History
History
The history of the "Petar Mandic" Endowment is short but interesting.
The history of the "Petar Mandic" Endowment
The idea to create the mentioned charitable institution was conceived during the writing of the book Tesla: Duhovni lik (Tesla: The Spiritual Character) by Oliver Subotic, a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church. For reasons of a personal nature, during the writing of the mentioned book, he made the decision to direct the entire income from its sale to charitable purposes.
That decision soon crystallised into the idea of forming an Endowment that would be associated with the character and work of Nikola Tesla, and to which all funds from the sale of the book would be directed. Soon after, a precise concept of the "Petar Mandic" Endowment was drawn up, which would be a charitable institution that would cherish the memory of the priestly and other ancestors of Nikola Tesla and promote the values related to Tesla's immediate family environment, which had a great influence on the development of the personality of the greatest Serbian inventor of all time.
Official registration
The "Petar Mandic" Endowment was officially registered on 26th April 2021, immediately after the publication of the book Tesla: Duhovni lik (Tesla: The Spiritual Character) in Serbian. In addition to the author of the book, the co-founder of the Endowment is his father Vidomir Subotic, a retired businessman. For the purpose of founding the Endowment, he donated a plot of land in the village of Radoinja, which is located in the wider region of the Zlatar mountain and near the "Uvac" nature reserve.
The first composition of the Managing Board of the Endowment was created by school friends of the author of the book, all originally from Nova Varos, together with Slavko Radmilovic, a man originally from the Nova Varos region, whose company Mak Trade Group was the sponsor of the publication of the first Serbian edition of the book about Tesla.
The name of the Endowment
The "Petar Mandic" Endowment is named after Petar Mandic, the doyen of the post-war cultural scene of Nova Varos and a dedicated worker in the field of education. Petar Mandic (also the uncle of Vidomir Subotic, the co-founder of the Endowment) was born in 1920 - exactly 100 years before the initial establishment of the Endowment. He was the first long-term director of the Nova Varos Cultural Centre, whose name has remained synonymous with the cultural life of the Novi Varos region after the Second World War.
Objectives
The goals of the "Petar Mandic" Endowment are related to the character and work of another Petar Mandic, an Orthodox priest who was Nikola Tesla's uncle.
The priest Petar Mandic - later Metropolitan Nikolaj of Dabar-Bosnia - was Tesla's favourite relative and the person who got Tesla interested in science at an early age, by introducing him to Descartes' writings and mathematical method, which had a decisive influence on his inventive approach. He was born in 1840 - exactly 160 years before the initial formation of the "Petar Mandic" Endowment.