Traces
01.05.1778.
In Sombor NORMA started with its work, a three-month course within a four-grade school, a teacher-training school, where after passing two such courses future teachers took the teacher’s exam. Norma, the first teacher-training school among the Serbs and the other Slavic peoples in Europe, was founded by Avram Mrazović, a citizen of Sombor, who a year before had become the director of all Serbian schools of the Torontal, Baranja and Bačka districts, and later even the Banat district, and made Sombor his seat.
02.05.1802.
The FRANC JOZSEF’S CANAL was opened, later known as the Great Bačka canal. It, by the ideas and projects of Jozsef Kis and his brother Gabor, joined the rivers Danube and Tisa from Bački Monoštor to Bačko Gradište. The brothers even started the digging, but exceeding the budget, the building of the canal was given to the others and they were not even invited to the ceremony of the opening of this big traffic artery, and by the time the most expensive economic object of the Austrian Empire.
03.05.1781.
Daniel Heršing, the headmaster of the royal schools, sets the foundation stone for the construction of the LATIN SCHOOL in Sombor, on the foundations on which not even a century later the building of today’s Grammar school will be constructed. On the great ceremony, the speeches in the vernacular were held, and in the Church of the Holy Trinity the great service was held, while the Magistrate organized the formal lunch for the prominent people with the sound of a mortar in the streets.
05.05.1883.
In Čurug PETAR KONJOVIĆ was born, the progenitor of the art of opera among the Serbs. Still as a pupil of the Preparatory school in Sombor, he composed the opera Vilin veo (Fairy’s veil), conducting the orchestra during its first performance. He spent the First World War in Sombor, and in 1917 he moved to Zagreb to work as a composer and conductor, because before the War he had graduated from the conservatoire in Prague. At the Great National Assembly in Novi Sad on 25 November 1918, he was elected the deputy chairman of the National Administration, and after it he was the director of the opera in Zagreb, then the headmaster of the theatres in Novi Sad, Osijek and Zagreb. He also wrote the operas Knjez od Zete (Prince of Zeta), Koštana, Seljaci (Peasants), he composed symphonies, scene music, choral music, he edited the magazine Jedinstvo (Unity) in Belgrade, where he was the rector of the Academy of Music. He was the member of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in Belgrade on 1 October 1970, and according to his own wish he was buried in Sombor next to his parents and his children.
06.05.1793.
Near Bački Monoštor the digging of the canal started, which was, according to the idea of Jozsef Kis, flowing through Bačka, going to join the rivers Danube and Tisa. There were 3.000 people working on the building of the canal. Exceeding the budget and the deadlines, in 1797 Kis was dismissed. The Franz Jozsef’s canal, as it was later called, will be finished in 1802, as the most expensive economic object of the Austrian Empire, for which 3,062.690 forints was spent. Today it is Veliki bački kanal (The Great Backa canal), which starts at Bezdan because in 1856 the Danube closed the entrance to the canal which then had to be moved up the river.
06.05.1871.
Poet Jovan Jovanović Zmaj sent to the address of a lawyer from Sombor Dimitrije Manojlović the first postcard in the world, which was, based on the idea of Petar Manojlović, created by the sender in the` Vienna printing shop Valdhajm, the year before, and done as an engraving. Since the postcard contained pro-Slavic ideas, the cautious lawyer sent it back to its sender with the note „I don’t want to have anything with Zmaj – I do not accept it“. Today, this postcard is extremely valuable among the philatelists.
