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Not only for children a journey worth: Senj, home of the Red Zora and their gang

A mecca for history fans: the Croatian town of Senj in the Lika-Senj County is not only the oldest town on the upper Adriatic, it is also home to the Nehaj Fortress, the medieval center of the Uskoks. And this is where the famous youth novel by Kurt Kläber, who published “The Red Zora and her gang” under the pseudonym Kurt Held for the first time in 1941, is set.

There is hardly a child who does not know the youth novel The Red Zora and her Gang by Kurt Kläber (1897–1959), who first published it under the pseudonym Kurt Held in 1941.

Kurt Kläber, who was living in exile in Switzerland, undertook a trip to Yugoslavia around 1940, during which he supposedly met Zora and her gang. He is said to have processed his experiences with these young people in his first book for young people, which is recommended for children aged ten and up.

The story is about orphans from the small Croatian coastal town of Senj. Branko, the twelve-year-old son of a traveling violinist and a tobacco worker, loses his mother and has no home. He is suspected of theft and locked up.

But thirteen-year-old Zora, a red-haired girl, frees him. Branko is accepted into the “Bande der Uskoken”, which has united under Zora’s leadership. The town’s citizens treat the destitute children like outcasts, and the high school students, all the sons of respected townspeople, chase them; thefts and property damage are the reactions of the children’s gang.

The children become criminals in order to survive, but within their community they adhere to fixed rules. Their top priority is solidarity.

The book The Red Zora and her gang is famous and has been read millions of times in many languages.

Kirsten Boie writes in her preface to an edition published by Fischer Children’s and Youth Books: “But it’s not just because of the character of Zora that the book is so famous and has actually been read millions of times in many languages worldwide – almost a bit like Harry Potter today!”

“We readers are also interested in the whole Uskoks gang of children, who constantly break the rules of society, steal because the children, who for a variety of reasons have been left alone by their parents, would otherwise have no way of surviving, and share everything; in which everyone shows solidarity and helps each other – even when they are jealous of or dislike each other.”

“We would all like to belong to a group of friends like this, against the rest of the world – but of course without the hardship that welded the Uskoks together,” continues Kirsten Boie in her foreword to the book.

The book for young people refers to the historically documented Uskoks, who had their main base in Senj.

In addition to the exciting account of the adventures of the children’s “gang”, the reader also learns something else: about the life of the Uskoks. This militarily organized group consisted mainly of refugees from various ethnic groups who came from the Ottoman-occupied areas.

The Uskoks (derived from the Slavic word uskočiti, which means “to jump in”) were active as guerrillas between the spheres of interest of the Habsburgs, the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire.

The first Uskoks were probably refugees from Herzegovina who gathered around 1530 in Dalmatia on the properties of the Croatian commander Petar Kružić in the area of the Hungarian fortress Klis near Split and the surrounding area. They were Roman Catholic.

The Uskoks’ traditional costume was based on that of their areas of origin. The trousers, made of white, coarse cloth, were tight up to the knee and somewhat wider at the top. The shirts had wide sleeves embroidered at the edges. The doublet had a double row of buttons. Light strap shoes were worn with the costume, along with a red cap with a crane feather as headgear.

The Uskoks: Masterful sailors and warriors

The Senj Uskoks were armed with a musket, battle axe or mace. They also had a short curved sword (hand shar), a pistol and a knife. Their excellent weapons were of Turkish or Venetian origin and often looted in battle.

When the Ottomans conquered Klis in 1537, the Uskoks moved to Senj, which became their main base from then on. There are said to have been more than a thousand people fit to bear arms who had been driven from their homeland, mostly as a result of the war. They had sworn to take revenge for their devastated homeland and their oppressed peoples, and to do so equally against both Turks and Venetians, always and everywhere.

From Senj, they waged a bitter struggle against both the Ottomans and the Republic of Venice, particularly on the Zadar coast; they also robbed merchant ships of the Republic of Ragusa.

Above Senj is the well-preserved Uskok castle of Nehajgrad, which is now a museum

Above the town of Senj, the well-preserved Uskok castle of Nehajgrad can still be found today. Sports skippers coming by boat from the direction of Novi Vinodolski and sailing south in the channel of the same name can already make out the 16th-century fortress (which can also be seen in the film adaptation of Held’s children’s book) from the water.

 

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Nehajgrad Castle – View from the harbor

During the reconstruction of the fortress in 1965, the remains of the Church of St. Juraj from the 11th to 12th century were found. It was burnt down during a Turkish raid in 1520 and the remains were demolished during the construction of the fortress. During the excavations, the so-called Senj Tablet, a a tablet in Glagolitic script dating from around 1100, which is one of the oldest Croatian written documents.

In 1539, Ivan Lenković became captain of Senj. He reported to the imperial court on the state of the region’s fortifications and advocated the construction of a fortress on Mount Nehaj. After Emperor Ferdinand I provided the funds, construction of the fortress began in 1558. All buildings outside the city of Senj were demolished on Lenković’s orders and the material was used to build the fortress.

The fortress has a square ground plan with a side length of 23.5 m and a height of 18 m. There are 100 embrasures for handguns and eleven embrasures for cannons on the three defensive floors. On the second defensive floor and on the roof platform, there are cantilevered half-towers (échauguette) at all four corners, enabling the flanking of the sides. Inside the fortress, there is a narrow courtyard.

The fortress contains a small exhibition on the history of the Uskoks. It is said that, thanks to their great seafaring skills, equipped with agile, smaller boats, the Uskoks were particularly unbeatable in the wind phases of the bora.

 

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Senj: Uskoks’ Castle Nehajgrad

 

The Uskoks had up to 30 fast sailing ships with up to 50 fighters.

The strong bora wind in the Senj Channel was dreaded by the Venetian captains, as neither large galleys nor warships could offer sufficient resistance. The Uskoks, on the other hand, had up to 30 fast sailing ships with five to twelve pairs of sails and a crew of up to fifty fighters.

Sailing and rowing, mostly at night and often in shallow waters, the Uskoks operated from Pula, Piran and Monfalcone in the north to the Neretva and the Bay of Kotor in the south. Their ships were painted in the “colors of death,” black and red, and their sudden appearance was the terror of all enemy ships at the time.

 

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Senj: Historic sailing ships

Today, Nehaj Fortress is state-owned and serves as a museum and popular excursion destination – for adults interested in history as well as for readers of the book “Die Rote Zora und ihre Bande” (The Red Zora and her gang), who want to see the place of action (and the later film adaptation) for themselves.

Good to know for amateur skippers who want to moor in the port of Senj at one of the guest berths along the inside of the north breakwater: Senj was then, as it is now, considered a place with the highest frequency of bora winds and winds that can reach strengths of more than 12 Bft. (tel. port authority: 053-8811301).

 

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Port of Senj
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