The view to Gajeva Street in the Suburb Zvijezda

      Our first meeting was held on February 12th, 1935., when our friend the Governor, Rudolf Krajci announced The Club to be founded. Inauguration of the club was highly honoured by the presence of our dear friend, the Governor and all the members of RC Karlovac would keep it in mind as a pleasant memory. The Governor gave the memorable speech and the lecture on the Rotarian Ideals, and consequently all the friends spontaniously promised to be forever loyal to the Rotary.
     This is the description of the inauguration of the RC Karlovac from the "Yugoslav Rotary" in February 1935. Many guests were present at the inauguration.
     At the very beginning RC Karlovac had 16 members.
     The professional lectures of the members and the reports on the contacts with other clubs were the usual agenda of the meetings. At the end of the year 1935., the first humanitarian actions of the Karlovac's Rotarians, concerning the aid to the city's nurseries and socially disabled people, were mentioned in the reports.
     In the course of the year 1936., it was very important to mention the International Rotary Convention held on 27th June, in Ozalj. There were about 80 Rotarians with wives and besides the sightseeing of Ozalj and the surrounding area, the themes of the general social interest like the building of the Susak's port and the railway connection of the mentioned port to Slovenia were the main aim of the gathering. At the end of the Convention, the Resolution was brought and sent to the Royal Government.
     At the end of 1935., the Rotarians decided to start their caritative actions. During the winter and for Christmas they bought clothes for 17 boys and 20 girls from Karlovac's kinder garden.
     In the year 1937., RC Karlovac organized the intercity meeting at Plitvice Lakes on 14th August. There were about 65 rotarians with their families.
     It became a well known custom to invite the members of others clubs to attend the lectures of Karlovac's Rotarians. One of the most interesting lectures, was the lecture on the problem of the city-village relationship. Two following lectures showed that Karlovac's Rotarians had carefully followed the ideas from abroad. The theme of the first was biological warfare and the other was on autarchy and imperialism.
     Karlovac's Rotarians were very happy and pleased when they were awarded the Rosanov Silver Chalice as the club with the highest members' presence at the meetings, among the clubs from Europe, North Africa and Eastern Mediterranean. The notice came from the headduarters in Zuerich.
     At the beginning of 1940, there were 26 members.
     At the same time RC Karlovac established the foundation for rewarding two best essays in secondary schools in Karlovac. The best essay in the Trade Academy was the essay written by Novakovic Sofija about "The Economy of the City of Karlovac". Apart from being awarded financially, Sofija was honoured by being allowed to read her essay in front of the members of the club among whom was also the Head of the Academy. The basic idea of this foundation was to initiate young people to be creative and interested in anything that could be good and useful.

The Bank of the River Kupa

     The 1941 was also the year when the history of Karlovac's Rotarianism was abruptly interrupted owing to the wind of war which unfortunately didn't avoid this area, and it would take more than a half of century to reestablish the Rotarianism in our city.
     The war has extinguished the Rotarian initiative, but neverthless, it has found strenght to reestablish itself again during the Liberation War 1991-95. The history which is written nowadays by Karlovac's Rotarians is our personal identification towards our future generation and fellow citizens, thus, we believe, also towards the future Rotarians.