Dignity of Memory: Partisan Memorial Cemetery Mostar – PUBLIC TALK

The Partisan Memorial Cemetery has become a target for destruction, both in times of war and in times of peace. Although much damaged during the war in 1992-1995, the memorial suffered further damage in the period following the war. The first conservation and restoration works were done in 2005 with the support of donor funds from the Government of The Netherlands and the Kingdom of Norway, and with co-financing from the City of Mostar and Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

However, the Partisan Memorial Cemetery has been, and still is, one of the region’s contested heritage sites. This has resulted in repeated acts of vandalism up until the most recent destruction which happened in June of 2022. This was followed by numerous reactions from the Mayor, the City Council, the Commission to preserve national monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as from anti-fascist activists and associations both at local and international level, and also the reaction from numerous organisations from the territory of former Yugoslavia, which condemned the vandalism.

Recently, the Agency “Old City” of the City of Mostar launched the public procurement for the revitalisation, rehabilitation and illumination of the Partisan Memorial Cemetery. However, the monument does not yet have a holistic plan for its conservation and maintenance with a corresponding funding. The local community in Mostar has developed various campaigns for the legal protection of the Partisan Memorial Cemetery as a Monument of National Importance. The nomination of the cemetery to the 7 Most Endangered Programme 2023 was made by IDEAA Mostar with the endorsement of the Mayor of Mostar, the Galerija DESSA, Architectuul and Europa Nostra Serbia.

More about the monument: bit.ly/3YQFVxT

Aida Murtić is an architect from Sarajevo and doctoral candidate in art history at the Heidelberg University. She holds a diploma degree in architecture from the University of Sarajevo and MSc degree in urban development from Technical University of Darmstadt and University Grenoble Alpes. Currently, she is a member of the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies emerging from the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context,” the research environment within which she conceptualized her PhD project on histories of urban heritage. As an architect, she worked on a number of projects of post-war reconstruction of architectural heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is Secretary General of the ICOMOS National Committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Together with a group of scholars, activists, and artists, Aida has researched memory activism and forms of engagement with the Partisan Memorial Cemetery in Mostar.

Senada Demirović Habibija is PhD architect studied in Morocco, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Denmark, employed in the city administration of the City of Mostar as an expert advisor for urban planning. From 2000 to 2003, she worked as an architect in the Mostars Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the World Monuments Fund office, on the reconstruction of the cultural heritage of Mostar and Herzegovina. In the period from 2012 to 2018, she was a curator at the Center for Architecture, Dialogue and Art ADA Mostar, and in 2019 she founded an association Urban House IDEAA, a laboratory that explores the important relationship between design, emotional state and social needs of the society. She is a lecturer at the University “Džemal Bijedić” Mostar.

Kaja Lipnik Vehovar completed her studies at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana, where she founded her studio Kubusarhitektura.​ ​She is enrolled in the doctoral programme in Studies of Cultural Heritage (Economics and Techniques for the Conservation of the Architectural and Environmental Heritage) at the University of Nova Gorica. The subject of her PhD dissertation concerns the built heritage of the 20th century in Ljubljana, emphasizing urban and architectural planning during the periods of social transformations, particularly the relationship between open spaces and built structures. She is a member of DOCOMOMO. As a part of UNESCO’s Open Education for a Better World program, she created the online platform Preservation of 20th-century residential heritage and sustainable development. She was the main initiator and coordinator of the successful nomination of the Plečnik Stadium to the Seven Most Endangered 2020 program, led by the international non-governmental organization Europa Nostra.

Vesna Marjanović is a Graduate of Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade. She completed her postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade, and underwent various training programs connected to politics, cultural policy and management, media and public relations which were held in Strasbourg, Cape Town, London and Belgrade. Vesna is the Secretary General for Europa Nostra Serbia since July 2021. Before that she was employed as a culture and media advisor in the Center for Democracy Foundation in Belgrade. She was a member of the Serbian Parliament from 2007 until June 2020. During that time she held the position of Chairperson of the Committee on Culture and Media of Serbia, Member of the EU-Serbia Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee as well as Member of the Serbian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the European Museum Forum, Member of the Council of Europa Nostra.