Place:Temerin, Vojvodina, Serbia, Serbia and Montenegro

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Temerin is a town and municipality located in the South Bačka District of the autonomous province of Vojvodina in Serbia. The town has a population of 19,613, while the municipality has a population of 28,287.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Early history

In written documents, Temerin is mentioned for the first time in 1332 in the receipt by the pope, issued to Laurentius de Temeri, the parish priest, for the payment of the papal tax. In this time, Temerin was part of the Bacsensis County within the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. It remained under control of the Kingdom of Hungary until the battle of Mohács in 1526. After that battle, the settlement first became part of the Serb state of emperor Jovan Nenad (1526-1527) and was subsequently included into the Ottoman Empire, which controlled the area until the end of the 17th century. Administratively, Temerin was part of the Ottoman Sanjak of Segedin.

The list of names of the Serb inhabitants of Temerin is mentioned in the Szeged notebook dating from 1560/61. The local duke’s name was Radica Stepana. There were 20 houses that paid taxes and the whole income of feudal taxes was 5,922 akče. By the end of the 17th century and Ottoman rule, Temerin was devoid of inhabitants.

Habsburg administration

From the end of the 17th century, the area was part of the Habsburg monarchy, and a population was established in the first half of the 18th century. According to D. Ruvarac, in 1722 Temerin was a Serb settlement with 183 Serb houses and three Orthodox priests: Miško, Mihajlo and Petar. In 1769 there were 208 houses, in 1773 there were 183 and in 1786 215 Serb homes. In that year five Serb Orthodox priests lived and worked in Temerin; two of them gave religious services and three of them did not.

Given Temerin's past wealth, local Serbs built an Orthodox church between 1746 and 1749 and dedicated it to Christ’s ascension into Heaven. It was located at the beginning of today’s Bosanska (Bosnian) street, on its right side, replaced by houses with numbers 2 through 10.

Military map and religious books from that same church are proving the existence of the church. Some of them are still kept in the church of Christ’s ascension into Heaven in the village of Đurđevo. The church was made of bricks – solid material (which is important because in the most of the villages churches were made of wood – as log cabins). Church dimensions were: length 17 m, width 6.5 m, walls were nearly 6 m high. The church had church steeple, built just besides main building, 11 special windows with iron bars on them. Johan Milner built the church with assistance and coordination of Visarion Pavlović, the bishop of Bačko-Segedinska eparchy.

Among church school students is also one of the most notable people from Temerin: the writer, theology professor bishop, and polyglot Lukijan Mušicki, born in 1777 in the town. He was a friend and associate of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, contributing to the Vuk alphabet in adding the letter “đ”.

In 1796 Chamber sold Temerin and Bački Jarak to count Sándor Szécsen for a price of 80,000 forints. Organized colonization of Temerin by Hungarians started in 1782 and the migration of Germans started in 1787. In that year they founded and settled Bački Jarak, a place which used to be barren area of Bačka until then.

Count Sándor Szécsen tried to turn Serbs into his peasants which resulted in their four years long attempt (from 1796 to 1800) to annex Temerin to the Military Border and its nearest unit battalion of Šajkaš. This attempt failed and on July 21, 1799 they decided to move out of Temerin. Delegation sent by parish commission stopped them in their attempt by postponing their migration. On the same day that commission made a document of a great importance. Document was called “a listing of all Orthodox families from Temerin who came out for migration to the military battalion in the Paška barren area”. This important document contents the names of 178 heads of families that were leaving.

After a few months the number of immigrant families raised to 210 families and 1,610 living souls. In the spring of 1800 they tore down their houses and their church and carried all of its building material to Paška barren area where they founded new village named Đurđevo. Name was given because they moved on a St. George day (“Sveti Đorđe”). Only five years later they built a new, even bigger church out of the material they brought with themselves. They dedicated the new church to Christ’s ascension into Heaven, same as they did in Temerin.

For next 120 years Temerin was almost without Serbs, count Szécsen brought Hungarian settlers, peasants from counties Pest, Fejér and Tolna. Same count ordered building of a very representative palace (castle), so called "Kaštel" / "Kastély", which is now under state jurisdiction. Nowadays it houses secondary school of techniques.

Szécsen family sold the Temerin property and "Kaštel" / "Кastély" to grain merchant Antal Fernbah from Apatin. Ana and Petar Fernbah were his heirs and they kept complete Temerin property until agrarian reform in the Kingdom of SHS (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) in 1920.

In 1799 Temerin was declared a town and was given a right to hold 4 livestock fairs per year. Catholic Church was built in 1804, and the "old school" in 1835. From the 18th century to 1848/1849, Temerin was administratively a part of the Batsch-Bodrog County within the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary. In 1848–49, the settlement was part of autonomous Serbian Vojvodina and in 1849-1860 part of the Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar, a separate Austrian crown land. It was part of the Batschka-Torontal District (1849-1850) and Neusatz District (1850–1860) within the voivodeship. After the abolishment of the voivodeship in 1860, the settlement was again included into Batsch-Bodrog County. Tumultuous times and 1848–1849 revolution did not spare Temerin. In clashes it was burned completely and the settlers migrated to the north, in Bačka Topola, Mali Iđoš, Čantavir and other settlements. After 4–6 months most of them returned to their old homes.

On July 2, 1899 a railway direction Novi Sad–Temerin–Bečej was built and put in function as well as the railway station in Temerin. That started industrial development of Temerin, putting into operation one brick plant and first steam mills. Temerin soon became one of the important trading centers in the southeast part of Bačka. In the year 1900, Temerin had 9,581 inhabitants, including 8,711 speakers of Hungarian language, 787 speakers of German language, and 13 speakers of Serbian language.

After 1918

In 1918, Temerin (as part of the Banat, Bačka and Baranja region) firstly became part of the Kingdom of Serbia and then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed to Yugoslavia). Creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes marked a new period in the history and the economy of the town. Fernbah's properties were one of the agrarian reform targets. Agrarian authorities from Belgrade and Novi Sad put a new law into effect, colonized farmers from Novi Sad and its vicinity and colonized volunteers. In 1920 started a creation of a new colony of volunteers south of Temerin, 18 km north of Novi Sad and next to road Novi Sad–Bečej–Senta. In the memory of an old Serb settlement in Temerin, settlers named their new settlement Staro Đurđevo (Old Đurđevo) in 1929. At the beginning it had 42 families, now it has grown into a place with over 1,100 households and about 4,000 settlers.

In 1918-1919, Temerin was part of the Banat, Bačka and Baranja region and also (from 1918 to 1922) part of the Novi Sad district. From 1922 to 1929, the settlement was part of the Bačka Oblast and from 1929 to 1941 part of the Danube Banovina. In 1927, between two World wars, Temerin got electricity.

From 1941 to 1944, the settlement was under Axis occupation and was attached to the Bács-Bodrog County within Horthy's Hungary. During the Hungarian military occupation (1941–1944) settlers of Staro Đurđevo and Sirig were expelled from their homes and Hungarian families from Bukovina were settled on this land. In the period 7 to 9 January 1942 48 inhabitants of the town, 42 Jews, and 6 Serbs, were killed during a series of massacres commonly known as the Novi Sad Raid. Since 1944, Temerin was part of autonomous Yugoslav Vojvodina, which (from 1945) was part of new socialist Serbia within Yugoslavia. In 1944, Hungarians from Bukovina resettled in Hungary, while founders of Staro Đurđevo and Sirig returned to their old settlements. Post-WW2 population censuses recorded Hungarian ethnic majority in the settlement. Population of the town increased from 11,438 in 1948 to 19,613 in 2011. During the 1990s, Serbs replaced Hungarians as the largest ethnic group in the settlement and 2002 census recorded a Serb ethnic majority in Temerin.

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