page_title: Belgrade Fortress
section_title: Words War II
hierarchical_section_title: Belgrade Fortress / Archaeology / Words War II
caption_attribution_description: Српски / srpski: Остаци капије Карла VI на доњем Калемегдану.
context_page_description: Belgrade Fortress, consists of the old citadel and Kalemegdan Park on the confluence of the River Sava and Danube, in an urban area of modern Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of Stari Grad. Belgrade Fortress was declared a Monument of Culture of Exceptional Importance in 1979, and is protected by the Republic of Serbia. It is the most visited tourist attraction in Belgrade, with Skadarlija being the second. Since the admission is free, it is estimated that the total number of visitors is over 2 million yearly.
context_section_description: Already in April 1941, professor and major Johann von Reiswitz was appointed to the Referat for the Protection of the Cultural Values in Serbia. He saved numerous cultural objects in Serbia, which won him praise even from some Serbian historians after the war. On 20 October 1941 the Lower Town was fenced on his orders of keeping and protecting the fortress. He also began archaeological digging. However, the right to dig in the fortress was asked from both the pseudo-scientific organization Ahnenerbe and the Main Work Group Southeast of the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce. Pressured financially and politically, von Reiswitz felt he must side with one of them, so he arranged the participation of Ahnenerbe with organization's head Walther Wüst in October 1941. Based on this, collaborationist Minister for Education and Religion Velibor Jonić issued the "permit on monopoly" to Ahnenerbe's Secretary General Wolfram Sievers in February 1942.
  Austrian prehistorian Friedrich Holste was selected to conduct the survey, but he was killed in May 1942 near Kharkiv, Ukraine, before reaching Belgrade. He was replaced with Wilhelm Unverzagt, director of the Berlin's Museum for Prehistory and Early History. Joined by Sievers and Herbert Jankuhn,  Heinrich Himmler's close associate, Unverzagt began targeted digging, searching for the material proof to confirm the German idea of transforming Belgrade into Prinzeugenstadt. He specifically searched for the monumental gate at the entry into the Lower Town, built during the Nicolas Doxat's rebuilding of Belgrade under the orders of Prince Eugene of Savoy in the 1720s and 1730s. The gate was named after the Holy Roman Emperor from that period, Charlies VI. Already on 15 July 1941, secretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior Wilhelm Stuckart sent memo, asking for Belgrade to be transformed into the "Reich's Fortress". It was to be connected military with the copper and gold Bor mines and the Danube's Iron Gates gorge, to create the Banat area protection zone. This zone was intended to become Eugenia, or Prinz Eugen's District, where Danube Swabians were to settle and expand.
  The digging lasted through 1942 and 1943, when it was stopped after the Allied bombing of Belgrade began. By 1943, the Germans completely rebuilt the Gate of Charles VI, in greatest detail. Reconstruction included the cartouche with the initials of the emperor on the capital from the outer side, and the supposed coat-of-arms of never-existing Tribalia, on the inner side (boar with an arrow pierced through the head). As the motive of this coat-of-arms appeared in medieval Serbian seals and was adopted as part of the Serbian coat-of-arms after First Serbian Uprising in 1804, it was meant to show the incorporation of Serbia into the western empire. The gate was damaged already during the heavy Allied Easter bombing in April 1944.
  It is not known was Ahnenerbe searching for something specifically or just wanted to falsify the route by which Aryans reached Germany from Middle East. Some surviving documents show that they discovered remains of Celtic and Gothic settlements, a trench from the Roman period and relics from the Austrian rule after the conquest of Eugene of Savoy. Some sources claim that after the bombing started, documentation and part of the artifacts were transported to Lebus, in Germany, and are considered to be lost. Others claim that the entire material was stored in the Belgrade City Museum. What is known for sure is that during the "terrain cleaning" in 1941-1942, the Germans completely destroyed the foundations of the Austrian artillery barrack built in the 1723-1736 period.
caption: Gate of Charles VI.
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