French philosopher Bernard Henri Levy chose Sarajevo to premiere his play, “Hotel Europe”, a monologue on crisis in Europe. Leaders of the 28-member European Union marked the centennial on Thursday in Ypres, the Belgian city synonymous with the slaughter of the war, papering over divisions born of economic crisis and growing support for the anti-EU right. Izetbegovic’s Croat counterpart attended, but their Serb colleague did not.Īustria’s Fischer said: “Tonight we want to send out an appeal to Bosnian citizens to put aside their differences and concentrate on a joint goal, to bring the country closer to the EU.” “I am happy that we can send to Europe a message of peace after the destruction of two decades ago,” Bakir Izetbegovic, the Bosniak chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency told reporters after the concert, which included the music of Haydn, Schubert, Berg and Brahms.
People cross the Latin Bridge and street corner in front of the historical landmark, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated, in Sarajevo June 24, 2014. The building bears a plaque condemning the “Serb criminals” who fired the shells, a reference Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said prevented him from attending. The neo-Moorish Vijecnica, which later became the National Library, went up in flames in 1992 under fire from Bosnian Serb forces in the hills, almost 2 million books perishing in the inferno. The Austrians attacked Serbia a month later and the Great Powers, already spoiling for a fight, piled in. The archduke and his wife left in an open car, but the driver took a wrong turn and Princip shot them from a Browning pistol on the banks of the river.
In Sarajevo, Austrian President Heinz Fischer was guest of honour at the concert in the capital’s restored City Hall, known as Vijecnica, where Ferdinand attended a reception on June 28, 1914. They planned to re-enact the murder in the eastern Drina river town of Visegrad, seared into the memory of Muslim Bosniaks for a wave of ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serbs early in the 1992-95 war.
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