourism – suffered immeasureably as a result of war and the economic slump which followed the collapse of communism.

As a result municipal belt-tightening has led to a decline in subsidies for the city’s traditionally rich cultural scene, but this is more than made up for by the vivacious outdoor life that takes over the streets in all but the coldest and wettest months.

 

 

As long as the sun is shining, the swish cafés of the waterfront Riva are never short of custom.

Because of its ideal climate, with 2,800 hours of sunlight each year, local people have a few nicknames for Split:

• “The most beautiful city in the world“
• “Mediterranean flower“

Winters in Split are generally mild, with temperatures above 0°C, but despite the popular saying that the city experiences snowfall once every 30 years, there is actually at least one snowy day nearly every winter, usually in January or early February.

If you find yourself in Split on a day with significant snowfall, expect serious traffic disruption.

 

 

Many famous Croatian sports people were born in Split, so locals often nicknamed their city “The sportiest city in the world“.

The most popular sport institution is the football club Hajduk.

Large portions of the city are painted with the club’s colors and logo.

This is done by Torcida, the oldest supporters group in Europe, established in 1950.

 

• Watch football / soccer at HNK Hajduk Split, Stadion Poljud, Osmih mediteranskih igara.
  • They play in Prva HNL, the top tier of football in Croatia:
    • Indeed they’ve never been out of it and have won it several times.
  • Their home ground of Poljud Stadium (capacity 34,000) is 1 km north of the main bus station, harbour and old city.
  • Don’t go for the cheapest seats as these are in the north stand, the Torcida bastion of home fanatics.

 

Besides the bell tower of St. Duje (Domnius), the symbols of city are the Dalmatian dog and a donkey.

 

Above: Cathedral of St. Domnius

• Katedrala sv. Duje (St. Duje’s Cathedral).
  • Built around 305 AD as a Mausoleum for Roman Emperor Diocletian it is the oldest cathedral building in the world.
  • The cathedral is a very beautiful mixture of Roman temple and Catholic church.
  • It also has a beautiful belltower which provides you a great panoramic view of Split, nearby islands and Marjan Hill.
• St. Duje’s bell tower.
  • This beautiful bell tower also provides you a great panoramic view of Split, nearby islands and Marjan Hill.
• Jupiter temple (Cathedral’s baptistry).
  • Ancient Roman temple which became St. John’s Church

• Climb the campanile bell tower next to the palace mausoleum.
  • The stairs cling to the inside of the tower and in places the steps cross the large open window spaces.
  • The ascent is certainly not for those with vertigo, but the views from the top are marvelous.
  • It costs 10 kn to go up the bell tower.

 

 

Locals have a high regard for the donkey because of its past indispensable place in field work and transport across the Dalmatian mountains.

 

 

Nothing will ever damage the spirit of the indomitable Splicani themselves who remain famous for their self-depreciating humour, best exemplified by the writings of Miljenko Smoje (1923 – 1995), a native of the inner City district of Veli Varos.

Smoje’s books, written in Dalmatian dialect, document the lives of an imaginary group of local archetypes and brought the wit of the Splicani to a nationwide audience.

 

Above: Miljenko Smoje

 

An adaptation of his works, Nase male misto (Our Little Town), was the most popular comedy programme in Croatian – and probably Yugoslav – television history.

 

 

The city’s tradition of irreverence lived on in the weekly newspaper and national institution Feral Tribune, a mixture of investigative reporting and scathing political satire which was a thorn in the side of successive administrations.

 

Above: 1995 copy of the Feral Tribune (1984 – 2008)

 

As I have said, the historic centre of Split is built around the remains of the Roman palace.

• The historic core of Split with Diocletian palace is among the first urban complexes to enter the list of the UNESCO world heritage in year 1979.
  • This one of a kind Imperial Palace was built from 298-305 AD and is one of the most significant original structures of the period mostly because so much of it has been preserved.
  • Later this Palace contributed to the broadening of the town because as the city evolved beyond its walls.
  • The unique substructure halls were newly explored and each year more of them are opened to the public.
  • Fascinating artefacts on display.

You only need to wander around to experience it but you can also pay to visit the excavated remains of the basement of the palace.

The palace has well preserved main streets.

Roman palace is enriched with some gothic and reinassance buildings which makes a perfect match.

The palace has four monumental gates:

• Porta Aurea (Golden Gate)
• Porta Argenta (Silver Gate)
• Porta Ferrea (Iron Gate)
• Porta Aenea

 

Above: The Silver Gate

 

Diocletian’s palace is probably the best preserved Roman palace in the world.

• Peristylium (Peristil square).
  • Main square of Diocletian’s palace with well preserved Roman architecture

 

 

• Two original Egyptian sphinxes
  • One is located on Peristil square and the other in front of Jupiter’s temple or St. John’s church.
  • They were brought from Egypt by Roman emperor Diocletian.

 

 

• Basement halls of Diocletian’s Palace
  • Exceptionally well preserved substructure of Diocletian’s Palace now open as a museum.
  • One of the locations in Game of Thrones.

 

 

– Getski vrtal is the smallest park in Split, situated in the Diocletian’s palace at the Dominisova street.

During the summer the lanes and alleys here are full of clothes drying in the sunshine.

In every guidebook about Split are pictures from the Getski vrtal.

 

 

Riva is the main city promenade.

• Since 2007, Riva has a new, modern appearance, which isn’t up to the taste of some who used to its authentic look.

 

 

• Marjan – a hill situated on the west of Split, it is an oasis for many people who look for a natural stress relief, a great place for long walks, jogging, and bike rides.
  • Marjan’s peak, Telegrin, is 174 m high and gives a wonderful panoramic view of Split.
  • The south cliffs are popular within alpine climbers.
  • St. Nicholas Church is situated on the east of Marjan.
  • On its south side are the beautiful St. Jeronimus church and the “Gospe od Betlema” Church (Madonna of Bethlehem).
  • House building is strictly forbidden in order to save Marjan – the lungs of Split.

 

 

• Veli Varoš – one of the oldest parts of town is the place where most of the city peasants and fishermen lived.
  • Charming streets and beautiful small houses.

 

 

• Galerija Meštrović.
  • The gallery contains works of Ivan Meštrović, a famous Croatian sculptor.

 

Above: Ivan Meštrović (1883 – 1962)

 

• Archaeological Museum.
  • The oldest museum in Croatia (1820), about 20 min walk north of the old town (entry 20 kn).
  • Many artifacts and monuments from Roman colonies Salona and Narona.

 

 

• Old graveyards
  • Sustipan Memorial Park

 

 

• • The old Jewish Cemetery

 

 

• Split city beach
  • Continue south past the bus station, follow the road which goes by the tracks, and from the bridge over the tracks you can take a stairs down to the beach.
  • If you have a longer stop-over in Split, 5 mins south of the passenger terminal and the train and bus stations lies Split’s city beach where you can take a plunge in the Adriatic.
  • Sunbathe and swim on the beach at Bačvice.
    • To reach this beach walk south along the waterfront from the bus station and then follow the road that crosses the railway line.
    • There are many cafes and places to eat ice cream.
    • This is certainly not the best beach in Croatia (it is packed solid most of summer), but it will give you a feeling of ‘real‘ Croatia as the vast majority of people who go there are from Split.

 

Above: Bacvice Beach

• Picigin, Bačvice.
  • Traditional beach game with a small ball (Bačvice Beach).
  • In summer every year there is a world championship of picigin.

 

 

• Green Market (Pazar).
  • Split’s Pazar is the place to go for a variety of wares such as fruits and veggies, clothing and other odds and ends.
  • Lots of local colour and excitement

 

 

• Grgur Ninski.
  • It is said that if you touch the big toe of the statue and make a wish your wish will come true.

 

Andric and Cerina then went to Rijeka, where Čerina left Andrić without explanation, only saying he urgently needed to go to Italy.

Several days later, Andrić learned that Čerina was being sought by the police who had come to the offices of the paper where he had worked in Zagreb.

 

Above: Rijeka Harbour

 

Vladimir Cerina (1891 – 1932) had written for the Val and Vihor magazines, where he railed against Austria-Hungary and the Magyars.

He took part in organizing the assassination of Slavko Cuvaja.

At the end of WWI Cerina was disappointed with the accomplishment of Yugoslavia.

Mentally disturbed Cerina was placed into a mental hospital in Sibenik where he died.

He belongs to the rebellious and talented young Croatian writers who have been critical of Croatia’s political and social circumstances since the beginning of the 20th century.

 

 

Rijeka (“River“) is a city in Kvarner Bay, a northern inlet of the Adriatic Sea in Croatia.

It is the principal seaport of the country.

It had about 129,000 inhabitants in 2011, with the greater city area reaching up to 200,000, and is Croatia’s third largest city.

The city of Rijeka is a unique cosmopolitan city with a very turbulent history, especially during the 20th century.

For instance, Rijeka was ruled by eight different countries between 1918 and 1991, so theoretically, a citizen of Rijeka born in 1917 could have had eight different passports without ever leaving the city limits.

Such rapid changes of events led to a strong local identity for the city.

Rijeka is a major Croatian port, in the very heart of Kvarner Gulf.

Because of its location, Rijeka is a crossroads of land and sea routes, connected with the rest of the world by air, bus, train and ship lines.

Despite often being described as a predominantly industrial and port city, Rijeka is an interesting city with beautiful architecture of mostly secession style, a good choice of museums and quality night-life.

In the beginning of the 20th century, Rijeka was one of the main European ports and had weekly passenger service to and from New York.

 

 

The famous ship Carpathia, which saved most of the survivors from the Titanic, was heading from New York to Rijeka, and most of the crew on the ship was Croatian.

 

Above: The RMS Carpathia

 

Thanks to that, one of the lifeboats from the Titanic is preserved in the Rijeka Naval Museum.

 

Above: The RMS Titanic

Above: Untergang der Titanic, Willy Stöwer, 1912

 

Rijeka was also the first fascist state in the world before Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s German Reich.

A mixture of fascism, anarchism and elements of dadaism was the basis for the constitution of Reggenza Italiana del Carnaro (Italian Regency of Kvarner), a short-lived state created in 1919, after a coup d’etat of Italian war veterans led by Gabriele D’Annunzio, often called the pioneer of fascism.

 

Above: Flag of the Regency of Carnaro (1919 – 1920)

 

Above: Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863 – 1938)

 

(For more about Gabriele D’Annuzio, please see Canada Slim and the Shrine of Italian Victories of this blog.)

 

To make it more awkward, this unusual state was the first international state that recognized Lenin’s USSR.

 

Above: Flag of the Soviet Union (USSR)(1922 – 1991)

 

(For more on Lenin and the Russian Revolution, please see Canada Slim and….

• the Zimmerwald Movement
• the Forces of Darkness
• the Apostle of Violence
• the Dawn of Revolution
• the Bloodstained Ground
• the Sealed Train

….of this blog.)

 

On the bright side, from 1920 to 1924, Rijeka was an independent neutral state, a status that provided Rijeka with independence and neutrality.

The official languages in the Free State of Fiume were Croatian, Italian and Hungarian, in order to provide maximum care for all minorities in the city.

 

Above: Flag of the Free State of Fiume (1920 – 1924)

 

Woodrow Wilson, President of United States, recommended Rijeka in 1919 as a headquarters of the League of Nations.

 

Above: Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924), 28th US President (1913 – 1921)

 

Above: Flag of the League of Nations (1920 – 1946)

 

After the Second World War, Rijeka was one of the candidates for hosting the headquarters of the United Nations.

The idea was to reintroduce the Independent State of Rijeka as a special United Nations neutral state.

 

Above: Flag of the United Nations

 

Rows of cumbrous cranes and rusty, sea-stained tankers front the soaring apartment blocks of this Croatia’s largest port.

Rijeka (pronounced ree-acre) is a down-to-earth industrial city, a major ferry terminal along the Adriatic coast and an unavoidable transit point if you are travelling through the region by bus.

Rijeka is far from beautiful, but it is the northern Adriatic’s only true metropolis with a reasonable number of attractions and an appealing urban buzz.

 

 

Modern Rijeka is actually made from two original cities that were separated by river Rječina.

On the west was Fiume or Rijeka and on the east Sušak, the rival counterpart of Rijeka mostly inhabited by Croatians and most of the 19th and early 20th century under Yugoslavian or Croatian administrative rule.

Those two cities were merged in 1945.

To symbolically connect the city, a wide pedestrian bridge was built in front of Hotel Kontinental which was turned into a square.

 

 

Most people are not aware that there is actually a river under this wide square.

It is a popular place for meeting and socializing, especially for the younger generations.

Coming to Rijeka, you are joining the list of people, together with Che Guevara, James Joyce, Franz Liszt, Dora Maar, Enrico Caruso, Benito Mussolini, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Josip Jelačić, Bobby Fischer, Saddam Husein, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Johnny Weissmueller, Pope John Paul II and many others, that have been in Rijeka before.

Rijeka will be a “European Capital of Culture” for 2020, an honour it shares with Galway.

 

 

The best way to see Rijeka’s cultural and historical monuments is to follow the tourist path that gathers all of the most important sights for this town and its history.

Most of them are accessible by foot, as they are mostly located in or near the city centre, but to see Trsat Castle you will need to take a short car/bus ride.

Other option, the more adventurous one, is to climb the 561 Trsat stairs that lead from city centre to Trsat.

Trsat Castle is worth the effort.

• Trsat Castle represents a strategically embossed gazebo on a hill 138 meters above sea level that dominates Rijeka.
  • As a parochial centre it was mentioned for the first time in 1288.
  • Trsat Castle is one of the oldest fortifications on the Croatian Coast, where the characteristics of the early medieval town construction have been preserved.
  • Today Trsat Castle, beside the souvenir shop and the coffee shop, is enriched with new facilities – gallery space where art exhibitions are held as well as open-air summer concerts and theatre performances, fashion shows and literary evenings.

• City Tower (Gradski Toranj)
  • A symbol of Rijeka and a good example of a typical round tower Access point, which leads into the fortified town.
  • Today it dominates the central part of Korzo and is often used as a meeting place for local people.

 

• Our Lady of Trsat’s Sanctuary
  • This is the largest centre of pilgrimage in western Croatia.
  • It is famous for its numerous concessions and for the pilgrimages by numerous believers throughout the year, and especially on the Assumption of Mary holiday.

• Treasury and Gallery of Our Lady of Trsat’s Sanctuary
  • The monastery treasury holds works of extraordinary esthetic and material value, paintings, reliquaries, lamps, chalices, ecclesiastical robes, while the Chapel of Votive Gifts houses gifts since the 19th century.

 

• Main city market – Placa
  • No supermarket can replace the charm of the personal contact with the vendor or the excitement of the unpredictable purchase at the main city market.
  • The harmonious compound of two pavilions and a fish market building where, in the morning hours, the real Rijeka can be experienced.

 

• Torpedo launching ramp
  • The launching ramp from 1930s is an item belonging to the closed torpedo production factory.
  • It is proof of the technical inventive of Rijeka during this period and at the same time is an important world landmark of industrial heritage.

 

Rijeka is a city with an unusual, turbulent past.

The best places to discover the whole story on Rijeka are its museums, among its rich collections and exhibitions.

 

• Maritime and Historical Museum of the Croatian Littoral
  • Located in the beautiful Governor’s Palace building, it preserves a large part of Rijeka’s history and maritime tradition.
  • Besides its continuous ethnographic exhibition, visit our collection of furniture and portraits of people from Rijeka’s public life.

 

• Natural History Museum
  • Besides the botanical garden, the museum is a multimedia centre with an aquarium containing species from the Adriatic Sea.
  • Besides fish, sharks and sea rays, the museum also conserves species of insects, reptiles, birds and amphibians.
  • Ideal entertainment for both children and adults.

 

• Rijeka City Museum
  • The museum includes eleven collections: fine arts, arts & crafts, numismatics, valuable objects, medals, arms from the Second World War and from the Croatian War of Independence, a collection of theatre and film material, philately, photography, press and technical collections.

 

• Modern and Contemporary Art Museum
  • The museum collects works of art by Rijeka artists from 19th century and Croatian and foreign artists from 20th and 21st centuries.

 

• Peek & Poke – Museum of old computers.
  • • In this continuous exhibition over 1000 expositions are exhibited from around the world and from Croatian computer history.
    • Located in an area of 300 m², in the centre of Rijeka, it is the largest exhibition of its kind in this part of Europe.

 

• The St. Vitus Cathedral Sacral Collection
  • The collection is located in an attractive location, in a gallery above the internal part and above the church’s altar, whilst the thesaurus is located in the atrium of the cathedral’s locale.
  • The sacral “Jesuits’ heritage” collection includes some very rare exponents.

 

• Memorial Library and the Mažuranić-Brlić-Ružić Collection
  • The library and Mažuranić-Brlić-Ružić collection are at Pećine, in Rijeka, inside the villa of the famous Rijeka’s family, Ružić.

 

• Permanent Glagolitic Alphabet Exhibition
  • A permanent exhibition has been collocated in the Rijeka University Library known as “Glagoljica” in which the Glagolitic written and printed heritage has been presented, especially that of the north Adriatic area where the first Croatian (Glagolitic) books were printed.

 

• Petar Kružić staircase

The stairway starts from the archway on the eastern bank of the Rjecina River in Rijeka and leads up to Trsat settlement, on a plateau with an altitude of 138 meters from sea level.

The stairway consists 561 stone steps and was built for the pilgrims as the road to the Church of Our Lady of Trsat (Church of Our Lady of Trsat).

The construction of the votive stairway was begun in 1531. due to the Croatian warlord captain (Petar Kružić), who excelled in the battles with the Turks.

Petar Kružić built the lower part of the staircase way leading to the Basilica of Notre-Dame of Trsat, today is Church of Our Lady of Trsat dated 15th century.

It is why this staircase was named the Petar Kružić Stairway.

Later the stairway was extended up to 561 steps.

One of the votive chapels along this stairway was created in 15th century and another one in 18th century.

The porch at the foot of the stairway leading to Trsat has a statue of “Virgin with Child” dating from 1745.

There is a legend about the Trsat stairway.

It says that the Franciscans made a deal with the Devil:

If he makes a stairway, he will have a soul who climbs the stairway first.

After some deliberation, the Devil accepted.

Once he finished the work, the Devil waited for the victim.

However, the Franciscans let a goat climb the stairway.

The Devil was so enraged that he mixed the steps, so that nobody had been able to count them to this day.

The legend is based on the fact that the stairway was extended on several occasions.

When it was first built in 1531 by Petar Kružić, the captain of the Uskoks, there were about a hundred steps.

Today, their number exceeds 500.

The beginning of the steep ascent as votive repositories of dignitaries.

A unique experience is to climb the Trsat steps in the procession on the Feast of the Assumption.

Even today, some pilgrims practise the ancient votive tradition of climbing the steps on their knees.

 

By the time war was declared, Andrić had returned to Split feeling exhausted and ill.

Given that most of his friends had already been arrested for nationalist activities, he was certain the same fate would befall him as the police took an obvious interest in his movements

Despite not being involved in the assassination plot, on 29 July 1914, Andrić was arrested for “anti-state activities” and imprisoned.

He was subsequently transferred to a prison in Šibenik and then, with some 350 others, to Rijeka.

Many of the others were taken on to Pest, while another group, including Andric, arrived on 19 August in Maribor (Marburg) Prison, in what is now Slovenia.

 

Above: Sibenik Prison

Šibenik is a city (pop. 37,000) in Šibenik-Knin County, in northern Dalmatia, Croatia.

It is one of the few towns on the Adriatic not to have a Greco-Roman heritage.

It is not a resort and there is little point in stopping if you are looking for somewhere quiet with a beach, though the mazelike medieval centre is good for idle walking.

 

 

A trademark of the city is the traditional Šibenik hat, coloured orange and black, also the city’s colours.

 

Sixteenth century polymath and bishop Faust Vrančić (1515 – 1617), known as one of the inventors of the parachute and perhaps the first man who used it, was born here and lived here.

 

Above: Portrait of Faust Vrancic

 

 

Šibenik was mentioned for the first time under its present name in 1066 in a charter of the Croatian King Petar Krešimir IV (reigned 1058 – 1075).

For a period of time, it was a seat of the Croatian King.

For that reason, Šibenik is also called “Krešimirov grad” (Krešimir’s city).

 

 

It is the oldest native Croatian town on the eastern shores of the Adriatic sea.

You can see the statue of King Petar Krešimir IV between the park and the beginning of the promenade along the sea.

 

 

Šibenik was for almost 300 years under Venetian rule and then Austro-Hungary, Yugoslavia and Croatia.

It was a very important town during the Venetian-Turkish wars and it was a frontier of Western civilization and Christianity.

Venetian rule left Šibenik with four beautiful fortresses: St. Michael, St. John, Šubićaevac and St. Nicholas.

The old part of the town is full of churches, old noblemen palaces and typical Dalmatian stone houses centuries old is very interesting.

The town walls are also well preserved.

One of the most interesting sights is the medieval monastery garden.

• • Katedrala sv. Jakova (Cathedral of St. James or Cathedral of St. Jacob)
    • This basilica is considered as one of the major attraction in the city.
    • It is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
    • Construction started in 1431 and it was not finished until 1536 due to Turkish wars.
    • Several successive architects built it completely in stone in the 15th and 16th centuries, both in Gothic and in Renaissance style.
    • The interlocking stone slabs of the Cathedral’s roof were damaged when the city was shelled by Serbian forces in 1991.
    • The damage has since been repaired.
    • It has a beautiful baptistery worth seeing it, and the curiosity is it has been built with stone only, without any kind of binder.
    • Another one is 72 human heads carved in stone on the external part which belong to unknown individuals, passers-by, sailors, merchants and peasants who posed as the cathedral was being built.
    • Statues of Adam and Eve are also curious:
      • Adam is covering his chest, but Eve is not covering hers, but rather her stomach.

 

• Gradska vijecnica (Old City Hall)

 

• Crkva sv. Barbare (Church of Saint Barbara).
  • A beautiful small church dating from the 15th century with an asymmetric facade with a clock.
  • Now it houses the Muzej crkvene umjetnosti (Museum of Church Art).

 

• Biskupska palača (Bishops Palace) (1439-1441)

 

• Kneževa palača (Dukes Palace)

 

• Četiri bunara (four draw-wells)
  • It is an underground complex of water reservoirs, built in the 15th century for city’s water supply.
  • Now it’s a multimedia exhibition center Bunari – Tajne Šibenika (“Bunari – Secrets of Sibenik“).
  • The reservoirs are now dry and decorated as a museum/gallery and a café.
  • It has seven sections: Šibenik’s treasure, food and drink, shipwrecks around Šibenik, persons from the past.
  • Concerts and stand-up comedy shows often take place at the café.

 

• Crkva i smostan sv. Frane
  • Church and monastery of St. Francis dating from the 16th century.

 

• Perivoj Roberta Visianija (Park of Roberto de Visiani).
  • A nicely decorated little park with fountains dedicated to Roberto de Visiani (1800 – 1878) – botanist, poet and philosopher who was born in Šibenik.

 Above: Roberto de Visiani

 

• Srednjovjekovni vrt sv. Lovre (Medieval garden of the monastery St. Laurence)
  • Extremely rare medieval monastery garden, restored in 2007 by Dragutin Kiš, who won a Millenium Flora Award in Japan in 2000.
  • It contains various plants, especially those used in pharmacies and as spices.
  • It has a quiet café, where you can quietly enjoy the view to the Šibenik’s old part and the sea, the atmosphere and the aromas.

 

• Tvrđava sv. Mihovila (St. Michael’s Fortress)
  • Ruins of the 13th century now converted into a summer stage.
  • It’s an empty shell inside, but the views over the surrounding city and the bay are quite promising.

 

In Maribor, the prisoners were 8 to 10 to a room.

Andric and his fellows quickly organized their time in reading, discussion and learning foreign languages.

“We have founded a proper little university.“, Andric wrote to his friend Evgenija Gojmeric in Janaury 1915.

 

Nevertheless, despite the craftfully cheerful tones of his letters of this time, Andric’s health was rapidly deteriorating.

 

“I am a bit weak, but I am protecting the little health I have and I hope that I shall be able to hold out insave my mother’s only child.”

(January 1915)

 

“Sometimes I become impatient, but I force myself to be calm and sit down, God knows how often, at the table: all neutral nouns, etc.

Believe me, grammars are the only books I can read calmly, for everything else reminds me of the past or the present, and I don’t want that.”

(March 1915)

 

Above: Maribor Prison

 

Maribor is the second most important centre and the second largest city of Slovenia.

It has about 114,000 inhabitants who live embraced in its wine growing hills and the Mariborsko Pohorje mountain.

Maribor is near the Slovenian border with Austria, beside the Drava River and at the centre of five natural geographic regions.

It is the capital of Štajerska, the Slovenian Styria.

 

 

Maribor was first mentioned in the 12th century.

Though the city had been attacked by the Turks several times, it was constantly under the rule of the Austrian Habsburgs until the end of the World War I.

After the war was over the city was claimed by both the Austrians and by the new state of Yugoslavia.

Finally it fell to Yugoslavia.

It was occupied by the Germans during World War II, but became part of Yugoslavia again after the War was over.

In 1975 the University of Maribor was founded and this has helped the city to become more and more an attractive, vibrant student city.

After Slovenia declared independence, back in 1991, the city suffered from the economic consequences.

 

Above: Flag of Maribor

 

Today, Maribor is a transregional financial, educational, trade and cultural centre.

And since it is pleasantly small and lodged in the nature of Pohorje Mountain on the one side, the wine growing hills on the other, and with the river Drava wending its way through it, Maribor has grown into one of the country’s most important tourist destinations.

Its key features are:

• the rich wine culture (the oldest vine in the world, numerous wine roads and wine cellars)
• the old town’s cultural offerings (theatre, traditional events, galleries and museums)
• recreational activities (hiking, cycling and skiing).

Maribor sits among the Pohorje Mountain, the Slovenske gorice Hills and the Kozjak Hills on the gravel terrace of the Drava Valley.

The river Drava divides the city on the so-called left (north) and the right (south) bank.

The city’s old town core is on the left bank of the river Drava.

 

 

On the north, Maribor is embraced with the town (wine-growing) hills, and on the southwestern part of the city, the foothills of the Pohorje Mountain start to rise.

 

A good first stop in the city is Infopeka, an information center which gives out free advice, free Internet usage and free rent-a-bicycle.

They can be found across the old bridge from the Glavni Trg, on the right side of the street.

Sights to see:

• Old Vine (Stara trta).
  • Guinness Book-certified oldest vine in the world (about 450 years old) growing on the front of the Old Vine House in Lent, the oldest part of the town on the embankment of the Drava river.
  • Maribor’s Old Vine is given a lot of tourist promotional protocol events
    • the most famous and most popular is certainly the Vine’s Grape Harvest – the highlight of the traditional Old Vine Festival (Festival Stare trte) held annually at the end of September.

• The Old Vine House (Hiša Stare trte).
  • A temple of wine tradition and culture, selling point of souvenirs from the Maribor-Pohorje destination and a tourist information centre, an exhibition room with guided tours, a place for wine tasting, an event room, and the honorary seat of Slovene and international associations, sworn to honouring wine and the wine culture.

 

• Vinag Wine Cellar (Vinagova vinska klet)
  • In the centre of the city with 20,000 m² surface and 2 km length, it has 5.5 millions litres of excellent wine.

 

• Slomškov Square (Slomškov trg)
  • One of the most charming squares in the city can be found in the western part of the old town core.

• • In the square stand the Cathedral (Stolnica) and a statue of Bishop Anton Martin Slomšek (1800 – 1862).

Above: Bishop Anton Martin Slomsek

(Blessed Anton Martin Slomšek was a Slovene Roman Catholic prelate who served as the Bishop of Lavant from 1846 until his death.

He served also as an author and poet as well as a staunch advocate of the nation’s culture.

He served in various parishes as a simple priest prior to his becoming a bishop in which his patriotic activism increased to a higher degree since he advocated writing and the need for education.

He penned textbooks for schools including those that he himself opened and he was a vocal supporter of ecumenism and led efforts to achieve greater dialogue with other faiths with an emphasis on the Eastern Orthodox Church.

His beatification had its origins in the 1930s, when petitions were lodged for a formal cause to commence.

This all culminated on 19 September 1999, when Pope John Paul II presided over the late bishop’s beatification in Maribor.)

 

 

• Main square (Glavni trg)
  • Includes:
    • the Town Hall (Mestna hiša Rotovž)

 

• • • the Plague Column (Kužno znamenje)

 

• • • the Aloysius church (Alojzijeva cerkev)

 

• • The main square is the largest of Maribor’s squares and it is one of the most important one in the city centre with historical sights and the hustle and bustle of town life flow.
  • Here you can look at the important sights of the old town core.
  • Sip coffee and sit out in the sunshine.
  • Visit some of the small shops.
  • You can find it in the immediate vicinity of the Old Bridge and the street Koroška cesta.

 

• Maribor Synagogue (Sinagoga Maribor).
  • Built in 14th century, it is the second oldest in Europe (at Židovska ulica 4).
  • Today, it serves as a centre for cultural activities and it offers visitors various events including exhibitions, concerts, literary evenings and round tables.
  • The Synagogue is in the Jewish square (Židovski trg) in the former Jewish quarter, which is situated near the Main square (Glavni trg).

 

• Water tower (Vodni stolp).
  • One of defence towers built in the 16th century by inhabitants on account of the constant fear of Turkish raids.
  • This mighty Renaissance town fortification can be seen close by the river Drava at Lent.
  • The street Usnjarska ulica, one of the oldest streets in the town, will lead you past it.

 

• Maribor castle (Mariborski grad).
  • Built by Emperor Frederick III in the 15th century to fortify the northwestern part of the town wall.
  • The castle is located right in the centre of Maribor, surrounded by the Castle square (Grajski trg) and the Trg svobode square (Trg svobode).
  • In the castle, you can visit the Maribor Regional Museum.

 

Plagued by tuberculosis, Andrić passed the time reading, talking to his cellmates and learning languages.

By the following year, the case against Andrić was dropped due to lack of evidence, and he was released from prison on 20 March 1915.

 

 

The authorities exiled him to the village of Ovčarevo, near Travnik, Bosnia, where he remained for two years until the Amnesty.

He arrived there on 22 March and was placed under the supervision of local Franciscan friars.

Andrić soon befriended the friar Alojzije Perčinlić and began researching the history of Bosnia’s Catholic and Orthodox Christian communities under Ottoman rule.

Andrić lived in the parish headquarters and the Franciscans gave him access to the Gura Gora Monastery chronicles.

In return, he assisted the parish priest and taught religious songs to pupils at the monastery school.

 

Above: Ovcarevo Monastery, Travnik

 

Andrić’s mother soon came to visit him and offered to serve as the parish priest’s housekeeper.

“Mother is very happy.”, Andrić wrote.

“It has been three whole years since she saw me.

And she can’t grasp all that has happened to me in that time nor the whole of my crazy, cursed existence.

She cries, kisses me and laughs in turn.

Like a mother.“

 

It was a world rapidly disappearing, but one to which Andric was to return to often in his visits to Bosnia throughout his life.

 

 

(For a description of the Travnik region, please see Canada Slim and the Author’s Apartment 1 – Learning of this blog.)

 

After the companionship of the prison in Maribor, Andric’s letters from Bosnia in this period express a deep sense of isolation and despondency.

His experience of exile in the wild mountains in the heart of Bosnia certainly coloured the atmosphere of the novel Bosnian Story, set in Travnik, describing the exile and isolation of the small diplomatic community there in the early 19th century.

 

 

Andrić was later transferred to a prison in Zenica.

 

Zenica prison (Kazneno-popravni zavod zatvorenog tipa Zenica, KPZ Zenica, K.P. DOM) is a closed-type prison located in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It was opened in 1886.

It was the largest prison in Yugoslavia during its existence and is currently the largest prison in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As of 2016, the prison had a capacity of 813 inmates.

 

Zenica is an industrial city (the fourth largest, after Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Tuzla) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the capital of the Zenica-Doboj Canton of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity.

It is located about 70 km north of Sarajevo and is situated on the Bosna river, surrounded by mountains and hills.

The modern city is dominated by the Zenica Steelworks and the air can be toxic, making it difficult to walk around.

 

Above: Images of Zenica

 

The town’s Stara čaršija (old quarter) contains several attractions, including a synagogue, which used to be the City Museum and Art Gallery.

 

Above: Zenica Synagogue

 

There is also a mosque (Čaršijska mosque), an Austrian fountain and an old Bey’s farmhouse (Hadžimazića House).

 

Above: Zenica Mosque

 

Above: Hadzimazica House

 

Fatih Sultan Mehmed Barracks of the Turkish Armed Forces was also based in Zenica within the peacekeeping activities of European forces in the country.

 

Above: Fatih Sultan Mehmed Barracks of the Turkish Armed Forces, Zenica

 

There are many things to do in Zenica.

A lot of people just enjoy walking around the city and shopping.

But there are also places where you can hike and enjoy beautiful views.

 

Also, there are beautiful mountains around Zenica.

One of the most visited is Mount Smetovi.

It is very attractive in all seasons.

In summer there are beautiful meadows and forest and marked mountaineer trails through forests.

In winter it is attractive for skiing and snowboarding.

 

Above: Mount Smetovi Monument

 

On 2 July 1917, Emperor Charles declared a general amnesty for all of Austria-Hungary’s political prisoners.

His freedom of movement restored, Andrić visited Višegrad and reunited with several of his school friends.

He remained in Višegrad until late July, when he was mobilized.

 

Above: Images of Visegrad

 

(For a description of Visegrad, please see Canada Slim and the Author’s Apartment 1 – Learning.)

 

Because of his poor health, Andrić was admitted to a Sarajevo hospital and thus avoided service.

 

Above: Panorama of Sarajevo

 

(For a description of Sarajevo, please see Canada Slim and the Author’s Apartment 1 – Learning.)

 

He was then transferred to the Reservospital in Zenica, where he received treatment for several months before continuing to Zagreb.

There, Andrić again fell seriously ill and sought treatment at the Sisters of Mercy hospital, which had become a gathering place for dissidents and former political prisoners.

 

Above: Sisters of Mercy Hospital, Zagreb

 

(For a description of Zagreb, please see Canada Slim and the Author’s Apartment 1 – Learning.)

 

In the company of several like-minded young men and writers, including the renowned playwright Ivo Vojnovic (1857 – 1929) from Dubrovnik, Andric entered fully into the intellectual life of the time.

 

Above: Ivo Vojnovic

 

In January 1918, Andrić joined several South Slav nationalists in editing a short-lived pan-Yugoslav periodical called Književni jug (Literary South), the first literary magazine of an expressively Yugoslav orientation.

 

 

Here and in other periodicals, Andrić published book reviews, plays, verse, and translations of Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass) and August Strindberg (The Red Room), and the first fragement of the story “Derzelez at the Inn“.

 

Above: Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)

 

Above: August Strindberg (1849 – 1912)

 

Over the course of several months in early 1918, Andrić’s health began to deteriorate.

Suffering from lingering pnuemonia, his friends believed Andric was nearing death.

He was described by several contemporaries as being exceptionally thin and pale, with all the signs of impending death.

Medical treatment alternated with intensive literary and editorial work.

He published literary critiques and reviews, essays, articles and translations.

 

Above: Zagreb

 

“Looking at a human settlement on a damp and steep incline, surrounded by a rickety fence, I began to think about the purpose of this world.

Indeed, this planet could merely be a pigsty into which everything that ever lived and crawled in the universe was forced, with the sole purpose of dying here.

In large hospitals, there is a room where the patients who obviously have but a few hours to live are transferred.

In the universe, our Earth is this dying chamber.

And the fact that we reproduce is merely an illusion, for everything is happening with the confines of death, to which we are condemned and because of which we have been cast upon Earth.

The fact of the matter is, measured by a universal yardstick and expressed in our human language:

We came into the world yesterday and tomorrow we will be gone.

The grass might still grow and the minerals mature, but only for their own benefit, not ours.”

(Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside)

 

 

Andric recovered and spent the spring of 1918 in Krapina writing Ex ponto.

It was his first book.

Towards the end of the summer it was published.

 

 

Ex Ponto is a work of experiencing body and mind disempowerment, a dark image of human isolation and loneliness.

The entire book is based on melancholy, solitude and separation from others – the main feelings that permeate the whole work.

In Ex Ponto, Ivo Andrić paints his story with feelings of melancholy and loneliness, one of the dominant characteristics and characteristics of Andić’s works.

 

The title of the work Ex Ponto Ivo Andrić takes from the collection of poems “Epistulae ex Ponto” of the Latin poet Ovid, who speaks about his suffering and exile on the Black Sea coast (where he was sent by Caesar Augustus).

Above: Statue of Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC – 18 AD), Constanta, Romania

 

This collection of lyric prose tells of the days of Andrić’s time spent in prison and in exile.

Fatigue, loneliness, separation from others are the main feelings that occur throughout the work.

 

Andrić did not want to give any description of his darkening and coming to such a place.

Confident in his power, the poet tries to rise above the evil that has befallen him.

He tries to deprive himself of the sense of need for happiness and to view it as a generality.

He speaks to all those who will live in abundance and joy until he is as silent as the foundation stone.

He dreams of one absolute kindness, without boundaries, and does not despair of hope.

 

 

Ex Ponto is expressed in the form of addressing the reader with the impression that he wants to start a dialogue with him.

We try to understand and find the connection between his love and faith.

 

Ex Ponto is accompanied by motives of loneliness, anxiety, melancholy.

The captivity of his thoughts and the loneliness of solitude accompany him, both at the beginning and throughout the darkness, but also later in life.

The banished stay in a prison cell leaves one with an indelible feeling of restlessness and loneliness.

 

 

He remembers his mother, her warm bread and her room.

He is deeply sorry that his mother is suffering.

He looks through the bars of the seasons and accordingly the emotions come.

Time is gloomy, gentle, optimistic.

 

He thinks of women as a luxury, a cause for dreams, singing, sighs, ecstasy and longing.

The female leitmotif is present in all his works.

 

 

Embarrassed by solitude, Andric understands the truths of life and the meaning of the fight that illuminates his dark days.

Ex Ponto abounds in the truths of life that Ivo Andrić came to us and which he communicates to us, from which we learn and live.

The very point of the piece is in the epilogue when a young man, disappointed with life, still chooses to live, because life is once and lasts a very short time.

As with many of his other works, Ivo Andrić Ex Ponto quotes have been used very often when attempting to explain the significance and inevitability of the losses a person faces during life, which must be reconciled because we cannot prevent them.

 

 

Now I see.

Losing is terrible only until everything is lost, because losing a little brings sorrow and tears.

And as long as we can gauge the size of the loss on the rest, it is difficult for us.

But once we lose everything, then we feel an ease for which there is no name, because that is the ease of too much pain.

 

It’s weird how little we need to be happy and even more weird is how often we miss it so much.

 

The more you hear and feel about yourself, the shallower and crazier your neighbor’s conversation becomes.

 

And what I look at is all song and whatever I touch is all pain.

 

Live and fight as best you can, pray to God and love all nature, but leave the most love, attention, and compassion for the people, your poor brethren, whose life is a steady beam of light between the two infinities.

Love people, help them often and always want them, because we all need people.

 

Ex Ponto ends rather optimistically, explaining to us that to live means to live illusion to illusion, deception to deception.

Although life is hard, everyone is committed to living it.

 

 

Krapina is a city in Central Croatia.

Krapina is a small town in northern Croatia and also an administrative and cultural centre of Krapinsko-Zagorska County, located approximately 55 km from Zagreb, Croatia’s capital.

Krapina is very tiny town so you can see all the sights on foot.

 

Above: Krapina, Croatia

 

Krapina Neanderthal Museum (Muzej Krapinskih Neandertalaca)

This is where you enter a time machine and go far back into the past to Earth’s prehistory.

Here you can find out all about the anatomy, culture and the environment of the Neanderthal.

The museum is located on the prehistoric habitat.

The museum has all sorts of multimedia content so it is a great place to visit with your family.

 

World War I (often abbreviated as WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War, the Great War, the Seminal Catastrophe, and initially in North America as the European War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918.

Contemporaneously described as “the war to end all wars“, it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history.

It was also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the resulting 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.

 

Above: Images of World War One

 

The end of World War I saw the disintegration of Austria-Hungary, which was replaced by a newly established South Slav state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929).

 

 

The first weeks after the end of the War were intoxicating for the peoples of the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

 

In the words of Ivo Vojnovic:

“We look at one another and ask:

Is it true?

Is this really happening to us?”

 

 

Nevertheless, it did not take long for Andric and Vojnovic to realize that the organization of the new state had simply replaced the old one, more or less unchanged.

They were deeply disappointed, but resolved to carry out their duty to their fellow countrymen as conscientiously and seriously as they could.

 

Above: Flag of the Kingdom

 

In November 1918, Andric published an article in the Zagreb paper The News entitled “Let the intruders remain silent“:

“The idea of national unity is the legacy of our finest generations and the first of heavy sacrifice.

This unity, the dream of our life and the meaning of our struggles and suffering, must not, now that it is largely realized, be allowed to fall into the hands of intruders, to be tainted by the marks of their unclean fingers and treated with their toothless sophisms.

And all of us who bore this idea of unity unsullied with fraternal battles and did not deny it before the slanderous Austrian judges, we shall be able to defend it also from unscrupulous journalists and sullen self-styled politicians.”

 

In late 1918, Andrić re-enrolled at the University of Zagreb and resumed his studies.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Andrić’s tendency to identify with Serbdom became increasingly apparent.

 

Above: Logo of the University of Zagreb

 

In December 1918, Ivo Vojnovic wrote to his brother:

“I am sending you Ex Porto which has created a great sensation.

The writer is a young Catholic, a perfect young man.

A Serb from Bosnia, where he contracted tuberculosis.

He is here now, running The Literary South, my constant companion, one of the best and most refined souls I have ever met.

This work of his will become “Das Gemeingut” (common heritage) of all peoples when it is translated.

C’est un grand poète et une âme exquise.”

(He is a great poet and an exquisite soul.)

 

By January 1919, he fell ill again and was back in the hospital.

Fellow writer Ivo Vojnović became worried for his friend’s life and appealed to Andrić’s old schoolteacher Tugomir Alaupović (who had just been appointed the new Kingdom’s Minister of Religious Affairs) to use his connections and help Andrić pay for treatment abroad.

 

Above: Tugomir Alaupović (1870 – 1958)

 

Eventually, Andrić chose to seek treatment in Split, where he stayed for the following six months on the nearby island of Brac.

 

 

During his time on the Mediterranean coast, Andrić completed a second volume of prose poetry, titled Nemiri (Anxieties), which was published the following year.

 

 

“You have been silent for a long time and have been silent for a long time, my son, you are enveloped in dreams, weary of the ways of the spirit. 

Your face is bent and your face is pale, deep down with your eyelids and your voice like the squeak of a dungeon door.

Get out on a summer day, my son!

 

What did you see on a summer day, my son?

I saw that the earth is strong and the sky eternal, and man weak and short-lived.

 

What did you see, my son, on a summer day?

I saw that love is short and hunger is eternal.

 

What did you see, my son, on a summer day?

I have seen that this life is a painful thing, consisting of the wrong change of sin and unhappiness, that to live means to lie from one to another.

 

You want to sleep, my son?

No, father, I’m going to live.”

“Oh God, why did you give me a heart that constantly pulls me to the distance and beauty of unseen places?

Why did you always make my fortune stay where I am gone?”

“I often sit for hours and watch the cool autumn colors.

The peace of destiny that can no longer be changed fuses on my soul and face.

Everything in me is dead.

I’m so good.

No sound comes to me, my father’s vision died.

Everything was left behind the big gate that closed the hell behind me.

I have lost everything and am no more human than a restless angry thought that has sunk and lingered on the deep bottom, and over me, like opaque green masses, are water, peace, distance and oblivion.”

“I, a man of a perpetual heart, who live without peace and joy, a bitter life about someone else’s bread, a troubled past, full of wanderings, disobedience and distress, a volatile, difficult present and a dark future, flushed with passions, shaken by events, and tormented by people, knocked down and crushed at the entrance to life, fueled by sin, and the fight against sin.

I crave my soul for peace, and tonight I ask for a life bright and quiet from God, so that I do not break within myself and break the world.“

“Still alive.

It still happens sometimes that pain overcomes me, so I bend like a worm on the earth and press my face into the rustling, cold grass and utter words in a black thirsty land that I have no one to say.

I complain to the invisible God, that I am struck with an unbearable curse, to pour out the best thoughts and the best feelings unseen and vain like pollen on stone, sparks into darkness, moans into the wind.”

“From fear, people are evil and cruel and mean, from fear they are generous, even good.

All the lower, the higher fear.

And the one who has no one to fear is that pre-fear of his sick imagination, because fear is like an infection that fills all brains.

If I could look inside this man destined to torment me, I think I would find a small, miserable soul, tormented by considerations and fear of failures and reprimands.

I’m sorry for him and that compassion hurts me.“

“All the glory that God has prescribed in the world has made my eyes blue.

They are bound by rugs of sun and shade.

My heart pounding.

For long life and great joy!

Travel and ship, do not remain eager for the stormy sea, neither the fields nor the dense forests!

It is good for God to see you where your life is song and dance!

For the living and for those who are young!”

“It is strange that all mistakes are equal, if we are repeating and continuing with new hopes.

All night long, we bite our mouths, snoop on the pillow of helpless anger, and firmly swear to remain lonely, and when we get dark, we lift our souls like a soft balloon from the blossoming dandelion of the oncoming winds of life, and blow you away.

But who saved only one little puff and brought it into the covenant saved his whole soul.

It is a bitter work, but one that does not make the souls of the soul tender to the winds of the trials, even to save it completely and to pass it on, it cannot sense if it has had any at all.”

“I’m completely torn.

I’m sinking into oblivion.

Sadness covers me.

I come to myself like a candle they forgot to put out, so it burns all night on the altar as an unprecedented sacrifice in the deaf age.

It’s hardest for a person to feel compassion for themselves.”

“Changing false courtesies and torturing shallowness.

Never warm or sincere conversations, that old words and dramatic thoughts play like the dust of the sun in the light of a smile, never to grow cordial, full of souls, with dear faces, looking forward to seeing you again, never to lie down, lips and be at peace.

This is how life receives the mask of stiff, voiceless tragedy and my born soul is a beautiful distant memory.”

 

By the time Andrić left, he had almost fully recovered, and quipped that he was cured by the “air, sun and figs of Brac“.

Brač is an island in the Adriatic Sea within Croatia, with an area of 396 square kilometres (153 sq mi), making it the largest island in Dalmatia, and the third largest in the Adriatic.

It is separated from the mainland by the Brač Channel, which is 5 to 13 km (3 to 8 mi) wide.

The island’s tallest peak, Vidova gora, or Mount St. Vid, stands at 780 m, making it the highest island point of the Adriatic islands.

The island has a population of 13,956, living in numerous settlements, ranging from the main town Supetar, with more than 3,300 inhabitants, to Murvica, where less than two dozen people live.

 

Above: Supetar Harbour

 

Above: Murvica

 

• Pustinja Blaca (Blaca hermitage)
  • A former monastery originating from 1551, now a museum run by two brothers.
  • In the 2007 the hermitage was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List.

 

• Vidova gora.
  • It is the highest mountain of all Adriatic islands.
  • It has a great view to the Zlatni Rat (Golden Horn) beach, Place Bol and the islands of Hvar and Vis.

• Dragon’s cave
  • near Murvica on the south side of the island.

 

• Dominican monastery
  • In Bol, the monastery has a great collection of prehistoric items, amphoras and numismatics.

 

• Museum of the island
  • in the village Škrip.

Visit Brac’s many pebble beaches and private coves, with diving, kitesurfing and windsurfing in Bol.

Try Brač dishes of domestic lamb (vitalac) and famous Brač cheese.

Brač is famous for its wines, the most famous is Bolski Plavac: spirits made of grapes with herbs.

 

Troubled by news that his uncle was seriously ill, Andrić left Split in August and went to him in Višegrad.

He returned to Zagreb two weeks later.

 

With his two volumes of prose poems and the first part of the story The Journey of Alija Derzelez in print, Andric was launched on his literary career.

 

 

This was Andrić’s first short story, published in 1920.

Its protagonist is the hero of a large number of Moslem heroic ballads.

Bearing in mind the special place accorded to “legend” and “fairy tale” in Andrić’s statements about art, we should consider exactly what form “the grain of truth contained in legend” takes in this tale.

The traditional ballads concerned with Alija deal exclusively with his prowess on the battlefield.

Andrić refers to his fame in just one sentence:

“He was renowed for many battles and his fearful strength.” and immediately takes him off his horse, setting him down in a context where he appears awkward because he is not used to being on the ground, or to normal social interaction.

His stature is at once diminished:

“In a few days the magic circle around Đerzelez had quite disappeared.”

There is no clear reason why the label “hero“ should have attached itself to this particular person.

He is small, unprepossessing and ungainly as soon as he dismounts, awkward and uninteresting in conversation.

He is slow-witted and chronically lacking in imagination.

But he is also obsessive.

Once he sees a beautiful woman he can think of nothing else but possessing her.

Or he abandons himself wholeheartedly to the singing of a particularly fine traditional singer:

“Đerzelez felt that the singer tugging at his soul and that any moment now, he would expire, from excessive strength, or excessive weakness.”

Đerzelez can flourish only in circumstances where his simple-minded strength energy can be expressed in the immediate violent ways he understands.

He is quite baffled by more intricate social relationships and by the whole deeply disturbing question of women.

Andrić here exploits the comic possibilities exposing a renowned hero to the demands made on men by their ballads.

 

“Andric est arrivée.“, wrote the Serbian writer Milos Cinjandir at the end of his review of Ex Ponto.

 

Andric was, however, dissatisfied with the circumstances of his life.

Activists had begun to leave Zagreb.

Andric wrote to Alaupovic in March 1919:

“We have all dispersed and I feel lonelier than ever in my life.”

On his return to Zagreb the town seemed even more deserted.

Vojnovic was his one real friend left and Andric was frequently ill.

 

By 1919, Andrić had acquired his undergraduate degree in South Slavic history and literature at the University of Zagreb.

He was perennially impoverished and earned a meagre sum through his writing and editorial work.

By mid-1919, he realized that he would be unable to financially support himself and his aging mother, aunt and uncle for much longer.

His appeals to Alaupović for help securing a government job became more frequent.

“This is what will not permit me to go on living this impoverished, but free and fine style of life.

I have no one whom I could consult about this matter (except Vojnovic who has persuaded me to write) so I am asking you whether you could bear my situation to mind.”

 

Something of a more general dissatisfaction with his surroundings can be seen in another letter to Alaupovic written in July:

“I shall be glad to get to grips with some concrete work which has nothing to do with journalistic literary cliques.”

 

In September 1919, Alaupović offered him a secretarial position at the Ministry of Religion, which Andrić accepted.

In late October, Andrić left for Belgrade.

 

Above: Images of Belgrade

 

The first formative phase of Andric’s adult life was over, coloured by poverty, illness, imprisonment and exile against a background of international tension and war.

Andric set out, in better health, into a job about which he knew nothing but which offered a previously unknown stability.

He was setting out into a town he had never seen.

But he was going as an established writer, with his first book sold out after enthusiastic reviews.

 

He became involved in Belgrade’s literary circles, focused on the Moscow Café where he was warmly welcomed and accepted, and soon acquired the distinction of being one of the city’s most popular young writers.

 

Above: Hotel Moscow, Belgrade

 

Though the Belgrade press wrote positively of him, Andrić disliked being a public figure, and went into seclusion and distanced himself from his fellow writers.

At the same time, he grew dissatisfied with his government job and wrote to Alaupović asking for a transfer to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 

On 20 February 1920, Andrić’s request was granted.

 

The Memorial Museum does not primarily focus on these years of Andric’s greatest suffering.

There are photographs of Andric in the Reservespital in Zenica alongside doctors and patients.

And there are photographs and handwritten notes of his life in Zagreb after the end of the Great War.

Between the ravages of illness and imprisonment Andric was fortunate to have survived, but it comes as no surprise to see so little documentary evidence of those years on exhibit in the Museum.

Perhaps he simply didn’t save much from those years as he did not wish to be reminded of the suffering he endured then.

 

 

Andric’s career that followed as a diplomat would find him at the heart of European politics and would eventually lead him back to Belgrade and to the apartment that is now his Memorial Museum.

Those years (1920 – 1941) would see Andric abroad and away from his beloved Belgrade.

Living in Europe’s capital cities broadened his world views and offered him the opportunity to improve his language skills, to meet other men of letters and to have an immediate access to the literature of the countries in which he served as a diplomat, as well as to gather materials for his future novels and stories.

 

 

To fully understand what it was like to live the life of Ivo Andric in the years of the Great War before he became a diplomat, one needs to imagine a life alternating between hospitals, hovels and prisons.

 

To see the remarkable strength of the Balkans and the resilence of those who live there I recommend retracing Andric’s life by visiting where he once was.

 

And then come back with me to Belgrade and Ivo Andric’s last residence.

The Memorial Museum exhibits and the story of Ivo Andric become more exciting….

(To be continued)

 

 

Sources: Wikipedia / Wikivoyage / Google / Memorial Museum of Ivo Andric Guide, Belgrade City Museum / Tourist Guide Belgrade, Intersistem Kartographia / Serbia in Your Hands, Komshe Travel Guides / Laurence Mitchell, Bradt Serbia / Lonely Planet Central Europe on a Shoestring / Lonely Planet Eastern Europe / Lonely Planet Croatia / Rough Guide Croatia / Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside / Ivo Andric, Ex Ponto / Ivo Andric, Anxieties / Ivo Andric, The Journey of Alija Djerzelez / Dorling Kindersley, World War I: The Definitive Visual Guide from Sarajevo to Versailles

 

Above: Ivo Andric, 1922

 

“That young man is the personification of general, eternal human destiny:

On one hand, there is a dangerous and uncertain road.

On the other, a great human need to not lose one’s way, to survive and leave behind a legacy.”

(Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside)

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the Man Who Invented the Future

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 21 January 2019

(Continued from Canada Slim and the Visionary & Canada Slim and the Current War)

“Imagine a man a century ago, bold enough to design and actually build a huge tower with which to transmit the human voice, music, pictures, press news and even power, through the Earth to any distance whatever without wires!

He probably would have been hung or burnt at the stake.”

(Hugo Gernsback, Preface to Nikola Tesla’s My Inventions: 5. The Magnifying Transmitter, Electrical Experimenter, June 1919)

Such was the high regard that Gernsback, Tesla’s greatest admirer, had for the Serbian inventor.

Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943) was one of the greatest scientists and innovators during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

The Serbian genius went to America in 1884 and would be followed by his Luxemburger admirer Hugo Gernsback (1884 – 1967) twenty years later.

 

Both men would come to America to bring realization to their visionary ideas.

 

Tesla is the creative genius behind many great inventions which are today utilized in radio, industrial and nuclear technology.

Gernsback’s contributions as a publisher were so significant that, along with the novelists H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, that he is sometimes called the Father of Science Fiction, and it is in his honour that the annual awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention are named the Hugos.

 

For me there is an irony that Tesla was discovered by the world through Gernsback while I discovered Gernsback through the world of Tesla.

 

Belgrade, Serbia, 5 April 2018

A week’s vacation where boys will be boys in a part of the world far removed from our respective spouses found me visiting my Serbian friend Nesha in his home city of Belgrade.

Sadly, Nesha had more obligations in Serbia than just playing host to this Canadian blogger so half my stay involved me on my own.

I had arrived the previous day, travelling with Nesha from his home in Herisau, Switzerland, to his childhood house in the Serbian capital.

After breakfast the following morning, the dateline above, I set out to explore the city.

Krunska Street runs parallel to the Bulevar (King Aleksander Boulevard, one of the longest streets in Belgrade) and, in contrast, is a relatively quiet street and makes for a very pleasant stroll.

At Krunska 51, the Raska style villa of politician Dorde (George) Gencic, built in 1929, the Nikola Tesla Museum is engaged in educating and informing the public about the life and inventions of this Serbian scientist who died in Manhattan in 1943.

 

(Gernsback would die in the same city twenty-four years later.)

 

The Museum was founded when Sava Kosanovic, Tesla’s heir….

 

(Tesla never married.

He explained that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities.

He once said in earlier years that he felt that he could never be worthy enough for a woman, considering women superior in every way.

His opinion started to sway in later years when he felt that women were trying to outdo men and make themselves more dominant.

 

(I know how he feels!)

 

This “new woman” was met with much indignation from Tesla, who felt that women were losing their feminity by trying to be in power.

In an interview with The Galveston Daily News on 10 August 1924, he stated:

“In place of the soft voiced, gentle woman of my reverant worship, has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies in making herself as much as possible like man – in dress, voice and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind.

The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me.”

 

(Clearly his confusion has carried on into the modern age where the ongoing internal struggle between a woman defining herself and letting herself be defined by others still remains.)

Although he told a reporter in later years that he sometimes felt that by not marrying, he had made too great a sacrifice to his work, Tesla chose to never pursue or engage in any known relationships, instead finding all the stimulation he needed in his work.)

 

(Unlike Tesla, Gernsback would marry three times.)

 

Kosanovic brought Tesla’s effects and legacy to Belgrade.

These mainly consist of sketches of his unrealized works, his scientific journal, personal notes and also an urn containing his ashes.

Also at the Museum are thematic rooms, categorized according to different periods of his life.

The most interesting area is certainly that containing models which explain the functioning principles behind his inventions.

Above: Tesla two-phase induction motor

 

Though quite small the Museum has several interesting items on display and an interactive exposition that will capture your attention.

It holds more than 160,000 original documents, over 2,000 books and journals, over 1,200 historical technical exhibits, over 1,500 photographs and photo plates of original, technical objects, instruments and apparatus, and over 1,000 plans and drawings.

Above: Nikola Tesla’s baptismal certificate (24 July 1856)

 

The Museum is also of interest to researchers since it keeps almost all belongings left by the eccentric scientist.

Due to the importance that Tesla’s writings still have for science, the archive of the Museum has been added to the UNESCO Memory of the World list.

The Museum is divided into two parts.

The historical part is where one can see many of Tesla’s personal belongings, exhibits illustrating his life, awards and decorations bestowed.

The second presents the path of Tesla’s discoveries with models of his inventions in fields of electricity and engineering.

Guided tours in English and Serbian with fascinating demonstrations on how Tesla’s inventions work take place every hour on the hour.

 

Though Tesla never had great financial success, he nonetheless registered over 700 patents worldwide – examples of his best known discoveries being rotating magnetic fields, wireless communication (the foundation of remote control and radio) and rotary transformers.

During his life Tesla was recognized as a striking but sometimes eccentric genius.

Today he is praised for his great achievements:

In 1895 he designed the first hydroelectric power plant at the Niagara Falls.

Above: Schoellkopf Stations 3, 3B and 3C, Niagara Falls

 

His alternating current (AC) induction motor is considered one of the greatest discoveries of all time.

Tesla’s name has been honoured with the International Unit of Magnetic Flux Density, the Tesla (T).

 

Nevertheless I cannot help but wonder whether Tesla’s genius would be as well-known to the average man had it not been for Gernsback or whether he would have gone down in history as simply a clever eccentric without the additional fame Gernsback provided him.

And, to be fair, I wonder whether Gernsback would have found the inspiration for founding “scientifiction” had it not been for the scientific wonders that Tesla invented.

To bring these two men together I need to continue with Tesla’s story first.

 

From the 1890s through 1906, Tesla spent a great deal of time and fortune on a series of projects trying to develop the transmission of electrical power without wires.

It was an expansion of his idea of using coils to transmit power that he had been demonstrating in wireless lighting.

He saw this as not only a way to transmit large amounts of power around the world but also, as he had pointed out in his earlier lectures, a way to transmit worldwide communications.

 

At the time Tesla was formulating his ideas, there was no feasible way to wirelessly transmit communication signals over long distances, let alone large amounts of power.

 

By the mid 1890s, Tesla was working on the idea that he might be able to conduct electricity long distance through the Earth or the atmosphere, and began working on experiments to test this idea including setting up a large resonance transformer magnifying transmitter in his East Houston Street lab.

Above: Tesla’s East Houston Street lab, New York City

 

Seeming to borrow from a common idea at the time that the Earth’s atmosphere was conductive, he proposed a system composed of balloons suspending, transmitting, and receiving, electrodes in the air above 30,000 feet (9,100 m) in altitude, where he thought the lower pressure would allow him to send high voltages (millions of volts) long distances.

To further study the conductive nature of low pressure air, Tesla set up an experimental station at high altitude in Colorado Springs during 1899.

The Experimental Station was located on empty land on the highest local point (Knob Hill) between the 1876 Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind and the Union Printers Home, where Tesla conducted the research described in the Colorado Springs Notes, 1899-1900.

A few papers of the times listed Tesla’s lab as about 200 feet east of the Deaf and Blind School and 200 feet north of Pikes Peak Ave.

This put it on top of the hill at E. Kiowa St. and N. Foote Ave (facing west); as documented by Pikes Peak Library District.

There he could safely operate much larger coils than in the cramped confines of his New York lab, and an associate had made an arrangement for the El Paso Power Company to supply alternating current free of charge.

 

Tesla was focused in his research for the practical development of a system for wireless transmission of power and a utilization system.

Tesla said, in “On electricity“, Electrical Review (27 January 1897):

“In fact, progress in this field has given me fresh hope that I shall see the fulfillment of one of my fondest dreams; namely, the transmission of power from station to station without the employment of any connecting wires.“

 

Tesla went to Colorado Springs in mid-May 1899 with the intent to research:

1. Transmitters of great power.
2. Individualization and isolating the energy transmission means.
3. Laws of propagation of currents through the earth and the atmosphere.

Tesla spent more than half his time researching transmitters.

Tesla spent less than a quarter of his time researching delicate receivers and about a tenth of his time measuring the capacity of the vertical antenna.

Also, Tesla spent a tenth of his time researching miscellaneous subjects.

J. R. Wait’s commented on Tesla activity:

“From an historical standpoint, it is significant that the genius Nikola Tesla envisaged a world wide communication system using a huge spark gap transmitter located in Colorado Springs in 1899.

A few years later he built a large facility in Long Island that he hoped would transmit signals to the Cornish coast of England.

In addition, he proposed to use a modified version of the system to distribute power to all points of the globe”.

 

To fund his experiments he convinced John Jacob Astor IV to invest $100,000 to become a majority share holder in the Nikola Tesla Company.

Above: John Jacob Astor IV (1864 – 1912)(died on the Titanic)

Astor thought he was primarily investing in the new wireless lighting system.

Instead, Tesla used the money to fund his Colorado Springs experiments.

 

Upon his arrival, he told reporters that he planned to conduct wireless telegraphy experiments, transmitting signals from Pikes Peak to Paris.

Above: Pike’s Peak, 12 miles / 19 km west of Colorado Springs

 

The lab possessed the largest Tesla coil ever built, 49.25 feet (15 m) in diameter, which was a preliminary version of the magnifying transmitter planned for installation in the Wardenclyffe Tower.

He produced artificial lightning, with discharges consisting of millions of volts and up to 135 feet (41 m) long.

Thunder from the released energy was heard 15 miles (24 km) away in Cripple Creek, Colorado.

People walking along the street observed sparks jumping between their feet and the ground.

Sparks sprang from water line taps when touched.

Light bulbs within 100 feet (30 m) of the lab glowed even when turned off.

Horses in a livery stable bolted from their stalls after receiving shocks through their metal shoes.

Butterflies were electrified, swirling in circles with blue halos of St. Elmo’s fire around their wings.

While experimenting, Tesla inadvertently faulted a power station generator, causing a power outage.

In August 1917, Tesla explained what had happened in The Electrical Experimenter:

“As an example of what has been done with several hundred kilowatts of high frequency energy liberated, it was found that the dynamos in a power house 6 miles (10 km) away were repeatedly burned out, due to the powerful high frequency currents set up in them, and which caused heavy sparks to jump through the windings and destroy the insulation!“

 

There he conducted experiments with a large coil operating in the megavolts range, producing artificial lightning (and thunder) consisting of millions of volts and up to 135 feet (41 m) long discharges and, at one point, inadvertently burned out the generator in El Paso, causing a power outage.

The observations he made of the electronic noise of lightning strikes, led him to (incorrectly) conclude that he could use the entire globe of the Earth to conduct electrical energy.

 

During his time at his laboratory, Tesla observed unusual signals from his receiver which he speculated to be communications from another planet.

He mentioned them in a letter to a reporter in December 1899 and to the Red Cross Society in December 1900.

Reporters treated it as a sensational story and jumped to the conclusion Tesla was hearing signals from Mars.

Above: Mars

 

He expanded on the signals he heard in a 9 February 1901 Collier’s Weekly article “Talking With Planets” where he said it had not been immediately apparent to him that he was hearing “intelligently controlled signals” and that the signals could come from Mars, Venus, or other planets.

 

It has been hypothesized that he may have intercepted Guglielmo Marconi’s European experiments in July 1899—Marconi may have transmitted the letter S (dot/dot/dot) in a naval demonstration, the same three impulses that Tesla hinted at hearing in Colorado—or signals from another experimenter in wireless transmission.

Above: Guglielmo Marconi (1874 – 1937)

 

Tesla had an agreement with the editor of The Century Magazine to produce an article on his findings.

The magazine sent a photographer to Colorado to photograph the work being done there.

The article, titled “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy“, appeared in the June 1900 edition of the magazine.

He explained the superiority of the wireless system he envisioned but the article was more of a lengthy philosophical treatise than an understandable scientific description of his work, illustrated with what were to become iconic images of Tesla and his Colorado Springs experiments.

 

Tesla made the rounds in New York trying to find investors for what he thought would be a viable system of wireless transmission, wining and dining them at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Palm Garden (the hotel where he was living at the time), The Players Club and Delmonico’s.

 

On 7 January 1900 Tesla made his final entry in his journal while in Colorado Springs.

In 1900 Tesla was granted patents for a “system of transmitting electrical energy” and “an electrical transmitter.”

 

When Guglielmo Marconi made his famous first-ever transatlantic radio transmission in 1901, Tesla quipped that it was done with 17 Tesla patents, though there is little to support this claim.

Above: Marconi watching his associates raising the kite used to lift the antenna, St. John’s, Newfoundland, 12 December 1901

 

In 1904, Tesla was sued for unpaid debts in Colorado Springs.

His lab was torn down and its contents were sold two years later at auction at the court house to satisfy his debts.

 

In March 1901, Tesla obtained $150,000 ($4,517,400 in today’s dollars) from J. Pierpont Morgan in return for a 51% share of any generated wireless patents and began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility to be built in Shoreham, New York, 100 miles (161 km) east of the city on the North Shore of Long Island.

Tesla’s design for Wardenclyffe grew out of his experiments beginning in the early 1890s.

 

His primary goal in these experiments was to develop a new wireless power transmission system.

 

He discarded the idea of using the newly discovered Hertzian (radio) waves, detected in 1888 by German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz since Tesla doubted they existed and basic physics told him, and most other scientists from that period, that they would only travel in straight lines the way visible light did, meaning they would travel straight out into space becoming “hopelessly lost“.

Above: Heinrich Hertz (1857 – 1894)

 

In laboratory work and later large scale experiments at Colorado Springs in 1899, Tesla developed his own ideas on how a worldwide wireless system would work.

He theorized from these experiments that if he injected electric current into the Earth at just the right frequency he could harness what he believed was the planet’s own electrical charge and cause it to resonate at a frequency that would be amplified in “standing waves” that could be tapped anywhere on the planet to run devices or, through modulation, carry a signal.

His system was based more on 19th century ideas of electrical conduction and telegraphy instead of the newer theories of air-borne electromagnetic waves, with an electrical charge being conducted through the ground and being returned through the air.

 

Tesla’s design used a concept of a charged conductive upper layer in the atmosphere, a theory dating back to an 1872 idea for a proposed wireless power system by Mahlon Loomis.

Above: Mahlon Loomis (1826 – 1886)

 

Tesla not only believed that he could use this layer as his return path in his electrical conduction system, but that the power flowing through it would make it glow, providing night time lighting for cities and shipping lanes.

 

In a February 1901 Collier’s Weekly article titled “Talking With Planets” Tesla described his “system of energy transmission and of telegraphy without the use of wires” as “using the Earth itself as the medium for conducting the currents, thus dispensing with wires and all other artificial conductors … a machine which, to explain its operation in plain language, resembled a pump in its action, drawing electricity from the Earth and driving it back into the same at an enormous rate, thus creating ripples or disturbances which, spreading through the Earth as through a wire, could be detected at great distances by carefully attuned receiving circuits.

In this manner I was able to transmit to a distance, not only feeble effects for the purposes of signaling, but considerable amounts of energy, and later discoveries I made convinced me that I shall ultimately succeed in conveying power without wires, for industrial purposes, with high economy, and to any distance, however great.”

 

Although Tesla demonstrated wireless power transmission at Colorado Springs, lighting electric lights mounted outside the building where he had his large experimental coil, he did not scientifically test his theories.

He believed he had achieved Earth resonance which, according to his theory, would work at any distance.

Tesla began working on his wireless station immediately.

 

As soon as the contract was signed with Morgan in March 1901 he placed an order for generators and transformers with the Westinghouse Electric Company.

 

Tesla’s plans changed radically after he read a June 1901 Electrical Review article by Marconi entitled SYNTONIC WIRELESS TELEGRAPH.

At this point Marconi was transmitting radio signals beyond the range most physicists thought possible (over the horizon) and the description of the Italian inventor’s use of a “Tesla coil” “connected to the Earth” led Tesla to believe Marconi was copying his earth resonance system to do it.

Tesla, believing a small pilot system capable of sending Morse code yacht race results to Morgan in Europe would not be able to capture the attention of potential investors, decided to scale up his designs with a much more powerful transmitter, incorporating his ideas of advanced telephone and Image transmission as well as his ideas of wireless power delivery.

Above: J.P. Morgan (1837 – 1913)

 

In July 1901 Tesla informed Morgan of his planned changes to the project and the need for much more money to build it.

He explained the more grandiose plan as a way to leap ahead of competitors and secure much larger profits on the investment.

With Tesla basically proposing a breach of contract, Morgan refused to lend additional funds and demanded an account of money already spent.

Tesla would claim a few years later that funds were also running short because of Morgan’s role in triggering the stock market panic of 1901, making everything Tesla had to buy much more expensive.

Despite Morgan stating no additional funds would be supplied, Tesla continued on with the project.

 

He explored the idea of building several small towers or a tower 300 feet and even 600 feet tall in order to transmit the type of low-frequency long waves that Tesla thought were needed to resonate the Earth.

 

His friend, architect Stanford White, who was working on designing structures for the project, calculated that a 600-foot tower would cost $450,000 and the idea had to be scrapped.

Above: Stanford White (1853 – 1906)

 

By July 1901, Tesla had expanded his plans to build a more powerful transmitter to leap ahead of Marconi’s radio based system, which Tesla thought was a copy of his own system.

He approached Morgan to ask for more money to build the larger system but Morgan refused to supply any further funds.

A month after Marconi’s success, Tesla tried to get Morgan to back an even larger plan to transmit messages and power by controlling “vibrations throughout the globe“.

Over the next five years, Tesla wrote more than 50 letters to Morgan, pleading for and demanding additional funding to complete the construction of Wardenclyffe.

 

Tesla continued the project for another nine months into 1902.

The tower was erected to its full 187 feet (57 m).

In June 1902, Tesla moved his lab operations from Houston Street to Wardenclyffe.

 

In 1906 the financial problems and other events may have led to a nervous breakdown on Tesla’s part.

 

The mentally unstable multimillionaire Harry Kendall Thaw shot and killed the prominent architect and New York socialite Stanford White in front of hundreds of witnesses at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden on the evening of 25 June 1906, leading to what the press would call the “Trial of the Century“.

During the trial, Nesbit testified that five years earlier, when she was a stage performer at the age of 15 or 16, she had attracted the attention of White, who first gained her and her mother’s trust, then sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious, and then had a subsequent romantic and sexual relationship with her that continued for some period of time

Above: Evelyn Nesbit (1884 – 1967)

 

In October, long time investor William Rankine died of a heart attack.

 

Things were so bad by the fall of that year George Scherff, Tesla’s chief manager who had been supervising Wardenclyffe, had to leave to find other employment.

The people living around Wardenclyffe noticed the Tesla plant seemed to have been abandoned without notice.

 

In 1904 Tesla took out a mortgage on the Wardenclyffe property with George C. Boldt, proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, to cover Tesla’s living expenses at the hotel.

Above: George Boldt (1851 – 1916)

 

In 1908 Tesla procured a second mortgage from Boldt to further cover expenses.

The facility was partially abandoned around 1911, and the tower structure deteriorated.

Between 1912 and 1915, Tesla’s finances unraveled, and when the funders wanted to know how they were going to recapture their investments, Tesla was unable to give satisfactory answers.

 

The 1 March 1916 edition of the publication Export American Industries ran a story titled “Tesla’s Million Dollar Folly” describing the abandoned Wardenclyffe site:

There everything seemed left as for a day — chairs, desks, and papers in businesslike array.

The great wheels seemed only awaiting Monday life.

But the magic word has not been spoken, and the spell still rests on the great plant.

 

Investors on Wall Street were putting their money into Marconi’s system, and some in the press began turning against Tesla’s project, claiming it was a hoax.

The project came to a halt in 1905.

 

Tesla mortgaged the Wardenclyffe property to cover his debts at the Waldorf-Astoria, which eventually mounted to $20,000 ($500,300 in today’s dollars).

He lost the property in foreclosure in 1915 and by mid-1917 the facility’s main building was breached and vandalized.

In 1917 the Tower was demolished by the new owner to make the land a more viable real estate asset.

Meanwhile….

Gernsback was an entrepreneur in the electronics industry, importing radio parts from Europe to the United States and helping to popularize amateur “wireless“.

In April 1908, he founded Modern Electrics, the world’s first magazine about both electronics and radio (“wireless“).

While the cover of the magazine itself states it was a catalog, most historians note that it contained articles, features and plotlines, qualifying it as a magazine.

Under its auspices, in January 1909, Gernsback founded the Wireless Association of America, which had 10,000 members within a year.

In 1912, Gernsback said that he estimated 400,000 people in the US were involved in amateur radio.

In 1913, he founded a similiar magazine, The Electrical Experimenter, which became Science and Invention in 1920.

It was in these magazines he began including scientific fiction stories alongside science journalism – including his own novel Ralph 124c 41+ which he ran for 12 months in Modern Electrics.

By playing a key role in the wireless industry, Gernsback secured a position and a significant influence on the adoption of new legal regulations.

At the same time, aware of the low level of education of radio amateurs, he founded several magazines covering radio and later also television.

It is widely believed that the term television appeared for the first time in the December 1909 issue of his Modern Electrics, in the article “Television and the Telephot“.

Gernsback began publishing articles with a futuristic view of scientific and technological developments very early.

When finishing the preparation of an issue of his magazine Modern Electrics in 1911, Gernsback discovered that some free space remained on one of the pages.

Since he was already used to writing his predictions for the future of radio and other technologies, which were well received by the readers, he decided to go one step further.

He wrote a short adventure story, focusing on the application of technology in the year 2660.

It was a spur of the moment thing that he wrote late at night in his office and the text was long enough to fit into the available space into the magazine.

The readers wanted to learn what happened next.

And so the next installment came about – 12 of them in total until the story was completed.

Encouraged by its popularity, Gernsback continued to publish this specific type of texts, which he called scientifiction, later to be known as science fiction.

As the publisher of successful magazines, Gernsback managed to draw the attention of leading scientists, including Tesla, Marconi, Fessenden, Edison and many others….

Above: Hugo Gernsback demonstrating his television goggles in 1963 for Life magazine

 

After Wardenclyffe closed, Tesla continued to write to Morgan.

After “the great man” died, Tesla wrote to Morgan’s son Jack, trying to get further funding for the project.

 

In 1906, Tesla opened offices at 165 Broadway in Manhattan, trying to raise further funds by developing and marketing his patents.

Above: City Investing Building, 165 Broadway, Manhattan

 

On his 50th birthday, in 1906, Tesla demonstrated a 200 horsepower (150 kilowatts) 16,000 rpm bladeless turbine.

 

During 1910–1911 at the Waterside Power Station in New York, several of his bladeless turbine engines were tested at 100–5,000 hp.

Tesla worked with several companies including the period 1919–1922 working in Milwaukee for Allis-Chalmers.

He spent most of his time trying to perfect the Tesla turbine with Hans Dahlstrand, the head engineer at the company, but engineering difficulties meant it was never made into a practical device.

Tesla did license the idea to a precision instrument company and it found use in the form of luxury car speedometers and other instruments.

Tesla went on to have offices at the Metropolitan Life Tower from 1910 to 1914, rented for a few months at the Woolworth Building, moving out because he could not afford the rent, and then to office space at 8 West 40th Street from 1915 to 1925.

After moving to 8 West 40th Street, he was effectively bankrupt.

Above: Tesla working in his office, 8 W. 40th Street, New York City

Most of his patents had run out and he was having trouble with the new inventions he was trying to develop.

 

By 1915, Tesla’s accumulated debt at the Waldorf-Astoria was around $20 thousand ($495 thousand in 2018 dollars).

When Tesla was unable to make any further payments on the mortgages, Boldt foreclosed on the Wardenclyffe property.

Boldt failed to find any use for the property and finally decided to demolish the tower for scrap.

On 4 July 1917 the Smiley Steel Company of New York began demolition of the tower by dynamiting it.

The tower was knocked on a tilt by the initial explosion but it took till September to totally demolish it.

The scrap value realized was $1,750.

 

Since this was during World War I a rumor spread, picked up by newspapers and other publications, that the tower was demolished on orders of the United States government with claims German spies were using it as a radio transmitter or observation post, or that it was being used as a landmark for German submarines.

Tesla was not pleased with what he saw as attacks on his patriotism via the rumors about Wardenclyffe, but since the original mortgages with Boldt as well as the foreclosure had been kept off the public record in order to hide his financial difficulties, Tesla was not able to reveal the real reason for the demolition.

George Boldt decided to make the property available for sale.

 

When World War I broke out, the British cut the transatlantic telegraph cable linking the US to Germany in order to control the flow of information between the two countries.

They also tried to shut off German wireless communication to and from the US by having the US Marconi Company sue the German radio company Telefunken for patent infringement.

Telefunken brought in the physicists Jonathan Zenneck and Karl Ferdinand Braun for their defense and hired Tesla as a witness for two years for $1,000 a month.

The case stalled and then went moot when the US entered the war against Germany in 1917.

In 1915, Tesla attempted to sue the Marconi Company for infringement of his wireless tuning patents.

Marconi’s initial radio patent had been awarded in the US in 1897, but his 1900 patent submission covering improvements to radio transmission had been rejected several times, before it was finally approved in 1904, on the grounds that it infringed on other existing patents including two 1897 Tesla wireless power tuning patents.

Tesla’s 1915 case went nowhere, but in a related case, where the Marconi Company tried to sue the US government over WWI patent infringements, a Supreme Court of the United States 1943 decision restored the prior patents of Oliver Lodge, John Stone and Tesla.

The court declared that their decision had no bearing on Marconi’s claim as the first to achieve radio transmission, just that since Marconi’s claim to certain patented improvements were questionable, the company could not claim infringement on those same patents.

 

On 6 November 1915, a Reuters news agency report from London had the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla.

However, on 15 November, a Reuters story from Stockholm stated the prize that year was being awarded to Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg “for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays.”

There were unsubstantiated rumors at the time that either Tesla or Edison had refused the prize.

The Nobel Foundation said:

“Any rumor that a person has not been given a Nobel Prize because he has made known his intention to refuse the reward is ridiculous“.

A recipient could decline a Nobel Prize only after he is announced a winner.

There have been subsequent claims by Tesla biographers that Edison and Tesla were the original recipients and that neither was given the award because of their animosity toward each other, that each sought to minimize the other’s achievements and right to win the Award, that both refused ever to accept the award if the other received it first, that both rejected any possibility of sharing it, and even that a wealthy Edison refused it to keep Tesla from getting the $20,000 prize money.

In the years after these rumors, neither Tesla nor Edison won the prize (although Edison did receive one of 38 possible bids in 1915 and Tesla did receive one of 38 possible bids in 1937).

 

On 20 April 1922, Tesla lost an appeal of judgment on Boldt’s foreclosure of Wardenclyffe.

This effectively locked Tesla out of any future development of the facility.

 

Tesla attempted to market several devices based on the production of ozone.

These included his 1900 Tesla Ozone Company selling an 1896 patented device based on his Tesla coil, used to bubble ozone through different types of oils to make a therapeutic gel.

He also tried to develop a variation of this a few years later as a room sanitizer for hospitals.

 

Tesla theorized that the application of electricity to the brain enhanced intelligence.

In 1912, he crafted “a plan to make dull students bright by saturating them unconsciously with electricity,” wiring the walls of a schoolroom and, “saturating the schoolroom with infinitesimal electric waves vibrating at high frequency.

The whole room will thus, Mr. Tesla claims, be converted into a health-giving and stimulating electromagnetic field or ‘bath.'”

The plan was, at least provisionally, approved by then superintendent of New York City schools, William H. Maxwell.

 

Before World War I, Tesla sought overseas investors.

After the war started, Tesla lost the funding he was receiving from his patents in European countries.

 

In the August 1917 edition of the magazine Electrical Experimenter, Tesla postulated that electricity could be used to locate submarines via using the reflection of an “electric ray” of “tremendous frequency,” with the signal being viewed on a fluorescent screen (a system that has been noted to have a superficial resemblance to modern radar).

Tesla was incorrect in his assumption that high frequency radio waves would penetrate water.

 

Émile Girardeau, who helped develop France’s first radar system in the 1930s, noted in 1953 that Tesla’s general speculation that a very strong high-frequency signal would be needed was correct.

Girardeau said:

“Tesla was prophesying or dreaming, since he had at his disposal no means of carrying them out, but one must add that if he was dreaming, at least he was dreaming correctly.”

Above: Émile Girardeau (1882 – 1970)

 

In 1928, Tesla received U.S. Patent 1,655,114, for a biplane capable of taking off vertically (VTOL aircraft) and then of being “gradually tilted through manipulation of the elevator devices” in flight until it was flying like a conventional plane.

Tesla thought the plane would sell for less than $1,000, although the aircraft has been described as impractical.

Above: VTOL (vertical take-off/landing) Harrier

 

This would be his last patent and at this time Tesla closed his last office at 350 Madison Avenue, which he had moved into two years earlier.

Above: Borden Building, 350 Madison Avenue, New York City

 

Since 1900, Tesla had been living at the Waldorf Astoria in New York running up a large bill.

Above: Waldorf-Astoria Hotel

 

In 1922, he moved to St. Regis Hotel and would follow a pattern from then on of moving to a new hotel every few years leaving behind unpaid bills.

Above: St. Regis New York

 

Tesla would walk to the park every day to feed the pigeons.

He took to feeding them at the window of his hotel room and bringing the injured ones in to nurse back to health.

He said that he had been visited by a specific injured white pigeon daily.

Tesla spent over $2,000, including building a device that comfortably supported her so her bones could heal, to fix her broken wing and leg.

Tesla stated:

I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years.

But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings.

That one was different.

It was a female.

I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me.

I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me.

As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.

 

 

Tesla’s unpaid bills, and complaints about the mess from his pigeon-feeding, forced him to leave the St. Regis in 1923, the Hotel Pennsylvania in 1930 and the Hotel Governor Clinton in 1934.

At one point, he also took rooms at the Hotel Marguery.

 

In 1934, Tesla moved to the Hotel New Yorker and Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company began paying him $125 per month as well as paying his rent, expenses the company would pay for the rest of Tesla’s life.

Accounts of how this came about vary.

Several sources say Westinghouse was worried (or warned) about potential bad publicity surrounding the impoverished conditions under which their former star inventor was living.

The payment has been described as being couched as a “consulting fee” to get around Tesla’s aversion to accept charity, or according to one biographer as a type of unspecified settlement.

 

Tesla worked every day from 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. or later, with dinner from exactly 8:10 p.m., at Delmonico’s restaurant and later the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Tesla would telephone his dinner order to the headwaiter, who also could be the only one to serve him.

“The meal was required to be ready at eight o’clock …

He dined alone, except on the rare occasions when he would give a dinner to a group to meet his social obligations.

Tesla would then resume his work, often until 3:00 a.m.”

 

For exercise, Tesla walked between 8 and 10 miles (13 and 16 km) per day.

He curled his toes one hundred times for each foot every night, saying that it stimulated his brain cells.

Tesla became a vegetarian in his later years, living on only milk, bread, honey and vegetable juices.

 

Tesla read many works, memorizing complete books and supposedly possessed a photographic memory.

He was a polyglot, speaking eight languages: Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.

 

Tesla claimed never to sleep more than two hours per night.

However, he did admit to “dozing” from time to time “to recharge his batteries.”

On one occasion at his laboratory, Tesla worked for a period of 84 hours without rest.

Kenneth Swezey, a journalist whom Tesla had befriended, confirmed that Tesla rarely slept.

Swezey recalled one morning when Tesla called him at 3 a.m.:

“I was sleeping in my room like one dead …

Suddenly, the telephone ring awakened me …

Tesla spoke animatedly, with pauses, as he worked out a problem, comparing one theory to another, commenting.

And when he felt he had arrived at the solution, he suddenly closed the telephone.”

 

Tesla was asocial and prone to seclude himself with his work.

However, when he did engage in a social life, many people spoke very positively and admiringly of Tesla.

Writer Robert Underwood Johnson described him as attaining a “distinguished sweetness, sincerity, modesty, refinement, generosity, and force.”

Above: Robert Underwood Johnson (1853 – 1937)

 

His secretary, Dorothy Skerrit, wrote:

“His genial smile and nobility of bearing always denoted the gentlemanly characteristics that were so ingrained in his soul.”

 

Tesla’s friend, writer Julian Hawthorne, commented:

“Seldom did one meet a scientist or engineer who was also a poet, a philosopher, an appreciator of fine music, a linguist, and a connoisseur of food and drink.”

Above: Julian Hawthorne (1846 – 1934)

 

Tesla was a good friend of Francis Marion Crawford, Robert Underwood Johnson, Stanford White, Fritz Lowenstein, George Scherff and Kenneth Swezey.

 

In middle age, Tesla became a close friend of Mark Twain.

They spent a lot of time together in his lab and elsewhere.

Twain notably described Tesla’s induction motor invention as “the most valuable patent since the telephone.”

Above: Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain)(1835 – 1910)

 

At a party thrown by actress Sarah Bernhardt in 1896, Tesla met Indian Hindu monk Vivekananda and the two talked about how the inventors ideas on energy seemed to match up with Vedantic cosmology.

Above: Narendranath Datta (aka Swami Vivekananda)(1863 – 1902)

 

In the late 1920s, Tesla befriended George Sylvester Viereck, a poet, writer, mystic, and later, unfortunately, a Nazi propagandist.

Tesla occasionally attended dinner parties held by Viereck and his wife.

Above: George Viereck (1884 – 1962)

 

Tesla could be harsh at times and openly expressed disgust for overweight people, such as when he fired a secretary because of her weight.

He was quick to criticize clothing.

On several occasions, Tesla directed a subordinate to go home and change her dress.

 

When Thomas Edison (b. 1847) died, in 1931, Tesla contributed the only negative opinion to The New York Times, buried in an extensive coverage of Edison’s life:

He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene …

His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90% of the labor.

But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor’s instinct and practical American sense.

 

Tesla was 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall and weighed 142 pounds (64 kg), with almost no weight variance from 1888 to about 1926.

His appearance was described by newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane as “almost the tallest, almost the thinnest and certainly the most serious man who goes to Delmonico’s regularly“.

He was an elegant, stylish figure in New York City, meticulous in his grooming, clothing, and regimented in his daily activities, an appearance he maintained as to further his business relationships.

He was also described as having light eyes, “very big hands“, and “remarkably big” thumbs.

Hugo Gernsback was literally spellbound with Tesla and believed that the ideas of the great inventor were the salvation for all of mankind.

This is how Gernsback describes Tesla in the February 1919 issue of Electrical Experimenter:

“The door opens and out steps a tall figure – over six feet high – gaunt but erect.

It approaches slowly, stately.

You become conscious at once that you are face to face with a personality of a high order.

Nikola Tesla advances and shakes your hand with a powerful grip, surprising for a man over 60.

A winning smile from piercing light blue-gray eyes, set in extraordinarily deep sockets, fascinates you and makes you feel at once at home.

 

You are guided into an office immaculate in its orderliness.

Not a speck of dust is to be seen.

No papers litter the desk.

Everything just so.

It reflects the man himself, immaculate in attire, orderly and precise in his every movement.

Dressed in a dark frock coat, he is entirely devoid of all jewelry.

No ring, stickpin or even watch-chain can be seen.

 

Tesla speaks – a very high almost falsetto voice.

He speaks quickly and very convincingly.

It is the man’s voice chiefly which fascinates you.

As he speaks you find it difficult to take your eyes off his own.

Only when he speaks to others do you have a chance to study his head, predominant of which is a very high forehead with a bulge between his eyes – the neverfailing sign of an exceptional intelligence.

Then the long, well-shaped nose, proclaiming the scientist….

 

His only vice is his generosity.

The man who, by the ignorant onlooker has often been called an idle dreamer, has made over a million dollars out of his inventions – and spent them as quickly on new ones.

But Tesla is an idealist of the highest order and to such men money itself means but little.”

I wonder if Tesla felt the same towards Gernsback….

 

Gernsback was noted for sharp (and sometimes shady) business practices,and for paying his writers extremely low fees or not paying them at all.

H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith referred to him as “Hugo the Rat“.

As Barry Malzberg has said:

Gernsback’s venality and corruption, his sleaziness and his utter disregard for the financial rights of authors, have been well documented and discussed in critical and fan literature

That the founder of genre science fiction who gave his name to the field’s most prestigious award and who was the Guest of Honor at the 1952 Worldcon was pretty much a crook (and a contemptuous crook who stiffed his writers but paid himself $100K a year as President of Gernsback Publications) has been clearly established.

 

Nonetheless, Gernsback earned Tesla’s sympathy and Gernsback became an important publisher of Tesla’s articles in his many publications.

In the August 1917 Electrical Experimenter, under the title “Tesla’s Views on Electricity and the War“, Tesla made the first technical description of radar.

The author of the article (H. Winfield Secor, the magazine’s Associate Editor) explained to his readers that “Dr. Tesla had invented, among other things, an electric ray to destroy or detect submarines under water at a considerable distance.

Mr. Tesla very courteously granted the writer an interview and some of his ideas on electricity’s possible role in helping to end the Great War.”

Later that year, in addition to Tesla’s autobiographical serial My Inventions, the Electrical Experimenter also published a number of other Tesla-authorized articles with considerable regularity:

• The Effect of Statics on Wireless Transmission
• Famous Scientific Illusions
• Tesla’s Egg of Columbus (or how Tesla performed the feat of Columbus without cracking the Egg)
• The Moon’s Rotation
• The True Wireless
• Tesla’s Bulbs
• Electrical Oscillators
• Can Radio Ignite Balloons?(or the Opinions of Nikola Tesla and Other Radio Experts)

 

Tesla and Gernsback started correspondence with one another from the end of 1918 and throughout 1919.

Tesla could not fit himself into the strict deadlines presented to him by the rules of periodical press and wrote to Gernsback at the end of July 1919:

“I think it well on this occasion to notify your readers, as a precaution, that I am not one of those who display the sign ‘Do it now.’ on their desks and office doors.

My motto is: ‘Do not do it now.  Think it over.‘ ”

 

Over the next several years, only a few letters were exchanged between Tesla and Gernsback, in which the famous publisher tried whatever he could to appease his most prominent writer and resume their cooperation, but as a reply received very cold letters, demonstrating Tesla’s injured pride and his objections to the egoism of the publisher.

In one of the last letters, Tesla wrote:

“I appreciate your unusual intelligence and enterprise but the trouble with you seems to be that you are thinking only of H. Gernsback first of all, once more and then again.”

 

Tesla wrote a number of books and articles for magazines and journals.

Among his books are My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla, The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla and The Tesla Papers.

Many of Tesla’s writings are freely available online, including the article “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy,” published in The Century Magazine in 1900 and the article “Experiments With Alternate Currents Of High Potential And High Frequency” published in his book Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla.

 

In 1931, Kenneth Swezey, a young writer who had been associated with Tesla for some time, organized a celebration for the inventor’s 75th birthday.

Tesla received congratulatory letters from more than 70 pioneers in science and engineering, including Albert Einstein, and he was also featured on the cover of Time magazine.

The cover caption “All the world’s his power house” noted his contribution to electrical power generation.

The party went so well that Tesla made it an annual event, an occasion where he would put out a large spread of food and drink (featuring dishes of his own creation) and invite the press to see his inventions and hear stories about past exploits, views on current events, or sometimes odd or baffling claims.

 

(“Tesla is very fussy and particular about his food:

He eats very little, but what he does eat must be of the very best.

And he knows, for outside of being a great Inventor in science he is an accomplished cook who has invented all sorts of savory dishes.“

Hugo Gernsback, Electrical Experimenter, February 1919)

At the 1932 occasion, Tesla claimed he had invented a motor that would run on cosmic rays.

 

In 1933, at age 77, Tesla told reporters that, after thirty-five years of work, he was on the verge of producing proof of a new form of energy.

He claimed it was a theory of energy that was “violently opposed” to Einsteinian physics and could be tapped with an apparatus that would be cheap to run and last 500 years.

He also told reporters he was working on a way to transmit individualized private radio wavelengths, working on breakthroughs in metallurgy, and developing a way to photograph the retina to record thought.

At the 1934 party, Tesla told reporters he had designed a superweapon he claimed would end all war.

He would call it “teleforce“, but was usually referred to as his death ray.

Tesla described it as a defensive weapon that would be put up along the border of a country to be used against attacking ground-based infantry or aircraft.

Tesla never revealed detailed plans of how the weapon worked during his lifetime, but in 1984, they surfaced at the Nikola Tesla Museum archive in Belgrade.

The treatise, The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media, described an open-ended vacuum tube with a gas jet seal that allows particles to exit, a method of charging slugs of tungsten or mercury to millions of volts, and directing them in streams (through electrostatic repulsion).

Tesla tried to interest the US War Department, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia in the device.

 

In 1935, at his 79th birthday party, Tesla covered many topics.

He claimed to have discovered the cosmic ray in 1896 and invented a way to produce direct current by induction, and made many claims about his mechanical oscillator.

Describing the device (which he expected would earn him $100 million within two years) he told reporters that a version of his oscillator had caused an earthquake in his 46 East Houston Street lab and neighboring streets in downtown New York City in 1898.

He went on to tell reporters his oscillator could destroy the Empire State Building with 5 lbs of air pressure.

 

He also explained a new technique he developed using his oscillators he called “Telegeodynamics“, using it to transmit vibrations into the ground that he claimed would work over any distance to be used for communication or locating underground mineral deposits.

 

At his 1937 celebration in the Grand Ballroom of Hotel New Yorker, Tesla received the “Order of the White Lion” from the Czechoslovakia ambassador and a medal from the Yugoslavian ambassador.

On questions concerning the death ray, Tesla stated:

“But it is not an experiment …

I have built, demonstrated and used it.

Only a little time will pass before I can give it to the world.”

 

In the fall of 1937, after midnight one night, Tesla left the Hotel New Yorker to make his regular commute to the cathedral and the library to feed the pigeons.

While crossing a street a couple of blocks from the hotel, Tesla was unable to dodge a moving taxicab and was thrown to the ground.

His back was severely wrenched and three of his ribs were broken in the accident.

The full extent of his injuries were never known.

Tesla refused to consult a doctor, an almost lifelong custom, and never fully recovered.

 

On 7 January 1943, at the age of 86, Tesla died alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel.

Above: Room 3327, New Yorker Hotel, Present day

 

His body was later found by maid Alice Monaghan after she had entered Tesla’s room, ignoring the “do not disturb” sign that Tesla had placed on his door two days earlier.

Assistant medical examiner H.W. Wembley examined the body and ruled that the cause of death had been coronary thrombosis.

 

Two days later the Federal Bureau of Investigation ordered the Alien Property Custodian to seize Tesla’s belongings.

John G. Trump, a professor at MIT and a well-known electrical engineer serving as a technical aide to the National Defense Research Committee, was called in to analyze the Tesla items, which were being held in custody.

Above: John G. Trump (1907 – 1985)(Donald’s paternal uncle)

After a three-day investigation, Trump’s report concluded that there was nothing which would constitute a hazard in unfriendly hands, stating:

Tesla’s thoughts and efforts during at least the past 15 years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power, but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.

In a box purported to contain a part of Tesla’s “death ray“, Trump found a 45-year-old multidecade resistance box.

 

At the request of Gernsback, on 9 January 1943, two days after Tesla’s death, a death mask of the inventor was made by F. Moynihan.

 

On 10 January 1943, New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia (1882 – 1947) read a eulogy written by Slovene-American author Louis Adamic live over the WNYC radio while violin pieces “Ave Maria” and “Tamo daleko” were played in the background.

 

On 12 January, two thousand people attended a state funeral for Tesla at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.

After the funeral, Tesla’s body was taken to the Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, New York, where it was later cremated.

 

The following day, a second service was conducted by prominent priests in the Trinity Chapel (today’s Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sava) in New York City.

Above: Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sava, New York City

 

On the occasion of 100 years since Tesla’s birth, on 25 June 1956, the aforementioned death mask was placed on the business premises of Gernsback Publications in New York.

On a marble pedestal, in relief, were presented the symbols of Tesla’s greatest discoveries and ideas – the first induction motor, Tesla’s transformer, and the famous Wardenclyffe Tower at Long Island intended for the “World System” project….

An astonishly accurate prediction of the electronic and wireless world we live in today.

The symbol of Tesla’s great and unfulfilled dream.

 

In Hugo Gernback’s honour, the Hugo Awards or “Hugos” are the annual achievement awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention, selected in a process that ends with vote by current Convention members.

They originated and acquired the “Hugo” nickname during the 1950s and were formally defined as a convention responsibility under the name “Science Fiction Achievement Awards” early in the 1960s.

The nickname soon became almost universal and its use legally protected; “Hugo Award(s)” replaced the longer name in all official uses after the 1991 cycle.

In 1960 Gernsback received a special Hugo Award as “The Father of Magazine Science Fiction“.

Hugo Gernsback died at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City on 19 August 1967.

In late 2002 Gernsback Publications went out of business.

 

 

Tesla’s legacy has endured in books, films, radio, TV, music, live theater, comics and video games.

In Jim Jarmusek’s film Coffee and Cigarettes, Jack shows Meg his Tesla coil!

Tesla features prominently in the movies The Prestige (David Bowie as Tesla) and The Current War, as well as in Family Guy‘s Season 9, Episode 15.

Above: David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, The Prestige

 

Tesla appears in Ron Horsley’s and Ralph Vaughan’s re-imaginings of the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

 

In The Big Bang Theory, Tesla is referred to as “a poor man’s Sheldon Cooper“.

 

In 2011, Sesame Street introduced the world to grumpy Professor “Nikola Messla“.

 

The impact of the technologies invented or envisioned by Tesla is a recurring theme in several types of science fiction.

 

In science and engineering Tesla has given his name to the Tesla coil and the singing Tesla coil, Tesla’s Egg of Columbus, the Tesla Experimental Station, Tesla’s oscillator, the Tesla Principle, the Tesla Tower, the Tesla turbine, the Tesla unit and the Tesla valve.

Tesla is a 26-km wide crater on the far side of the Moon as well as a minor planet (2244 Tesla).

There is both the Nikola Tesla Award and the Nikola Tesla Satellite Award.

Tesla was an electrotechnical conglomerate in the former Czechoslovakia.

Tesla is an American electric car manufacturer, the Croatian affliliate of the Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer Ericsson, a bank in Zagreb and two companies in the Serbian cities of Novi Sad and Plandiste.

His birthday (10 July) is celebrated every year in Croatia, in Vojvodina and in Niagara Falls.

Every year the annual Nikola Tesla Electric Vehicle Rally is held in Croatia.

In music, there is Tesla (US), Tesla Boy (Russia) and Tesla Coils (Australia) – all the names of band groups, while “Tesla Girls” is a song by the British pop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) released in 1984.

The groups They Might Be Giants released “Tesla“, The Handsome Family “Tesla’s Hotel Room” and the Polish band Silver Rocket‘s last album was named “Tesla“.

There is a Tesla STEM High School in Redmond, Washington.

Tesla is both an Airport and a Museum in Belgrade.

TPP Nikola Tesla is the largest power plant in Serbia.

And 128 streets in Croatia have been named after Nikola Tesla, making him the 8th most common street name in the country.

 

It took me a few hours, despite the Museum’s small size, for my eyes to absorb all that was revealed about Tesla here.

It has taken me months for my mind to absorb all that I have learned since my visit.

 

But of all of this I find myself drawn not to his inventions but to his character.

 

I walked away from the Museum that day, sat on a bench and watched a pigeon approach.

I thought of Tesla.

The pigeon and I looked at each other.

No words were needed.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Nikola Tesla, My Inventions / Vladimir Dulovic, Serbia In Your Hands / Marija Stosic, Belgrade

Canada Slim and the Current War

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 17 October 2018

(Continued from Canada Slim and the Visionary)

What has gone before….

I visited Serbia this past April and spent a few wonderful days exploring the Serbian capital of Belgrade.

Of the many wonders to explore and of the many things Belgrade and Serbia have to offer, one particular attraction that stands out is the Nikola Tesla Museum.

Nikola Tesla was a great Serb physicist and inventor who almost, but not quite, became an international household name.

Above: Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943)

Many say that if it were not for occasional stubbornness and a poor sense of financial management, Tesla might have ended up as famous as Edison or Einstein.

Despite a lack of international recognition, Tesla remains a Serbian national hero.

It is his face that currently decorates the 100 dinar note.

In the first part of three (this is the second) I briefly spoke of Hugo Gernsback that made Tesla as famous as he did become and I spoke of his life before he left for the United States.

Above: Hugo Gernsback (1884 – 1967)

 

What follows is the sad story of a prisoner execution, a deadly blizzard and a very ugly battle between two business magnates with Tesla smack dab in the middle of it all….

 

But first….

Let there be light.

 

The first type of widely used electric light was the arc lamp.

These lamps had been around for most of the 19th century but by the late 1870s were beginning to be installed in cities in large scale systems powered by central generating plants.

Arc lighting systems were extremely brilliant and capable of lighting whole streets, factory yards, or the interior of large buildings.

They needed high voltages (above 3,000 volts) and some ran better on alternating current.

Alternating current had been under development for a while in Europe with contributions being made to the field by Guillaume Duchenne (1850s), the dynamo work of Zénobe Gramme, Ganz Works (1870s), Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti (1880s), Lucien Gaulard, and Galileo Ferraris.

The high voltages allowed a central generating station to supply a large area, up to 7-mile (11 km) long circuits since the capacity of a wire is proportional to the square of the current traveling on it, each doubling of the voltage allowed the same size cable to transmit the same amount of power four times the distance.

1880 saw the installation of large-scale arc lighting systems in several US cities including a central station set up by the Brush Electric Company in December 1880 to supply a 2-mile (3.2 km) length of Broadway in New York City with a 3,500–volt demonstration arc lighting system.

The disadvantages of arc lighting were:

It was maintenance intensive, buzzed, flickered, constituted a fire hazard, was really only suitable for outdoor lighting, and, at the high voltages used, was dangerous to work with.

 

In 1878 inventor Thomas Edison saw a market for a system that could bring electric lighting directly into a customer’s business or home, a niche not served by arc lighting systems.

Above: Thomas Edison (1847 – 1931)

 

By 1882 the investor-owned utility Edison Illuminating Company was established in New York City.

Edison designed his “utility” to compete with the then established gas lighting utilities, basing it on a relatively low 110 volt direct current supply to power a high resistance incandescent lamp he had invented for the system.

Edison direct current systems would be sold to cities throughout the United States, making it a standard with Edison controlling all technical development and holding all the key patents.

 

Direct current worked well with incandescent lamps, which were the principal load of the day.

Direct-current systems could be directly used with storage batteries, providing valuable load-leveling and backup power during interruptions of generator operation.

Direct-current generators could be easily paralleled, allowing economical operation by using smaller machines during periods of light load and improving reliability.

Edison had invented a meter to allow customers to be billed for energy proportional to consumption, but this meter worked only with direct current.

Direct current also worked well with electric motors, an advantage DC held throughout the 1880s.

The primary drawback with the Edison direct current system was that it ran at 110 volts from generation to its final destination giving it a relatively short useful transmission range:

To keep the size of the expensive copper conductors down generating plants had to be situated in the middle of population centers and could only supply customers less than a mile from the plant.

 

Starting in the 1880s, alternating current gained its key advantage over direct current with the development of functional transformers that allowed the voltage to be “stepped up” to much higher transmission voltages and then dropped down to a lower end user voltage for business and residential use.

Using induction coils to transfer power between electrical circuits had been around for 40 years with Pavel Yablochkov using them in his lighting system in 1876 and Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs using the principle to create a “step down” transformer in 1882, but the design was not very efficient.

A prototype of the high efficiency, closed core shunt connection transformer was made by the Hungarian “Z.B.D.” team (composed of Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy and Miksa Déri) at Ganz Works in 1884.

Above: (left to right) Károly Zipernowsky, Otto Bláthy, Miksa Déri

The new Z.B.D. transformers were 3.4 times more efficient than the open core bipolar devices of Gaulard and Gibbs.

Transformers in use today are designed based on principles discovered by the three engineers.

Their patents included another major related innovation:

The use of parallel connected (as opposed to series connected) power distribution.

Ottó Bláthy also invented the first AC electricity meter.

The reliability of this type of AC technology received impetus after the Ganz Works electrified Rome, a large metropolis, in 1886.

 

In North America the inventor and entrepreneur George Westinghouse entered the electric lighting business in 1884 when he started to develop a DC system and hired William Stanley, Jr. to work on it.

Above: George Westinghouse (1846 – 1914)

Westinghouse became aware of the new European transformer based AC systems in 1885 when he read about them in the UK technical journal Engineering.

He grasped that AC combined with transformers meant greater economies of scale could be achieved with large centralized power plants transmitting stepped up voltage very long distances to be used in arc lighting as well lower voltage home and commercial incandescent lighting supplied via a “step down” transformer at the other end.

Westinghouse saw a way to build a truly competitive system instead of simply building another barely competitive DC lighting system using patents just different enough to get around the Edison patents.

The Edison DC system of centralized DC plants with their short transmission range also meant there was a patchwork of un-supplied customers between Edison’s plants that Westinghouse could easily supply with AC power.

Westinghouse purchased the US patents rights to the Gaulard-Gibbs transformer and imported several of those as well as Siemens AC generators to begin experimenting with an AC-based lighting system in Pittsburgh.

 

William Stanley used the Gaulard-Gibbs design and designs from the ZBD transformer to develop the first practical transformer.

The Westinghouse Electric Company was formed at the beginning of 1886.

In March 1886 Stanley, with Westinghouse’s backing, installed the first multiple-voltage AC power system, a demonstration incandescent lighting system, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Expanded to the point where it could light 23 businesses along main street with very little power loss over 4000 feet, the system used transformers to step 500 AC volts at the street down to 100 volts to power incandescent lamps at each location.

By fall of 1886 Westinghouse, Stanley, and Oliver B. Shallenberger had built the first commercial AC power system in the US in Buffalo, New York.

By the end of 1887 Westinghouse had 68 alternating current power stations to Edison’s 121 DC-based stations.

Above: William Stanley (1858 – 1916)

 

To make matters worse for Edison, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts (another competitor offering AC- and DC-based systems) had built 22 power stations.

Thomson-Houston was expanding their business while trying to avoid patent conflicts with Westinghouse, arranging deals such as coming to agreements over lighting company territory, paying a royalty to use the Stanley AC transformer patent, and allowing Westinghouse to use their Sawyer-Man incandescent bulb patent.

 

Besides Thomson-Houston and Brush there were other competitors at the time included the United States Illuminating Company and the Waterhouse Electric Light Company.

 

All of the companies had their own electric power systems, arc lighting systems, and even incandescent lamp designs for domestic lighting, leading to constant lawsuits and patent battles between themselves and with Edison.

 

Elihu Thomson of Thomson-Houston was concerned about AC safety and put a great deal of effort into developing a lightning arrestor for high-tension power lines as well as a magnetic blowout switch that could shut the system down in a power surge, a safety feature the Westinghouse system did not have.

Thomson also worried what would happen with the equipment after they sold it, assuming customers would follow a risky practice of installing as many lights and generators as they could get away with.

He also thought the idea of using AC lighting in residential homes was too dangerous and had the company hold back on that type of installations until a safer transformer could be developed.

 

Due to the hazards presented by high voltage electrical lines most European cities and the city of Chicago in the US required them to be buried underground.

The City of New York did not require burying and had little in the way of regulation so by the end of 1887 the mishmash of overhead wires for telephone, telegraph, fire and burglar alarm systems in Manhattan were now mixed with haphazardly strung AC lighting system wires carrying up to 6000 volts.

Insulation on power lines was rudimentary, with one electrician referring to it as having as much value “as a molasses covered rag“, and exposure to the elements was eroding it over time.

A third of the wires were simply abandoned by defunct companies and slowly deteriorating, causing damage to, and shorting out the other lines.

In June 1884, Tesla emigrated to the United States from Paris.

He arrived in America with four cents in his pocket (he had been robbed aboard ship), a book of poetry and a letter of recommendation.

“I wish that I could put into words my first impressions of this country.

In the Arabian Tales I read how genii transported people into a land of dreams to live through delightful adventures.

My case was just the reverse.

What I had left was beautiful, artistic and fascinating in every way.

What I saw here was machined, rough and unattractive.

A burly policeman was twirling his stick which looked to me as big as a log.

I approached him politely with the request to direct me.

“Six blocks down, then to the left.“, he said, with murder in his eyes.

“Is this America?“, I asked myself in painful surprise.

“It is a century behind Europe in civilization.”

When I went abroad in 1889 – five years having elapsed since my arrival here – I became convinced that it was more than one hundred years AHEAD of Europe and nothing has happened to this day to change my opinion.”

“The meeting with Edison was a memorable event in my life.

I was amazed at this wonderful man who, without early advantages and scientific training, had accomplished so much.

I had studied a dozen languages, delved in literature and art, and had spent my best years in libraries reading all sorts of stuff that fell into my Hands, from Newton’s Principia to the novels of Paul de Kock, and felt that most of my life had been squandered.

Above: Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727)

But it did not take long before I recognized that it was the best thing I could have done.

Within a few weeks I had won Edison’s confidence and it came about this way:

The SS Oregon, the fastest passenger steamship at the time, had both of its lighting machines disabled and its sailing delayed.

As the superstructure had been built after their installation it was impossible to remove them from the hold.

The predicament was a serious one and Edison was much annoyed.

In the evening I took the necessary instruments with me and went aboard the vessel where I stayed for the night.

The dynamos were in bad condition, having several short circuits and breaks, but with the assistance of the crew I succeeded in putting them in good shape.

At five o’clock in the morning, when passing along 5th Avenue on my way to the shop, I met Edison with Batchelor and a few others as they were returning home to retire.

Above: Charles Batchelor (1845 – 1910)

“Here is our Parisian running around at night.“, he said.

When I told him that I was coming from the Oregon and had repaired both machines, he looked at me in silence and walked away without another word.

But when he had gone some distance I heard him remark:

“Batchelor, this is a damn good man.”

 

From that time on I had full freedom in directing the work.

 

For nearly a year my regular hours were from 10:30 am to 5 o’clock the next morning without a day’s exception.

 

Edison said to me:

“I have had many hard-working assistants but you take the cake.”

 

During this period I designed 24 different types of standard machines with short cores and of uniform pattern which replaced the old ones.”

(A few notes for those of an unscientific background:

Imagine a blanket that covers everything and stretches into infinity.

Imagine that this blanket consists of two types of energy: that which remains stationary (magnetic) and that which is constantly in motion (electrical).

Further imagine that within all matter there is, on the subatomic level, particles of a positive nature (protons) and a negative nature (electrons) and that they create fields that either attract or repel other particles towards or away from them.

This force’s presence and motions between these particles is manifested in current (how this flow varies over time) by either direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC).

Direct current means that there is a one-way flow from positive magnetic spot to negative magnetic spot.

Alternating current means that the current flow can reverse direction repeatedly.

Direct current means direct contact with a conductor, for example, a copper wire, but much energy is lost as heat due to wire resistance.

Alternating current means that the waves of electromagnetic radiation (manifested in the form of heat) rather than travelling through a wire will instead ride upon the surface of the wire.

Direct current motors sparked, needed constant replacements and servicing, and offered limited range.

But until Tesla no one had found an effective method to create an AC motor.)

 

Meanwhile, Hugo Gernsback (né Gernsbacher)(1884 – 1967) was born in Luxembourg Ville to Moritz Gernsbacher, a Jewish winemaker, and his wife Berta (née Dürlacher).

Above: Flag of Luxembourg

 

Tesla began working almost immediately at the Machine Works on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in an overcrowded shop with a workforce of several hundred machinists, labourers, managing staff and 20 field engineers struggling with the task of building the largest electric utility in New York City.

As in Paris, Tesla was working on troubleshooting installations and improving generators.

Tesla met Thomas Alva Edison only a couple of times.

Edison called Tesla “the Poet of Science“, for both men had very different approaches.

Where Edison was a practical, mercantile, trial and error man, Nikola Tesla was a theoretical, well-educated business-naive visionary who never fully understood the American tendency to disbelief in science unless it was cloaked in the “show me” sensibility.

Tesla had been working at the Machine Works for a total of six months when he quit.

Tesla had made considerable improvements on DC dynamos, but when he approached Edison for the money he had been promised he was told:

“Tesla, you don’t understand American humour.”

Above: Nikola Tesla

 

This caused Tesla to resign and to form his own company, Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing, but this came to nought as his investors pulled out over his plan for an alternating current motor.

Soon after leaving the Edison company, Tesla was working on patenting an arc lighting system.

Tesla worked for the rest of the year obtaining the patents that included an improved AC generator, but investors showed little interest in his ideas for new types of alternating current motors and electrical transmission equipment.

By 1886 the inventor was left penniless so he had to work at various electrical repair jobs and as a ditch digger.

 

In late 1886, Tesla met Alfred S. Brown, a Western Union superintendent, and New York attorney Charles F. Peck.

The two men were experienced in setting up companies and promoting inventions and patents for financial gain.

Based on Tesla’s new ideas for electrical equipment, including a thermo-magnetic motor idea, they agreed to back the inventor financially and handle his patents.

Together they formed the Tesla Electric Company in April 1887, with an agreement that profits from generated patents would go 1/3 to Tesla, 1/3 to Peck and Brown, and 1/3 to fund development.

They set up a laboratory for Tesla at 89 Liberty Street in Manhattan, where he worked on improving and developing new types of electric motors, generators, and other devices.

 

In 1887, Tesla developed an induction motor that ran on AC, a power system format that was rapidly expanding in Europe and the United States because of the advantages in long-distance, high-voltage transmission.

The motor used polyphase current, which generated a rotating magnetic field to turn the motor.

This innovative electric motor had a simple self-starting design that avoided sparking and the high maintenance of constantly servicing and replacing mechanical brushes.

Along with getting Tesla’s motor patented, Peck and Brown arranged to get the motor publicized, starting with independent testing to verify that it was a functional improvement, followed by press releases sent to technical publications for articles to run concurrent with the issue of the patent.

Physicist William Arnold Anthony (who tested the motor) and Electrical World magazine editor Thomas Commerford Martin arranged for Tesla to demonstrate his AC motor on 16 May 1888 at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

Engineers working for the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company reported to George Westinghouse that Tesla had a viable AC motor and related power system – something Westinghouse needed for the alternating current system he was already marketing.

Westinghouse decided that Tesla’s patent would probably control the market.

In July 1888, Brown and Peck negotiated a licensing deal with George Westinghouse for Tesla’s polyphase induction motor and transformer designs for $60,000 in cash and stock and a royalty of $2.50 per AC horsepower produced by each motor.

Westinghouse also hired Tesla for one year for the large fee of $2,000 ($54,500 in today’s dollars) per month to be a consultant at the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company’s Pittsburgh labs.

During that year, Tesla worked in Pittsburgh, helping to create an alternating current system to power the city’s streetcars.

He found it a frustrating period because of conflicts with the other Westinghouse engineers over how best to implement AC power.

Between them, they settled on a 60-cycle AC system that Tesla proposed (to match the working frequency of Tesla’s motor), but they soon found that it would not work for streetcars, since Tesla’s induction motor could run only at a constant speed.

They ended up using a DC traction motor instead.

 

Tesla’s demonstration of his induction motor and Westinghouse’s subsequent licensing of the patent, both in 1888, came at the time of extreme competition between electric companies.

The three big firms, Westinghouse, Edison, and Thompson-Houston, were trying to grow in a capital-intensive business while financially undercutting each other.

There was even a propaganda campaign going on with Edison Electric trying to claim their direct current system was better and safer than the Westinghouse alternating current system.

Competing in this market meant Westinghouse would not have the cash or engineering resources to develop Tesla’s motor and the related polyphase system right away.

The Great Blizzard of 1888 (11 – 14 March 1888) was one of the most severe recorded blizzards in the history of the United States of America.

The storm, referred to as the Great White Hurricane, paralyzed the East Coast from Chesapeake Bay to Maine, as well as the Atlantic provinces of Canada.

Snowfalls of 10 to 58 inches (25 to 147 cm) fell in parts of New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and sustained winds of more than 45 miles per hour (72 km/h) produced snowdrifts in excess of 50 feet (15 m).

Railroads were shut down, and people were confined to their houses for up to a week.

Railway and telegraph lines were disabled, and this provided the impetus to move these pieces of infrastructure underground.

Emergency services were also affected.

 

The Great Blizzard of 1888 tore down a large number of the lines, cutting off utilities in the city.

This spurred on the idea of having these lines moved underground but it was stopped by a court injunction obtained by Western Union.

Legislation to give all the utilities 90 days to move their lines into underground conduits supplied by the city was slowly making its way through the government but that was also being fought in court by the United States Illuminating Company, who claimed their AC lines were perfectly safe.

As AC systems continued to spread into territories covered by DC systems, with the companies seeming to impinge on Edison patents including incandescent lighting, things got worse for the company.

The price of copper was rising, adding to the expense of Edison’s low voltage DC system, which required much heavier copper wires than higher voltage AC systems.

Thomas Edison’s own colleagues and engineers were trying to get him to consider AC.

Edison’s sales force was continually losing bids in municipalities that opted for cheaper AC Systems and Edison Electric Illuminating Company president Edward Hibberd Johnson pointed out that if the company stuck with an all DC system it would not be able to do business in small towns and even mid-sized cities.

Edison Electric had a patent option on the ZBD transformer, and a confidential in-house report recommended that the company go AC, but Thomas Edison was against the idea.

 

After Westinghouse installed his first large scale system Edison wrote in a November 1886 private letter to Edward Johnson:

“Just as certain as death Westinghouse will kill a customer within six months after he puts in a system of any size.

He has got a new thing and it will require a great deal of experimenting to get it working practically.”

 

Edison seemed to hold a view that the very high voltage used in AC systems was too dangerous and that it would take many years to develop a safe and workable system.

Safety and avoiding the bad press of killing a customer had been one of the goals in designing his DC system and he worried that a death caused by a mis-installed AC system could hold back the use of electricity in general, Edison’s understanding of how AC systems worked seemed to be extensive.

He noted what he saw as inefficiencies and that, combined with the capital costs in trying to finance very large generating plants, led him to believe there would be very little cost savings in an AC venture.

Edison was also of the opinion that DC was a superior system (a fact that he was sure the public would come to recognize) and inferior AC technology was being used by other companies as a way to get around his DC patents.

 

In February 1888 Edison Electric president Edward Johnson published an 84-page pamphlet titled “A Warning from the Edison Electric Light Company” and sent it to newspapers and to companies that had purchased or were planning to purchase electrical equipment from Edison competitors, including Westinghouse and Thomson Houston, stating that the competitors were infringing on Edison’s incandescent light and other electrical patents.

It warned that purchasers could find themselves on the losing side of a court case if those patents were upheld.

The pamphlet also emphasized the safety and efficiency of direct current, with the claim DC had not caused a single death, and included newspaper stories of accidental electrocutions caused by alternating current.

As arc lighting systems spread so did stories of how the high voltages involved were killing people, usually unwary linemen, a strange new phenomenon that seemed to instantaneously strike a victim dead.

One such story in 1881 of a drunken dock worker dying after he grabbed a large electric dynamo led Buffalo, New York, dentist Alfred P. Southwick to seek some application for the curious phenomenon.

He worked with local physician George E. Fell and the Buffalo ASPCA, electrocuting hundreds of stray dogs, to come up with a method to euthanize animals via electricity.

Southwick’s 1882 and 1883 articles on how electrocution could be a replacement for hanging, using a restraint similar to a dental chair (an electric chair) caught the attention of New York State politicians who, following a series of botched hangings, were desperately seeking an alternative.

An 1886 commission appointed by New York governor David B. Hill, which including Southwick, recommended in 1888 that executions be carried out by electricity using the electric chair.

Above: William Kemmler (1860 – 1890), the world’s first person to be executed by electric chair (6 August 1890)

 

There were early indications that this new form of execution would become mixed up with the war of currents.

As part of their fact-finding, the commission sent out surveys to hundreds of experts on law and medicine, seeking their opinions, as well as contacting electrical experts, including Elihu Thomson and Thomas Edison.

Above: Elihu Thomson (1853 – 1937)

 

In late 1887, when death penalty commission member Southwick contacted Edison, the inventor stated he was against capital punishment and wanted nothing to do with the matter.

After further prompting, Edison hit out at his chief electric power competitor, George Westinghouse, in what may have been the opening salvo in the war of currents, stating in a December 1887 letter to Southwick that it would be best to use current generated by “‘alternating machines,’ manufactured principally in this country by George Westinghouse“.

 

Soon after the execution by electricity bill passed in June 1888, Edison was asked by a New York government official what means would be the best way to implement the state’s new form of execution.

“Hire out your criminals as linemen to the New York electric lighting companies” was Edison’s tongue in cheek answer.

 

As the number of deaths attributed to high voltage lighting around the country continued to mount, a cluster of deaths in New York City in the spring of 1888 related to AC arc lighting set off a media frenzy against the “deadly arc-lighting current“and the seemingly callous lighting companies that used it.

These deaths included a 15-year-old boy killed on 15 April by a broken telegraph line that had energized with alternating current from a United States Illuminating Company line, a clerk killed two weeks later by an AC line, and a Brush Electric Company lineman killed in May by the AC line he was cutting.

The press in New York seemed to switch overnight from stories about electric lights vs gas lighting to “death by wire” incidents, with each new report seeming to fan public resentment against high voltage AC and the dangerously tangled overhead electrical wires in the city.

 

Tesla became a US citizen in 1889.

In 1889, Tesla moved out of the Liberty Street shop Peck and Brown had rented and for the next dozen years would work out of a series of workshop/laboratory spaces in Manhattan.

These included a lab at 175 Grand Street (1889–1892), the fourth floor of 33–35 South Fifth Avenue (1892–1895), and sixth and seventh floors of 46 & 48 East Houston Street (1895–1902).

Above: Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) at Tesla’s 5th Avenue laboratory

 

Tesla and his hired staff would conduct some of his most significant work in these workshops.

 

In the summer of 1889, Tesla traveled to the Exposition Universelle in Paris and learned of Heinrich Hertz’s 1886–88 experiments that proved the existence of electromagnetic radiation, including radio waves.

Tesla found this new discovery “refreshing” and decided to explore it more fully.

In repeating, and then expanding on, these experiments, Tesla tried powering a Ruhmkorff coil with a high speed alternator he had been developing as part of an improved arc lighting system but found that the high frequency current overheated the iron core and melted the insulation between the primary and secondary windings in the coil.

To fix this problem Tesla came up with his Tesla coil with an air gap instead of insulating material between the primary and secondary windings and an iron core that could be moved to different positions in or out of the coil.

Two years after signing the Tesla contract, Westinghouse Electric was in trouble.

The near collapse of Barings Bank in London triggered the financial panic of 1890, causing investors to call in their loans to Westinghouse Electric.

The sudden cash shortage forced the company to refinance its debts.

The new lenders demanded that Westinghouse cut back on what looked like excessive spending on acquisition of other companies, research, and patents, including the per motor royalty in the Tesla contract.

At that point, the Tesla induction motor had been unsuccessful and was stuck in development.

Westinghouse was paying a $15,000-a-year guaranteed royalty even though operating examples of the motor were rare and polyphase power systems needed to run it were even rarer.

 

After 1890, Tesla experimented with transmitting power by inductive and capacitive coupling using high AC voltages generated with his Tesla coil.

He attempted to develop a wireless lighting system based on near-field inductive and capacitive coupling and conducted a series of public demonstrations where he lit Geissler tubes and even incandescent light bulbs from across a stage.

He would spend most of the decade working on variations of this new form of lighting with the help of various investors but none of the ventures succeeded in making a commercial product out of his findings.

 

In 1891 Tesla established his own laboratory in Houston Street, where he lit up vacuum tubes as evidence for the potential of wireless power transmission.

 

In early 1891, George Westinghouse explained his financial difficulties to Tesla in stark terms, saying that, if he did not meet the demands of his lenders, he would no longer be in control of Westinghouse Electric and Tesla would have to “deal with the bankers” to try to collect future royalties.

The advantages of having Westinghouse continue to champion the motor probably seemed obvious to Tesla and he agreed to release the company from the royalty payment clause in the contract.

 

At the beginning of 1893, Westinghouse engineer Benjamin Lamme had made great progress developing an efficient version of Tesla’s induction motor and Westinghouse Electric started branding their complete polyphase AC system as the “Tesla Polyphase System“.

Westinghouse Electric asked Tesla to participate in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago where the company had a large space in a building devoted to electrical exhibits.

Westinghouse Electric won the bid to light the Exposition with alternating current and it was a key event in the history of AC power, as the company demonstrated to the American public the safety, reliability, and efficiency of a fully integrated alternating current system.

 

Tesla showed a series of electrical effects related to alternating current as well as his wireless lighting system, using a demonstration he had previously performed throughout America and Europe.

These included using high-voltage, high-frequency alternating current to light a wireless gas-discharge lamp.

An observer noted:

“Within the room were suspended two hard-rubber plates covered with tin foil.

These were about fifteen feet apart and served as terminals of the wires leading from the transformers.

When the current was turned on, the lamps or tubes, which had no wires connected to them, but lay on a table between the suspended plates, or which might be held in the hand in almost any part of the room, were made luminous.

These were the same experiments and the same apparatus shown by Tesla in London about two years previous, where they produced so much wonder and astonishment.”

 

Tesla also explained the principles of the rotating magnetic field in an induction motor by demonstrating how to make a copper egg stand on end, using a device that he constructed known as the Egg of Columbus and introduced his new steam powered oscillator AC generator.

 

At St. Louis’s Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the National Electric Light Association, Tesla told his audience that he was sure a system like his could eventually conduct “intelligible signals or perhaps even power to any distance without the use of wires” by conducting it through the Earth.

 

Edward Dean Adams, who headed up the Niagara Falls Cataract Construction Company, sought Tesla’s opinion on what system would be best to transmit power generated at the falls.

Over several years, there had been a series of proposals and open competitions on how best to use power generated by the falls.

Among the systems proposed by several US and European companies were two-phase and three-phase AC, high-voltage DC and compressed air.

Adams pumped Tesla for information about the current state of all the competing systems.

Tesla advised Adams that a two-phased system would be the most reliable, and that there was a Westinghouse system to light incandescent bulbs using two-phase alternating current.

The company awarded a contract to Westinghouse Electric for building a two-phase AC generating system at the Niagara Falls, based on Tesla’s advice and Westinghouse’s demonstration at the Columbian Exposition that they could build a complete AC system.

At the same time, a further contract was awarded to General Electric to build the AC distribution system.

In 1897 Westinghouse purchased Tesla’s patent for a lump sum payment of $216,000 as part of a patent-sharing agreement signed with General Electric (a company created from the 1892 merger of Edison and Thompson-Houston).

The money Tesla made from licensing his AC patents made him independently wealthy and gave him the time and funds to pursue his own interests.

And it would be this pursuit of his own interests that would take a highly-respected engineer and, through Hugo Gernsback, make him into a legend….

Sources:  Wikipedia / Nikola Tesla, My Inventions

Canada Slim and the Visionary

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 7 October 2018

“I caution you.

Expect much!”

(Hugo Gernsback, Electrical Experimenter, January 1919)

Above: Hugo Gernsback (1884 – 1967)

 

In my apartment we have many things.

These things seem so commonplace that we have taken this electrical world in which we live in for granted.

Amongst the flotsam and jetsam and choas that is a modern apartment, much is powered by electricity: the lamps and overhead lights, the computer upon which I type this blog, the TV and two radios, the toaster, the kettle, the dishwasher, the fridge, the freezer, my wife’s hairdryer and iron, the vacuum cleaner, and batteries and cables used for mobile devices.

Our apartment is by no means super-modern nor overly luxurious in terms of all the bells and whistles other flats might produce, but we are nevertheless grateful for the manner in which our lives are blessed, materialistically and otherwise.

There are names you might have heard of in regards to the history of electricity: Thales, Aristophanes, Euclid, Pliny, William Gilbert, Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Priestley, Charles Coulomb, Luigi Galvini, Alessandro Volta, Humphrey Davy, André-Marie Ampère, Georg Ohm, Michael Faraday, Samuel Morse, James Prescott Joule, Thomas Edison and Heinrich Hertz.

I have even written at great length about Alessandro Volta….

Above: Alessandro Volta (1745 – 1827)

(See Canada Slim and the Life Electric of this blog.)

 

There are names equally important to the development of electricity that you may have never heard of: Shen Kuo, Alexander Neckham, Pierre de Maricourt, Gerolamo Cardano, Cabaeus, Sir Thomas Browne (who first coined the word “electricity“), Otto von Guericke, Robert Boyle, Francis Hauksbee, Stephan Gray and the Reverend Granville Wheler, Charles Francois de Cisternay du Fay, Pieter van Musschenbroek of Leyden, Ewald Georg von Kleist, William Watson, C.M. of Scotland (still unidentifiable to this day), Georges-Louis LeSage, William Nicholson, Anthony Carlisle,  Johann Ritter, Gian Domenico Romagnosi, Thomas Young, Étienne-Louis Malus, Hans Christian Orsted, Johann Schweigger, Thomas Seebeck, William Sturgeon, Francesco Zantedeschi, Paul Schilling, Heinrich Lenz, Jean-Charles Peltier, Joseph Henry, David Alter, Alexandre Becquerel, James Clark Maxwell, John Kerr, Oliver Heaviside, Galileo Ferraris, John Fleming, Heike Onnes, Louis de Broglie and Martin Ryte.

To name a few….

 

There is one man who we might never had heard of were it not for his greatest fan’s determination to demonstrate to the world his hero’s legacy.

A legacy remembered in Croatia, Serbia, Austria, Hungary and America.

A determined traveller can find plaques and memorials to this man in Smilijan (Croatia), Zagreb (Croatia), Niagara Falls (USA / Canada), Baku (Azerbaijan), Wardenclyffe (USA), Manhattan (USA), Palo Alto (USA), Hamilton (Canada) and Belgrade (Serbia).

This great inventor has had his name given to a ship, a song, a high school, a planetoid, a crater on the Moon, a power plant, a museum-archive, an airport, a unit of measurement, an electric vehicle rally, three holidays, a rock band, an electrotechnical conglomerate, an electric car manufacturer and a major scientific award.

His name has endured in books, films, radio, TV, music, live theater, comics and video games, and most recently a new Hollywood film (The Current War) and a Netflix documentary.

But much like Sherlock Holmes needed Dr. John Watson for his fame, so we are grateful to Hugo Gernsback (“The man who invented the future“) for the fame of a man he called “the greatest inventor of all time“: Nikola Tesla.

Above: Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943)

 

Were it not for Tesla’s eccentric personality and a poor sense of financial management, he might have ended up as famous as Edison or Einstein.

Tesla was the electrical engineer who invented the AC (alternating current) induction motor, which made the universal transmission and distribution of electricity possible.

 

This spring I spent six days, by invitation from my good friend Nesha, in Serbia, a country that everyone in the West thinks they know but hardly anyone in the West really knows.

(For a further description of Serbia, please see Canada Slim and the Holy Field of Sparrows & Canada Slim and the Land of Long Life of this blog.)

Above: The flag of Serbia

 

Ask the average North American what little they know about Serbia and chances are strong they will mention NATO bombings, Milosevician atrocities and…. Nikola Tesla.

 

I have often believed that Americans are the world’s best marketers and there is a grain of truth to the song dedicated to the American metropolis of New York City, but applicable to America as a whole….

“If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.”

In other words, until America knows you, very few others will.

 

Were it not for Tesla’s work in America and Gernsback’s American technical science monthly magazine for which Tesla wrote for and in which his autobiography appears, the world might not remember as it does the name of Tesla.

 

Were it not for my visit to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade I might never have learned of the legacy of Tesla and his greatest publicist….

Despite a lack of enduring international recognition, Tesla remains a Serbian national hero and it is his face that currently decorates the 100 dinar note.

The Museum has captions in English and guidebooks available in Serbian and English.

Regular tours in English are given by the enthusiastic and knowledgable staff.

Some of the rooms relate to Tesla’s scientific work and have a number of hands-on displays and dynamic working models that are fun for children and adults alike.

Two more rooms are dedicated to the personal life of the physicist.

The urn containing his ashes is housed here too as well as his death mask.

Above: Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade, Serbia

 

Belgrade, Serbia, 5 April 2018

To say that Hugo Gernsback was a fan of Nikola Tesla is an understatement.

In Gernsback’s own words:

“Nikola Tesla, in the opinion of authorities, today is conceded to be the greatest inventor of all time. 

Tesla has more original inventions to his credit than any other man in history. 

He is considered greater than Archimedes, Faraday or Edison. 

His basic, as well as revolutionary, discoveries for sheer audacity have no equal in the annals of the world. 

His master mind is easily one of the seven wonders of the intellectual world.

Tesla has secured more than 100 patents on inventions, many of which have proved revolutionary.

Science accords to him over 75 original discoveries, not mere mechanical improvements.

90% of the entire electrical industry pays tribute to his genius.

The question as to why the world at large does not know Tesla is answered best by stating that he committed the unpardonable crime of not having a permanent press agent to shout his greatness from the housetops.

Then, too, most of Tesla’s inventions, at least to the public mind, are more or less intangible on account of the fact that they are very technical and, therefore, do not catch the popular imagination, as, for instance, wireless, the X-ray, the airplane or the telephone.

Tesla is a man of extraordinary knowledge.

He is remarkably well read and has a photographic memory whereby it is possible for him to recite page after page of nearly every classical work, be it Goethe, Voltaire or Shakespeare.

He speaks and writes twelve languages.

He is an accomplished calculator, who has little use for tables and textbooks and holds the slide rule in contempt.”

Nikola Tesla’s autobiography, My Inventions, appeared in Hugo Gernsback’s magazine Electrical Experimenter in six monthly installments (February to June 1919 and October 1919) and is in a hard cover book offered by the Nikola Tesla Museum, which has been in operation since the 150th anniversary of Tesla’s birth (2006).

To fully appreciate and comprehend both men and the Museum dedicated to Tesla and Tesla’s autobiography printed by Gernsback, we need to look back at not only both men’s histories but as well back to an age where electricity existed in a realm that lay somewhere between magic, science and commerce.

 

Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943) was born an ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Croatia.

Above: Tesla’s house, Smiljan, Croatia

 

His father Milutin was a Serbian Orthodox priest, his mother Duka was the daughter of another priest.

Above: Milutin Tesla, Nikola’s father

Milutin was the son of an officer who served in Napoleon’s army and, in common with Nikola’s uncle, a professor of mathematics, had received a military education but later embraced the clergy in which vocation he achieved eminence.

Milutin was a very erudite man, a veritable natural philosopher, poet and writer.

Nikola’s father had a prodigious memory and frequently recited at length from works in several languages.

Milutin often remarked playfully that if some of the classics were lost he could restore them.

His style of writing was much admired.

He penned sentences short and terse and was full of wit and satire.

 

Nikola’s mother, Duka, descended from one of the oldest families in the country and a line of inventors.

Both her father and grandfather originated numerous implements for household, agricultural and other uses.

Duka had a talent for making homemade craft tools and mechanical appliances and the ability to memorize lengthy Serbian epic poems, even though she had never received a formal education.

Tesla credited his eidetic memory and creative abilities to his mother’s genetics and influence.

Nikola was the 4th of five children.

 

Nikola Tesla was born during a lightning storm at the stroke of midnight on 10 July 1856.

His midwife is reported to have exclaimed:

“He’ll be a child of the storm.“

To which his mother replied:

“No, of light.“

“How does the world’s greatest inventor invent?

How does he carry out an invention?

What sort of mentality does Nikole Tesla have?

Was his early life as commonplace as ours?”

(Hugo Gernsback, foreword to Nikola Tesla’s My Inventions, 1: My Early Life, Electrical Experimenter, February 1919)

 

“Our first endeavours are purely instinctive, promptings of an imagination vivid and undisciplined.

As we grow older, reason asserts itself and we become more and more systematic and designing.

But those early impulses, though not immediately productive, are of the greatest moment and may shape our very destinies.”

(Nikola Tesla, My Inventions)

 

Nikola had three sisters (Milka, Angelina and Marica) and an older brother named Dane, who was killed in a horse riding accident when Tesla was five.

Nikola attended primary school in Smiljan and Gospic and middle school in the latter town.

Above: Gospic, Croatia

 

“In my boyhood I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sights of real objects and interfered with my thought and action.

They were pictures of things and scenes which I had really seen, never of those I imagined.

When a word was spoken to me the image of the object it designated would present itself vividly to my vision and sometimes I was quite unable to distinguish whether what I saw was tangible or not.

This caused me great discomfort and anxiety….

To free myself of these tormenting appearances, I tried to concentrate my mind on something else I had seen, and in this way I would often obtain temporary relief.

But in order to get it I had to conjure continuously new images….”

(Nikola Tesla, My Inventions)

 

In 1870, Tesla moved far north to Karlovac to attend high school where he became interested in demonstrations of electricity by his physics teacher.

Tesla noted that these demonstrations of this “mysterious phenomena” made him want “to know more of this wonderful force.”

Tesla was able to perform integral calculus in his head, which prompted his teachers to believe that he was cheating.

Nonetheless he finished a four-year term, in three years, graduating in 1873.

“This (mental imaging) I did constantly until I was about 17 when my thoughts turned seriously to invention.

Then I observed to my great delight that I could visualize with the greatest facility.

I needed no models, drawings or experiments.

I could picture them all as real in my mind.”

(Nikola Tesla, My Inventions)

 

That same year, Tesla returned to Smiljan.

Shortly after he arrived, he contracted cholera, was bedridden for nine months and was near death multiple times.

 

In 1874 Tesla evaded conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army by running away southeast to Tomingaj.

There he explored the mountains wearing hunter’s garb, believing that this contact with nature made him stronger, both physically and mentally.

Tesla read many books while in Tomingaj and later said that Mark Twain’s works had helped him to miraculously recover from his earlier illness.

Above: Tomingaj, Croatia

 

In 1875, Tesla enrolled at Austrian Polytechnic in Graz, on a military frontier scholarship.

Above: Graz, Austria

 

During his first year, he never missed a lecture, earned the highest grades possible, passed nine exams (twice as many as were required), started a Serbian cultural club, and received a letter of recommendation from the dean of the technical faculty to his father, which stated:

“Your son is a star of the first rank.”

Tesla claimed that he worked from 3 a.m. to 11 p.m., no Sundays or holidays excepted.

 

(After Milutin’s death in 1879, Nikola found a package of letters from his professors to his father, warning that unless Nikola were removed from the school, he would die through overwork.)

 

At the end of his second year, Tesla lost his scholarship and became addicted to gambling.

During his third year, Tesla gambled away his allowance and his tuition money, later winning back his initial losses and returning the balance to his family.

When examination time came, Tesla was unprepared and asked for an extension to study, but was denied.

He did not receive grades for the last semester of the third year and he never graduated.

 

In December 1878, Tesla left Graz and severed all relations with his family to hide the fact that he dropped out of school.

His friends thought that he had drowned in the nearby Mur River.

 

Tesla moved to Maribor where he worked as a draftsman, spending his spare time playing cards with local men on the streets.

In March 1879, Tesla’s father went to Maribor to beg his son to return home, but he refused.

Nikola suffered a nervous breakdown.

Above: Maribor, Slovenia

 

On 24 March 1879, Tesla was returned to Gospic under police guard for not having a residence permit.

On 17 April 1879, Milutin Tesla died.

That year Nikola taught a large class of students in his old school in Gospic.

 

In January 1880, two of Tesla’s uncles put together enough money to help him leave Gospic for Prague, where he attended lectures in philosophy at Charles Ferdinand University as an auditor but did not receive grades for the courses.

Above: Prague, Czech Republic

 

In 1881 Tesla moved to Budapest to work as chief electrician for the Budapest Telephone Exchange.

Upon arrival, Tesla realized that the company, then under construction, was not functional, so he worked as a draftsman in the Central Telegraph Office.

Within a few months, the Budapest Telephone Exchange became functional and Tesla was allocated the chief electrician position.

During his time with the BTE, Tesla made many improvements to the Central Station Equipment and invented a device known as the telephone repeater, a precursor to the modern wireless telephone.

Above: Budapest, Hungary

 

In 1882, Tesla moved to Paris to work for the Continental Edison Company, in what was then a brand new industry, installing indoor incandescent lighting citywide in the form of an electric power utility.

Above: Paris, France

Management took notice of Tesla’s advanced knowledge in engineering and physics and soon had him designing and building improved versions of generating dynamos and motors, as well as sending him on to troubleshoot engineering problems at other Edison utilities being built across France and Germany.

In 1884, Edison manager Charles Batchelor, who had been overseeing the Paris Installation, was brought back to the US to manage the Edison Machine Works, a manufacturing division situated in New York City, and asked that Tesla be brought to the US as well.

Above: Charles Batchelor (1845 – 1910)

 

In June 1884, Tesla left Paris for New York City and the United States.

An amazing future awaited him.

Fame, fortune and amazing creativity would be both his bane and his blessing.

And there would literally be blood as two business magnates fought a merciless war for power….electrical power….with Tesla in the middle and Gernsback and the world as witness….

(To be continued….)

Sources: Wikipedia / Bradt Serbia / Nikola Tesla, My Inventions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the Holy Field of Sparrows

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 20 July 2018

I have three books in my possession that offer three different ways to consider the Serbian capital city of Belgrade….

I can choose to be as Chris Farmer and be Grumpy in Belgrade, I can choose to be as Momo Kapor and feel The Magic of Belgrade, or I can follow Aleksandar Diklic´s advice and take a sentimental journey through history of Belgrade: The Eternal City.

What is certain is that I experienced these emotions and more when I was in Belgrade this past April.

I spent six glorious days in Serbia as a guest of my Starbucks St. Gallen colleague Nesha, and there is much I learned that I wish to share with you, my gentle readers, in the hopes that you too will discover the unsung delights that are the fascinating cities of Belgrade and Nis.

Perhaps my stories will encourage you to visit….

Above: The City of Belgrade

Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday 5 April 2018

The day, my first full one, began with a regret, my first full one.

During the evening as a result of excessive eating and drinking – first with Nesha and his mama Strawberry, and then later with Nesha and the godparents of Nesha´s daughter – in Belgrade, which, like New York City, never sleeps – I found that my night clothing had paid the penalty for my pastimes.

It had been a difficult time – my leg itched, I couldn´t get comfortable on my air mattress bed, and the gigantic teddy bears that shared the room seemed to be watching me.

I dreamt of Amadeus Mozart gambling – his name spelled Mozzart like the chain of Serbian betting offices seen everywhere.

Above: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)

 

As the ladies of the harbour offered me comfort for the night, raccoon-eyed, hard-working, hard-living Nesha kept telling me:

“Listen to me, Adami.  I´ll sleep when I´m dead.”

Above: Nesha Obranovic, the man, the legend

The begging boys by the Danube reminded me that no concentration camps are open on the Orthodox Easter weekend.

I take my night clothing into the shower, attempting to multi-task my morning cleanliness with a wee bit of laundry.

Not knowing how Nesha´s shower worked, I turn the bathroom floor into a swimming pool.

Yet Nesha is in good spirits, despite his lungs are tobacco leaf folders.

His kitchen is not ideally set up for elaborate cooking so after discussion about this and that we have latté and Turkish coffee at the Café Alphonse de Lamartine.

Named after French writer/poet/politician Alphonse de Lamartine (1790 – 1869) the Café stands across from Park Lamartine.

Above: Alphonse de Lamartine

Lamartine is memorialized by this park and café as well as a monument in Karadordev Park.

Lamartine was born in Macon, France, on 21 October 1790.

His family were members of the French provincial nobility and Lamartine spent his youth at the family estate.

Lamartine made his entrance into the field of poetry by a masterpiece, Les Méditations Poétiques (1820) and awoke to find himself famous.

He was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1825.

He worked for the French embassy in Italy from 1825 to 1828.

In 1829, he was elected a member of the Académie française.

He was elected a deputy in 1833.

Above: Flag of modern France

In 1835 he published the Voyage en Orient, a brilliant and bold account of the journey he had just made, in royal luxury, to the countries of the Orient.

Alphonse de Lamartine was an Orientalist with a particular interest in Lebanon and the Middle East.

He travelled to Lebanon, Syria and the Holy Land via Serbia in 1832–33.

During that trip, while he was in Beirut, on 7 December 1832, he lost his only remaining child, Julia.

During his trip to Lebanon he had met Prince Bashir Shihab II and Prince Simon Karam, who were enthusiasts of poetry.

A valley in Lebanon is still called the Valley of Lamartine as a commemoration of that visit and the Lebanon cedar forest still harbors the Lamartine Cedar, which is said to be the cedar under which Lamartine had sat 200 years ago.

“Highlanders with innate manners, shepherds who live for freedom and women as beautiful as ladies from Swiss cantons…”

This is how Lamartine saw the people of Serbia during his visit in 1833.

Was Alphonse de Lamartine actually the one who has established French-Serbian friendship, and not World War I, as it was considered for a long time?

Lamartine was the first man whose opinion mattered and who spread the word across Europe about sufferings of peoples in the Balkans under  Ottoman rule and the great courage of Serbs fighting for freedom.

Till than France was on good terms with the Ottoman Empire, but it all changed after what Lamartine had to say.

He visited Serbia, met the villagers that hosted him in their modest peasant houses, talked to princes and warriors.

Finally Lamartine came to a conclusion that “among them there is very little material inequality and the only grandeur they have are their weapons” used to defend their freedom.

He liked the Serbian language and considered it “harmonious, musical, and rhythmic”.

There was something in the country of this small nation from the Balkans that deeply touched the heart of this romantic poet.

Lamartine was so influenced by his trip that he staged his 1838 epic poem La Chute d’un ange (The Fall of an Angel).

From then on he confined himself to prose.

 

He was briefly in charge of the French government during the turbulence of 1848.

He was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 24 February 1848 to 11 May 1848.

Due to his great age, Jacques-Charles Dupont de l’Eure, Chairman of the Provisional Government, effectively delegated many of his duties to Lamartine.

He was then a member of the Executive Commission, the political body which served as France’s joint Head of State.

Lamartine was instrumental in the founding of the Second Republic of France, having met with Republican Deputies and journalists in the Hôtel de Ville to agree on the makeup of its provisional government.

Lamartine himself was chosen to declare the Republic in traditional form in the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville and ensured the continuation of the Tricolore as the flag of the nation.

During his term as a politician in the Second Republic, he led efforts that culminated in the abolition of slavery and the death penalty, as well as the enshrinement of the right to work and the short-lived national workshop programs.

A political idealist who supported democracy and pacifism, his moderate stance on most issues caused many of his followers to desert him.

He was an unsuccessful candidate in the presidential election of 10 December 1848, receiving fewer than 19,000 votes.

He subsequently retired from politics and dedicated himself to literature.

He published volumes on the most varied subjects (history, criticism, personal confidences, literary conversations) especially during the Empire, when, having retired to private life and having become the prey of his creditors, he condemned himself to what he calls “literary hard-labor in order to exist and pay his debts“.

Lamartine ended his life in poverty, publishing monthly installments of the Cours familier de littérature to support himself.

He died in Paris in 1869.

Above: The tomb of Alphonse de Lamartine, Paris

 

The square where Nesha´s apartment stands is named after this poet.

Nesha and I say little at breakfast, as he is determined that I am “set up electronically for Serbia” and magically manipulates my mobile so that I am not plagued by roaming phone charges.

Then we part company as he has business to conduct in distant Tara National Park.

I am left the use of Nesha´s Belgrade apartment and I am to remain solo until late Saturday night.

 

With the exception of a few Serbian words my bought-in-Switzerland guidebook provides, I am rendered mostly mute as a Canadian stranger in a strange land – a feeling that is simultaneously terrifying and exhilirating.

 

I continue down the street upon which the Café Lamartine stands and have breakfast at Restaurant Voulez-Vous: another latté and a serving of posinana jaja Benedict with home fries.

I am told by the waiters, resplendent in azure blue long-sleeved shirts with grey collars, that I must eat outside on the café terrace as “only the insane eat indoors on a sunny day.”

 

Armed with guidebook and maps obtained from yesterday´s arrival at the airport, I am a man with a plan:

Try to see as much as I can, as leisurely as possible, allowing myself to occasionally get lost.

My steps are as unsteady as the aim of an amateur archer.

I am pointed towards a target but there is no guarantee that I will reach the target.

 

I make my way to the closest tourist attraction to Lamartine: the St. Sava Cathedral.

The small rise upon which the Cathedral sits was once called Savinac, then later Vrapcije Polje (field of sparrows).

Over time and through the language variation that time creates, the name evolved into Vracarsko Polje and was eventually shortened to Vracar.

To appreciate Serbia fully, one must come to understand the importance of this Cathedral in the history of the country.

And much like Serbia itself, like Belgrade itself, the Cathedral has always been in a state of construction and renovation.

 

“There is a belief that the history of mankind is actually a history of waging war.

The voyage through history of our civilization´s soul leads us to Belgrade, one of the oldest and most often destroyed cities of the world.

When Le Corbusier, the famous architect, said that “Belgrade was the ugliest city at the most beautiful place“, he certainly had in mind the image of the results caused by the continual destruction of the city over many centuries as well as its inadequate renewal and reconstruction.

Above:  Charles-Édouard Le Corbuisier (1887 – 1965)

It is for certain that the most beautiful Belgrade has disappeared without a trace, vanished, impossible to touch.

History cherishes many stories about this city that are hard to be reconstructed exactly due to its continuous destruction, shifts and intertwining of a large number of cultures and prominent people whose life paths have passed through Belgrade, the eternal city….”

(Aleksander Diklac)

 

Before 1236, no individual among the Serbs had been woven into the consciousness and being of the people as St. Sava.

Though certainly there were those who tried.

 

As Greek legend has it, the Argonauts, a team of mythical sailors under Jason´s command, stole the Golden Fleece and sailed into the river Danube.

It is believed that when Apollonius of Rhodes wrote his Argonautica (300 BC) he was copying a legend much older than himself, known from a time predating the Trojan War.

In the magnificent legend about the Argonauts, Apollonius tells us about the hospitality of the Sindi people who lived at a place where the waters part, a locality already heavily inhabited.

Above: The Argo, Konstantinos Volanakis (1837 – 1907)

According to other legends, the Danube River is one of the four rivers originating in Paradise.

Above: The course of the Danube, flowing east from west

 

Singidun, Belgrade´s first name to be entered into the annals of history, is ascribed to the fearless Celtic tribe of Scordisci who, soon after Alexander the Great’s death in 323 BC, invaded and conquered the area of Serbia.

However generations later, as it happens in history, no alliances, no singularities of culture, no dexterous manufacture and handling of weapons could repel the advancing Roman army, whose military order and war tactics made it a revolutionary apparatus for killing, subordination and enslavement.

The arrival of the Romans into Singidun hastened the complete assimiliation of the Scordisci and Romanized the name into Singidunum, but the region was not stabilized until the era of the formidable Octavian / Caesar Augustus.

Singidunum gained fortifications, magnificent edifices and villas, a precious water pipeline, roads and even artist´s workshops, which made life in the city quite pleasant.

Roman Singidunum became a strategic area and an important base connecting the fortifications and settlements along the Danube border.

An epitaph from Roman Belgrade, blazing like a flash of light across the centuries and with a disregard for time, comes to us with a pain that quivers.

The powerfully engraved text is the cry of a soldier, a father filled with sorrow over his prematurely departed son:

“To the gods of the underground world!

Traveller, ye who walks the roads, whoever ye be, please, hear.

When, in his 15th year of age, the fuzz of his first beard sprouted over the cheeks of the young man´s face, he was taken by the boat on which the dead are transported to the other world and deprived his unlucky father of his only consolation.

He is lying here now.

Taken from his father´s embrace, as the plough cuts the flower from the soil.

Still, the small flower shall blossom again in pleasant meadows.

But ye dead I can no longer revive.”

We feel the pain inherent, although 17 centuries have passed since the tragic event.

 

Signidunum was a city with developed civilized manners, wealthy people, active soldiers, and veterans.

Life was facilitated by an abundance of food: grains, vegetables, fish and excellent fruit of the vine.

Fishermen and shepherds were free men, while construction and farm labour was performed by slaves.

The ancient city saw numerous imperial processions as many Roman emperors (17) passed through Belgrade or stayed in it.

Christians first appeared in the 3rd century when the priest Montanus and his wife Maxima died, accompanied by around 40 fathful Christians.

They were killed in 315 when Emperor Licinius ruled the eastern part of the Roman Empire while Constantine the Great ruled in the west.

Together the Christians suffered brutal torture and were jointly sentenced to death, shut into a chest and cast into the Danube River alive.

Ten years later, Licinius made a bid for power, unleashing carnage in a series of rebellions and battles.

Constantine ordered him killed together with his young son, Licinius II.

Harmony did not reign among the first Christians, either.

 

Long ago, in 441, the legendary conqueror Attila the Hun (406 – 453) besieged and captured Singidunum.

He destroyed and killed everything that moves and single-handedly brought an end to the ancient past of the city of Belgrade.

Rivers of human bones and the odor of death testified to Attila´s barbaric cruel campaigns.

Attila died on the first night of his marriage.

After destroying Singidunum and forever extinguishing the Roman lamp within it, Attila died in the arms of a woman called Ildiko.

The wedding day progressed with the customary feasting, singing, inebriation and gluttony.

When night finally fell, the drunk and lecherous groom naturally led the bride to intimate quarters.

He was found the next morning, long dead, while beside him was his terrified bride, who had trembled the whole night.

As to the possible cause of death of the 47-year-old leader?

An enormous quantity of alcohol, vast quantities of food, poison?

According to one narrative, Attila was buried somewhere in the waters of Singidunum, as per Khazar custom.

After Attila, Belgrade was subsequently razed by the Sarmats, then the East Goths, and then the Gepids, before the city of Singidunum was restored by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (482 – 563).

Justinian with significant funds and even greater visions reached the Sava and Danube around 535 and rebuilt Singidunum.

Justinian was an important man for the history of Europe, especially Christianity, but it is clear that the true power of this ruler originated from the other half of his wedding bed.

The Emperor was a slow and indecisive man, practically a pawn in comparison with Empress Theodora, a charismatic courtesan with a brilliant mind.

Justinian gave orders for the construction of both Singidunum´s new fortifications as well as Constantinople´s Hagia Sophia, possibly the most beautiful place of worship in the world.

Ten thousand people over many years built the temple that marked a new era in the history of Christian architecture.

The best marble, as well as gold, silver and ivory were transported from the most distant regions of the empire.

Even with these divine components, the architects demanded that there be no lack of taste.

Thus, Hagia Sophia is a composition of the most refined artistic sensitivity towards space and materials, a rhapsody of diversity that successfully demonstrates the greatness of God imitated on Earth.

Hagia Sophia was consecrated in 537.

Belgrade’s monumental Temple of St. Sava, with its skyscraping cross at 82 metres above ground, is one of the tallest and largest temples in the Christian world.

It was intended to resemble the magnificent Hagia Sophia.

These days the Temple is consecrated to St. Sava, but what of the saint himself?

Patience, my gentle readers, we are getting there.

 

Many people and many conquerors to the banks of the Sava and the Danube came, for Singidunum was for most of its history the end point of a large number of organized states, and thus was a frequent target of attack and destruction.

None of the conquerors could boast of their humanity towards the population they found.

Though the flow of the rivers brought changes and new tyrants, the appeal of the location as a place of life endures to this day.

So fierce and frequent were the attacks from all sides that Singidunum, as a fortified and significant military fortification, could not and did not manage to repel them, regardless of the height of the defensive walls or the skill of the defenders.

By the end of the 6th century, ancient Singidunum was ultimately destroyed though never abandoned, as the Slavs appeared.

 

The first mention of the Slavic name Belgrade appears on 16 April 878, when the city’s name appears on a letter from Pope John VIII sent to the Bulgarian Prince (Knyaz) Boris Mihail, referring to the dismissal of the Belgrade Bishop Sergios.

Pope John VIII is remembered by history as a great advocate for the use of the Slavic languages in the liturgy.

However it should be mentioned that this Pope may have been a female in disguise.

John was poisoned by the wife of the spouse she fell in love with, then she was finished off by blows of a hammer to the head by the accomplices of the jealous wife, dying on 15 December 882.

 

Some decades after her letter to the Knyaz, once again armies and conquerors came a-callin’.

 

Charlemagne (Charles the Great)(742 – 814) during his reign conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III Roman Emperor in order to restore the hopes and dreams of a wealthy and holy Roman Empire.

Along the course of Charlemagne´s campaigns, he demolished Belgrade.

The severity of his campaigns was such that tribes begged for Peace and agreed to be baptized and embrace Christianity.

Rulers die and empires fall.

The Frankish rule over Belgrade was superseded by the Bulgarians and theirs by the Hungarians.

 

At the end of the 10th century, Samuilo (997 – 1014) created a large empire of southern Slavs taking over the region that is today´s Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Romanian Dobruja, northern Bulgaria and northern Greece, adopting for himself the title of Emperor of Bulgaria.

After several victories and defeats, the final showdown between Samuilo and Byzantium took place on Belasica Mountain in 1014.

The Bulgars were massacred.

Around 14,000 Bulgar captives were blinded by order of the Byzantine Emperor, with every 100th man left with one eye so as to be able to guide the others home.

As a consequence of such cruelty, Byzantine Emperor Basil II was given the epithet “Bulgar slayer“.

It is reported that Samuilo, at the sight of his chained and blinded army, died on the spot from a heart attack.

Above: Forensic reconstruction of Samuilo

 

Belgrade again became a significant border fortress to the Byzantine Empire.

During the 11th and 12th centuries the rival powers of Bulgaria, Byzantium and Hungary contended for Belgrade.

Enter, St. Sava (1169 – 1236)

Rastko Nemanjic was born in 1169 in Gradina (modern Podgorica, Montenegro) as the youngest son of Grand Prince Stefan Nemanjic and his wife Ana, alongside his brothers Vukan and Stefan.

The brothers received a good education in the Byzantine tradition, which exercised great political, cultural and religious influence in Serbia.

Rastko grew up in a time of great foreign relations activities in Serbia.

He showed himself serious and ascetic when he was made Prince of Hum at an early age in 1190.

(Hum was a province between Neretva and Dubrovnik.)

Having his own court with magnates (velmoze), senior officials and selected local nobility, governance in Hum was not only an honorary title but constituted a practical school of state administration.

Rastko, as a ruler, was said to be “mild and gentle, kind to everyone, loving the poor as few others and very respecting of the monastic life.”

He showed no interest in fame, wealth or the throne.

 

Meanwhile….

Frederick Barbarossa (1122 – 1190), following his reconciliation with the Pope and wearing the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor, embarked on the Third Crusade to liberate from Muslim control the holy sites of Christendom, especially Christ’s empty tomb in Jerusalem.

His European counterparts, the French under Philip II Augustus and the English under Richard the Lionheart, joined the Crusade.

Richard and Philip approached Jerusalem by sea, while the German Emperor Barbarossa preferred land, over which he marched through Hungary and Serbia.

Under Barbarossa’s leadership, 190,000 warriors marched into Belgrade and left it in ruins, razed to the ground.

He then stopped in Nis where they were politely welcomed by Rastko who personally tended to the ailing Barbarossa, who continued on his journey.

Frederick Barbarossa, though successful at traversing Belgrade’s rivers, drowned on 10 June 1190 when crossing the small river of Saleph in Cilicia.

Thrown by a horse, the shock of the cold water induced a heart attack in the German king, who at the time of his unexpected death was 68.

 

After two years as ruler, in the autumn of 1192, Rastko left Hum for Mount Athos.

Upon arriving at Athos, Rastko entered the Russian St. Panteleimon Monastery where he received the monastic name of Sava (Sabbas).

He later entered the Greek Vatopedi Monastery, where he would stay for the next seven years, becoming acquainted with Greek theological and church administrational literature.

Sava´s father tried to persuade him to return to Serbia, but Sava was determined and replied:

“You have accomplished all that a Christian sovereign should do.

Come now and join me in the true Christian life.”

Stefan Nemanja took his son’s advice and abdicated on 25 March 1196, giving the throne to his middle son Stefan.

The next day Stefan and Ana took monastic vows.

Stefan took the monastic name Simeon and stayed in Studenica until leaving for Mt. Athos in the autumn of 1197.

Simeon’s arrival was greatly pleasing to Sava and the Athonite community as Stefan as a ruler had donated much to the community.

The two, with the consent of monastic head (hegumen) Theostyriktos of Vatopedi, went on a tour of Athos in late autumn 1197 in order for Simeon to familiarize with all of its churches and sacred places.

When Sava guested the Byzantine Emperor Alexios III Angelos at Constantinople, he mentioned the neglected and abandoned Hilandar, and asked him that he and his father be given the permit to restore the monastery and grant it to Vatopedi.

The Emperor approved and sent a special letter and much gold to his friend Stefan Nemanja (monk Simeon).

Sava then addressed the Protos of Athos, asking them to support the effort that the monastery of Hilandar becomes the haven of the Serb monks.

All Athonite monasteries, except Vatopedi, accepted the proposal, and in July 1198 Emperor Alexios III authored a charter which revoked the earlier decision, and instead not only granted Hilandar, but also the other abandoned monasteries in Mileis, to Simeon and Sava, to be a haven and shelter for Serb monks in Athos.

The restoration of Hilandar quickly began and Grand Prince Stefan sent money and other necessities, and issued the founding charter for Hilandar in 1199.

Sava wrote a typikon (liturgical office order) for Hilandar, modeled on the typikon of the monastery of The Mother of God Euergetes in Constantinople.

Besides Hilandar, Sava was the ktetor (founder) of the hermitage at Karyes (seat of Athos) for the monks who devoted themselves to solitude and prayer.

In 1199, he authored the typikon of Karyes.

Along with the hermitage, he built the chapel dedicated to Sabbas the Sanctified, whose name he received upon monastic vows.

His father died on 13 February 1199.

 

On 13 April 1204, Sava received the rank of archimandrite.

That same year, with the establishment of the Latin Empire, Rome increased its power over Serbia.

As Nemanja had earlier decided to give the rule to Stefan, and not the eldest, Vukan, in the meantime, back home, the latter began plotting against Stefan.

He found an ally in Hungarian king Emeric with whom he banished Stefan to Bulgaria and Vukan usurped the Serbian throne.

Stefan returned to Serbia with an army in 1204 and pushed Vukan to Zeta, his hereditary land.

After problems at Athos with Latin bishops and Boniface of Montferrat following the Fourth Crusade, Sava returned to Serbia in the winter of 1206, with the remains of his father which he relocated to his father’s endowment, the Studenica Monastery, and then reconciled his quarreling brothers.

Sava saved the country from further political crisis by ending the dynastic fight.

Simeon was canonized in 1206.

 

Having spent 14 years in Mount Athos, Sava had extensive theological knowledge and spiritual power, so he was asked to teach the court and the people of Serbia Christian laws and traditions and “in that way enwisen and educate.”

Since his return in 1206, Sava had become the hegumen of Studenica.

He used the general chaos in which the Byzantine Empire found itself after the Crusader siege of Constantinople (1204) and the strained relations between the Despotate of Epirus (to which the Serbian Church was subject to) and the Ecumenical Patriarchiate of Nicaea to his advantage.

He declared that “Here, therefore, no one is have authority, neither Bishop nor anyone else.” over Studenica.

In 1217, Sava´s brother King Stefan made a switch in politics, marrying a noblewoman of Venice, and asked the Pope for a crown and moral support.

Stefan was crowned in Zica, now equal to other kings, and was called by Rome “the first crowned King of all Serb lands“.

Stefan´s allegiance to Rome over Constantinople in matters of religion did not sit well with the Serbian people.

Serbia embraced and Sava represented the Orthodox Church, Stefan the Catholic Church.

The elevation of Serbia into a kingdom did not fully mark the independence of the country, according to that time´s understanding, unless the same was achieved with its church.

On 15 August 1219, Sava was consecrated as the first Archbishop of the independent Serbian church, which was vitally important as the church was the supporter and an important factor in state sovereignty as well as political and national identity.

That same year, Sava published Zakonopravilo (Sava´s Nomocanon), the first constitution of Serbia, uniting both politics and religion.

In 1229, after the son of Stefan, Radoslav was crowned King of Serbia, Sava left for a trip to Palestine.

After another throne change in 1234, when Radoslav was replaced by his brother Vladislav, Sava began a second trip to the Holy Land.

Sava, after much work and years of travelling, arrived at the Bulgarian then-capital of Trnovo a tired and sick man.

He died on 14 January 1235.

Above: Where Sava died, Trnovo, Bulgaria

 

Sava became known as the protector of the Serbian people – of their churches, families, schools and artisans.

He is regarded as the father of Serbian education and literature.

Many songs, tales and legends were created about his life, work, merit, goodness, fairness and wisdom.

His relics became a topic of nationalism, a political cult, a focus of liberation, a danger to foreign rule.

Belgrade is not only the capital of the Serbian state but as well Serbia´s most important economic, cultural and religious centre.

So it comes as no surprise that Serbia´s most important cathedral, dedicated to Sava, should be in Belgrade.

 

In 1319, Belgrade was seized, and again destroyed, by the Hungarians.

The ruined and deserted city became a border base.

The continued existence of the Serbian state and the reconstruction of Belgrade was necessary for the Hungarians as Serbia served as a desirable military buffer against greater barbarians and conquerors.

 

As such, Belgrade welcomed the 15th century when the Turks, a new large conquering force, entered the historical arena of Europe.

Belgrade would soon gain the rank of Antemurale Christianitatis, the Bulwark of Christianity.

For an entire century, Belgrade resisted Turkish incursions.

The Turks, under the leadership of Sultan Suleiman I (“the Magnificent“), would finally conquer Belgrade, on their third attempt, on 28 August 1521, and the key of defense to western Europe.

The reign of Suleiman I has been described as the Golden Age of the Ottoman Empire.

Above: Suleiman I (1494 – 1566)

 

At the end of his reign, however, constant wars had taken their toll, damaging the economy.

The faulty politics that followed shook the economy and the foundations of Ottoman society: state officials became poor, their pay worthless, corruption and briberies common.

Mutiny struck throughout the Ottoman Empire.

 

Over the next few centuries there were many Serbian uprisings against Turkish rule.

In 1594, during the Austrian-Turkish War (1593 – 1606), a Serbian insurrection was staged in the Banat region north of the Danube River.

The Turkish Sultan responded by skinning alive and hanging the Serbian Patriarch, Teodor, before bringing the relics of St. Sava to Vracar to be burned and his ashes scattered on 27 April 1594, because the figure of St. Sava had adorned the flags of the Serbian rebels.

There was great violence carried out against the Serbian clergy and devastation of their monasteries.

The Ottomans sought to symbolically and in reality to set fire to the Serb determination of freedom.

But this desecration was considered to be an unimaginably sacrilegious act by all Serbs.

Rather than discouraging dissent, St. Sava’s desecration fomented and cemented rebellion.

One day the Serbians would rally around the idea of St. Sava and expel the Ottoman Turks from their land.

 

The Church of St. Sava was built near the place where his relics were burned.

Construction began on 10 May 1935, 340 years after the burning of Sava’s relics, and was “completed” in 2004, but the Church much like the Serbia it serves is never complete.

Construction was halted when the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941.

The occupying German army used the unfinished church as a parking lot.

Later in 1944 Russia’s Red Army and later the Yugoslav People’s Army would do the same.

For a while after, the Church was used for storage by various companies.

Construction resumed on 12 August 1985.

After the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, construction was halted again.

Serbian Patriarch Pavle thought that the expense of building a massive Cathedral was inappropriate when people are beaten and impoverished.

After becoming Prime Minister, Zoran Dindic spoke with the Patriarch and convinced him to have construction resumed.

By 2017, the exterior of the church was complete.

Work continues on the interior.

The church is centrally planned, having the form of a Greek cross.

It has a large central dome supported on four pendentives and buttressed on each side by a lower semi-dome over an apse.

Beneath each semi-dome is a gallery supported on an arcade.

The dome is 70 m (230 ft) high, while the main gold plated cross is another 12 m (39 ft) high, which gives a total of 82 m (269 ft) to the height of the Church of Saint Sava.

The peak is 134 m (440 ft) above the sea level (64 m (210 ft) above the Sava river).

Therefore the church holds a dominant position in Belgrade’s cityscape and is visible from all approaches to the city.

Above: The Church of St. Sava and the National Library of Serbia

The church is 91 m (299 ft) long from east to west and 81 m (266 ft) from north to south.

It is 70 m (230 ft) tall, with the main gold-plated cross extending for 12 m (39 ft) more.

Its domes have 18 more gold-plated crosses of various sizes, while the bell towers have 49 bells of the Austrian bell foundry Grassmayr.

It has a surface area of 3,500 m² (37,674 sq ft) on the ground floor, with three galleries of 1,500 m² (16,146 sq ft) on the first level and a 120 m² (1,292 sq ft) gallery on the second level.

The Church can receive 10,000 faithful at any one time.

The choir gallery seats 800 singers.

The basement contains a crypt, the treasury of Saint Sava, and the grave church of Saint Lazar the Hieromartyr, with a total surface of 1,800 m² (19,375 sq ft) .

Above: The crypt of the Church of St. Sava

The central dome mosaic depicts the Ascension of Jesus and represents Resurrected Christ, sitting on a rainbow and right hand raised in blessing, surrounded by four angels, Apostles and Theotokos.

This composition is inspired by mosaic in main dome of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

The lower sections are influenced by the Gospel of Luke and the first narratives of the Acts of the Apostles.

The texts held by the angels are written in the Church Slavonic language, while the names of the depicted persons are written in Greek.

The first points to the pan-Slavic sentiment while the latter connects it to the Byzantine traditions.

The total painted area of the dome is 1,230 m² (13,200 sq ft).

It is one of the largest curved area decorated with the mosaic technique and when the work is completely finished, Saint Sava will be the largest church ornamented this way.

Magnificient is the legacy that is St. Sava’s Church.

 

It is my feeling that Serbia and Serbians will remain incomprehensible to the foreigner who has never visited St. Sava Church or has never read why this church remains integral to the Serbian identity, for Religion has Always played a defining role in the history of the Serbs.

The main religion of Serbia remains that of Sava: Serbian Orthodox Christianity, which is practiced by 84% of the population.

The Serbian Orthodox Church is an independent Church, ranking 6th in order of seniority of the Orthodox Churches after Constantinople (Istanbul), Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Russia.

Above: Flag of the Serbian Orthodox Church

Serbian Orthodoxy is also practiced by 74% of the population of Montenegro, 36% in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 4.4% in Croatia.

Religion plays an important role in Serbian daily life.

The religious calendar is filled with a profusion of saints’ days, celebrated by families in the traditional way – usually involving a visit to church, prayers and the lighting of candles.

 

As a barbaric heathen I cannot claim to understand the Serbian need to kiss icons as passionately and as frequently as they do, but it makes them happy so who am I to argue?

All I know is a visit to St. Sava, especially if one researches the history behind it, is as awe-inspiring as a visit to the Sistine Chapel in Rome or the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, but unlike the Vatican City or Turkish temples of worship St. Sava has a feeling of warmth and personability that the others lack.

As much as it is splendid to feel the almighty grandeur of a glorious God in an edifice meant to impress and intimidate, I feel that religion, being the personal and private set of values and beliefs unique to each individual, should whisper into the ears and seductively warm the hearts of salvation’s seekers rather than frighten and cow people into a submissive state little related to the promise of eternal blessing from a loving deity.

Certainly St. Sava is not lacking in pomp and circumstance as a church should shine above the standards of the common Household, but one cannot have a personal relationship with God if one does not feel to have anything in common to that person inside God’s house.

And somehow St. Sava captures that nuance.

I left the church to explore more of the city, knowing one certainty upon which I stake my experience upon.

There is little danger (or hope) that I shall ever become a Serbian Orthodox Christian but to deny the feeling that there is a need to believe in something or someone beyond one’s self is a primal passion that St. Sava church quietly shares.

It is waiting to share this passion with you.

My explorations of Belgrade (and later Nis) would continue, but in the beginning God….

Sources:  Aleksander Diklic, Belgrade the Eternal City / Culture Smart Serbia / Momo Kapor, A Guide to the Serbian Mentality / Wikipedia / Facebook