Friday, February 08, 2013 - 
Bosnia,cultural heritage,Illuminated Manuscripts,museum funding,Sarajevo Haggadah
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Bosnia,cultural heritage,Illuminated Manuscripts,museum funding,Sarajevo Haggadah
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Bosnian Culture Heritage Survived the War but will it Survive the Nation's Peace?
by Lynda Albertson, ARCA's CEO
Bosnia's shuttered national museum in Sarajevo and the
Bosnian Commission for Historic Monuments say they cannot loan The Metropolitan Museum of Art its Sarajevo Haggadah,
a rare medieval illuminated manuscript that contains the illustrated traditional
text of the Passover Haggadah, read during the Jewish Passover Seder.
They say the manuscript cannot be loaned because of the
unresolved status of its home. The
125-year old institution, The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Zemaljski Muzej), has been left without funding as a result of the 1995
Bosnian peace agreement. The signing
of the Dayton Accord may have brought an end to the region’s conflict but it
also effectively fractured the country into two parts: the Republika Srpska and
the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina linked by a weakened central
government.
In the war’s aftermath, the crucial priorities of the
country’s postwar leadership were rebuilding the economy, resettling an
estimated one million refugees and establishing a working government amongst
the ethnically mixed populace. While
the accord heralded a much-needed peace, it also created a constitutional
vacuum, open to conflicting interpretations over the maintenance of the
country’s cultural legacy.
Within Bosnia and Herzegovina there are those who insist
that the situation should be resolved giving responsibility for key cultural institutions
to the state. Others argue that since nothing is mentioned
in the country’s constitution, the administration should remain with lower
levels of government and its expenses should not fall on the common budget.
Many in Sarajevo hope that by rejecting the Met’s lending request,
the situation will put pressure on the government to try to step in to resolve
the issue, saving the museum and other key cultural institutions facing potential
closure due to lack of funding and oversight.
Like with the more recently publicized Arabic manuscripts in
Mali, this Sarajevo Haggadah’s
preservation history is a testament to the lengths citizens from various
countries have gone to protect their cultural heritage during times of conflict.
Handwritten on bleached calfskin and illuminated in copper
and gold, the manuscript is believed to have originated
in Catalonia in the mid 14th century.
Splashed among the pages are droplets of red wine, a testament to its
use, most likely by a Sephardic family.
Historians believe that the manuscript was spirited out of Spain after King Ferdinand decreed that Jews
should be expelled in 1492.
During this exodus, many Sephardic Jews
relocated first to Provence and later to Venice. The Sarajevo Haggadah surfaced in Venice in 1609, during a period when Jews were prohibited
from printing books and restricted to the islet of Cannaregio. Subject to inspection during the inquisition,
where texts perceived as dangerous to the Church were burned, the book was ultimately
spared, as witnessed by the handwritten notation on its pages which was signed
by the Dominican inquisitor of Giovanni Vistorini, censor of
Hebrew texts.
The manuscript made its way eventually to Sarajevo, where it
was housed but not displayed publically at the Archaeological
Museum, now National Museum in Sarajevo.
During the Second World War the manuscript was hidden from
Nazi forces through the ingenuity of the museum’s director, Jozo
Petrovic, and Dervis Korkut, an ethnic Albanian Muslim who served as the
museum’s chief librarian. With the
help of a Muslim imim in Zenica the Sarajevo
Haggadah was hidden in a mosque’s library until
after the war.
During the 1992-1995 Bosnian war the manuscript was again subject
to great risk. Sarajevo was on the front line and
constantly under siege by Bosnian Serb forces. To keep the text safe from harm or potential looting the
director of the Museum, Enver Imamovic under armed guardsequestered the
manuscript in an underground vault at the National Bank. Despite being safe, several
newspaper articles around the world speculated that the Sarajevo Haggadah had been secretly sold and used to buy
arms to support the ongoing conflict.
This rumor was proved false when the newly instated president of Bosnia
presented the manuscript publicly at a community Seder in 1995.
In 2001 Jacques Klein, the head of the U.N.
mission in Bosnia along with two international experts examined the Haggadah at
the invitation of UNESCO. Through the joint efforts of the UN Mission, which
donated $50,000, Klein
himself, the German Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the World Bank and
Bosnia's Jewish community minor repairs were undertaken on the Haggadah,
primarily working to conserve its binding. A space to permanently exhibit the Haggadah was
also established and the manuscript at last went on public display in December
2002.
In the last ten years Sarajevo's National
Art Gallery, its National Library and the Historical Museum, have joined the
National Museum in slow decline due to lack of funding. Resourceful staffers first tried to squirrel
away resources by cutting their heating, then staff salaries or in some cases,
opening their doors to the public only a few days per week. Eventually, failing to find alternative
funding solutions, the National Museum was forced to lock
its doors.
According to cultureshutdown.net,
February 4, 2013 marked the National Museum in Sarajevo’s 125th
anniversary. Wooden planks were
nailed over entrance last October despite pleas for civic intervention to save
the museum and its collection. At this birthday celebration all well-wishers
could do was light 125 candles and lay 125 roses.
The museum's deputy director, Marica
Filipovic, said that the institution had survived two world wars and the
Bosnian conflict: "But it seems it will not survive the peace.”