Status of monument -> National monument
Pursuant to Article V para. 4 Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Article 39 para. 1 of the Rules of Procedure of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, at a session held from 7 to 11 October 2003 the Commission adopted a
D E C I S I O N
I
The sepulchral ensemble of the Roman Catholic Burial Ground in Rabić in Derventa is hereby designated as a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the National Monument).
The National Monument is located on cadastral plot no. 3870/1, cadastral municipality Derventa 1; Derventa Municipality, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The provisions relating to protection and rehabilitation measures set forth by the Law on the Implementation of the Decisions of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, established pursuant to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Official Gazette of Republika Srpska no. 9/02) shall apply to the National Monument.
II
The Government of Republika Srpska shall be responsible for ensuring and providing the legal, scientific, technical, administrative and financial measures necessary to protect, conserve, display and rehabilitate the National Monument.
The Government of Republika Srpska shall be responsible for providing the resources for drawing up and implementing the necessary technical documentation for the rehabilitation of the National Monument.
The Commission to Preserve National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the Commission) shall determine the technical requirements and secure the funds for preparing and setting up signboards with the basic data on the monument and the Decision to proclaim the property a National Monument.
III
To ensure the on-going protection of the National Monument, the following measures are hereby stipulated:
A single protection zone consisting of c.p. 3870/1 on which the Roman Catholic burial ground of Rabić stands:
In this zone the following measures shall apply:
· No works of any kind shall be permitted other than the regular maintenance of the burial ground in current use and woodland in the burial ground, and conservation and restoration works on the older monuments, with the approval of the Ministry responsible for regional planning in Republika Srpska and under the expert supervision of the heritage protection authority of Republika Srpska (hereinafter: the heritage protection authority);
· No damage or vandalism shall be caused to the site;
· The dumping of all kinds of waste is prohibited;
· felling is permitted only for reasons of tree/woodland health
IV
All executive and area development planning acts not in accordance with the provisions of this Decision are hereby revoked.
V
Everyone, and in particular the competent authorities of Republika Srpska and urban and municipal authorities, shall refrain from any action that might damage the National Monument or jeopardize the preservation and rehabilitation thereof.
VI
The Government of Republika Srpska, the Ministry responsible for regional planning in Republika Srpska and the heritage protection authority of Republika Srpska, and the Municipal Authorities in charge of urban planning and land registry affairs, shall be notified of this Decision in order to carry out the measures stipulated in Articles II to V of this Decision, and the Authorized Municipal Court shall be notified for the purposes of registration in the Land Register.
VII
The elucidation and accompanying documentation form an integral part of this Decision, which may be viewed by interested parties on the premises or by accessing the website of the Commission (http://www.aneks8komisija.com.ba)
VIII
Pursuant to Art. V para 4 Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, decisions of the Commission are final.
IX
This Decision shall enter into force on the date of its adoption and shall be published in the Official Gazette of BiH.
This Decision has been adopted by the following members of the Commission: Zeynep Ahunbay, Amra Hadžimuhamedović, Dubravko Lovrenović, Ljiljana Ševo and Tina Wik.
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Chair of the Commission
Amra Hadžimuhamedović |
No: 06-6-39/03-14
8 October 2003
Sarajevo
E l u c i d a t i o n
I – INTRODUCTION
Pursuant to Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Law on the Implementation of the Decisions of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, established pursuant to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a “National Monument” is an item of public property proclaimed by the Commission to Preserve National Monuments to be a National Monument pursuant to Articles V and VI of Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and property entered on the Provisional List of National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Official Gazette of BiH no. 33/02) until the Commission reaches a final decision on its status, as to which there is no time limit and regardless of whether a petition for the property in question has been submitted or not.
On 13 January 2003 the Roman Catholic parish office of Derventa submitted a petition/motion to designate the Roman Catholic burial ground of Rabić as a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Pursuant to the provisions of the law, the Commission proceeded to carry out the procedure for reaching a final decision to designate the Property as a National Monument, pursuant to Article V of Annex 8 and Article 35 of the Rules of Procedure of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments.
II – PROCEDURE PRIOR TO DECISION
In the procedure preceding the adoption of a final decision to proclaim the property a national monument, the following documentation was inspected:
· Documentation on the location and current owner and user of the property (copy of cadastral plan and copy of land registry entry)
· Data on the current condition and use of the property, including a description and photographs, data of war damage if any, data on restoration or other works on the property if any, etc.
· Current condition of the property
· Historical, architectural and other documentary material on the property, as set out in the bibliography forming part of this Decision.
The findings based on the review of the above documentation and the condition of the site are as follows:
1. Information on the property
Location
The sepulchral ensemble of the Roman Catholic burial ground in Rabić is located on c.p. no. 3870/1 c.m. Derventa 1, Land Registry entry no. 1832, in state ownership, user Roman Catholic parish office Derventa.
The burial ground stands alongside the main Sarajevo-Brod road at the intersection of the Derventa by-pass, about 2 km from the centre of Derventa to the south.
Historical data
There are no written historical sources relating to the Rabić Catholic burial ground.
2. Description of the property
The Catholic burial ground in Rabić occupies an area of 3 hectares and almost 92 are. The burial ground lies north-south with a certain minor deviation. It is bordered on the east by the main road running along the river Bosna valley from Sarajevo to Brod. At the north-eastern corner is the major intersection of the two Derventa by-passes. To the south-east a military facility was established by the JNA, which is still in active use. The burial ground is on a slight elevation running from east to west alongside the main road. There was also a Jewish burial ground, separated from the Catholic one by the road to the village of Tetima. The Jewish burial ground came into use in 1884 and the last burial that took place there was in 1941. Until the 1970s there were still a few tombstones there on the abandoned site. Its contemporaries remember it as the finest and best-maintained burial ground in Derventa (Alagić, 2001, 46-47).
The exact age of the Roman Catholic burial ground in Rabić is not known, but it was certainly in existence in the mid nineteenth century. It is believed to be one of the oldest Catholic burial grounds in the Derventa area, other than those in Plehan (which pre-dates the monastery) and in the villages of Dubočac and Modrani (Kajmaković, 1978, 68). Its emergence is closely linked to historical events in the Derventa area, which is four hours from the border dividing the two great empires along the river Sava. In the early nineteenth century, there was a good deal of unsettled land in the Derventa area, and thus plenty of opportunity for new settlers. It is known, for example, that in 1842 a large group of Catholics from the Ljubuški area moved here, and another in 1850 from the Travnik area. Major changes to the population make-up also arose with the change of rule in 1878. Among other things, many Catholics from the territory of the Monarchy settled here during the Austro-Hungarian period.
Approximately at the centre of the burial ground was the central pathway, running east-west, with the cemetery chapel at the centre, which no longer exists. However, in the central area there is a raised concrete platform with a modern metal pyramid topped by a cross. Here was the main entrance to the burial ground from the east, by the main road. Although the graves are fairly intermingled, the natural result of a burial ground in long use, some general chronological arrangement of the tombstones can be identified. There is a clear concentration of old tombstones from the mid nineteenth century south of the centre of the burial ground. The northern part of the burial ground, particularly the extreme northern quarter or third, has been divided into new burial plots, and at the extreme edge are some graves dating from the decade prior to the 1992-1995 war. Groups of graves belonging to certain lineages are also to be seen in the burial ground, but since it was an urban burial cemetery there are quite a few individual and family graves, particularly from the Austro-Hungarian period through to the present day.
The oldest tombstones are in the form of a stele about a metre high terminating in an arch. Decorations are executed in low relief. It was the invariable rule to have a cross on every stele, but in varying forms – the Latin cross, the Calvary-Golgotha, and multiple crosses. On some of the crosses, moustaches are indicated beneath the horizontal arms (for a man's grave) or two hemispheres (for a woman's). On some steles the lower half is reserved for an epitaph, which appears on such steles at the end of the nineteenth century. The epitaph may be brief, engraved at the base of the stele, but at times it may occupy the lower half of the tombstone. As far as it is possible to decipher the year of burial on the older tombstones, burials began here in the mid nineteenth century.
There are such tombstones in Catholic burial grounds throughout the Derventa region, made by stonemasons from the village of Bunara, where a soft, easily worked stone called “soft graša” was quarried. According to accounts by the stonemasons of the village, recorded in the 1970s, the cutting of these steles began in the mid nineteenth century and were still being made for the local rural population in the second half of the twentieth. In Rabić they already began gradually to disappear during the Austro-Hungarian period. They were made to resemble the tombstones of Slavonia (Kajmaković, 70).
The population that moved into the town of Derventa between 1878 and 1918 brought new fashions and a different kind of tombstone, of the kind to be seen in all urban cemeteries throughout Bosnia and Hedrzegovina. Burials continued in the Rabić burial ground between the two world wars and after World War II, when it began to become usual to erect marble tombstones. Burials continue to this day, though fewer now take place as a result of many of the Catholics of Derventa leaving the town during the 1992-1995 war.
3. Legal status to date
No protection applied.
4. Research and conservation and restoration works
None.
5. Current condition of the property
During an on-site inspection the following was ascertained:
The southern part of the burial ground, where the majority of nineteenth and early twentieth century tombstones are located, is quite badly neglected. The tombstones have sunk into the ground which is covered with a thick soft layer of leaves. In more than three-quarters of the burial ground there are old, ailing lime trees which are liable to fall, which would cause major damage to many of the tombstones. Only the newest, northern part of the burial ground is free of trees. The burial ground is not much maintained, partly due to the absence of the population.
Alongside the burial ground is a military depot built by the JNA, where there was an ammunition explosion in summer 2003. The existence of this ammunitions deput alongside the burial ground endangers the entire complex of the burial ground. III – CONCLUSION
Applying the Criteria for the adoption of a decision on proclaiming an item of property a national monument (Official Gazette of BiH nos. 33/02 and 15/03), the Commission has enacted the Decision cited above.
The Decision was based on the following criteria:
A. Time frame
C. Artistic and aesthetic value
C. v. value of details
D. Clarity
D.iv. evidence of a particular type, style or regional manner
E. Symbolic value
E.iii. traditional value
E.iv. relation to rituals or ceremonies
E.v. significance for the identity of a group of people
G. Authenticity
G.vi. spirit and feeling
I. Completeness
I.iii. completeness
The following documents form an integral part of this Decision:
- Photodocumentation;
- Drawings
Bibliography
During the procedure to designate the monument as a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina the following works were consulted:
Alagić, Nedžmudin, Derventa između dva svjetska rata. (Derventa between the two world wars) Office for the resolution of issues of status of refugees Derventa Municipality – branch in Sarajevo area, Sarajevo, 2001
Kajmaković, Radmila, Narodni običaji.(Folk customs) Journal of the National Museum of BiH in Sarajevo, Ethnology, new series, Vol. XXX/XXXI, Sarajevo, 1978, 43-88.
Ledić, Franjo, Crtice iz okoline Dervente. (Drawings from the Derventa area) Derventa, 1958.
Omerhodžić, Ahmet, Derventa i okolina. (Derventa and environs) Geographical Society of BiH, special edition, Vol. VI, Sarajevo, 1981
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