Lecture: "War and transformation. Forms and conflicts of memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the 1990s."

Seven states have formed on the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia since 1991 and as a result of several wars; there was no “peaceful revolution” here. The idea of a multiethnic socialist state was replaced by ethnonationalist ideas which included the murderous policy of "ethnic cleansing".  The most striking illustration of this is the Bosnian War with its three-year siege of the city of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre with more than 8,000 dead which was qualified as genocide by international courts. .

How is a culture of remembrance formed under such brutal conditions and what does the transformation of a society mean here? How does the experience of war and the experience of murderous nationalism shape the memory of the former socialist Yugoslavia? And what does that mean for the very practical remembrance work on the ground?

Elma Hašimbegović and Nicolas Moll would like to address these questions and then discuss them together with the colloquium, also in a comparative perspective with Germany. Elma Hašimbegović heads the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, the former “Museum of Revolution”. Nicolas Moll coordinates the “Memory Lab” from Sarajevo, a trans-european platform for remembrance work.

+++ Attention: The event will be held in English! +++