Kosta Magazinović

Konstantin "Kosta" Magazinović[1](Ruma, Habsburg Monarchy, 9 April 1819 - Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbia, 16 September 1891) was a Serbian politician and diplomat, best remembered for establishing Romania-Serbia relations and being one of the founders of a gun foundry in Kragujevac that became Zastava Arms.[2]Also, he was one of the signatories of the Treaty of Bucharest on 20 January 1886.[3]Officially, the first Serbian diplomatic agency in Bucharest was established in February 1863, with Kosta Magazinović, as its first diplomatic agent. Magazinović and the U.S. consul at Bucharest, Ludwig J. Czapkay, tried to initiate U.S.-Serbian official contacts in 1867, the year when Ottoman troops withdrew from Serbia, but to no avail.[4]

Konstantin "Kosta" Magazinović

In 1839 the first generation of learned Serbs born in Serbian lands (then divided between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire) was sent abroad for education on the state bursaries in order to train a 'local' bureaucratic and intellectual elite who had to substitute for the Serbs from Habsburg Vojvodina. Kosta Magazinović was among many chosen to study at the military academy in Vienna, but he arbitrarily went to Imperial Russia, then to Leipzig to study philosophy and finally to Paris where he enrolled in the law school. There he met other Serbian Parisians such as Milan Simić, Konstantin Cukić, Dimitrije Crnobarac, and Ljubomir Nenadović. Upon graduation, he returned to Serbia and joined the civil service.[5]He wrote Memoari (Memoirs) where he tells the many experiences he had in his political and diplomatic career in Serbia and abroad during the 19th century.[6]

He was elected regular member of Društvo srbske slovesnosti (Society Of Serbian Letters: the forerunner of the Serbian Royal Academy) on 1 August 1848.[7]