Alexander I, also known as Alexander the Unifier served as a prince regent of the Kingdom of
Serbia from 1914 and later became King of Yugoslavia from 1921 to 1934.
Early life Alexander Karađorđević was born on 16 December
1888 in Principality of Montenegro as the fourth child of Petar Karađorđević and
Princess Zorka of Montenegro. Despite enjoying support from the Russian Empire, at the time
of Alexander's birth and early childhood, the House of Karađorđević was in a political
exile of sorts with different family members scattered all over Europe unable to return
to Serbia that recently got transformed from a principality into a kingdom under Obrenovićs
who ruled with strong support from Austria-Hungary. The antagonism between the two rival royal
houses was such that after the assassination of Prince Mihailo Obrenović in 1868, the
Obrenovićs resorted to making constitutional changes, specifically proclaiming the Karađorđevićs
banned from entering Serbia and stripping them of civic rights.
Alexander was only two when his mother Princess Zorka died in 1890 from complications while
giving birth to his younger brother Andrija who also died only 23 days after being born.
Alexander spent his childhood in Montenegro, however, in 1894 his widower father took the
four children, including Alexander, to Geneva where the young man completed his elementary
education. Alongside his older brother George, he continued his schooling at the imperial
Page Corps in St Petersburg, Russian Empire. In 1903 while young George and Alexander were
off getting schooled abroad, their father Petar along with a slew of conspirators managed
to pull off a bloody coup d'état in the Kingdom of Serbia known as May Overthrow in which
King Alexander I Obrenović and his consort Queen Draga were murdered and viciously dismembered.
House of Karađorđević thus retook the Serbian throne after forty five years and Alexander's
58-year-old father became King Peter I of Serbia, prompting George's and Alexander's
arrival to Serbia to continue their studies. Becoming crown prince
One of the key moments in Prince Alexander's life occurred in 27 March 1909 when his older
brother Crown Prince George publicly renounced his claim to the throne after strong pressure
from political circles in Serbia. George was long considered unfit to rule by many in Serbia
including powerful political and military figures such as prime minister Nikola Pašić,
as well as high-ranking officers Dragutin "Apis" Dimitrijević and Petar Živković
who didn't appreciate the young man's impulsive nature and unstable, incident-prone personality.
George was the perpetrator of the tragic incident in 1909 when he kicked his servant Kolaković
in the stomach, causing the unfortunate man to die from the injury several days later.
The incident served as the final straw. It grew into a huge scandal in the Serbian public
as well as in the Austro-Hungarian press, which reported extensively on it, and 21-year-old
Prince George was forced into renouncing his claim to the throne.
In 1910 Prince Alexander nearly died from stomach typhus and was left with stomach problems
for the rest of his life. In Belgrade on 8 June 1922 he married Princess
Maria of Romania, who was a daughter of King Ferdinand of Romania. They had three sons:
Crown Prince Peter, and Princes Tomislav and Andrej.
Balkan Wars and World War I
In the First Balkan War in 1912, as commander of the First Army, Crown Prince Alexander
fought victorious battles in Kumanovo and Bitola, and later in 1913, during the Second
Balkan War, the Battle of Bregalnica. After the Turks' withdrawal from Skopje, Prince
Alexander was met with flowers by the local people, according to tradition. It was then
when he asked the girl who handed him the flowers, "Who are you?", and slapped her when
the girl responded she was Bulgarian. In the aftermath of the Second Balkan War
Prince Alexander took sides in the complicated power struggle over how Macedonia should be
administered. In this Alexander bested Col. Dragutin Dimitrijević or "Apis" and in the
wake of this Alexander's father, King Peter, agreed to hand over royal powers to his son.
On 24 June 1914 Alexander became Regent of Serbia.
At the outbreak of World War I he was the nominal supreme commander of the Serbian army
- true command was in hands of Chief of Staff of Supreme Headquarters - position held by
Stepa Stepanović, Radomir Putnik, Petar Bojović and Živojin Mišić. The Serbian army distinguished
itself in the battles at Cer and at the Drina in 1914, scoring victories against the invading
Austro-Hungarian forces and evicting them from the country.
In 1915 the Serbian army with the aged King Peter and Crown Prince Alexander suffered
many losses being attacked from all directions by the alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary
and Bulgaria. It withdrew through the gorges of Montenegro and northern Albania to the
Greek island of Corfu, where it was reorganized. After the army was regrouped and reinforced,
it achieved a decisive victory on the Macedonian Front, at Kajmakcalan. The Serbian army carried
out a major part in the final Allied breakthrough on the Macedonian Front in the autumn of 1918.
King of Yugoslavia
On 1 December 1918, in a prearranged set piece, Alexander, as regent, received a delegation
of the People's Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, an address was read out by one
of the delegation, and Alexander made an address in acceptance. This was considered to be the
birth of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
In 1921, on the death of his father, Alexander inherited the throne of the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes, which from its inception was colloquially known both in the Kingdom
and the rest of Europe alike as Yugoslavia. On 6 January 1929, in response to the political
crisis triggered by the assassination of Stjepan Radić, King Alexander abolished the Constitution,
prorogued the Parliament and introduced a personal dictatorship. He also changed the
name of the country to Kingdom of Yugoslavia and changed the internal divisions from the
33 oblasts to nine new banovinas on 3 October. In the same month, he tried to banish by decree
the use of Serbian Cyrillic to promote the exclusive use of Latin alphabet in Yugoslavia.
In 1931, Alexander decreed a new Constitution which transferred executive power to the King.
Elections were to be by universal male suffrage. The provision for a secret ballot was dropped
and pressure on public employees to vote for the governing party was to be a feature of
all elections held under Alexander's constitution. Furthermore, the King would appoint half the
upper house directly, and legislation could become law with the approval of one of the
houses alone if it were also approved by the King.
Assassination
After the Ustaše's Velebit uprising in November 1932, Alexander said across an intermediary
to the Italian government: If you want to have serious riots in Yugoslavia or cause
a regime change, you need to kill me. Shoot at me and be sure you have finished me off,
because that's the only way to make changes in Yugoslavia.
As a result of the previous deaths of three family members on a Tuesday, Alexander refused
to undertake any public functions on that day of the week. On Tuesday, 9 October 1934,
however, he had no choice, as he was arriving in Marseilles to start a state visit to France,
to strengthen the two countries' alliance in the Little Entente. While Alexander was
being slowly driven in a car through the streets along with French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou,
a gunman — the Bulgarian from Macedonia Vlado Černozemski, stepped from the street
and shot the King twice and the chauffeur with a Mauser C96 semiautomatic pistol. Alexander
died in the car, slumped backwards in the seat, with his eyes open. Barthou was badly
wounded in the arm but died later due to inadequate medical treatment.
It was one of the first assassinations captured on film; the shooting occurred straight in
front of the cameraman, who was only feet away at the time. While the exact moment of
shooting was not captured on film, the events leading to the assassination and the immediate
aftermath were. The body of the chauffeur became jammed against the brakes of the car,
allowing the cameraman to continue filming from within inches of the King for a number
of minutes afterwards. The assassin was a member of the Bulgarian
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and an experienced marksman. Immediately after
assassinating King Alexander, Chernozemski was cut down by the sword of a mounted French
policeman, and then beaten by the crowd. By the time he was removed from the scene, the
King was already dead. The IMRO was a political organization that fought for secession of
Vardar Macedonia from Yugoslavia and becoming again part of the Bulgarian Kingdom. The leader
of the organization in that time was Ivan Mihailov.[2] IMRO worked in alliance with
the Croatian Ustaše group led by Ante Pavelić. Chernozemski and three Croatian accomplices
had travelled to France from Hungary via Switzerland. After the assassination, Chernozemski's fellows
were arrested by French police. Although there is no final evidence that either Italian dictator
Benito Mussolini or the Hungarian government were involved in the plot, the public opinion
in Yugoslavia was that Italy had been crucial in the planning and directing of the assassination.
The incident was later used by Yugoslavia as an argument to counter the Croatian attempts
of secession and Italian and Hungarian revisionism. The film record of Alexander I's assassination
remains one of the most notable pieces of newsreel in existence, alongside the film
of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia's coronation, the funerals of Queen Victoria of the United
Kingdom and Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The film was later revealed to have been manipulated in order to give the audience the impression
that the assassination had been captured on film. Three identical gunshot sounds were
added to the film afterwards, when in reality Chernozemski fired his handgun over ten times,
killing or wounding a total of 15 people. The exact moment of assassination was never
filmed. Just hours later, Chernozemski died of the injuries inflicted on him by the crowd
in the chaos. The following day, the body of King Alexander
I was transported back to the port of Split in Croatia by the Yugoslav destroyer JRM Dubrovnik.
After a huge funeral in Belgrade attended by about 500,000 people and many leading European
statesmen, Alexander was interred in the Memorial Church of St. George, which had been built
by his father. The Holy See gave special permission to bishops Aloysius Stepinac, Antun Akšamović,
Dionisije Njaradi and Gregorij Rožman to attend the funeral in an Orthodox church.
As his son Peter II was still a minor, Alexander's first cousin Prince Paul took the regency
of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Unknown to the public, King Alexander I had
a large heraldic eagle tattooed over his chest. Issue
Ancestors In popular culture
The song "Don Juan" by British synth duo Pet Shop Boys contains the phrase "King Zog's
back from holiday, Marie Lupescu's grey and King Alexander is dead in Marseilles".
Honours and awards References and notes
Notes
^ "The first central committee of IMRO. Memoirs of d-r Hristo Tatarchev", Materials for the
Macedonian liberation movement, book IX, Sofia, 1928, p. 102, поредица "Материяли
за историята на македонското освободително движение"
на Македонския научен институт на ВМРО, воден от българския
академик проф. Любомир Милетич, книга IX, София,
1928. Farley, Brigit, "King Aleksandar and
the Royal Dictatorship in Yugoslavia," in Bernd J. Fischer, Balkan Strongmen: Dictators
and Authoritarian Rulers of Southeastern Europe, 51-86.
Bibliography Marković, Marko. Povijest Crne legije: Jure
i Boban. Passmore, Kevin. Women, gender, and fascism
in Europe, 1919-45. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-6083-4.
External links Newsreel footage of the Assassination of King
Alexander The Official Website of the Serbian Royal
Family Royal Mausoleum Oplenac