Telephone: (+381 21) 881-757 
Address:
Arhiv u Sremskim Karlovcima, Trg Branka Radičevića 17, 21000 Sremski Karlovci,
Serbia
History
The creation of the Archives is related to one of the most important historical
events in the history of the Serbian nation of the modern period, the Great
Migration of the Serbs of 1690, led by the Patriarch Arsenije III Carnojevic.
That is when a part of the Serbian hierarchy and people brought some books,
sacral inventory, Charters of the Serbian medieval rulers, sindjelijas
(orders), berats (Sultan’s Charters) and other documents from the Balkan part
of the Ottoman Empire to the Habsburg Monarchy.
This documentation core was further extended by the correspondence that
Patriarch Arsenije III and his successors had with secular, ecclesiastic and
military institutions and individuals in the Habsburg Monarchy, Serbia, Russia
and other countries, as representatives of state, church and school autonomy,
or as private individuals. During the Second World War, the Archives were
closed by German and Ustasha authorities and partly damaged. At the request of
the Serbian Academy of Sciences, Holy Sinod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox
Church gave ,, the Metropolinates and Consistory in Sremski Karlovci for
keeping and definite organizing”, for their use for scholarly purposes on 4
July, 1949. The Academy procured financial means, staff and fulfilled the
conditions for making this possible. It also secured the return of the 81st
Charter from Vienna and placed the documents of the Archives of the Magistrate
of Karlovci and Karlovci Grammar School, which were kept in inadequate and
insecure places, in the Archives of Karlovci. It received some of the documents
and sources as gifts from the citizens, it bought some and it microfilmed most
of the documents of the Dalmatian Eparchy found in the Historic Archives of
Zadar.
The archival sources gathered in such manner in the Archives of Serbian Academy
of Arts and Sciences in Karlovci chronologically date back from the mid
sixteenth century until the seventies of the twentieth century, with references
to farther past. They were written by people of different professions, in
Serbian (and its different variants), German, Latin, Russian-Slovene,
Hungarian, Italian, Greek, Romanian and other European languages. Regarding the
content, these are petitions, appeals, reports, memoranda, protocols,
contracts, testaments, correspondence, censuses etc. The documents are still
being sorted out, put into protective boxes, preserved and restored from moist
and other damages. For the time being, it is classified into forty-four funds
and ten minor collections. The Archives has almost three million documents
today. For most of them there are original or afterwards made registries,
regestas, card files of individuals or summary catalogues. All in all, these
documents are exceptional sources for political, cultural and economic history
of the Serbian people in the Habsburg Monarchy, especially regarding church and
religious life; schools, education, literature, art and various relations of
Serbs with different Euro-Asian people. Ilarion and Dimitrije Ruvarac, Radoslav
M. Grujuc, Mita Kostic, Dejan Medakovic, Vasilije Krestic, Slavko Gavrilovic,
Nikola Gavrilovic – are some of the great researchers who wrote their books,
studies and articles based on the sources of the Archives or who published it
in magazines and thematic collections of papers.
The Archives of Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Sremski Karlovci is the
first archives organized in a modern way in modern Serbian history. The first
known inventory dates back to 1719. The Archives also has a library with over
2500 books in it.