IV.

Culture

Bosnia’s diverse population has made the country’s cultural life rich. Epic stories, a form of traditional oral literature, were still sung throughout the country well into the 1950s. Bosnian urban love songs, largely Muslim in origin, were popular throughout the former Yugoslavia.

A.

Literature, Film, and Music

Ivo Andrić, a Serb who was raised Catholic in Bosnia, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1961. His novels include Na Drini ćuprija (1945; The Bridge on the Drina, 1959), in which a bridge from the Ottoman period symbolically united the peoples of Bosnia. The novelist Meša Selimović was of Muslim origin but said that he wrote Serbian literature. The film director Emir Kusturica, also of Muslim origin, made internationally acclaimed films in Sarajevo. His film When Father was Away on Business was a finalist for the Academy Award in the United States for best foreign film in 1984. That film had a cast and crew that included Muslims, Serbs, and Croats. Through 1991 the Bosnian rock group Bijelo Dugme was extremely popular throughout Yugoslavia, playing music influenced by the various traditions of Bosnia.

These ethnic and cultural mixtures have declined since the war. The Bosniak authorities regard Andrić as having been anti-Muslim, and they closed the museum devoted to him in his home town of Travnik. Filmmaker Kusturica moved to Serbia in 1992. His internationally acclaimed 1995 depiction of the war, Underground, was condemned in Sarajevo. As of early 1999, he had not been able to return there.

B.

Cultural Institutions Destroyed

The most important library in Bosnia was the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. It was intentionally destroyed by Serb shelling in 1992 and remained in ruins as of early 1999. The world famous bridge in Mostar, built by Ottoman rulers in the 17th century, was intentionally destroyed by Croat shelling in 1994. Throughout Bosnia, churches (Orthodox and Roman Catholic) and mosques were destroyed by the armed forces of the other major ethnic groups. Among the most important losses were two mosques in Banja Luka that were on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) register of world cultural monuments. These mosques were leveled by Serb authorities in 1992, with even the stones removed from the sites.

The Culture section of this article was contributed by Robert M. Hayden.