Quarantine Island

"Lazing around in quarantine is good practice for octopus life", wrote Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen in his Danube travel diary in the spring of 1841, during the forty days he spent in quarantine in Nagyzsuppány (Jupalnic - Romania). The Habsburg Empire's cordon sanitaire, built within the framework of the military frontier, which protected the Empire's borders from invisible enemies such as viruses and bacteria from the Adriatic Sea to Bukowina. These quarantines, commonly referred to as "contumaz" stations, were lined up in regular order along the Danube border from Zimony (Zemun - Serbia) to Nagyzsuppány until the middle of the 19th century. Most of them were demolished without a trace, with the one in Nagyzsuppány, for example, now lying 25 meters under water, but the name of one of them is still preserved today on a Danubian island in Serbia.

Quarantine buildings of Pancevo (below)

"We have moved into the quarantine station, and now our Helena-life is beginning to take on its peaceful daily routine", writes German traveler Wilhelm Richter at around the same time, in the same place, at the quarantine station in Nagyzsuppány. Balázs Szálinger recommended Richter's travelogue about Hungary to me a few years ago, during the raging COVID pandemic, as a potential Danubian topic for the blog. The German Richter was luckier than the Danish storyteller, having to spend only eleven days in quarantine, as the number of days spent in quarantine was determined by the epidemic situation abroad, in this case in Wallachia, and the idleness was shortened in epidemic-free times. Even then, this protracted coercive measure was considered unnecessary, as life was rather boring in the quarantine, surrounded by wooded mountains, decorated with a small garden planted with grapevines, but closed off by prison walls and guards, where the travelers could only communicate with each other through a wooden slat, Their food (sour cabbage and fatty pork) was provided by an innkeeper, and their health was checked daily by the quarantine doctor. Travelers and merchants could rent their own furnished accommodation according to their financial means, or they were forced to share a regularly whitewashed room with others. Presumably, the quarantine stations along the southern and eastern borders of the Habsburg Empire had a similar layout, standards, and regulations to the one in Nagyzsuppány, but the one in Pancsova (Pančevo - Serbia) was somewhat different.

The quarantine building at the lighthouseless Temes estuary

A permanent quarantine station was built in Pančevo for people arriving from the Ottoman Empire (later Serbia) based on a royal decree dated June 6, 1741 [1]. An entire block of houses on the southern edge of the city at that time was designated for this purpose. This block still exists in the urban structure of Pančevo today and can be most easily identified by the Red Warehouse (Kontumaz Magazin) shown in the first picture, in the quadrangle bounded by Žarko Fogaraš, Dositej Obradović, Radoje Dakić, and Milorad Bata Mihailović streets. This place is still remembered in Serbia today, as the renowned Serbian linguist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić spent a few weeks here on his way to Western Europe.

In the vicinity of the old Pančevo Castle, the settlement that developed after the expulsion of the Turks was located on the high banks of the Temes River rather than on the wide floodplain of the Danube for geomorphological reasons. This meant that those crossing the Danube border could easily avoid quarantine if they headed not for Pančevo but for one of the nearby military frontier villages. It was therefore necessary to set up an additional quarantine station 2.5 kilometers from Pancsova, directly at the ferry crossing, later at the boat station, which at that time was below the mouth of the Temes River. This was the Vor Kontumaz, or pre-quarantine station. 

The two qarantines (inner and outer) of Pancevo in 1775 (source)

According to old pictures, it was a square, one-story, tent-roofed, massive stone building, standing next to the confluence of the Temes and Danube rivers like a late Roman burgus on the border of the empire. Some maps also included the German word "Wache," meaning that military guards were also assigned to it. After all, since 1776, epidemics had fallen under the jurisdiction of the Aulic War Council (Hofkriegsrat), i.e., the military, but it was not regular soldiers who served here, but wounded, veteran or retired soldiers. 

In 1857, under the new Danube navigation agreement, the parties (Ottoman Turkey, the Habsburg Monarchy, Württemberg, and Bavaria) agreed that if there were no signs of plague along the Danube for a year, the quarantine would be lifted [2]. The lonely, disused building was still standing in 1908 and even gained some neighbors when the famous lighthouses, now sadly falling into disrepair, were built at the mouth of the Temes.  

Lighthouses of the Temes estuary
with the quarantine station on the right. (postcard, own collection)

Ironically, the destruction of the quarantine building was caused by the relatively young Danube island named after it. Sometime between 1834 (Rauchmüller map) and 1856 (Pasetti map), a sandbar rose in the middle of the Danube, directly at the mouth of the Temes River, next to the quarantine station building. This section of the Danube below Belgrade was already quite prone to shoaling, and in the fairly wide bend of the river, the formation of the new shoal was already visible from both banks, as it was surrounded by four large islands. From the direction of the flow, these were: Ovca Island (left), the wasp-waisted Cakljanac Island (right), Stefanec Island (r) and Starcevo Island (l), all of which belonged administratively to the city of Pančevo, even though only a very narrow branch separated Cakljanac Island from Serbia in the south. 

Vorkontumaz station and island in 1914 (source)

With the appearance of Vorkontumac Island (Serbian phonetic transcription: Форконтумац) in the middle of the Danube, the unified main branch split into two roughly equal branches, both of which were used for shipping, as the Danube, augmented by the discharge of the Drava and Sava rivers, already had a significant discharge here. As most of the riverbed was occupied by the rapidly growing new island, whose area exceeded one square kilometer by 1866, the waters of the Danube diverted in both directions and began to reshape the two banks. Both the Hungarian, Pančevo bank and the large islands on the right bank along the main channel eroded rapidly, and the washed-away sediment was deposited along the lower part of the islands. Erosion continued to destroy the mouth of the Temes until 1908, when the banks along the lighthouses were reinforced with stone embankments, saving the quarantine building from collapsing into the Danube. This bend development has since taken away about half of Starcevo Island below the mouth of the river. 

The Форконтумац Island nowadays (wikipedia)

The exact date of the quarantine station's destruction is unknown, but it was still standing in 1914. What is certain is that the excavation of the Pančevo customs port bay did not affect the area where it stood. Its ruins and foundation walls may still exist somewhere in the riverine forest next to the lighthouse on the right bank of the Temes River. However, its name has survived in the form of the island named after it, which has since grown considerably in size. Vorkontumaz Island now covers an area of more than 4 square kilometers. Its upper peak, close to Belgrade, is inhabited, and it is here that the resort called Bela Stena (White Rock) was built, named after the white sand found here. Most of the island is covered by natural forest, divided lengthwise by the remains of old oxbow lakes, but a smaller part is a forest plantation where logging also takes place. 

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Literature:

[1] Linzbauer Xav. Ferenc: A Magyar Korona Országainak nemzetközi egésségügye (Pest, 1868) 

[2] Sabine Jesner: Cordon Militaire – Cordon Sanitaire. Járványmegelőzés az erdélyi katonai határőrvidéken (cca. 1760–1830) Századok 2022. 1. szám