Summary

The present-day municipality of Teočak was created from the southern portion of Ugljevik municipality (as well as some portions of settlements that previously lay in Lopare to the west) following the 1995 Dayton Agreement, being established as a municipality in 1998. The seat of the municipality is in Teočak-Krstac. It is located in Tuzla Canton, within the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Between 1966 and 1973, the most comprehensive nationwide survey of immovable monuments to the NOB to date was carried out under the auspices of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Monuments. However, it was not until 1981 that a summary of this survey list was published (Tihić, 1981). In total, 2,049 immovable properties were recorded on the territory of SR Bosnia & Herzegovina, with 23 being recorded on the territory of Ugljevik municipality in a survey conducted between 17 and 19 August 1970, categorized as follows:

-        Memorial plaques – 12

-        Memorial busts – 2

-        Fountains, wells and cisterns – 0

-        Artistic monuments – 5

-        Marked individual graves and collective graves – 4

-        Cemeteries of Partisan fighters and Victims of Fascist Terror – 0

Although the construction of memorials and monuments continued long after this period (with a wave of monuments being created in the wake of the death of Josip Broz Tito, and continuing throughout the 1980s), no further Republic-level survey of monuments was undertaken before the secession of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Yugoslavia in 1992.

Teočak municipality’s spatial plan for 2016-36 (Općina Teočak, 2019) makes no mention of monuments and memorials to the NOB. In fact, little space is devoted to historical monuments whatsoever, with only three medieval- and one Ottoman-era sites mentioned. Likewise, no sites are recorded in the register maintained for Teočak municipality by the Institute for the Protection and Use of Cultural-Historical and Natural Heritage of Tuzla Canton, which at present contains a total of 16 cultural-historical sites (Zavod za zaštitu i korištenje kulturno-historijskog i prirodnog naslijeđa Tuzlanskog Kantona, n.d.).

In mid 2020, a series of photographs were published on the Facebook page “Teočak u slikama” (“Teočak in pictures”) showing a monument in Teocak-Krstac. These photographs, taken in around 2007 (Džuzdanović, pers. comm. April 2023) show this monument as having been in extremely poor condition at the time. Further research revealed that this was, in fact, a collective grave of fallen fighters and Victims of Fascist Terror (Tihić, 1982).

Ljubomir Kaišarević’s 2019 monograph Drago Handanović: 60 godina umjetničkog oblikovanja documents the realizations of Doboj-based artist Drago Handanović in detail. This includes mentions of a bust of NH Ismet Kapetanović commissioned from Handanović in 1984 for display in the Ismet Kapetanović elementary school (since renamed Teočak elementary school).

No other evidence of any plaques or similar forms of memorial ever having existed on the territory of present-day Teočak municipality could be found during the course of research.

Map

Key

(precise coordinates can be obtained by contacting the author

Resources