Paper given at the conference 'Balkan Worlds: Ottoman Past and Balkan Nationalism'.

University of
Macedonia, Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, Thessaloniki, 4 to 7 October 2012.

Nataša Mišković

Post-Ottoman Nostalgia in the Yugoslav Capital, 1920s and 1930s

To ask for post-Ottoman nostalgia in the Serbian capital Belgrade might be an unusual
question in a country which strove for a national rebirth and independence with so much
fervour. Yet, this is one of the main questions I wish to explore in the context of a large new
research project affiliated at the Institute for Middle Eastern Studied at the University of
Basel. , which will investigate post-Ottoman everyday life in Turkish and ex-Ottoman
Yugoslav cities. In this project, I do not depart from the usual historical approach, which
relies on purely written sources, but from visual material too. In my investigations so far, I
have found enough evidence which let me believe that there must have been more into this
question than the often passionately anti-Turk argumentation of contemporary Serbian
historiography. In my work on 19th century Belgrade, I dealt with the cultural and political
changes brought about in Belgrade society by the immigration of committed and highly
skilled administrators and intellectuals from the Habsburg Empire. Why should this be
different, when the end of the wars and the founding of the Yugoslav monarchy led to a
similar immigration wave? This, and the obsolete Serbian need to differentiate themselves
from the Ottomans after the dissolution of the empire, helped to broaden the horizon of the
rather self-focussed Belgrade elites regarding the political and cultural history of Southeastern
Europe, to accept an increased influx of “Western” European culture, and to relax in regard to
the imprint left by the Ottomans. The necessity to integrate the various, formerly Habsburg or
Ottoman regions into the new kingdom was undisputed among pro-Yugoslav unionists and
Greater-Serbian nationalists. Recent research has focussed on the question why the Yugoslav
idea failed (Djokić 2003, Sundhaussen 2007, Calic 2010). Less attention has been given to the
fact that under the new condition, the Ottoman past could be rediscovered as a shared heritage
within the Yugoslav kingdom, and even beyond. The difference to the older, and still
prevailing approach of total rejection was, of course, not too evident nor ubiquitous, but still
discernible.

1
In the following, I will give a few examples which illustrate this slow change of position. The
first section is about the public uproar the planned erection of a naked male statue in the
center of Belgrade caused in the early 1920s, and gives an impression of the deep mental
change which had occurred in Belgrade during the war years. The second one provides a
glimpse on the scientification of the discourse on the Balkan past, which took place in the
interwar period. The third chapter explores the popularity of orientalizing interior design in
contrast to the search for a Yugoslav style in applied art, and the fourth and last example deals
with nostalgic lifestyle and postcards on Belgrade.

1. Meštrović’s “Pobednik” Causes Commotion

In 1913, at the end of the Balkan Wars, the later on world-famous sculptor Ivan Meštrović
(1883–1962) received a letter from the mayor of Belgrade, commissioning him to create a
fountain at Terazije square in order to celebrate the conquest of Macedonia and the Serbian
victory against the Ottoman Empire. Meštrović had been living in Belgrade for a short while
since 1911 and had created the Serbian pavilion on the Rome International Exhibition the
same year. He accepted and set himself to work immediately. Jelisaveta Načić (1878–1955),
the very first Serbian woman architect and town architect of Belgrade, provided him with
working space in the primary school near the Cathedral. The project envisaged an allegoric
fountain thematizing the liberation of Macedonia from “the Turks”. The center column
proposed five steps symbolizing five centuries of Ottoman rule. On top of it was to stand a
male statue with a sword and a falcon, the so-called “Pobednik” (victor). Immediately before
the outbreak of World War I, the statue was ready for casting and brought to Bohemia, where
it survived the war unharmed. The rest of the work in progress was destroyed during the
occupation.
In 1920, Meštrović asked the Belgrade magistrate what was to become with the statue, but the
initial situation had changed completely. The Kingdom of Serbia solemnized herself as the
winner not only over the Ottomans, but over the Austro-Hungarians as well. The Serbian
King was now the ruler of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. His capital was to
remain Belgrade. It took several years until in 1927, Belgrade mayor Kosta Kumanudi
requested Meštrović to install his “Pobednik” at Terazije square preliminarily, until a final
solution would be found. Accordingly, the sculptor designed a column on which the statue
was to stand. Along with the on site preparations for the footing, talks and comments in the
“čaršija” started as well: A heated newspaper debate developed around the question why the

2
“Pobednik” was naked, how such a thing could be called art, and that a Serbian hero had to be
dressed in a traditional cap (šajkača) and footwear (opanke) in order to deserve the name
(Vučetić 1999; Vujović 1994: 106).

What had happened? The idea to erect the statue of a naked hero in the very centre of
Belgrade was indeed a revolutionary act. Herself a part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries,
formally until 1878, Serbia was unfamiliar with public monuments, and even less with
monuments featuring humans, as Karl Kaser convincingly shows in his latest research (Kaser
2012): Apart from the statue of Prince Mihailo Obrenović sitting on his horse, erected in
1882, and a romantic peasant girl’s statue decorating the prince’s park of Topčider since
1852, there were only a few busts in Kalemedgan park until 1913.1 Meštrović’s project
addressed a deeply conservative local public, supported only by a small elite doting on
Western European art — a set of people which, as it happens, supported the Yugoslav idea as
well (Vučetić 2003).
The story of the “Pobednik”, the victor memorial, symbolizes a turning point in the city’s
historical consciousness. The Ottoman and Habsburg empires had disappeared. Despite the
nationalist Greater Serbian frenzy anteceding the First Balkan War, which had united large
parts of the population, the Serbian government was able to sketch a future Yugoslav state
when it formulated its war aims in a circular note, only two months after the Habsburg heir
apparent’s assassination (Calic 2010: 77f). Also, the crimes committed in the name of the
secret organization “Black Hand” had split the elites.2 Belgrade as a city had suffered
considerably. The death toll and the destruction caused by the fighting had been immense.
Economic life had come to a standstill: Leo Trotsky, during his visit to Belgrade in 1912,
described the city as a military camp (Glenny 1999: 232), and the city archives store a series
of petitionary letters and complaints from tradespeople who paid for their nationalist
enthusiasm and consequent mobilization with insolvency and ruin, if not with death or
invalidity (Mišković 2008).
Belgrade in 1918 was therefore back at square one. On the war-burnt grounds of the new
capital of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, things were possible which, before the

1
The first public monument in Serbia had been erected in 1848 by prince Aleksandar Karađorđević and consists
of a memorial plaque commemorating the heroes of the First Serbian Uprising killed in 1806. It is located in
Karađorđev park. Early public statues are located in the University park and date from 1897 (Josif Pančić) and
1914 (Dositej Obradović) respectively. Also the Royal park featured sculptures. After 1918, the setting up of
statues became rather frequent. See Vujović 1994.
2
For instance, the popular Belgrade journalist and author Branislav Nušić resigned from his post as governor of
Bitola/Manastir in disgust (Glenny 1999: 234). On the „Black Hand“, see David MacKenzie (1995): The „Black
Hand“ on Trial: Salonika 1917, Boulder.
3
wars, had been unthinkable. The local pro-Western elites received support by new arrivals
from the former Habsburg territories, who came to participate in the establishment of the
Yugoslav state. Together, they tried to contain the nationalist, traditionalist stalwarts and,
among others, they promoted modern art (sculpture, applied art, architecture) and lifestyle
(furnishing, fashion). They thus prepared the ground for the establishing of the “Pobednik”.
The statue was finally erected in 1928, on the Belgrade fortress, the symbol of former
Ottoman domination, overlooking the former Habsburg lands beyond the confluence of the
rivers Sava and Danube, posed high up a column so as not to be discernible. Surrounded by
the Kalemegdan, he was in good company: This park featured an unusual density of sculpture.
It was in the hands of the progressive, pro-Yugoslav art lovers and promoters of the art
pavilion “Cvijeta Zuzorić”, which was opened the same year as the “Pobednik” column.3 The
entrance of the pavilion was marked with the first publicly exposed female act, by the
Belgrade born sculptor Dragomir Arambašić (1881–1945).4

Postcard 1931, Kalemegdan with Pobednik (Dimitrijević 86f., ill. 187)

I therefore do not interprete the fierce opposition against the “Pobednik” as a sign of
backwardness, as my colleague Radina Vučetić claimed 13 years ago. I consider the
commissioning of such a statue as the sign of an almost revolutionary departure to new
horizons. The public uproar was most certainly fuelled by political opponents, who in 1923
realized their own idea of proper art with a monument in the Karađorđev park, on the Vračar

3
Branislav Nušić, mentioned in the footnote above, was one of the founding members of the Association
„Cvijeta Zuzorić“, which included several women on the executive committee.
4
This statue, „Buđenje“ (Awakening), had received a prestigious art award in Paris in 1920.
4
hill. It was dedicated to the voluntaries defending Belgrade in 1915, and displayed a pristine
older Serbian soldier in “šajkača” and “opanci”.

2. Acknowledging the Past: Scientification

Contemporary academic publications allow to observe varying opinions, and perhaps even a
fundamental change of attitude in how the Serbian elites dealt with the Ottoman past — a
question which has not yet received the attention it deserves. In the late 19th century, Serbian
academic writing was marked by a pertinacious serbocentrism, caused by the search for a
national identity, a certain degree of insularity, romantisation of traditional Serbian rural life,
and the rejection to face the reality of past Ottoman rule (Mišković 2011). After the founding
of the Kingdom of SCS, one of the first major academic projects including scholars from all
regions of the monarchy was the “Narodna enciklopedija srpsko-hrvatsko-slovenačka”, edited
in four volumes under the guidance of the renowned Serbian historian Stanoje Stanojević
(1874–1937) in the course of the 1920s. A search for entries like “Ottoman Empire”, “Turkey
/ Turkish Republic”, “Sultan”, “Kemal Paşa”, or “Istanbul”, however, ends in disillusion. The
first four items are subsumed unter “Istočno pitanje”, Eastern question, and the last one,
“Carigrad”, deals exclusively with the Byzantine history of the city. The author, Belgrade
university professor and byzantinist Dragutin Anastasijević, restricted himself to two
sentences about the Ottoman half millenium:

“Finally, I.[stanbul] was conquered for the second time, by Ottoman-Turkish Sultan
Mohammed II. the Conqueror (1453). I. then became the capital of the Ottoman Empire.”
(Enciklopedija IV 1929: 862)

The short entry “Turci” (Turks) muses on the Ottoman seizure of the Balkans since the 14th
century and reflects the racist atmosphere of the era as a whole. The author, an ethnologist,
ends with the statement that “in the SCS, there are roughly 580’000 T[urks] (including
Albanians).” (Enciklopedija IV 1929: 652). Stanoje Stanojević’s “History of the Serbian
People” from 1921/22, reedited several times until the 1990s, displays the same serbocentrism
as the Enciklopedija.5

Continuing the search among the most able Serbian scholars of the time, the influential
geographer Jovan Cvijić (1865–1927) comes first to the mind. Cvijić was a professor at the

5
Jelavich 2003: 110f., cited in Sundhaussen 2007: 249.
5
Sorbonne in Paris, president of the Serbian Academy of Arts, and chief scientific advisor of
the Serbian government in formulating the war aims during World War I: If Prime Minister
Nikola Pašić was responsible for the expansionist policy, Cvijić suggested where to draw the
frontiers, both for a Greater Serbian and for a Yugoslav variant, with or without Bulgaria. His
work cannot be fully appraised in this place, but it certainly reflects intrinsic enthusiasm for
research, and, it does not suppress the fact that Ottoman rule left its mark on Serbian culture
and society. For example, in his article on cultural belts on the Balkans from 1921, he deals
with the “Turkish-Eastern Influence” by making a difference between Balkanism and the
Near East:

“The Balkan peninsula has today almost lost the best fruits of Byzantine culture, first the
intellecual and literary education, then the material welfare, which had allowed extended
luxury among the upper classes. Today, one finds there the leftovers of middle and lower
class Byzantine culture, which moreover appear in an adapted form. Despite the fact that
Byzantine culture has received elements of the eastern cultures since the Middle Ages, these
two have penetrated each other even more in Turkish times. It also lived through Levantine
influences. Changed in this way, it spread over the largest parts of the Peninsula during
Byzantine and Turkish rule, even to parts which today are out of its dissemination. It thus
became the Balkanese culture par excellence, Balkanism.
Balkanism therefore is not the Orient, it cannot be identified with the Nearer East, as is often
said. This confusion came along with the impressions made by the introduction of Islam, the
settling of Turks on the peninsula, and the bonds which the southern countries entertained for
centuries with Asia Minor and Northern Africa.” (Cvijić 1965: 91)

Cvijić obviously has a less romantic view of the Byzantine imprint than many of his fellow
Serbs, and gives a realistic account of the Turks’ cultural impact. His very particular
differentiation between Balkanism and the Orient however invites to misunderstandings. He
insists on the longue durée: Despite the Ottoman layer covering the Balkans, Asia Minor and
Northern Africa, which cursory observers call the Orient, the deep tissues of the Balkans and
the Near East, according to him, are not the same. The Byzantine layer already includes older
oriental features, which are accordingly, pre-Ottoman. The continuance of his argumentation
is interesting enough to be repeated:

“But the Turkish-Eastern influences spread in the Peninsula mainly during the Turkish era.
They are naturally stronger among the Turkish population, which settled in the southeast and
in the center, but they propagated among the islamized South Slavs and among the Albanians,
who are a mainly Muslim people. […] These Muslims contributed a lot to the dissemination
of Turkish-Eastern influences, not only because they have adopted them themselves, but
because they have transmitted them to the Christian population of the same language. These
influences have ingrained among all Balkan peoples during the long Turkish reign, and they
are felt, as a consequence of migrations, even among the South-Slav territories of Austria-

6
Hungary which never were under Turkish rule. They can be seen: in the shape of horse
harness and weapons, as in the type of towns and houses; in negligence and lazyness, the
Eastern javašluk [yavaşlık]; in the characteristic squatting position of artisans; in the Eastern
prejudices, in a goodness and honesty of a particular kind, as in fits of cruelty, which belong
to some groups of the population in the Nearer East.
Through the centuries, the Turkish rule had one more influence. It imprinted on the Balkan
peoples the traits of the “Rayah”, the characteristics of the depressed class; through this, it
created a large number of particular psychological traits.” (Cvijić 1965: 96)

This citation is as interesting as problematic and certainly deserves to be analyzed in the

context of Orientalism (Said) and Balkanism (Todorova 1997: 180f.), but this would go
beyond the aims of this paper. What I wanted to show hereby is the author’s explicit
awareness of both existence and duration of the Ottoman period, and his consciousness of the
far reaching imprints on Balkan society as a whole.

Another eminent Serbian scholar interested in the exploration of the Ottoman heritage was
Branislav Kojić (1899–1987), an architect educated in France, and founder-member of the
Serbian group of modernist architects (Grupa arhitekata modernog pravca). He was genuinely
interested in the building tradition of Serbia, and had researched at least two decades to
compile his beautiful volume “Stara gradska i seoska arhitektura u Srbiji” (Old urban and
rural architecture in Serbia). It consists of his own drawings and photographs which he had
prepared probably starting from the 1920s, but the book was published only after World War
II in 1949: As a modernist builder, his career continued successfully under socialist rule. In
the early 1920s, Kojić won an architecture competition to build the art pavilion “Cvijeta
Zuzorić”: He envisaged a building in the style of a traditional Serbian house from the Morava
region. His interest in traditional architecture founded in a wish to adapt it into a
contemporary style and to develop a truly modern national architecture (Kojić 1949: 7).
However, his project was never realized. In his book, he claims that such endeavours were not
approved by the expert public because they were considered as mere copies of traditional
work, and expresses his hope that under the new regime, a fresh attempt would be more
successful. Back in the 1920s, in the Zuzorić contest, he was commissioned to build, instead
of his own, the project ranked second, which was designed in the academic style, popular
among the pro-Western local elites. Radina Vučetić in her book on the pavilion argues that
the reasons for rejecting an art pavilion in Morava style were political: The sponsors of the
pavilion would not cater to the tastes of the nationalists (Vučetić 2003: 39). Kojić’s interest in
traditional architecture however did not derive from traditionalist views. This is very clear
from the following citation from his book:

7
“The Institute for the conservation and the study of cultural monuments in Serbia, by
initiating this publication, is filling a gap in our literature with the aim to present to the public
the art of our old constructors. Our systematic studies of ancient urban and rural architecture,
which have started scarcely twenty years ago, have shown so far that these architectures have
been formed in various accomplished styles over the past few centuries and that our old
master architects have been able to create true pieces of architectural art. (…)
This architecture (from the beginning of the 19th century) is not especially Serbian. It was
common in the entire Balkan Peninsula, except the coast, and even in Asia Minor. In this
extended territory, it developed various variants, according to the local conditions.
It is still difficult to define the origins. The most probable supposition is that the urban Balkan
architecture developed from the provincial Byzantine architecture, modified by the way of
living and the tastes of Turks and South Slavs. In any case, it is not the product of a nation,
but applies to territories and defined eras.”
(Kojić 1949: 184)

As Cvijić from a geographer’s point of view, Kojić the architect was genuinely interested in
the genesis and development of the architecture present in Serbia and the Balkans as a whole.
His plans, drawings and photographs document old houses which later were demolished in the
process of Belgrade’s city modernization (example Kojić 1949: 80, house demolished in 1937
in Car Lazar street, Belgrade). Belonging to a progressive, cosmopolitan, intellectual set of
Belgraders, he was interested in developing a modernist architectural style with a local
flavour, and was perhaps doomed under the narrow-minded conditions of contemporary local
politics, split into a pro-Western unionist and a traditionalist Serbian nationalist faction. For
Kojić, the change of regime in 1945 brought new perspectives to finally realize his vision.

3. Finding a Yugoslav Style: Interior Design

Branislav Kojić was not the only Belgrade intellectual searching for a modern national style,
be it Serbian, or SCS/Yugoslav — or whatever contemporaries meant when they said “naš”
(our, such as our language, our country, our people).6 The quest with the most public appeal
took probably place in the applied arts. To introduce applied art as something worth public
attention and even a specialized school had been a novelty in Serbia at the turn of the century.
The activity of the Serbian Women’s Association in Belgrade had been crucial to start schools
for women’s crafts, especially the “Ćilimarska škola”, the School for Kilim carpets in Pirot,
since Serbian independence. Their work laid the foundation for an increasing market for
handicraft items among the Belgrade elites, and a growing consciousness of the rural
6
This phrase is still ubiquitous in the whole of former Yugoslavia. On the search for a Yugoslav national style,
see Wachtel 2003.
8
producers’ artistry. On-site research into this field was conducted along with ethnographers,
geographers and architects, and international exhibitions such as the Paris “Exhibition on
modern decorative and industrial design” in 1925 further fostered the Belgrade elite’s zeal to
present to the world an attractive image of the SCS Kingdom (Primenjena umetnost 2011:
23ff.). How should a Serbian, or a Yugoslav home look like was a question which motivated
interior designers, architects and artists along with Women’s Associations to study traditional
handicraft and blend modern shapes with old patterns, to exhibit and to sell it to well-to-do
Belgraders who wanted to refurbish their homes. Crucial in formulating a Serbian theory on
applied art and in propagating a national style was Dragutin Inkiostri Medenjak (1866–1942),
a self-educated designer born in Split, who had travelled extensively in the Western Balkans,
stayed in Italy for longer periods, and lived in Belgrade from 1905 to 1911 and from 1923
onwards.7 How deeply the wish to express a common national identity through a national
style was linked with a wish to distinguish themselves and to compete with both neighbours
and former rulers is documented in the closing remarks of Inkiostri’s pamphlet “Novi srpski
stil” (A New Serbian Style) from 1910:

“It is my duty to turn your attention to the fact how a Bosnian house features right now at the
Hunter’s Exhibition in Vienna, drawn by a German on the basis of those old Serbian houses,
indeed on the same basis which I advocate must be the fundament of the new Serbian
architecture. It is our duty to start at least a little bit into this direction, — because times are
achanging, times of national, conscious awakening. Our posterity will ask our accountability
for fake artistic heritage, a heritage we will certainly bequeath to them if we continue to work
as we have done until now.” (Inkiostri 1910:33)

I presume that Inkiostri, with his Greek [?] name and Dalmatian place of birth, had a rather
wider understanding of the term “Serbian” than the Serbs in Serbia proper would have had. It
is no wonder then that his view of a new Serbian style switched into a new Yugoslav style
without effort, and included peasant artisanry from all the mountaineous western-Balkan
regions south of Trieste. While his theory demanded, for a pure national style, to crystallize
the pure, peasants craft devoid of any exterior influence — be it Byzantine, Ottoman, or
Austro-Hungarian (Inkiostri 1910: 22f.), his own practical work was not devoid of Oriental
influence, as the following piece of furniture shows:

7
In 1912, he designed nationalist Serbian placards in Bosnia and was prosecuted and exiled by the Austrian
authorities. (Enciklopedia II).
9
(Sideboard belonging to the dining room of General Milivoje Pantić, 1927–1932. Primenjena
umetnost 2011: 107, ill. 64)

This amazing sideboard from the 1920s combines rather roughly cut woodwork with finer
sections reminding of Damascene inlaid. Looking at the Serbian interior design from the
interwar period, which has been researched quite well by the Belgrade Museum of Applied
Art in the past two decades, one comes to the conclusion that the Belgrade elites and upper
middle class had a particular taste for orientalizing furnishing. This may partly have been
triggered by the fact that the Viennese and French interior designers, who equipped the King’s
Old Court — which had been severely damaged during the war —, fitted one of the Drawing
Rooms entirely in a Persian style, which in turn corresponded to the “Bosnian Room” in the
King’s New Court. This style received a lot of attention and was often copied by those who
could afford it. Among others, Jovan Cvijić had a professionally designed “Balkan Room” in
his home.

10
Dušan Janković, design for the Balkan Room of Jovan Cvijić, 1925 (Primenjena umetnost
2011: 95, ill. 56)

If initially introduced by western designers, oriental interiors most obviously have met a
widely spread need and craving among the Serbian elites. The nostalgia for the old Balkan
world as it used to be in the Ottoman times seems to have transgressed the usual political
differences, and Inkiostri’s appeal to find a pure national style devoid of “foreign” influences
may well be interpreted in this light.

4. Nostalgia Among the Belgrade Population

Such post-Ottoman nostalgia was neither restricted to interior design nor to the Belgrade
upper classes. The circles who sponsored the art pavilion “Cvijeta Zuzorić”, for example,
collected money for the new building by organising charity balls. One of these balls was
named the “Corso through the Belgrade čaršija”, and received a lot of attention even among
local cartoonists. Asks the wife her husband, queueing at the entrance of the assembly: “Why
haven’t you yet bought the tickets for the ball ‘through the Belgrade čaršija’?” Answer: “In
the čaršija, I buy everything on loan!” (Vučetić 2003: 236, 242).
War destruction, extensive city reconstruction and modernization, severe social and sanitary
problems such as high unemployment and tuberculosis rates, and moreover enforced
immigration in the context of the enlarged kingdom, which had, in 1913, doubled its size, and
11
in 1918 again trippled it, contributed to the sense of loss and desorientation among large parts
of the Belgrade population (Calic 1994). This sense of disorientation and loss in turn fostered
nostalgia. It was during this period of accelerated change that the local bohème quarter
“Skadarlija” was definitely established as a place where the old Balkanese structure and
coffeehouse lifestyle were (more or less) to be preserved, and everybody could endulge in
nostalgic songs celebrating the olden times on oriental (Bosnian, Macedonian) tunes
(starogradske pesme). If before the war, Belgrade photographers had lived on the wealthy and
on foreign visitors, and consequently catered for their demands in regard to motives and style,
this changed after 1918 (Kaser 2012). War photography had introduced and popularized the
collecting of cheap postcards among the poorer sections of society: For a few paras,
everybody could decorate his or her room or wall and thus create a personal sphere of
intimacy in the changing and fast-growing city. Especially popular were motives from bygone
times, which one’s parents or grandparents would still recall — the Ottoman period. If, for
instance, foreign travellers would have bought the following postcard of two sawyers in
Gospodar Jevremova street for its impression of exotic orientalism, locals would buy it for its
nostalgic aspect. That it was intended to be bought by the locals is ascertained by the fact that
it was edited and distributed by the board of the Association of War Invalids, probably
immediately after the war:

12
Sawyers in Gospodar Jevremova street, in the background the Bajrakli džamija, the last
surviving Belgrade mosque. Undated, but the lady’s attire in the background suggests the
years around World War I. Dimitrijević 1986: 41, ill. 76.

Conclusion
The period of the Balkan Wars and World War I with the subsequent unification of the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and its far reaching implications on the capital
Belgrade modified the political influence of Serbian nationalists and had a broadening effect
on the views of the city’s inhabitants. The nationalists were checked by pro-western unionists
and had to compete for influence, which resulted in a more or less outspoken partition of the
city, the boundaries of which can be recognized by the style of architecture or art: If the
Kalemegdan was under control of the pro-Yugoslav modernists, Karađorđe park was adorned
in traditionalist style. This partition was also visible in academy. Part of the scholars, among
them many historians, restricted their interest to the investigation of everything Serb, trying to
create a national history which linked a glorious Serbo-Byzantine Kingdom with the present,
others researched the field without inhibition and acknowledged what they found, including

13
the imprint of several centuries of Ottoman rule. The search for a new national, Yugoslav
style proved very delicate because of the manyfold influences and inextricable cultural layers.
Moreover, the creation of an image for the new Yugoslavia did not occur without interaction
from abroad. The orientalized excitement of Viennese and Parisian designers over oriental
interiors seems to have been crucial for the promotion of Bosnian, or Balkan rooms among
the Belgrade elites. The reflection via the fashions of the European metropolises obviously
helped the locals to redescover their home heritage, even if it was Ottoman. The new interior
fashion responded perfectly to a sense of nostalgia prevailing in all social layers in interwar
Belgrade. If the rich furnished their houses in oriental style and attended charity balls in
čaršija disguise, the middle classes would indulge in “Skadarlija” čevapćići dinners over
nostalgic tunes, and the poor would collect postcards with views of the old Belgrade.
It seems, and certainly needs more investigation, that the Yugoslav unification was one of the
major reasons why Serbia managed to put her relation with the Ottoman past into perspective,
living, rather contrary to Bulgaria or Greece, in peace with the Turkish successor state.

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