Bosnia Marks 30 Years Since Shelling of Sarajevo City HallAzem KurticSarajevoBIRNAugust 25, 202216:31 A commemoration was held to remember the night in 1992 when a Bosnian Serb shell hit Sarajevo’s grand Austro-Hungarian City Hall, the Vijecnica, setting on fire over two million books in the National Library inside.
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Until August 1992, the City Hall served as the national library, housing more than two million books, magazines and manuscripts of immeasurable cultural and historical value.
Sarajevo was under heavy shelling on August 25, 1992 and “half of the city was burning”, Omer Setic, one of the first firefighters to arrive at the blaze, told BIRN.
Soon after the firefighters’ arrival, Setic and his team realised that they could not overcome the spreading fire with just one truck and limited water supplies. “We emptied the water tank really fast,” Setic told us. “It was almost under control, but while we waited for the truck to refill, the fire started spreading again.”
When the firefighters finally understood that they could not get the fire under control, Setic joined local residents, artists and workers in saving the cultural heritage inside the City Hall. Around 17,600 pieces, including some from the library’s so-called ‘special collection’ were saved that day. Unfortunately, more than two million books, magazines and manuscripts were lost forever.
Among the lost pieces destroyed by flames cause by a single projectile were works that bore witness to the multicultural, multi-confessional, multi-ethnic society of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The renovated City Hall was reopened in July 2014, almost 22 years after it was burned down.
But since the building reopened, instead of hosting students and scholars, it now only houses the city administration. The National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been relocated to the Sarajevo University campus, where conditions are poor.
“We are not allowed to come back to this building, not even to third of it,” Ismet Ovcina, director of the National and University Library, told BIRN.
Ovcina said that they were promises to move the library back to the City Hall by the 30th anniversary of the blaze, but this hasn’t happened.
“We are very upset because of this,” Ovcina said. “We could use other expresion, but I’m choosing words. It shows an ignorant and uncivilised attitude, not only towards the library, but towards cultural heritage as well.”
The Vijecnica was constructed when Austria-Hungary ruled Bosnia, the former Ottoman province that it occupied in 1878 and annexed in 1908.
The architecture of the building, which opened in April 1896, was designed to reflect the new government’s sensitivity to Bosnia’s large Muslim community, with its exuberant faux-Ottoman and neo-Moorish touches.
The building was originally designed by Alexander Wittek, who died before it was finished and was succeeded by Ciril Metod Ivekovic.
The hall was first given to the City Council, which used it until 1949, when it was turned into a library. Generations of Sarajevans studied and prepared for their exams there.
Participants at the commemoration. Photo: BIRN.
Former firefighter Omer Setic. Photo: BIRN.
Ismet Ovcina, director of the National and University Library. Photo: BIRN.
The City Hall is home to a permanent exhibition dedicated to war crime trials. Photo: BIRN.
Sarajevo City Hall is considered to be one of the most beautiful buildings from the Austro-Hungarian era. Photo: BIRN.
Since reopening in 2014, the City Hall has housed the city administration. Photo: BIRN.
The grand ballroom of the City Hall. Photo: BIRN.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
