Properties
| ID | 134942 |
|---|---|
| System Class | Place |
| Case Study | Beyond East and West: Sacred Landscapes Duklja and Raška , Tabula Imperii Byzantini , TIB 17 |
| Administrative unit | Serbia |
Description
In 1925 the National Library of Serbia moved into a building in the district of Kosančićev Venac only to be bombed and gutted by fire sixteen years later from 6 to 9 April 1941 at the start of World War II.
The bombing by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe of the city of Belgrade officially proclaimed open, completely destroyed the Library building including a priceless book collection of 500,000 volumes, an invaluable collection of 1,424 Cyrillic manuscripts and charters, a collection of old maps, medieval manuscripts and prints of roughly 1,500 items, collections of 4,000 journals as well as 1,800 newspaper titles, its rich and irreplaceable archives of Turkish documents about Serbia and the complete correspondence of distinguished figures of the cultural and political history of Serbia, and all holdings lists and catalogs. The entire national cultural heritage existing in print almost disappeared overnight.
Relations
Artifacts (1)
| Name | Class | Description |
|---|---|---|
| The Prizren Gospel | Artifact | The Prizren Gospel, written on parchment, in the Serbian recension of Old Church Slavonic, was most probably created in the last decades of the 13th century. It was purchased from Hadji Jordan from Skopje around 1880, in the village of Bitinja in the Sirinić area, in the then district of the town of Prizren, after which it was named. It was kept under the number 297 in the former National Library in Belgrade. Unfortunately, the manuscript was destroyed on 6 April 1941 during Nazi Germany's bombing of Belgrade. However, the manuscript can be studied based on black and white photographs and descriptions of previous researchers. Within the codex were 36 miniatures, mostly located on the margins of the text. Their contours were made with black ink, with a thick pen or brush, and were partially painted with a reduced palette - light blue, red, ocher yellow and warm brown. Figural representations were indirectly related to the text next to which they were painted. Among the miniatures were portraits of the evangelists (Matthew and Mark), various New Testament themes and figures, images of Saints, etc. They were unskillfully executed and unusually iconographically resolved. The researchers recognised in them the influences of the Christian Orient, primarily works of Coptic art. |