Abstract
In this chapter attitudes towards the memorials and memorial practices in Mostar will be presented, framed within a discussion of remembering/forgetting incidents of trauma. Most of the official memorials in Mostar can be approached in the light of the division. The impression is that the official memorials and practices of commemoration have little positive meaning in terms of overcoming ethnocentrism. Afterwards, I turn to the ruins as a different form of material memory of the war. When interviewing older people about the ruins, most of them want the ruins to be reconstructed and are tired of constant reminders of the war. When switching perspective to the youth of the city, ruins are sometimes employed as creative spaces of youth activism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Franciscan Church is listed as a monument on the provisional list of national monuments, however, “property on the Provisional List shall be regarded as a national monument and shall enjoy the protection prescribed by the Law on the Implementation of Decisions of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments” (Decision about provisional list, http://old.kons.gov.ba/main.php?id_struct=89&lang=4).
- 2.
Since this occurred in January 2017, there has been plans by the City of Mostar to restore the building, and in the nomination for making Mostar a European Capital of Culture in 2024, it was stated that the restored building would be used as the new space for the Museum of Herzegovina (p. 21 in the unpublished nomination: “Mostar 2x24 Everything is Bridgeable” from 2019). Mostar lost the process to become European Capital of Culture to Bodø in Norway.
Bibliography
Anheier, H., and Y. Raj Isar, eds. 2011. Heritage, Memory and Identity. London: Sage Publications.
Basu, P. 2013. Memoryscapes and Multi-Sited Methods: Researching Cultural Memory in Sierra Leone. In Research Methods for Memory Studies, ed. E. Keightley and M. Pickering. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Bevan, R. 2007. The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War. London: Reaktion Books.
Calame, J., and A. Pašić. 2009. Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Mostar: Cart before the Horse. Divided Cities/Contested States. Working Paper No. 7.
Cateux, A. 2020. European Union Guidelines to Reconiliation in Mostar: How to Remember? What to Forget? In Europeanisation and Memory Politics in the Western Balkans, ed. A. Milosevic and T. Trost. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Clark, J.N. 2013. Reconciliation Through Remembrance? War Memorials and the Victims of Vukovar. International Journal of Transitional Justice 7 (1): 116–135.
Connerton, P. 2008. Seven Types of Forgetting. Memory Studies 1: 59–71. Sage Publications.
———. 2009. How Modernity Forgets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Connor, A. 2017. The Political Afterlife of Sites of Monumental Destruction: Reconstructing Affect in Mostar and New York. Abingdon: Routledge.
DeSilvey, C. 2017. Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Saving. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Forde, S. 2016. The Bridge on the Neretva: Stari Most as a Stage of Memory in Post-Conflict Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Cooperation and Conflict 51 (4): 467–483.
———. 2019. Movement as Conflict Transformation. Rescripting Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Forty, A. 1999. Introduction. In The Art of Forgetting, ed. A. Forty and S. Küchler, 1–18. Oxford: Berg.
Forty, A., and S. Küchler, eds. 1999. The Art of Forgetting. Berg: Oxford.
Grodach, C. 2002. Reconstituting Identity and History in Post-war Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. City 6 (1): 61–82.
Halilović, H. 2013. Places of Pain: Forced Displacement, Popular Memory and Trans-Local Identities in Bosnian War-Torn Communities. New York: Berghahn.
Holtorf, C. 2017. Cultural Heritage Beyond Culturalism. Published Online at “Heritage for Transformation”. https://heritagefortransformation.wordpress.com/2017/11/29/cultural-heritage-beyond-culturalism/. 01 Apr 2020.
Hromadžić, A. 2013. Discourses of Trans-Ethnic Narod in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 41 (2): 259–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2012.747503.
———. 2019. Uninvited Citizens: Violence, Spatiality and Urban Ruination in Postwar and Postsocialist Bosnia and Herzegovina. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal 4 (2–3): 114–136. https://doi.org/10.1080/23802014.2019.1646615.
Jackson, M. 2013. The Politics of Storytelling: Variations on a Theme by Hannah Arendt. 2nd ed. Köpenhamn: Museum Tusculanum Press.
Kurtović, L., and A. Hromadžić. 2017. Cannibal States, Empty Bellies: Protest, History and Political Imagination in Post-Dayton Bosnia. Critique of Anthropology 37 (3): 262–296.
Macdonald, S. 2009. Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond. Abingdon: Routledge.
Makaš, E. 2007. Representing Competing Identities: Building and Rebuilding in Postwar Mostar, Bosnia-Hercegovina. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Cornell University.
Moshenska, G. 2014. Children in Ruins. Bombsites as Playgrounds in Second World War Britain. In Ruin Memories: Materialities, Aesthetics and the Archaeology of the Recent Past, ed. B. Olsen and Þ. Pétursdóttir, 230–249. Abingdon: Routledge.
———. 2015. Curated Ruins and the Endurance of Conflict Heritage. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 17 (1): 77–90.
Murtić, A., and M. Barišić. 2019. Unruly Monument: Subverting the Topography of the Partisan Memorial Cemetery in Mostar. Paragrana 28 (1): 80–100.
Nikolić, D. 2012. Tre städer, två broar och ett museum. Minne, politik och världsarv i Bosnien och Hercegovina. PhD Thesis, Lund University.
Palmberger, M. 2012. Renaming of Public Space: A Policy of Exclusion in Bosnia and Herzegovina. MMG Working Paper 12-02.
———. 2016. How Generations Remember. Conflicting Histories and Shared Memories in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina, Global Diversities Series. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rehberg, K.S., and M. Neutzner. 2015. The Dresden Frauenkirche as a Contested Symbol: The Architecture of Remembrance after War. In War and Cultural Heritage: Biographies of Place, ed. M.L.S. Sørensen and D. Viejo-Rose, 98–127. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rüsen, J. 1987. Historical Narration: Foundation, Types, Reason. History and Theory 26 (4): 87–97. Beiheft 26: The Representation of Historical Events.
———. 2004. How to Overcome Ethnocentrism: Approaches to a Culture of Recognition by History in the 21st Century. Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 43: 59–74.
Trouillot, M.R. 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press.
Viejo-Rose, D. 2011. Reconstructing Spain: Cultural Heritage and Memory After Civil War. Brighton: Sussex Academic.
Walasek, H. 2015. Bosnia and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage. London: Routledge.
Walther, S. 2012. Imagined Communities. In Contemporary Holocaust Exhibitions of the 1990s. A Comparison of Berlin und London. National Museums and the Negotiation of Difficult Pasts, EuNaMus Report No.8, ed. D. Poulot, J.M. Lanzarote Gurial, and F. Bodenstein, 91–109. Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press.
Wertsch, J., and D.M. Billingsley. 2011. The Role of Narratives in Commemoration: Remembering as Mediated Action. In Heritage, Memory and Identity, ed. H. Anheier and Y. Ray Isar, 25–38. London: Sage Publications.
Winter, J. 2008. Sites of Memory and the Shadow of War. In Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. A. Erll and A. Nüning, 61–74. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
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 Memorials in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict: From History to Heritage, ed. M.L.S. Sørensen, D. Viejo-Rose, and P. Filippucci, 159–182. Cham: Palgrave.
Wollentz, G., M. Barišić, and N. Sammar. 2019. Youth Activism and Dignity in Post-war Mostar, Envisioning a Shared Future Through Heritage. Space and Polity 23 (2): 197–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2019.1635443.
Zwart, D. 2015. City of Symbols: Reimagining the Public Sphere Through “In-Between” Spaces in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Unpublished Bachelor Thesis, Harvard University, Cambridge.
Internet Sources
A Mostar Radiography. 2017. http://amostarradiography.org/alija-bijavica-or-my-tribute-to-the-14th-of-february/. Retrieved 13 Feb 2018.
Balkan Insight. 2013. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/memorial-dedicated-to-bosnian-army-members-blown-up. Retrieved 01 Apr 2020.
CGTN. 2019. https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d674d334d444d34457a6333566d54/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2TixL8Z1fKmxnXXJamg7DgF-R9_WBP2nzA3dBkm7wqjMycF-2QdraMymc. Retrieved 01 Apr 2020.
Commision to Preserve National Monuments. 2002. http://old.kons.gov.ba/main.php?id_struct=89&lang=4. Retrieved 12 Oct 2020.
DPUMH. 2017. https://dpumh.org/2017/01/16/o-donosenju-odluka-i-degradaciji-urbanoga-tkiva-mostara-uz-najavljeno-rusenje-ostataka-robne-kuce-nama/. Retrieved 01 Apr 2020.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wollentz, G. (2020). Remembering and Forgetting in Mostar. In: Landscapes of Difficult Heritage. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57125-2_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57125-2_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-57124-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-57125-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)