EAP833/1/5

Geca Kon was the most important Serbian and later Yugoslav publisher at the beginning of the 20th century. Having glorified the victory of the Serbian army, he was imprisoned during the First World War and the books from his bookstore were publicly burnt by the Austro-Hungarian army. In the Second World War, being a Serbian Jew, he was in the camp with his family who were all killed. At certain periods his publishing activity was on a much larger scale compared to all other publishers in Serbia together and many of the most important titles of Serbian literature, history and law were published at the time thanks to him. However, considering his participation in the First World War against the German and his Jewish origin, his publications were massively destroyed during the Second World War when the Germans used him as an example of anti-Jewish propaganda (especially during 1941) and the books from his bookstore were confiscated and transferred to Vienna. During the Second World War his publishing company was taken over by a fascist publishing company "Jugoistok", which when communists came to power became "Prosveta", the most important state publishing company between 1950 and 1990. In this collection of Geca Kon’s legal publications, there are many theoretical and practical editions which either caused great changes in Serbian society and law or they are crucial for theoretical and historical research of the Serbian state and law. Moreover, legal publications described capitalist legal regulation, many authors were proclaimed enemies of the new communist state, so these publications were often proscribed and massively destroyed.

All materials in this period were either acquired by Luka Lazić (1876-1946) or the smaler number of them by Milorad Lazić (1912-1977), the owners of the Library. The majority of the materials were purchased or acquired as a gift between 1930 and 1950 and some of them were overtaken overtaken from the closed monarchist libraries which were later run by the communists. No one made records of the ownership and acquirement at the time, so they cannot be determined for the majority of the materials.

Extent and format of original material: 30 books (items)

This series contains the following 30 files: