JOHANN GEORG TROMLITZ
Bogdan Bogdanovics equally impressive and reconciliatory memorials and monuments in former Yugoslavia.
The Serbian Bogdan Bogdanovic (19222010) architect, urbanist, polymath, writer, and former mayor of Belgrade created some of the most distinctive memorials in Europe. In particular his Flower of Stone, the Memorial for the Victims of the Concentration Camp in Jasenovac (Croatia, 1966), and the Dudik Memorial Park for the Victims of Facism in Vukovar (Croatia, 1980; partly destroyed during the Yugoslavian civil wars in the 1990s) gained international attention. Spread throughout the territories of former Yugoslavia, Bogdanovics around twenty monuments, memorial sites, and necropolises symbolize both the cultural diversity and the tragic history of the Balkans. Yet they all reflect Bogdanovics attitude of inclusion rather than exclusion, to unite rather than to separate.
Friedrich Achleitner, poet and architectural critic, has been a close friend of Bogdanovic during the latters years of exile in Vienna. Achleitner has visited all memorials, first together with Bogdanovic and, after the artists death in 2010, on his own. In this new book Achleitner presents what he has seen during his travels in essays and images.
