Kosančićev Venac

Kosančićev Venac is both a curved street on the ridge above the Sava and the old quarter around it. Belgraders used the word “venac” for streets laid out in an arc. Its current name was established in eighteen seventy-two, when neighboring streets were named after heroes of the Kosovo epic.

Ivan Kosančić is a character in folk songs, not a reliably established participant in the Battle of Kosovo of thirteen eighty-nine. In the song, he serves as a scout for Prince Lazar, the leader of the Serbian army. Kosančić studies the Ottoman camp for fifteen days and tells his blood brother Miloš Obilić, who intends to kill Sultan Murad, that the enemy is immeasurably strong. Obilić asks him to hide the truth from the prince so the army will not be frightened. According to legend, both blood brothers then die in the battle. The street was given the name of the scout who saw the danger before the others; a bust of him was placed by house number fifteen.

On this same street, there remains a site where historical documents make it possible to reconstruct events almost day by day. In the early nineteen twenties, the state bought the former cardboard workshop of the industrialist Milan Vapa and converted it into the National Library of Serbia. After the First World War, the library had no permanent home, and this building could be acquired immediately. It quickly proved cramped and unsuitable for storage, but money for a purpose-built book repository was never found. As a result, the manuscripts, early printed books, maps, and archives of the entire country ended up in an ordinary house among residential streets.

Before the new war, the library’s director, Dragoslav Ilić, sought to remove the most valuable collections. Ilić was a civil servant: preserving the collection was his profession, but he could not send state property away without an order from the ministry. By April first, nineteen forty-one, the staff had packed the rarities into sixty heavy crates. Thirty-eight contained manuscripts; the rest held old books, rare journals, and letters. They were intended to be taken to Annunciation Monastery in the Ovčar-Kablar Gorge.

On April third, Minister of Education Miloš Trifunović, who oversaw the evacuation of state collections, ordered the removal to stop. Heads of institutions were instructed to remain in Belgrade even in the event of occupation. The crates were taken down to the basement. On the evening of April fifth, they were nevertheless promised two trucks and ten soldiers: in the morning, the cargo was to be delivered to the railway station and sent by train to the monastery on April seventh.

On the morning of April sixth, the German invasion of Yugoslavia began. The trucks did not reach Kosančićev Venac. During the daytime air raid, an incendiary bomb struck the library’s roof. Two neighbors noticed smoke and tried to enter while there were still no open flames, but the doors were locked. Soldiers in the neighboring Patriarchate Building replied that they had no tools. The telephone connection was not working, and the firefighters did not come here. By evening, the entire roof was burning; then the fire spread into the floors and basements.

The building burned out along with more than five hundred thousand publications, about one thousand four hundred medieval manuscripts, and collections of maps, newspapers, and Ottoman documents about Serbia. The inventory books and catalogs were also lost: after the fire, the librarians did not even have a complete list of what had been lost. Ilić survived, but he was removed from his post that same year; he never headed the library again.

One part of the collection was saved by his earlier decision. In nineteen thirty-nine, Ilić transferred all the library’s sheet music—about eight hundred forty-one items—to the new Music Academy. He gave it to musicians for their work, rather than hiding it from bombs, but that is precisely why it was not in the basement on April sixth.

The library building is no longer here. Behind the fence remain low brick walls and the open outline of the basement. At this site, the National Library of Serbia holds literary evenings and presents an award for a new novel: participants gather within the boundaries of the building from which the crates of manuscripts never had time to be removed.