Serbian Landowners in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia: The Case of Bogdan Dunđerski

Abstract

Originally from Herzegovina, the Dunđerski family moved to south Hungary, present-day Serbia’s province of Vojvodina, in the seventeenth century. From the 1820s the family’s progress was marked by the enlargement of their landed property. In the early twentieth century the family owned or rented about 26,473 ha of land in Vojvodina. Bogdan Dunđerski (1860–1943), the third generation landowner, was brought up in a mixture of different traditions including the ethic of Serb highlanders of Herzegovina, central-European middle classes and Hungarian nobility. A wealthy landowner, Serb patriot and benefactor, whose political role in the Second World War remains controversial, described himself as: Serb, Christian Orthodox, landowner.