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The roads have long resounded with the echo of wheels from luxury carriages that carried emperors, kings, church dignitaries, nobility, landowners, hunters, merry wedding parties and pathetic characters among the local gentry. After World War II, elegant coaches began to disappear together with large estates, and with them mustachioed coachmen called paradeši, who, as told by art historian Bela Duraci, "disappeared together with the social class they faithfully served, having lost their feather, attire, vitality and youth."
The black and yellow lacquered fiacres with leather rooftops were hidden away into dark and dusty sheds where they remained almost completely forgotten. And then, a few decades ago, they were once again taken out into the light of day to shine with a fresh brilliance. |
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Then came wedding parties with horses and fiacres; one-and-two-pair teams of snow-white Lipizzaners with swan-like necks. Then on Sundays and holidays, fiacre festivals and competitions in coach- handling skills could be enjoyed in many towns. As if on a throne, coachmen on their high seats, with reins in their hands, are again collaborating with the stately stallions and slender mares...
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According to the chronicles, the first parade vehicles – a two-horse carriage – was manufactured in Hungary in the fifteenth century in a place called Koc. Hence the name kočije (carriage). This first three-horse "yellow and light Hungarian carriage was allegedly an invention of King Matthias Corvinus. In such a carriage he travelled from Budapest to Vienna with "incredible speed of one hundred-thousand paces a day, which makes 75 kilometers". At that time, very skillful coachmen appeared on the scene. Records say that in 1476, during a meeting between King Matthias Corvinus and his then fiancée Beatrice at Szekesfehervar (Stoni Beograd) "Her coachmen were dressed in velvet with golden buttons adorning their attire".
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Another preserved record states that the infamous Lucrezia Borgia requested from her brother-in-law, the church dignitary Ippolito d’Este, who had returned to Italy from Hungary, to lend her a "light and swift yellow vehicle"... A century later in Germany there appeared the luxury coach, the so-called behangener wagen – 'suspensioned cart' that dispensed with shaking! In the seventeenth century in England, coaches were made with springs, something that with time skilled master craftsmen would bring to perfection with the almost universally adopted name of 'victoria' fiacre. Similar carriages were also being made in Spain, Austria, France, Russia and other countries. At the Saint Fiacre Hotel in Paris, gentlemen took hackney carriages for pleasure rides and to travel around town, hence the name for these vehicles – fiacre!
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Parade carriages and fiacres in our country appeared in the mid- 18th century, as seen from the 1756 copper engraving of the Hopovo Monastery depicting a six-horse closed carriage carrying Archbishop Pavle Nenadović on a visit to the monastery.
According to Bogdan T. Stanojev, the first workshop (factory plant) of carriages and fiacres in Novi Sad was set up by Matija Rajh, originally from Crvenka, in 1880. |
Rajh won a gold meal at the London exhibition for his victoria fiacre in 1908. In 1906, Karlo Lebherc joined Matija. The two sold their products throughout southern Hungary and in all the Balkan countries. Thus, in 1913, they turned out 300 different-type carriages. Blacksmith Mladen Moga, cartwright Jožef Sečkar, and varnisher and upholsterer Fišer, who perfected their skills in Vienna and Pest, also opened a workshop to manufacture fiacres in Novi Sad in 1906. Among their products were two-wheel carts, the chaise, vehicles for hunting, chariots, different-type victoria fiacres, even vis-à-vis carriages, and fiacre-shaped sleds…
From mid-19th century through the 1950s, Sombor was a town of fiacres. Fiacre drivers would await their rides in clusters at squares and at the railroad station. The group outside the Sloboda Hotel alone numbered twenty-seven fiacres! This was where city authorities, in 1910, planted 27 trees to provide shade for the horses and their drivers.
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Jovan Djuran of Sombor, one of the best leather craftsmen in the country, made harnesses of natural yellow leather for the four-horse carriage of Josip Broz Tito. Tito then made a present of this brilliant piece of handwork to British Queen Elizabeth II. Jovan’s son, Nikola, continued in his father’s footsteps; he has his own web site and manufactures leather equipment for horses on order by Internet!
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There is only one professional hackney carriage driver still operating in Sombor today. His name is Ilija Mirković. It is believed, however, that there are perhaps more than 100 used fiacre-type carriages in Sombor, owned by private persons, that need restoration. This is the reason why Aleksandar Nedeljković has opened a shop in this town that he named "Remake" – to restore such carriages. Aleksandar has already restored several fiacres, which, as the song goes, "wander the street, carrying a couple in love"…
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The former golden age of fiacres is returning on a grand scale. Like in the myth about the Phoenix that is reborn from the ashes.
With slender wings bumpers, greased axles, upholstery and polished lanterns, luxury bodyshells – these black old ladies – victoria fiacres – continue unrivaled as regards prestige, easygoing leisure, dauntless rivalry between the coachmen, and wedding parties riding on Sundays in the open sky…. |
With their irresistible charm their wheels will continue to roll worldwide for a long time to come. Vienna, Madrid and Pest; Sombor, Šabac, Srbobran... |
