Municipality of Temerin
Find out more about the location and history of Temerin
Location
The Municipality of Temerin is situated in the South Bačka District of Vojvodina, the province of Serbia. According to recent data, from 2004, the Municipality covers 170 km2 (of which 15657 hectares are agricultural area, and 10 hectares are woodlands).
The Municipality consists of three settlements with Temerin as the central town. According to data from 2002, the Municipality has 28275 inhabitants. In 2004, according to the data, Temerin had a population growth of 3‰ and only 5788 people were employed in the Municipality. There are 4 elementary schools and one secondary school in the Municipality.
The following three settlements make up the Municipality of Temerin :
- Temerin
- Bački Jarak
- Sirig
The Municipality of Temerin is situated in the southeastern part of Bačka. Other municipalities surrounding Temerin are Žabalj in the east, Srbobran in the north, Vrbas in the west and Novi Sad in the south.
The vicinity of Novi Sad, the most developed business center in Vojvodina has been of great importance to development of Temerin . The Municipality of Temerin nearly covers 170 km2 and stretching from northwest to southeast, it has an irregular trapezoid shape. The longer axis, covering the direction Sirig–Temerin, is 14 km long and the shorter axis in Bački Jarak–Temerin direction is 11 km long. The boundaries of the Municipality were artificially set, so these are mainly straight lines. The only natural boundary of the Municipality is the Jegrička River in the northeast. In the southeast the boundary is marked by tranches originating from Roman times.
According to the hills and valleys map of Vojvodina, whole territory of the Municipality is situated on the South Bačkan loessial ridge. Thus, it leaves the impression of an almost flat surface. The Jegrička River with its small tributaries, flows through the Municipality in the north. Thermo-mineral waters are also present in the area. The soil is highly fertile, and it is of equal quality on the whole territory of the Municipality. Different types of chernozem dominate the area. Along the riverbank swampy types of soil and solonchak can be found, which are partly or fully salted soil types.
The Municipality of Temerin has three settlements: Temerin, Bački Jarak and Sirig and its territory is divided into four cadastral areas: Temerin, Bački Jarak, Sirig and Kamendin. The Municipality has a fortunate geographical position. Three important roads, parallel to the meridian go through the Municipality. The most important is the motorway E-75 which leads from Novi Sad to Subotica and then further to Hungary. The part of the road between Novi Sad and Srbobran, cutting the west part of the Municipality, was put in use in 1984. The second important road is the main road M-22 (since recently E-5) which has the nearly the same direction as the motorway. However, M-22 leads a bit more to the east than E-75 and it goes through the village called Sirig. The third road is of regional importance (R-120), it goes from Novi Sad, through Bački Jarak , Temerin , Bečej and Senta to Kanjiža.
At Sirig and Temerin, these three roads are crossed by the regional road (R-104) which connects Odžaci with Žabalj, through Zmajevo, Sirig and Temerin. From Žabalj a main road leads over the Tisa River to Zrenjanin and to other towns in Banat. Through the southeastern part of the Municipality and its two settlements, Bački Jarak and Temerin, leads the railway from Novi Sad to Žabalj, Bečej and Senta.
History
In written documents, Temerin was first mentioned in 1332 in a Pope's receipt, issued to Laurentije de Temeri, parish priest, for the payment of Pope’s tax. Temerin belonged to the Hungarian Monarchy until the battle of Mohács in 1526. After that year it was attached to the Ottoman Empire. In this period, Serbs settled down in Bačka, and in Temerin as well. The first list of names of the Serbian inhabitants is mentioned in the Szeged notebook dating back to1560 or 1561. The local duke’s name was Radica Stepana. There were 20 houses that paid taxes and the total income of feudal taxes was 5,922 akče, the money of the time. According to D. Ruvarac, in 1722, Temerin was a Serbian settlement with 183 Serbian houses and three orthodox priests: Miško, Mihajlo and Petar. The number of houses was gradually increasing. In 1769 there were 208 houses, in 1773 there were 183 and in 1786 there were 215 Serbian homes. In that year five Serbian orthodox priests lived and worked in Temerin but only two of them held religious services.
The first military map of settlement dates back to the same period and it shows that the curve- shaped settlement was located around the swamp called Grišina bara, it had four lines of houses and was encircled by a 13-kilometre ditch.
Northwest from Temerin, between Sirig, Nadalj and Temerin was the village of Almaš, on the bank of the Jegrička River. The village can be found on M. Štira's map which dates back to 1664. and it is also marked on I. Miller's map from 1709, on which the village lies north of Novi Sad. According to Erdujhelji, a great historian of Novi Sad, special attention should be paid to this village because its inhabitants moved to Novi Sad and settled down in the area called Almaška. They built an orthodox church there, which still exists and today it is called Almaška Church.
From 1699 to 1800, the residents of Temerin were equerries, that means they were not serfs. This is supported by the document which was written by the Illyrian court in 1772 and which says: "... here is a thirty-year old school”, that means that the school dates from 1742. "Here one can learn reading, writing, church songs and prayers. All of the school expenses are paid by the community that also pays for the teacher. One priest takes care of all that." The headmen of Temerin were Radojica Paraštinac in 1720, Josim Ratkovic in 1725/26, and Mladen Kusovin in 1730. After 1770, the headman was Gaja Grujic, who was in this position for several years.
That Temerin used to be a rich village is supported by the fact that between 1746 and 1749 the locals built a large and beautiful orthodox church and dedicated it to Christ’s ascension into Heaven. It was located at the beginning of today’s Bosanska street, on the right side, where today stand houses with numerbers from 2 to 10. The church was made of bricks (which is very important since in that time most of churches in villages were built of wood). The church was 17 meters long, 6.5 meters wide, and the walls were nearly 6 meters high. The church had a bell tower, which was built just beside the main building and had 11 special windows with iron bars on them. Johan Milner built the church with the support of Visarion Pavlović, the bishop of Bačka-Segedin eparchy. The military maps, as well as the religious books from that church prove the existence of the church. Some of these documents are still kept in the Church of Christ’s ascension into Heaven in Đurđevo.
Among the students of the church school was one of the most prominent citizen of Temerin, Lukijan Mušicki, who was a writer, a polyglot, a theology professor and a bishop of Gornji Karlovci. He was born in Temerin in 1777. Being a friend and associate of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, he added a letter "?" to the Cyrillic alphabet.
At that time a big part of Bačka, 56 villages together with Temerin, belonged to the Chamber. In 1796, the Chamber sold Temerin and Bački Jarak to Count Sándor Szécseny for 80,000 Hungarian forints. The organized colonization of Temerin by the Hungarians started in 1782 and the migration of Germans started in 1787. In that year they settled down in an uninhabited area of Bačka and founded Bački Jarak.
Count Sándor Szécseny tried to turn Serbs into peasants which resulted in a four-year attempt (from 1796 to 1800) to attach Temerin to the Military Frontier and to its nearest unit The Battalion of Šajkaš. This attempt failed on July 21, 1799 and the Serbs decided to move out of Temerin. The delegation sent by the parish commission stopped them in their attempt by postponing the migration. On the same day that commission issued a document of a great importance. The document was called "a listing of all orthodox families from Temerin who came out for migration to the military battalion in the Paška heath". This important document contained the names of 178 heads of the families that were leaving Temerin. After a few months the number of immigrant families raised to 210 families all together 1,610 people. In the spring of 1800, tearing down their houses and their church, they took all of the building material to Paška heath, where they founded a new village named Đurđevo. They have chosen this name 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 took with themselves. They dedicated the new church to Christ’s ascension into Heaven, same as they did in Temerin. A single generation has built two big churches in just 56 years.
For the following 120 years Temerin was without Serbs, so Count Szécseny has brought Hungarian colonizers, peasants from the tribal states of Pest, Fehér and Tolna. Among them were many Slovaks, who assimilated into the Hungarian community. This very same count ordered the building of a very representative castle, called Kaštel, which is now under the state's jurisdiction. Nowadays it houses the secondary school "Lukijan Mušicki". The Szécseny family sold their property in Temerin and "Kaštel" to a grain merchant from Apatin, Antal Fernbach. Ana and Petar Fernbach, his heirs, owned the whole Temerin until 1920, the Agrarian Reform in the Kingdom of SHS (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). In 1799 Temerin was declared a town and was given a right to hold 4 livestock fairs per year. The catholic church was built in 1804, and the "old school" in 1835.
Tumultuous times of 1848 did not spare Temerin. It was burned down completely in clashes and its citizens migrated to the north, to Bačka Topola, Mali Iđoš, Čantavir and other settlements. Two or three years later, most of them returned to their old homes.
On July 2, 1899 the railway Novi Sad–Temerin–Bečej was built and put into function as well as the railway station in Temerin. This started the industrial development of Temerin, putting into work one brick plant and the first steam mill. Temerin soon became one of the most important trading centers in the southeast of Bačka. The establishment of the SHS (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) Kingdom marked a new period in the history and the economy of the town. The Fernbach estate was one of targets of the Agrarian Reform. Agrarian authorities from Belgrade and Novi Sad passed a new law, and colonized farmers from Novi Sad and its vicinity. In 1920, started the establishment of a new voluntary colony in south of Temerin, 18km north of Novi Sad, next to the road Novi Sad–Bečej–Senta. In memory of the old Serbian village in Temerin, in 1929, the immigrants called their new settlement Staro Đurđevo. At the beginning it had 42 families, now it has grown into a place with over 1,100 households and about 4,000 citizens.
In 1927, between the World Wars, Temerin got electricity. During the Hungarian military occupation (1941-1944) the settlers of Staro Đurđevo and Sirig were expelled from their homes and Hungarian families from Bukovina were relocated to their land. In 1944, they left Sirig and Đurđevo, and Germans left Bački Jarak. The founders of Đurđevo and Sirig returned to their old settlements. Bački Jarak became almost completely colonized by immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
