Nikola Mijatov, PhD
Institute for Contemporary History
Belgrade, Serbia
nikolamijatov@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6499-4484
Original scientific paper
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19238768
Received: 26. 9. 2025.
Accepted: 9. 11. 2025.
Abstract: The construction of the Vršac Stadium is a complex historical phenomenon that was previously shaped by the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. Immediately after the liberation from the Germans, the new socialist government took on the task of building a stadium that would become the center of sports life. Given the lack of skilled architects, a solution was found in an unusual place: among the captured Volksdeutschers in the camp was the German architect Wilhelm Keze. Before the war, he was part of the renowned team of architects that designed the stadiums for the 1936 Olympic Games held in Nazi Germany. Keze was hired to apply his experience in building Nazi stadiums in Vršac, to the construction of what is now a socialist stadium. The project was completed in 1949 when the stadium was officially opened. The construction itself was mainly carried out by prisoners from a nearby camp, but the press presented the stadium as the result of the hard work of socialist youth. Every day, thousands of prisoners walked from the train station to the stadium to do hard labor. The stones for the stands were dragged from the Carpathians. The stadium still stands today and is the center of Vršac’s sports life; it has outlived both the ideology of Nazism and socialism and is a clear indicator that sport is a supra-ideological phenomenon. It is interesting that Keze, although he was practically a prisoner, fell in love with Vršac and was always happy to return to the city in which he was imprisoned.
Keywords: sport, Vršac, stadium, Wilhelm Keze
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