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Pančevo (Municipality, Serbia)

Панчево

Last modified: 2008-11-08 by ivan sache
Keywords: pancevo | pancsova | pantschowa | starcevo | crosses: 2 (red) |
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[Flag of Pancevo]

Flag of Pančevo - Image by Ivan Sarajčić, 18 November 2006 - coat of arms after the municipal website


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Presentation of Pančevo

Pančevo (Hungarian, Pancsova ; German, Pantschowa ; Romanian, Panciova) is a town (72,717 inhabitants in 1990) and municipality (127,100 inh. in 1994; 757 sq. km) located in southern Banat, on the left bank of the river Tamiš, close to its confluency with the Danube. The municipality is made of the towns of Pančevo and Kacarevo and of the villages of Banatski Brestovac, Banatsko Novo Selo, Glogonj, Dolovo, Ivanovo, Jabuka and Omoljica.
Pančevo is an industrial town with an oil refinery, chemical plants, breweries, the Lola-Utva (lit., Wild Duck) aircraft factory etc. The Petrohemija complex was bombed by the NATO Air Force in 1999, causing a strong pollution of the town; in November 2006, the complex released a reddish cloud loaded with benzene and sulphur, causing an emergency situation. According to local activists, pollution by the obsolete factories of Pančevo is constant. No solution seems to be found (that is nobody want to pay 300 millions € for the revamping of the factories) until the privatization of the factories.

The site of Pančevo was settled very early, as shown by archeological findings from the Neolithic, Dacian and Slavic (IX-Xth century) periods. The town appeared in the IX th century as Panuka, then ruled by the Arpadović lineage. The Talovac's Charter, dated 1430, lists the town as Panchal. The famous Turkish traveler Evliya Chelebi described in 1660 the fortified town of Panzova, under Ottoman rule but mostly inhabited by Christians. From 1522 to 1716, Pancevo belonged to the Sanjak (district) of Timişoara. The town was conquered by the Austro-Hungarians in 1716 and allocated to the bicephalous monarchy in 1718, by the Treaty of Požarevac. In 1720-1722, Serbs moved from the region of Timişoara to Pančevo, where they built the Upper Town; Germans from the upper valley of Rhine came to Pančevo, where they formed the Lower Town. Romanians arrived in 1767 and lived in both towns. The Upper and Lower Towns were merged in 1974.
The economic development of Pančevo started in the beginning of the XVIIIth century, with the building of grain warehouses (1724), saltworks (1718), a brewery (1722), a general hospital (1833), a town hall (1833-1838), army barracks and headquarters, banks, lighthouses at the river, schools etc... When joining the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, Pancevo was much more developed than most of Serbia. Pančevo was liberated from the German occupation on 6 October 1944. The town was rebuilt and new boroughs were set up; there are plans to develop the town on the right bank of the Tamiš.

Source: Unofficial Pančevo website

Ivan Sache, 24 November 2006


Flag of Pančevo

Residents of Pančevo blocked the town industrial zone today to protest against excessive air pollution. The municipal flag of Pančevo was seen in the streets. It is a white flag with the coat of arms in the middle. Unlike most Serbian municipal flags, it is not a banner of arms.
The municipal coat of arms clearly recalls the strategic location of the fortress of Pančevo on the river Tamiš.

Ivan Sarajčić & Ivan Sache, 18 November 2006


Former flag of Pančevo (Pancsova)?

[Pancevo, 1941-1947]

Former flag of Pančevo - Image by István Molnár, 24 September 2002

According to Széll (Városaink neve, címere és lobogója [szs41]), the former flag of Pančevo is vertically divided red-green with a vertical white stripe in the middle and two horizontal white stripes.
Széll's book shows the flags of several towns formerly held by Hungary. The book is our only source of these flags, but it is not clear as to what period these flags were used as claimed by the book. I doubt very much that they were used during the time of Austria-Hungary. It seems very much more like they were designed in 1941 - but it is not even clear weather the designs shown in Széll's book are just proposals or if they were ever prescribed in any formal way and after all whether they were used. At least for the moment, I believe that the former flag was in use at most in years 1941-1944.

Željko Heimer, 9 October 2005


Local community of Starčevo

[Flag of Starcevo]

Flag of Starčevo - Image by Ivan Sarajčić, 22 August 2007

Starčevo (7,615 inhabitants in 2002) is a local community (mesna zajednica, the smallest territorial unit in Serbia) in the municipality of Pančevo.
The name of the town means "the place of the old man" in Serbian. The Starčevo Culture, an ancient civilization on the Danube river which dates back to 6000 BC, is named after this town because of archaeological excavations carried out there. The Starčevo culture ceased to exist around 4200 BC with the invasions of the Pelasgians.
The Starčevo culture was a widespread early Neolithic archaeological culture from Eastern Europe and South to the Balkans. It dates to the between the seventh and fifth millennia BC. Starčevo is a site located on the north bank of the Danube, opposite Belgrade in Serbia. It represents the earliest settled farming society in the area, although hunting and gathering still provided a significant portion of the inhabitants' diet. The pottery is usually coarse but finer fluted and painted vessels later emerged. A type of bone spatula, perhaps for scooping flour, is a distinctive artefact. The Körös is a similar culture in Hungary named after the River Körös with a closely related culture which also used footed vessels but fewer painted ones. Both have given their names to the wider culture of the region in that period. Parallel and closely related cultures also include the Maritza in Bulgaria, Criş in Romania and the pre-Sesklo in Greece. It was superseded by the Vinča culture in Serbia.

As shown on the town website, the flag of Starčevo is a square yellow flag with, in the middle, a blue horizontal stripe representing the Danube and two red crosses in the upper left and right canton, respectively, representing the two Christian communities, Orthodox and Catholic, living together peacefully in the town.
As confirmed by Petar Andrejić from the Starčevo community administration, the flag and arms, designed by Dragomir Acović on behalf of the "White Eagle" society, were adopted in 2004.

Milan Jovanović, 23 August 2007