Pančevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Панчево, ; ; ; ; ) is a city and the administrative center of the South Banat District in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, Serbia. It is located on the shores of rivers Tamiš and Danube, in the southern part of Banat region. Since the 2022 census 115,454 people have been living in the Pančevo administrative area. Pančevo is the third largest city in Vojvodina and the sixth largest in Serbia by population (of the city only).2011 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Serbia, Volume 2, Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade 2012, p. 82.
Pančevo was first mentioned in 1153 and was described as an important mercantile place. It gained the status of a city in 1873 following the disestablishment of the Military Frontier in that region. For most of its period, it was part of the Kingdom of Hungary and after 1920 it became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was renamed in 1929 to Yugoslavia. Since then with one interruption it was part of several Yugoslav states and after the dissolution of the latest in 2003, it is part of its successor state, Serbia. Pančevo is notable for being multi-ethnic, Serbs (and Germans until 1945) have been the dominant ethnic group since the 16th century and since 2011 they compose 80% of the total population of the city.
Pančevo is a city with rich cultural events and monuments, and in the past, it also used to be a filming location for many national and international movie productions. Since 2003 an international and multi-cultural carnival has been organized in the city. It is also the main economic center of the South Banat region and its economy is also mostly tied up to Belgrade's economy. HIP factory is located in Pančevo as well as UTVA which was heavily damaged during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Pančevo is also well known for its brewery and silk factory which were founded in the early 18th century, and as well as the light bulb factory which are all now defunct. Pančevo is also home to many historical objects, museums and parks.
Etymology In Serbian and Macedonian, the town is known as Pančevo (Панчево), in Hungarian as Pancsova, in Slovak as Pánčevo, in Romanian as Panciova and in German as Pantschowa. The place name is probably derived from an old Slavonic term and meant location of marsh.Felix Milleker, Geschichte der Stadt Pantschowa, Pančevo 1925, p. 4-5.
History
In the late 19th and early 20th century many archaeological artifacts of the Stone Age period were found, remains of settlements and places of burial from the times of Bronze Age (Urnfield culture) and Ancient Rome on the urban area. Most of the objects are exhibited at the National Museum of the town.Felix Milleker, Geschichte der Stadt Pančevo, Pančevo 1925, p. 5-7.Virtual visit at National Museum, National Museum Pančevo.
In 1154, Arabic Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi described region in his Book of Pleasant Journeys into Faraway Lands as an important mercantile place. The regional area was administered by the Bulgarian Empire until early 11th century, then by the Kingdom of Hungary until it became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1521. During Turkish rule, the region was part of the Temeşvar Eyalet and mostly populated by Serbs. In 1660, Evliya Çelebi described the town as a quadrangular fortification being diameter of one hundred Turkish feet. During the Austro-Turkish War, the fortification was conquered by Imperial troops under supreme command of Claude Florimond de Mercy in 1716. There is an impression of the old city and its fortification recorded on maps from 1717 and 1720 which are located at National Széchényi Library and Institute of Military History in Budapest.Hungaricana Maps, Map of City and Fortification from 1717.Hungaricana Maps, Fortification Map from 1720. After the Treaty of Požarevac, the urban area belonged to the Habsburg Banat, and temporarily served as garrison of the Habsburg Imperial Army. In December 1764, a military commission of Viennese Hofkriegsrat registered all people and number of more or less habitable houses, and the Habsburg government encouraged massive immigration of German settlers for administrative furnishing and developing new district of Military Frontier. In January 1794, Francis II signed the charter of borough rights of Pančevo, there is no other real evidence like a deed of city founding. In 1852, the fortification was slighted for urban expanding. In 1873, the military frontier was abolished and Pančevo included into the Torontál county of Austria-Hungary. In 1902, cadastral maps of the town were recorded which are located at the National Archives of Hungary.Luka Ilić, Historische Skizze der kaiserlich königlichen Militär-Communität Pantschowa, Pančevo 1855, Enclosing Map of 1814.Pančevo on the Map of Franciscan Land Survey (1806–1869) at National Archives of Austria.Hungaricana Maps, Cadastre maps Pancsova.
After the Austrian-Hungarian Armistice of Villa Giusti, the region became part of the provisional Torontalsko-tamiške županja and due to the Treaty of Trianon finally belonged to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1922, the region was structured into the Belgrade oblast and since 1929 into the Dunavska banovina.
Effects of World War II on City life
In April 1941, Pančevo was occupied during the invasion of Yugoslavia by Germany. On 21-22 April, 1941, Wehrmacht soldiers, led by Johann Hubert Steinmair, committed a war crime massacre in the city when 36 Serbian people were murdered by hanging and shooting as a reprisal for the deaths of 9 Volksdeutsche members of the paramilitary formation Mannschaft, a part of the SS Division Das Reich, and a wounded comrade of that division, attacked by three men of the Royal Yugoslavian Army before the state surrender. On April 11, 1941, Royal Cavalry officers Stevan Rikanović, Saša Rakezić and Milan Orlić gave a signal during the German parade that they did not accept the looming Yugoslavian defeat. They erected temporary scaffolding behind a wall of a Catholic cemetery and fired at the Nazi Mannschaft, who, after overcoming that surprise, returned fire immediately, assisted by two SS men who had been seated in a nearby German café. On April 6, 1941, members of the Mannschaft had already daubed anti-semitic slogans on some graves in this cemetery; some gravestones were badly damaged, too, but they put on the grave of Georg Weifert a wreath with a decorated swastika ribbon. The following day, pro-German groups marched through all the streets, smashed windows of Serbian shops and taunted, spat and beat Serbian civilians because "they had to stay in their homes and were not allowed to go out." On April 17, 1941, there was a power demonstration with a deployment of Mannschaft units in front of City Hall Square, and an incendiary speech by Kreisführer Otto Vogenberger from the balcony of the building, in which he spoke about the "liberation of regional Germans from Yugoslav slavery" and announced "three days of celebrations until the birthday of our Führer." On April 20, 1941, the Kreisführer was personally gifted with a portrait of Hitler by Heinrich Knirr, who was "visiting his beloved homeland". On May 1, 1941, selected policemen from the Banatian State Guard were publicly sworn in at the same place with black uniforms and a Totenkopf on their collar, speaking words such as "protecting the rights and lives of German people," although they had already been recruited in April.Terezja Rihart, born November 7, 1909 in Jabuka, died July 21, 1993 in Vienna. Propaganda photos and film of the reprisal massacre were used decades after the event to help chronicle the Wehrmacht's complicity in the atrocities during the war, often manipulated in German-language TV documentaries.Ulrike Jureit and Hans Mommsen, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, Hamburg 2002.Jürgen Martschukat and Silvan Niedermeier, Violence and Visibility in Modern History, New York 2013.Crime of the Wehrmacht, Pančevo in April 1941—different numbers of victims, audio commentaries, sequences, film scores of TV-documentaries with original materials: version 1 (36 Serbs) and version 2 (18 Serbs), YouTube. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
During World War II in Yugoslavia, Pančevo was part of Autonomous Banat within German-occupied Serbia. Selected Danube Swabian men were recruited and conscripted in Mannschaft, in Waffen-SS, the majority of them either in SS-Division Das Reich, in German Police or SS Freiwilligen Gebirgsjäger Division Prinz Eugen. More than 99.99 percent of local German women and youth were organized in formations such as the Deutsche Frauenschaft and the Deutsche Jugend (including the DMB) and dedicated to Nazism. In 1943, the Südostdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft issued a very treacherously worded census with the note "for official use only," stating that "there are amazingly fifty eight 'orthodox Germans' in it," which is a phrase used to describe collaborators of Romanian origin. In 1944, after the defeat of the German Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS during the Belgrade Offensive by the Allied Armies, a part of the German population left the city, together with the defeated German army. In November 1944, in cooperation with the OZNA, a KNOJ brigade was set up to denazify the region, consisting of 20 elite partisans who volunteered to execute symbolic deterrent measures under the supreme command of Brigade Commander Svetozar Rupić. All measures began for the first time in January 1945 after intensive research and determination of the execution sites.See also: Bor (Serbia) and Pančevački RitTheresia Richard, born November 7, 1909 in Jabuka, died July 21, 1993 in Vienna. The rest of the ethnic German population remained in the country. These people were sent to local internment camps which existed until 1948. After their dissolution, much of the ethnic German population left Yugoslavia for economic reasons. From 1945, the city belonged to the Srez Pančevo of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The city was the administrative center of the region from all these centuries to the present.Akiko Shimizu, Die deutsche Okkupation des serbischen Banats 1941–1944 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der deutschen Volksgruppe in Jugoslawien. Regensburger Schriften aus Philosophie, Politik, Gesellschaft und Geschichte. Band 5, Münster 2003.Südostdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Die Gliederung der Bevölkerung des ehemaligen Jugoslawien nach Muttersprache und Konfession nach den unveröffentlichten Angaben der Zählung von 1931. Bearbeitet und herausgegeben von der Publikationsstelle Wien. Nur für den Dienstgebrauch, Vienna 1943.Ortssippenbuch Pantschowa, structured in alphabetical order, edited by Elfriede and Michael Adelhardt.
Geography Pančevo is located on flat plains at , approximately 17 km NE of Pančevo bridge to Belgrade and 43 km NW of Smederevo. The altitude above sea level is 77 meters. The southern city quarters are located on the bank of the Danube, the western quarters to the bank of Tamiš. The Danube river islands Forkontumac and Čakljanac are southernmost part of urban area.
Climate Pančevo has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfa).
Flora and fauna
Birds Nature reserves near the city, the coastal areas of the rivers Tamiš and Danube, as well as numerous islands, are a habitat for over 100 species of birds, 63 species of which are natural rarities.
The City Forest with over 300 hectares, and the National Garden, the largest city park with almost 15 hectares, are located just a few minutes walk from the center of Pančevo and are home to many species of birds.
A particularly important bird habitat, in addition to the Ponjavica Nature Park and the Ivanovačka Ada Special Nature Reserve, is the Deliblato Sands Special Nature Reserve, which is partly located in Pančevo.