Adil Zulfikarpašić

Adil Zulfikarpašić , (further form of name: Adil-beg Zulfikarpašić-Čengić ; born December 23, 1921 in Foča ; † July 21, 2008 in Sarajevo ) was a Bosnian politician (MBO), philanthropist and businessman.

Family and origin

The original family name was Zulfikar-Pascha Čengić, in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 19th century it became Zulfikarpašić-Čengić, whereby Adil dropped the name part Čengić as a young man.

According to tradition, the part of the name "Zulfikar" is derived from the double-headed sword Zülfikar by Hazreti Alija , fourth caliph and son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed .

Father: Husein-Beg

Mother: Zahida, also comes from the Čengić family.

The father was married four times, but as a Muslim he was never married to two women at the same time. At the time of Adil Zulfikarpašić's birth, the father was over 80 years old and the mother 17 years old.

The siblings and half-siblings

• Brothers: Alija, Hilmo, who emigrated to Turkey and took the name Akkoyunlu again, and also Ibrahim, Hassan, Hivzo, Hamdija and Sabrija
• Sisters: Arfa, Fatima, Haša, Zumruta, Hasiba, Hajrija, Hamijeta, Fahra and Šefika.

Career

In 1938 he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia . In the first regional government of the VR Bosnia-Herzegovina after the end of the war he was Vice Minister of Commerce, but soon turned away from the party and emigrated in 1946. He lived in Austria and studied political science and law. From the mid-1950s he lived in Friborg (Switzerland) and was active in various politically liberal emigrant organizations. In the 1960s he edited the magazine Bosanski Pogledi (Bosnian Views). In Zurich , where he has lived since 1965, he founded the Bosnian Institute (renamed "Bosniak Institute" in 1988), which is dedicated to researching the culture of the Bosniaks . Professionally, he worked as a financial service provider; together with his wife Dr. Tatjana Zulfikarpašić, he led the company Stamaco Finanz und Handels AG . In 1990 he returned to Bosnia and joined Alija Izetbegović's party SDA . Soon he founded the Muslimanska bošnjačka organizacija (MBO) party with Muhamed Filipović , which represented a much more moderate nationalism than the SDA. He was briefly vice-president of the Izetbegović government. He lived in Zurich and Sarajevo and set up a branch of the Bosniak Institute in Sarajevo.

Works

• Milovan Đilas , Nadežda Gaće : Adil Zulfikarpašić. A political biography from today's Bosnia (= studies on contemporary studies of Southeastern Europe 33). Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-56252-5 (English edition: The Bosniak. Adil Zulfikarpašić in dialogue with Milovan Đilas and Nadežda Gaće. Hurst & Co., London 1998, ISBN 1-85065-339-9 ; several editions in Serbo-Croatian, published in Zurich, last: 4th edition. Bošnjački Institut et al., Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-905211-00-9 ).

Web links

• Homepage of the Bosnian Institute (Adil Zulfikarpašić Foundation)
• Biographical information (Bosnian)
• Interview in NZZ Folio 09/1992 with Adil Zulfikarpašić, Vladimir Malogajski and Michael Novoselac
• Review of the book The Bosnjak from Vreme NDA from December 12, 1994 (English)
• THE BOŠNJAŠTVO CONCEPT BY ADIL ZULFIKARPAŠIĆ a master's thesis by Christiane Dick, Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Free University of Berlin. A work that Adil Zulfikarpašić himself described as "largely ignorant" and "created with a lot of effort". (PDF file; 1.43 MB)