The directory «Plots»
Petrovic (Ïåòðîâèž) Veljko
(1884—1967)
A writer. Graduated from the Grammar School in Sombor, and after that learned law in Budapest. In 1906, after he had listened to all his university subjects, he joined the editorial staff in "Srbobran" from Zagreb. In 1908 he moved to Sremska Mitrovica to become the editor of „Sloboda“, and in 1909 to edit "Srpska riječ" from Sarajevo. In 1912 he emigrated to Belgrade and worked as a war-correspondent for "Branik" from Novi Sad and "Narod" from Sarajevo. Between 1914 and 1915 he had been in a headquarters of Moravska division of II call, until he was invited to Niš to the Yugoslav Board to be one of the editors of "Savremena pitanja". After he had crossed Albania he was sent to Geneva, to a journalistic advertising agency, where he worked until 1918 on publications regarding Hungary and Hungarians. In 1918 he was chosen a member of the Yugoslav Board. In 1919 he was named an officer in a department of the Ministry of Education for Bačka, Banat and Baranja in Novi Sad, and in 1920 he was transferred to the Ministry in Belgrade. Between 1921 and 1923 he was a head of the minister’s Cabinet, an officer in the Art department, and since 1925 an inspector in the same Ministry.
Petrović started to contribute in 1903 to "Novi Srbobran", writing political articles, reports and translating stories. Since 1905 he started to publish poetry, stories and literary articles and notes in "Brankovo kolo", "Srpski književni glasnik", "Delo", "Savremenik", "Nova iskra", "Bosanska vila" and "Slovenski jug". In 1912 he published a book of songs "Rodoljubive pesme", and in 1914 the book of songs "Na pragu". In the same year he prepared two books of short stories to be published by Matica Srpska and "Napredak", but in the war his scripts were lost. Only in 1920 he started publishing a selection of his short stories, in books: "Bunja i drugi iz Ravangrada", pre-war story-telling, twelve short-stories (1921), "Pomerene savesti", ten short stories (1922), "Tri pripovetke" (1922), "Iskušenje", fifteen short stories (1924). In 1925 the Serbian Literary Cooperative published the selection of Petrović’s short stories (Pripovetke). Petrović wrote about a hundred short stories, and a gret number of articles on literature in "Politika", "Letopis" etc. Petrović edited "Album vojvođanske umetnosti" on the occasion of a hundred years of Matica Srpska and there wrote a summary of Serbian art in a period between the end of the 17th to the 20th century.
On a main assembly of the Reading-Room in December 1933 he was elected an honorary member of it "because of his merits regarding his nation and culture".
Yugoslavia, 1984, Veljko Petrovic
