Mihailo Merćep

Who was Mihailo Merćep?

Mihailo Merćep, Serb flight pioneer.

Born in Dubrovnik in a tradesman family, then a part of Austria-Hungary, Merćep started his primary education in Kladovo, Serbia and finished on the other side of the Danube in Turn-Severin, He returned to his native town in 1878 where he worked as a merchant though his main interests lay in photography.

At the beginning of the 1880s he moved to Belgrade where he was one of the co-founders of the first Serbian velocipede society. In 1893 he embarked on a spectacular bicycle journey: he was to ride his bike from Belgrade to Chicago to be there in time for the World Expo and second world championship in bicyclism. In Chicago Merćep witnessed some attempts of flying. Next four years he spent in Dallas where he embarked on a cyclist career. In 1897 he returned to Serbia this time cycling from Dallas to New York and again from Hamburg to Belgrade. In 1898 Merćep joined with the Belgrade cycling champion publisher Sveta Savić and actor Ljuba Stanojević and together they cycled through “Serb Lands”: across Bosnia and Herzegovina to Montenegro and then across Boka Kotorska to Dubrovnik.