Kosta Vujić

Kosta Vujić (Serbian Cyrillic: Коста Вујић; Zemun, Austria-Hungary, 1 May 1829 — Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbia, 26 March 1909) was a professor of German at the First Belgrade Gymnasium and one of the most influential and distinguished figures of the 19th century Serbia.He is credited to have influenced a whole generation of students who achieved great prominence in Serbia in the late 19th- and early 20-century. A public school is named after him in Zemun

Biography

He was born in 1829 in Zemun, where he finished Serbian and German grammar schools. In Sremski Karlovci, he attended five grades of high school, and completed the final year at the First Belgrade Gymnasium. In addition, he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the Visoka škola, and the Faculty of Law at the Belgrade Lyceum.

In November 1857 he took his tenure at the First Belgrade Gymnasium. During his first year semestar at teaching in Belgrade from 1857-1858 he was in the company of well-known Serbian professors

Kosta Vujić was a friend of politician Jovan Ristić, and an editor of Srpske novine(1860 1865) where Miloš Popović published a large number of articles in the newspaper. For a while, Vujić also collaborated with Milan Đakov Miličević's magazine Škola (School). He translated the book entitled "History of George Kastriotić."

When he was teaching Serbian in Belgrade, a former student of his left notes about Kosta Vujić in his memoirs, dealing with his character and qualities. Kosta was seen from the outside: "Small stature, bumpy, bloated, fat, wide mouth, which covered, wide gray mustache yellowed under the nose from tobacco." And when it comes to his character: "By the way, concerning Vujić, it is worth telling the truth, was a man of kindness and innocence." As a teacher: "Kosta Vujić did not have great professorial ambitions. He was lenient towards learning and success of his students, only if they did not scare him. But that is why he was a phenomenal gourmand" and a most kind, eccentric and iconic personality

He was a bohemian and a great gourmand and had lunch at four different inns every day. He ate soup at the "Russian Tsar"; beef at "Kolarac", stew at "Balkana" and roast beef with a glass of wine at "Paris"or in "Greater Serbia."

At his own request, he retired in April 1889, as a lecturer at the Second Belgrade Gymnasium. Sava IV degree. Professor Kosta Vujić, who never married, and was known for his good appetite, died one afternoon in his apartment. The police informed the Belgrade municipality and a list of his belongings was made "since no one died anywhere". He was buried in 1909 at the Belgrade New Cemetery, in the tomb he erected during his own lifetime.

Famous students of Professor Kosta Vujić

Professor Kosta Vujić was close to his students. One of his statements at the end of high school term just before he retired was:

Nešto mi govori da će se u budućnosti o meni znati samo po tome što sam bio profesor sjajnih budućih imena. (Something tells me that in the future, people will know about me only because I was a professor of great future names.)

It was his last generation that was remembered by a constellation of students who later became famous in their own right.Among others, his students were: Jovan Cvijić, Jaša Prodanović, Ljubomir Stojanović, Mihailo Petrović Alas, Pavle Popović, Milorad Mitrović and in earlier years he taught Pera Todorovic.

Professor Kosta Vujić's hat

Reading the text of academician Mihailo Petrović-Alas, who published Ošišani jež in 1938 on the occasion of the centenary of The First Men's Gymnasium in Belgrade in 1938, Milovan Vitezovićset out to research that famous generations. That is how the script for the TV drama was created in 1971, and in 1983 a novel entitled Professor Kosta Vujić's Hat was published, a film was released under the same title in 2012,and a school textbook came out in 2015.

Legacy

Osnovna škola "Kosta Vujić" (Public School "Kosta Vujić") is named after him in Zemun

References

• Translated and adapted from Serbian Wikipedia: https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosta_Vuji%C4%87

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