Gavrilo Vitković

Gavrilo Vitković (28 January 1829, in Buda, Austrian Empire – 25 July 1902, in Negotin, Kingdom of Serbia) was an engineer, historian, professor and collector of old manuscripts. He was a member of the Serbian Learned Society.

After graduating from the University of Budapest, Vitković worked as an engineer in Smederevo and Šabac. Later, he taught engineering in secondary schools in Kragujevac and Belgrade. And in his spare time he collected original documents and manuscripts mostly about 18th- and 19th- century people from Serbia and granted his collection to the National Library of Serbia.

It was Gavrilo Vitković who helped introduce the publishing of transcribed—but not translated—archival documents in large scholarly volumes in Serbia in the 1870s. Their publication was part of the national revival and the desire to preserve invaluable documents for the history of the Serbian people. Therefore, they were just published either as facsimiles or transcriptions, but never with commentaries or translations. They were supposed to serve as a 'contemporary backup' for the Serbian archives, and they have proven to be a reliable source of otherwise unavailable documents. Those of particular importance for research of this topic were: Gavrilo Vitković's Arhivski spomenici Budimskog i Peštanskog arhiva: 1728-1748, in Glasnik Srpskog Učenog Društva, Belgrade, 1873; Izveštaj, napisao 1733-godine Maksim Radković, eksarh beogradskog mitropolita; Novi podatci istriju srpskih preseljenika u Ugarskoj, Belgrade, 1871; Srpski istroijski i književni spomenici, Belgrade, 1887; Tihomir Ostojić's Korespondencija Pavla Nenadovića sa arhimandritima manastira Šišatova, in Srpski Sion, X and XII, 1907; Georgije Magarašević's Iz arhipastorskog rada mitropolita Pavla Nenadovića, in Brankovo kolo, XXXV, 1903.

When Béni Kállay, the Austro-Hungarian statesman, first published his monograph on Serbian history in German in 1878, he came to Serbia to look for a translator. Subsequently, Kallay's "Geschichte der Serben" was translated from German into Serbian by Gavrilo Vitković, who also wrote an introduction praising Kallay's work.

Benjamin von Kállay's "Istorija srpskog naroda" was published by Ćurčić in Belgrade in 1882. Kallay wrote a preface for the Serbian translation of his book stating that he wrote the history for personal reasons. His maternal parents were of Serbian antcedents. Kallay's travels through Serbia presented a pilgrimage to the country of his maternal forebears, and he walked in their footsteps retracing their life's odysseys. His interest in Serbian landmarks and history guided him in his numerous trips that he found even more beguiling than previously imagined. Furthermore, he himself wrote that he spent many years studying Serbian.