Nikola Spasić ( sr-cyr, Никола Спасић; 2 November 1838 in

Belgrade Belgrade is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin, Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. T ...

– 28 November 1916 in

Corfu Corfu ( , ) or Kerkyra (, ) is a Greece, Greek island in the Ionian Sea, of the Ionian Islands; including its Greek islands, small satellite islands, it forms the margin of Greece's northwestern frontier. The island is part of the Corfu (regio ...

) was a Serbian businessman, benefactor,

humanitarian Humanitarianism is an ideology centered on the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotiona ...

, and one of the leaders of the

Serbian Chetnik Organization The Serbian Revolutionary Organization () or Serbian Chetnik Organization (Српска четничка организација / Srpska četnička organizacija) was a paramilitary revolutionary organization with the aim of liberation of Old Se ...

Old Serbia Old Serbia () is a Serbian historiographical term that is used to describe the territory that according to the dominant school of Serbian historiography in the late 19th century formed the core of the Serbian Empire in 1346–71. The term does ...

and

Macedonia Macedonia (, , , ), most commonly refers to: * North Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe, known until 2019 as the Republic of Macedonia * Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity * Macedonia (Greece), a former administr ...

. He was the president of the Board of Directors of the Belgrade Exchange in 1903 and the initiator-founder-builder of the Nikola Spasić Endowment Building in Belgrade, which had a slightly bigger founding capital then the

Nobel Foundation The Nobel Foundation () is a private institution founded on 29 June 1900 to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes. The foundation is based on the last will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. It also holds Nobel Sym ...

. He also initiated and financed the construction of four major edifices in

Knez Mihailova Street Knez Mihailova Street (, officially: ) is the main pedestrian and shopping zone in Belgrade, and is protected by law as one of the oldest and most valuable landmarks of the city. Named after Mihailo Obrenović III, Prince of Serbia, it features ...

, the third of which were built immediately after the First Balkan War, such as the Grand Passage, designed by Nikola Nestorović."Трећи сектор у Србији - стање и перспективе" у: ''Непрофитни сектор у Србији и Црној Гори'', Београд, 2002.

Biography

Nikola Spasić was born to a poor Serbian family which moved to Belgrade from the countryside during the 1804-1813

First Serbian Uprising The First Serbian Uprising (; sr-Cyrl, Први српски устанак; ) was an uprising of Serbs in Orašac (Aranđelovac), Orašac against the Ottoman Empire from 14 February 1804 to 7 October 1813. The uprising began as a local revolt ...

against the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

. Spasić trained as an artisan and merchant before opening a leather workshop and store in 1865 alongside his brother. The shop manufactured and sold ''opanci'' (

Opanak Opanci are traditional peasant shoes worn in Southeastern Europe (specifically Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and also Romania and Albania). The attributes of the opanci (name in plural) are a con ...

), a Balkan peasant footwear similar to the

moccasin A moccasin is a shoe, made of deerskin or other soft leather, consisting of a sole (made with leather that has not been "worked") and sides made of one piece of leather, stitched together at the top, and sometimes with a vamp (additional pane ...

which was widely accepted as part of the Serbian national costume and was worn in the 19th century both in the city and the village. By the time of the

Kingdom of Serbia The Kingdom of Serbia was a country located in the Balkans which was created when the ruler of the Principality of Serbia, Milan I of Serbia, Milan I, was proclaimed king in 1882. Since 1817, the Principality was ruled by the Obrenović dynast ...

acquired full independence in 1878, Spasić had accumulated enough wealth to retire. The value of the property that the Endowment of Nikola Spasić had at its disposal following his death was close to that of the

. In Belgrade, Spasić is remembered for his professionalism and humanitarian work. For the architectural design of his buildings, Spasić developed a reputation for selecting the most accomplished Serbian architects. His buildings featured the latest technical devices, the construction material of the highest quality, with the entire building inventory procured from European centres. Nikola Spasić's will and last testament, drawn up in 1912, expressly forbade the sale of any of his Belgrade buildings. Instead, it called for their exploitation in order to raise funds and therefore finance all the undertakings of the Endowment of Nikola Spasić. The main goal of the endowment set by Spasić was the economic development of the nation. Only a few days before his death on the island of Corfu, where he arrived as a war refugee, Spasić revealed in a letter, his hope that he would return one day to liberated Belgrade, accompanied by Viennese architect

Konstantin Jovanović Konstantin Jovanović ( sr-cyr, Константин Јовановић; ; 13 January 1849 – 15 February 1923) was a Serbian and Bulgarian architect known for providing the original designs of the National Assembly of Bulgaria and National Asse ...

, with whom he planned to engage to design new remarkable edifices.

References

Sources

* * * 19th-century Serbian people 20th-century Serbian people People from the Principality of Serbia Businesspeople from Belgrade Serbian businesspeople 1838 births 1916 deaths Serbian military personnel killed in World War I Serbian Chetnik Organization {{Serbia-bio-stub

Biography

See also

References

Sources