Gazimestan

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The Monument to the Heroes of Serbian Kosovo was erected in 1953.

Gazimestan ( Serbian - Cyrillic Газиместан , Albanian  Monumenti Memorial i Gazimestanit ) is a memorial in Kosovo . It is located on the scene of the battle on the Amselfeld , in which July 28th took place . a Christian army, whose Serbian main contingents were led by the Serbian princes Lazar Hrebeljanović and Vuk Branković , opposed the Muslim Ottoman forces under Sultan Murad I.

The battle, in which both Lazar and Murad were killed, was decisive for Serbia's transition to the vassalage of the Ottoman Empire, which was advancing into the Balkans. In the modern age, however, a Serbian national myth was founded with the event that was perceived as a defeat , the Blackbird Field or Kosovo myth. Although the battle ended without a clear winner, as the leaders of both armed forces fell, the result was that the resistance of the Serbian princes against a military or numerically superior enemy was broken for the first time. They therefore had to recognize the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultans, which meant that the remainder of the Serbian principality was subject to tribute , although Vuk Branković and Đurađ Branković continued to oppose it for a long time after the battle. This battle was later transfigured into the national myth of the Serbs. In 1459 Serbia was finally conquered by the Ottomans and remained part of the Ottoman Empire until 1804.

The June 28 combined with other Christian and pagan influences to the important particularly for the Serbs holiday Vidovdan , whose celebration in since the end of Ottoman rule especially at the historic site Gazimestan Kosovo Polje plays a high symbolic value.

Since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, the celebration on Gazimestan has again been increasingly part of a new ethno- national or ethno-religious field of conflict between Albanian and Slavic (especially Serbian) claims, as recent attacks on the memorial and the Vidovdan celebrations show.

construction

The monument consists on the one hand of the monument to the heroes of Kosovo, designed by Aleksandar Deroko and erected in 1953, which is modeled on a medieval tower, on the other hand of Murat's tomb, the Gazimestan tomb and a marble column with an inscription by Stefan Lazarević , the son of the Serbian prince Lazar Hrebeljanović, who fell in the battle on the Blackbird Field .

The “Kosovo oath” of Prince Lazar as an inscription on the monument.

The tower has an inscription on the base that originated from the so-called Kosovo myth . According to legend, it is the "Kosovo Oath" , written by Prince Lazar, from a folk song by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić . This “oath” for the coming battles consists almost entirely of curses against treason, which apply to all those who would not take part in the battle. The traitors are condemned to be people with no offspring, outcasts for all time. The oath appears as an incantation to celebrate treason with a curse threat. Most of the songs about the so-called Kosovo myth were written down in the course of the 19th century, the age of European nationalism , which explains why traces of a transition to nationalism can already be found in some of them. The reason given for going into battle in Kosovo is no longer loyalty to the prince and faith, but rather an obligation to the Serbian ancestors, the Serbian blood and the Serbian upbringing, which form the basis for the oath made by Lazar. It was only in the songs of Karadžić that Lazar's choice between an honorable death and a life in shame had changed to the now known choice between "earthly and heavenly kingdoms". The accent of the oath in the Kosovo myth shifted further from the religious to the political, because the self-sacrificing hero is not only promised fame and eternal life. Eternal continuity is also promised for the kingdom, which is the point of reference for national endeavors.

The fact that it is seen as a “heavenly” kingdom points to the idea of ​​its latency: As for the “kingdom of God”, it is expected that it will one day come to earth and establish the originally intended good order. Karadžić's text from 1845 used here on the memorial contains a more nationalistic form than his version from 1813.

history

At the site of this monument, Slobodan Milošević held the so-called Blackbird Field Speech on June 28, 1989 for the large-scale celebration of the 600th anniversary of the battle , which was heavily criticized in western media, especially in the Yugoslav wars and in the Kosovo war, and which is said to have historical significance.

The memorial tower was damaged by the laying of explosives after the arrival of KFOR in June 1999. According to an inventory by UNESCO , the inscription was missing a few letters in 2003 and the lower part of the staircase was blown away so that the tower could not be climbed. In August 1999, the Kosovar Albanian paramilitary UÇK is said to have severely damaged the monument to the Heroes of Kosovo.

Two years after Kosovo's declaration of independence, in 2010 KFOR handed over guarding the monument to the local police authorities.

At Vidovdan 2012, Kosovar Albanian youths attacked a Serbian convoy of school buses with Molotov cocktails and concrete blocks, which was on the way back from the Vidovdan celebration. Two of the injured children and adolescents were treated with serious head injuries in a hospital in the Serbian exclave Gračanica .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Carl Polónyi: Salvation and Destruction: National Myths and War using the Example of Yugoslavia 1980-2004. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8305-1724-5 , pp. 25-27.
  2. ^ A b Tim Judah: The Serbs - History, Myth, & the Destruction og Yugoslavia , 2nd edition, Yale University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-300-08507-9 , p. 31.
  3. ^ A b Wolfgang Petritsch, Robert Pichler: Kosovo - Kosova - The long way to peace. Wieser, Klagenfurt u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-85129-430-0 , pp. 55 f.
  4. ↑ a b Momčilo Spremčić: Vuk Branković i Kosovska bitka . In: Glas, Odeljenje istorijskih nauka . No. 9 . Serbian Academy of Arts , Belgrade 1996, p. 85-108 .
  5. ↑ Jan N. Lorenzen: The great battles. Myths, people, fates. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2006, p. 22.
  6. ^ Carl Polónyi: Salvation and Destruction: National Myths and War Using the Example of Yugoslavia 1980-2004. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8305-1724-5 .
  7. ↑ a b Serbs attacked with firebombs; "Cyrillic t-shirts" banned ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English). B92 , June 28, 2012, archived from the original ( February 11, 2013 memento on WebCite ) on February 11, 2012.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.b92.net
  8. ↑ a b Dragan Kojadinović (ed.): March Pogrom in Kosovo and Metohija - March 17-19, 2004 - with a survey of destroyed and endangered Christian cultural heritage ( Memento of the original from January 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 103 MB) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, Museum in Priština (displaced), Belgrad 2004, ISBN 86-85235-00-6 , p. 62 (English, Serbian). Retrieved February 9, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mnemosyne.org.rs
  9. ↑ a b Kosovo police take over historic site of Gazimestan. In: BBC Online. British Broadcasting Corporation , March 18, 2010, accessed June 22, 2012 (British English): "Nato forces in Kosovo have handed over the task of guarding the Gazimestan monument, a site of great historical significance to Serbs, to local police."
  10. ^ A b Gazimestan Memorial Complex. Serbian Monument Office ( Serbian - Cyrillic Републички завод за заштиту споменика културе ), May 29, 2000, accessed on June 22, 2012 (English): “In August 1999 the KLA set explosive charges and badly damaged the monument to the Kosovo built in 1953 and designed by Aleksandar Deroko "
  11. ^ Carl Polónyi: Salvation and Destruction: National Myths and War Using the Example of Yugoslavia 1980-2004. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8305-1724-5 , pp. 53f .; Note: The description by Polónyi refers to the mountain wreath of Njegoš , which also deals with the Kosovo myth, but can be used in the cited passage.
  12. ^ Carl Polónyi: Salvation and Destruction: National Myths and War Using the Example of Yugoslavia 1980-2004. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8305-1724-5 , p. 48 f.
  13. ↑ Alexander Greenawalt: Kosovo Myths: Karadzic, Njegos, and the Transformation of Serb Memory. In: spacesofidentity.net. 2001, accessed on June 22, 2012 (English): "the quoted text appeared for the first time in Karadzic's 1845 edition of heroic folk songs, whereas the collection contains a different version of the pledge that initially appeared in the earlier 1813 edition, and which Karadzic claimed to have culled from his own childhood recollections. This earlier version is notably lacking in the appeal to Serb blood and heritage "
  14. ^ Cultural Heritage in South-East Europe: Kosovo; SEE edition featuring UNESCO mission in Kosovo and extensive field visits outside Pristina (March 2003), Cultural heritage in South-East Europe; 1 ( Memento from February 16, 2013 on WebCite ) (PDF; 2.9 MB, English). UNESCO, 2003, 154 p., Here p. 117, archived from the original on February 16, 2013.
  15. ^ Kosovo police take over historic site of Gazimestan. In: BBC Online. British Broadcasting Corporation , March 18, 2010, accessed June 22, 2012 (British English): “The Serbian government […] claims that Serbian monuments have been subject to past attacks by 'Albanian extremists', who - it has said - aim to destroy all traces of the Serb presence in Kosovo. "

Coordinates: 42 ° 41 ′ 26 ″  N , 21 ° 7 ′ 25 ″  E