Bogdan Bogdanović

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Bogdan Bogdanović ( Serbian - Cyrillic Богдан Богдановић ; born August 20, 1922 in Belgrade , Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes ; †  June 18, 2010 in Vienna , Austria ) was a Yugoslav-Serbian architect , urban theorist and essayist . He was the author of numerous publications on the architecture of cities, in particular on mythical and symbolic aspects, and made numerous contributions in international media ( El País , Svenska Dagbladet , Die Zeit, etc.).

Life

Stone flower by Bogdan Bogdanović in the memorial of the Jasenovac concentration camp

After the end of the Second World War , in which he took part on the side of the Yugoslav partisans , Bogdanović studied architecture and initially worked as an assistant at the Department of Urban Studies at the University of Belgrade . In 1951 he won a competition to erect a memorial on the Sephardic cemetery in Belgrade , creating the first of a total of around 20 memorials that he realized throughout Yugoslavia by the 1980s . One of his best-known works is the monumental concrete sculpture “Stone Flower” in the Jasenovac Memorial Park (1966), which also received international attention.

The work on the monument in the Belgrade Sephardic Cemetery (1951–1952) proved to be significant for Bogdanović's further work. Although not a believer himself, he began to deal with the Jewish symbolism and the Kabbalah , which influenced his further work , which was shaped by metaphysics and surrealism ( "So I can say that through my preoccupation with Jewish esotericism I began to see a lot, which later influenced all my work and, if you will, my life too. ” ). His style contradicted the socialist realism that was prevalent in Yugoslavia until the 1960s , but was repeatedly used by the party and state leadership around Josip Broz Tito , also to underline the country's independent path in contrast to the Soviet Union supported.

Politically, he was a member of the Communist Party since his time with the partisans, in his own words "a bad communist, but with conviction - a staunch leftist" . Although he found himself increasingly in opposition to the increasingly nationalist state leadership, he nevertheless became mayor of Belgrade in 1982 on the initiative of the then party chairman of the Communist Party of Serbia Ivan Stambolić .

When Slobodan Milošević came to power at the end of the 1980s and the associated spreading nationalism in Yugoslavia, Bogdanović withdrew into dissidence and in 1987, after describing Milošević and his followers as narrow-minded warmongers in a 60-page open letter, all official positions back. After the outbreak of the wars in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and increasingly exposed to hostility due to his comments critical of the regime, he went into exile with his wife Ksenija in 1993 . First they traveled to Paris , where there was already a “Belgrade Circle” of Yugoslav emigrants. However, this group was strongly nationalistic, which is why the couple looked for an alternative. At the invitation of Milo Dor , a childhood friend of Bogdan Bogdanović, they finally came to Vienna, where several of his books were published in German in the following years. In June 2010 he died of a heart attack in a hospital in Vienna.

Teaching

From 1964 Bogdanović taught as a professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Belgrade and headed it from 1970 as dean. In addition, he was temporarily chairman of the Yugoslav Association of Architects and a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts . As dean he tried to push through a reform of architecture education, but was forced to resign from the party before it was implemented. He then transferred his lessons entirely to an empty village school near Belgrade, where he had been trying to implement an alternative project with his “Philosophy of Architecture” since 1976. This alternative architecture education was also increasingly hostile by the rulers. In 1981 he demonstratively resigned from the academy in protest against the political leadership.

Buildings

Slobodište Memorial Cemetery
Monument to the fallen fighters of the revolution, Vlasotince

In the period between 1952 and 1981, Bogdan Bogdanović designed more than 20 monuments and memorials against fascism and militarism, which were built in all the republics of Yugoslavia . These works resulted directly from his personal experience with World War II. The year numbers mark the beginning of planning until the end of construction work.

Essays

The following collections of essays by Bogdan Bogdanović have been published in German:

Exhibitions

Awards

Movie

In the documentary Architecture of Memory: The Monuments of Bogdan Bogdanović by the Austrian city planner Reinhard Seiß , completed in 2008 , Bogdan Bogdanović and, above all, his monumental work are presented in detail.

literature

  • Jelica Jovanović, Vladimir Kulić, Wolfgang Thaler: BOGDAN BOGDANOVIĆ BIBLIOTEKA BEOGRAD. TO ARCHITECT'S LIBRARY . 2020. Salzburg: Fotohof edition . ISBN 978-3-902993-71-7

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Serbian architect and author died ( Memento from June 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b c d e Reinhard Seiß : Bogdan Bogdanovic: “I was and am a bad communist” , interview, April 26, 2009
  3. ^ Architekturzentrum Wien Bogdan Bogdanović: The Damned Builder , solo exhibition, March 5, 2009 - June 2, 2009.
  4. ↑ Video for the exhibition Bogdan Bogdanović: The Damned Builder (2009)
  5. ↑ Architecture of Memory: The Monuments of Bogdan Bogdanovic ( Memento from December 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the Vienna Film Fund

Web links

Commons : Bogdan Bogdanović  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Bogdanović, Bogdan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Богдановић, Богдан (Serbian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Yugoslav and Serbian architect, urban theorist and essayist
DATE OF BIRTH August 20, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Belgrade
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 2010
Place of death Vienna