Kula (Serbian Cyrillic: Кула) is a town and municipality in the West Bačka District of Vojvodina, Serbia. The town Kula has a Serb ethnic majority and a population of 26,867, while the Kula municipality has a population of 43,101.
In Serbian, the town is known as Kula (Кула); in Rusyn as Кула, in Hungarian as Kúla, in Croatian as Kula, in German as Kula or Wolfsburg, and in Turkish as Kula.
The name Kula means "tower" in Turkish and Serbian. In the 16th-17th century, a tower with Ottoman military garrison existed at this location, hence the name of the town. However it cannot be said for sure whether Ottoman Turks or local Serbs gave this name to the town.
In the middle of the 17th century, during Ottoman administration, two settlements with this name were mentioned - Gornja Kula and Donja Kula. These settlements were part of the Ottoman Sanjak of Segedin and were populated by ethnic Serbs. From the end of the 17th century, the region was under administration of the Habsburg Monarchy and two settlements were mentioned as Mala Kula and Velika Kula and were unpopulated. In 1714, there was a record about single settlement named Kula that had 14 houses. In 1733, the population of the settlement numbered 251 houses and its inhabitants were Serbs. Hungarians started to settle there in 1740 and Germans in 1780-1785.
Coordinates: 44°N 21°E / 44°N 21°E / 44; 21
Serbia (i/ˈsɜːrbiə/, Serbian: Србија / Srbija, IPA: [sř̩bija]), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: Република Србија / Republika Srbija), is a sovereign state situated at the crossroads between Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central Balkans. Serbia is landlocked and borders Hungary to the north; Romania and Bulgaria to the east; Macedonia to the south; and Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro to the west; it also claims a border with Albania through the disputed territory of Kosovo. The capital of Serbia, Belgrade, is one of the largest cities in Southeast Europe. Serbia numbers around 7 million residents.
Following the Slavic migrations to the Balkans from the 6th century onwards, Serbs established several states in the early Middle Ages. The Serbian Kingdom obtained recognition by Rome and Constantinople in 1217; it reached its peak in 1346 as a relatively short-lived Serbian Empire. By the mid-16th century, the entire territory of modern-day Serbia was annexed by the Ottoman Empire, at times interrupted by the Habsburgs. In the early 19th century, the Serbian Revolution established the nation-state as the region's first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory. Following disastrous casualties in World War I, and subsequent unification of Habsburg crownland of Vojvodina with Serbia, the country co-founded Yugoslavia with other South Slavic peoples, which would exist in various political formations until the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, which had devastating effects for the region. As a result, Serbia formed a union with Montenegro in 1992, which broke apart in 2006, when Serbia again became an independent country. In 2008 the parliament of Kosovo, Serbia's southern province with an Albanian ethnic majority, declared independence, with mixed responses from the international community.
The Kingdom of Serbia (Serbian: Краљевина Србија/Kraljevina Srbija; German: Königreich Serbien; Latin: Regnum Serviae) was a province (crownland) of the Habsburg monarchy from 1718 to 1739. It was formed from the territories to the south of the rivers Sava and Danube, corresponding to the paşalık of Belgrade, conquered by the Habsburgs from the Ottoman Empire in 1717. It was abolished and returned to the Ottoman Empire in 1739.
Although Habsburg rule was more oppressive than Ottoman and exploited the local Serb majority, the latter did benefit from self-government, including an autonomous militia, and economic integration with the Habsburg monarchy—reforms that contributed to the growth of the Serb middle class and were continued by the Ottomans "in the interest of law and order". Serbia's population increased rapidly from 270,000 to 400,000, but the decline of Habsburg power in the region provoked the second Great Serb Migration (1737–39).
In 1688–89, during the Great Turkish War, the Habsburg troops temporarily took control over most of present-day Serbia, but were subsequently forced into retreat. The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 recognized Ottoman authority over most of present-day Serbia, while the region of Bačka and the western part of Syrmia were assigned to the Habsburgs.
The Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia (German: Gebiet des Militärbefehlshabers in Serbien) was the area of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that was placed under a military government of occupation by the Wehrmacht following the invasion, occupation and dismantling of Yugoslavia in April 1941. The territory included Serbia proper, with the addition of the northern part of Kosovo (around Kosovska Mitrovica), and the Banat. This territory was the only area of partitioned Yugoslavia in which the German occupants established a military government. This was due to the key rail and riverine transport routes that passed through it, and its valuable resources, particularly non-ferrous metals. On 22 April 1941, the territory was placed under the supreme authority of the German military commander in Serbia, with the day-to-day administration of the territory under the control of the chief of the military administration staff. The lines of command and control in the occupied territory were never unified, and were made more complex by the appointment of direct representatives of senior Nazi figures such as Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (for police and security matters), Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (for the economy), and Reichsminister Joachim von Ribbentrop (for foreign affairs). The Germans used Bulgarian troops to assist in the occupation, but they were at all times under German control. Sources variously describe the territory as a puppet state, a protectorate, a "special administrative province", or describe it as having a puppet government. The military commander in Serbia had very limited German garrison troops and police detachments to maintain order, but could request assistance from a corps of three divisions of poorly-equipped occupation troops.