Industrial heritage

The history and the present of Odžaci municipality is difficult to understand without understanding the importance of hemp and hemp products for its general development. The initiator of hemp cultivation was Count Kothmann, the commissioner of colonization for this region in the eighteenth century. In one of his reports, he informed Vienna that hemp harvest in Odzaci is plentiful. Thanks to hemp production, new craftsmen started to appear. No sooner had hemp trade developed than some of the families controlled its supply from Vinkovci to Timisoara and from Zemun to Baja. The first hemp fairs were organized. A little later, the price of hemp on European market depended upon its price in Odzaci. Odzaci has become the unofficial capital of European hemp. The British Navy used ropes made of hemp produced here in Odzaci. The beginning of the twentieth century saw the foundation of modern industrial development with the establishment of String and Rope Factory by a "great son of Odzaci" - wealthy Johann Ertl.

String and Rope Factory is now registered as a cultural monument as well as a workers' colony dating from the first half of the twentieth century. Along with a number of machines from the factory's beginnings, a plentitude of documents and the Art Nouveau style administration building, the factory bears a remarkable testimony to the cultivation of hemp and industrial development in this part of Vojvodina.

The majority of artifacts are kept in the archaeological department of the Museum of Odzaci.