Originalni testament i ključevi srpskog glumca Pavla Vuisića Original testament and keys of Serbian actor Pavle Vuisić
fate of the state and the nation during the tumultuous Serbian history, hav- ing been destroyed and abandoned numerous times, only to emerge from the ashes again. - Luka Lazić was the owner of the library during the First World War. When he joined the Serbian army, out of fear for the survival of the books, Luka sewed several of the most valuable into his overcoat. With the Serbian army and books in his overcoat, he crossed the Albanian Golgotha by foot and arrived in Dur- res. His ship was torpedoed and in the general confusion Luka leapt in- to the sea to save the life of his com- mander. Thus, most of the books he brought with him on his war adven- ture ended up destroyed. However, while in Corfu and in Thessaloniki Luka collected the Serbian refugee press; so emerged the collection of wartime press, one of the largest in the region - Viktor tells us, reveal- ing only part of the interesting fam- ily passion that has been nurtured carefully for two centuries by the Lazić family. - Only the generation of my fa- ther resisted, because my grandfa- ther had put all the books in order. That’s precisely why I dreamt of not burdening the next generation with the family madness, but rather cre- ating an institution out of the li-
brary. I began to form an associa- tion and now there are more than 50 people who support us and who have donated their own libraries - says Viktor. And while we walk through rooms filled with books, Viktor explains to us that most of the holdings of the Li- brary are divided by the continents and countries addressed by the books, while there are also several different collections. Of course, the central collection is the Serbian one, with more than 70,000 publications covering Serbi- an ethnography, history, art, geogra- phy and literature. - We are particularly proud of the Asia and Africa collections. I would claim that these are among the best collections of Asia and Africa in this region. Europe is the largest collec- tion in the library, with large sub-col- lections of all European countries, in particular Russia, France, Germany and England. The collection cover- ing Russia was formed in agreement with several Russian institutions dur- ing separate research trips to 63 prov- inces of the Russian Federation and it contains more than 100,000 pub- lications, with a special collection of maps, brochures and postcards, says Viktor, who continues the passion un- abated by dealing in the search for valuable and rare books.
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