“Bosnien-Hilfe”

One example of various student initiatives in Europe in support of Bosnia-Herzegovina was the project “Bosnien-Hilfe” (Bosnia Aid) at the University of Frankfurt am Main. The group was closely linked to the international student magazine “Perspektiven”, the Bosnian refugee newspaper “Egzil” and the group “Undogmatische Linke” in Frankfurt. The students advocated for a democratic and multi-ethnic Bosnia and wanted to counter the public interpretation of the “ancient hatred between 3 tribes” with a political understanding of the war in BiH. After individual discussion events, the group organised a conference on “Bosnia and Europe” in Frankfurt in February 1994, to which they invited several intellectuals from the former Yugoslavia, including Gajo Sekulić from Sarajevo, Sejfudin Tokić from Tuzla, Ivan Čolović from Belgrade and Gvozden Flego from Zagreb. Building on this conference, the book “Bosnia and Europe” was published a few months later.

The conference and the book focused on the analysis of the political and violent mechanisms leading to the “ethnicisation of society” in the former Yugoslavia and the plans to divide BiH. At the same time, they criticized how easily Western societies adopted the ethnic interpretation of the war propagated by Serbian and Croatian nationalists, which in turn reflected how much ethnic thinking was spreading in Europe in general. This process poses a danger to Europe as a whole, as the book states at the outset: “European societies are increasingly moving back to defining themselves according to ethnic principles. The indifference of Western politicians in the face of the war that broke out in BiH after the end of real socialism shows the state of European nation states. The violent creation and reinforcement of ethnic differences and their artificial elevation to the most important criterion of action threatens the other countries of our continent as well.“