An unknown 27 pages of letters from King Milan Obrenović to Aleksandar Obrenović were found, which will change the view of Serbian history, and the letters are in the Obrenović Family Corner, which was made in the Adligat Association for Culture, Arts and International Cooperation, the association confirmed to Tanjug.
Viktor Lazić, the president of the Adligat Association, says for Tanjug that these are exceptional artifacts.
“The son’s father, the former king of the current king, teaches him how to rule, gives him information on how to secretly procure weapons, and that is the weapon that will later celebrate the Serbian army in the Balkans and in the First World War. King Milan wrote from Vienna in 1897, in the extraordinary French language. It is interesting that in one place, the former king predicts the imminent demise of Serbia, and occasionally sharply criticizes the behavior of Queen Natalija and Nikola Pašić, ” says Lazić.
The deputy manager of the University Library “Svetozar Marković” and one of the best Serbian experts on digitalization, Adam Sofronijević, was the coordinator of the procurement of letters and in charge of their digitalization.
“The letters were procured abroad, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, so it was a real feat to carry out such an action. We thank Miloš Janković and Stevanka Češljarova who, in time, during the greatest crisis, provided the necessary support for these letters to arrive in the country. Now it is their turn to digitize, and we also plan to make a digital model and recognize the manuscript of the King of Milan based on the text of these letters “, says Sofronijević.
He explains that this means that each subsequent king’s handwriting will be able to be automatically recognized by computers among hundreds of thousands of different pages, even though there is no other evidence that it is really the king’s handwriting.
“From a scientific point of view, that alone gives these letters a huge significance,” said Sofronijevic.
For verification of the authenticity and significance of the letters, the journalists addressed Suzana Rajić, Head of the Department for the History of the Serbian People in the New Century at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade:
“Letters are of first-class importance and will certainly influence the understanding of Serbian history at the end of the 19th century and how we experience the King of Milan.” The letters are unknown and authentic. The great thing is that they are now available to the public. In them, King Milan presents the entire state-political program to his son, teaches him how he should act in government, reveals to him the secrets he learned in the ruling and diplomatic circles of Vienna and advises him how to arm Serbia before the great changes coming in Europe. “, says Rajić.
The Adligat Association plans to address the most professional scientific institutions in the country in order for the letters to receive scientific processing and enter the corpus of knowledge of our people about their own past. It is planned to publish them in the form of a monograph.
In the Corner of the Obrenović family in the Adligat Association, you can see a wardrobe and a dressing table with chairs of Queen Natalija Obrenović, the first known manuscript of five-year-old Prince Mihailo Obrenović and books from the prince’s personal library, a stick of King Milan and many other items.
The Museum of Books and Travel and the Museum of Serbian Literature were opened within this Association.
TST
