Kljajićevo

Sombor

Kljajićevo

Čonoplja

Svetozar Miletić

Telečka

Bački Monoštor

Bezdan

Kolut

Bački Breg

Gakovo

Kruševlje

Stanišić

Aleksa Šantić

Rastina

Riđica

Stapar

Doroslovo

Municipality
of Sombor
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Kljajićevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Кљајићево, German: Kernei) is a village in Serbia. It is situated in the Sombor municipality, in the West Bačka District, Vojvodina province. The village has a Serb ethnic majority and its population numbering 6,012 people (2002 census).

Human settlement in the territory of present-day Kljajićevo has been traced as far back as the Stone Age. In 1391, during the administration of the Kingdom of Hungary, settlement named Sent Kiraj (Sveti Kraj) was mentioned at this location.

During the Ottoman administration (16th-17th centuries), Bačka was part of the Sanjak of Segedin (Szeged). The former Hungarian population escaped and the area was populated mostly by ethnic Serbs from the south. The village first was mentioned 1590 in the Ottoman tax-lists (Defters) as Kernja, a settlement near Sombor. Settlement was also mentioned under name Krnjaja in 1601 and was populated by ethnic Serbs.

In 1699 the Bačka came into the possession of the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria. After Maria Theresa of Austria assumed the throne as Queen of Hungary in 1740, she encouraged vigorous colonization on crown lands, first on the Military Frontier and than on the whole area, which had low population density after the last Ottoman Wars, as much of the Serbian population had been decimated through warfare.

The new settlers in the village were primarily Germans. In 1763, the Imperial Advisor Anton von Cothmann, proposed to his Empress Theresia that Kernyája and the surrounding territory should be settled. According to the „Conscriptio” from December 21st in 1765 a new village was resettled and new founded with 17 catholic German families. Among those there were farmers, 2 smiths, 1 carpenter 1 weaver and one innkeeper. The village now was called “Kernaja”. In 1784 there were 291 families living in Kernaja. Under these there were 83% Germans, 11% Hungarians and 6% Bohemians.

Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor from Austria extended the village with 78 new houses. The catholic church was built in 1791. In 1800 all the inhabitants declared themselves Germans. The town now was called "Kernei". At the beginning of 1767 pupils were taught in the cantor´s house. The new school was built in 1911.

In the year 1805, Kernei already had 2,000 inhabitants. When the number of people reached 3,500 in 1850, the proportion of the population from other nationalities was less than 5 percent. The first migration away from Kernei into newly established settlements began around 1866. Around the turn of the century and thereafter, the great wave of emigration to North America began. There was a steady rise and fall in the numbers of the population so that it did not reach the 5,000 mark until 1910.

In 1918, as part of Banat, Bačka and Baranja, Krnjaja became part of the Kingdom of Serbia, which later together with the Kingdom of Montenegro and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs formed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed to Yugoslavia in 1929). Between 1929 and 1941, the village was part of the Danube Banovina, one of the provinces of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

In 1941/42, the population of the village totaled 6,000. When Axis Powers invaded and partitioned Yugoslavia in 1941, Krnjaja was placed under Hungarian administration. During the Battle of Batina, the front was stretched all the way to Apatin and Bogojevo, and these places became military bases overnight. Since October 1944, and arrival of Yugoslav partisans, Krnjaja is under Yugoslav administration.

The antifascist council for the liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) declared its mainly German population as public enemies, and starved and tourtered them in concentration camps, appropriated their lands and murdered resistors.

After World War II, Krnjaja became part of the new Socialist Yugoslavia, within the People's Republic of Serbia and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. In this time, the village, after the forced appropriation of ancestral German farms and all dwellings Serbs from Croatia (Lika, Gorski Kotar, Žumberak, and Kordun)through torture and humiliation stole and began living in the now vacant buildings. The current name of the village, Kljajićevo, was introduced in 1949 and derives from Miloš Kljajić, a popular hero who was born in Kordun and was killed on Petrova Gora in 1943.

• 1961: 6,088
• 1971: 5,805
• 1981: 5,850
• 1991: 5,737

• Slobodan Ćurčić, Broj stanovnika Vojvodine, Novi Sad, 1996.

• List of places in Serbia
• List of cities, towns and villages in Vojvodina

• Kljajićevo
• Kljajićevo

45°46′N 19°17′E / 45.767°N 19.283°E / 45.767; 19.283