The Past in the Present

Memorials are more than memories cast in basalt and concrete; as reference points, they are sources of veneration and contempt, at the mercy of political interests and deliberate acts of manipulation.

The statements by state and city officials since the beginning of the construction works on the monument have made it clear that the monument is not only about Stefan Nemanja or medieval history. The war in Kosovo and the NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia in 1999 constitute key points of the official memory politics in which the current state actors invest incredible efforts. 

What happened in Skopje was a neoliberal appropriation of the public space. While everyone talks about the state expropriation of land in the city centre, coloured by a symbolic nationalist attack on all senses, the capitalist plunder of the public space throughout the city happened quietly - and that is the most important element of this endeavour.

The monument to the founder of the Nemanjić dynasty has been the subject of numerous criticisms, both because of its astronomical price and its over-dimensioned size, the location and controversial aesthetics. What does the monument to Stefan Nemanja say about the memory politics that the regime of Aleksandar Vučić wants to promote?

Although the topic of public monuments has not ceased to be the subject of various disputes in the last thirty years, it became even more current in Serbia recently when the construction of a megalomaniac bronze figure of Grand Župan Stefan Nemanja was decided and started in front of the former railway station in Belgrade.

From the online conference ‘Srebrenica: 25 years of remembrance, justice and reconciliation’, organized by the Green parliamentary group in the German Bundestag.

They talk about that time, about the summer of 1995, when they were children, when they had to pack their toys hastily in order to get themselves into safety from the Serbian troops. The attacks, the fears – the world seemed to stand still for them then. They talk about how it felt at that time when the then so-called UN safe area no longer provided any protection. How it felt when the hopes to get protection from the internationals from the hatred of the advancing Serbs, dissolved into thin air. At that time, when the international community folded in face of the violence overrunning the whole of Bosnia since 1992 and ultimately culminating in Srebrenica. At some point, as reported by one of the survivors, she understood that she did not have a father anymore.