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Memorials in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict pp 159–182Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Conflicted Memorials and the Need to Look Forward. The Interplay Between Remembering and Forgetting in Mostar and on the Kosovo Field

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict ((PSCHC))

Abstract

This chapter studies the interplay between remembering and forgetting in post-war contexts. Since memory has spatial dimensions and can be stimulated by visual clues, it is clear that memorials may play a highly important role within such processes. Fieldwork carried out in Mostar, Bosnia Herzegovina, and on the Kosovo Field between 2015 and 2016, in the aftermath of the ethno-religious wars that touched both these regions during the 1990s, helps to illuminate the negotiation. On the basis of the fieldwork carried out, this chapter aims to challenge routinely made assumptions about positive and negative valuations of remembering and forgetting.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The joint burial at Liska Street led to a tragic incident of violence, when on Bayram in 1997, a group of a few hundred Bosnian Muslims, including the then Mayor Safet Oručević, approached the cemetery in order to pay their respect to the victims. The west Mostar Police began beating them with batons as soon as they crossed the boulevard into west Mostar. Eventually, the west Mostar police started firing into the crowd, killing one man and injuring several others. Since then, most of the Bosnian Croats buried at Liska Street have been exhumed and buried elsewhere (Makaš 2007: 287–292).

  2. 2.

    For those interested in the historical battle, see Fine (1987), Emmert (1990), Vucinich and Emmert (1991), Malcolm (1998: 140), Ćirković (2004: 77–119), and see Rexha (2009) for a historiography of Serbian research written from a Kosovo Albanian perspective.

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Acknowledgements

During the field work conducted I received crucial help from Marko Barišić, Damir Ugljen, Dea Luma and Edona Rugova, who helped me as translators during several of the interviews and through stimulating discussions. Furthermore, I have to thank Cornelius Holtorf, Antonia Davidovic, Artur Ribeiro, Milinda Hoo and Marko Barišić for commenting on earlier drafts of this chapter, giving me valuable suggestions improving the chapter, as well as Paola Filippucci and Marie Louise Stig Sørensen for perceptive comments sharpening the arguments. Another thank you goes to Johannes Müller, Vedrana Tutiš Šimunović, Milot Berisha, Boban Todorović, Enver Rexha, Haxhi Methmetaj, Tatjana Mićević-Durić, Ivanka Miličević-Capek and the reviewers. Finally, I thank the editors for asking me to contribute to this volume. I also owe a large debt towards all the anonymous interview partners, who gave me their time and insights. The project was funded by the DFG through the Graduate School Human Development in Landscapes, Kiel University, Grant Name: GSC 208/2.

Note About the Fieldwork

The field work was carried out during several visits to Mostar and Kosovo in 2015 and 2016. More precisely, the field work in Mostar consisted of 22 in depth interviews with 24 people generally lasting between one and two hours, carried out in April and May 2015, as well as in May 2016. The focus of the interviews was on people who experienced the war from within Mostar but also on people in the city professionally working with the heritage. I was also spending a lot of time with, and befriending, many young activists in Mostar, getting a perspective of how the heritage could be employed through youth activism. The field work in Kosovo consists of 26 in-depth interviews with 29 people, carried out in November and December 2015, March 2016 as well as in June 2016. The focus was on people who experienced the war from within Kosovo, from both the Serbian and Albanian population, and who currently live close to or at the site of where the medieval battle is supposed to have taken place. I also observed the Vidovdan celebration at the Gazimestan monument on the 28th of June 2016. The interviews were carried out in Serbo-Croatian, Albanian and when possible, English. For the interviews in Serbo-Croatian and Albanian I relied on translators, as thanked in the acknowledgements, with whom I worked closely. The research was part of a PhD project conducted at the Graduate School Human Development in Landscapes, Kiel University, 2014–2018.

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  1. The Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning and Creativity, Östersund, Sweden

    Gustav Wollentz

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  1. Gustav Wollentz
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  1. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Marie Louise Stig Sørensen

  2. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Dacia Viejo-Rose

  3. Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Paola Filippucci

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Wollentz, G. (2019). Conflicted Memorials and the Need to Look Forward. The Interplay Between Remembering and Forgetting in Mostar and on the Kosovo Field. In: Sørensen, M., Viejo-Rose, D., Filippucci, P. (eds) Memorials in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18091-1_6

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