Publications

A Flower for the Dead – The Memorials of Bogdan Bogdanović

Author: Friedrich Achleitner
Publisher: Park Books, Zurich
Content: 183 pages
ISBN: 978-906027-35-7
Year: 2013

Bogdan Bogdanović’s equally impressive and reconciliatory memorials and monuments in former Yugoslavia.

The Serbian Bogdan Bogdanović (1922–2010) – architect, urbanist, polymath, writer, and former mayor of Belgrade – created some of the most distinctive memorials in Europe. In particular his “Flower of Stone”, the Memorial for the Victims of the Concentration Camp in Jasenovac (Croatia, 1966), and the Dudik Memorial Park for the Victims of Facism in Vukovar (Croatia, 1980; partly destroyed during the Yugoslavian civil wars in the 1990s) gained international attention. Spread throughout the territories of former Yugoslavia, Bogdanović’s around twenty monuments, memorial sites, and necropolises symbolize both the cultural diversity and the tragic history of the Balkans. Yet they all reflect Bogdanović’s attitude of inclusion rather than exclusion, to unite rather than to separate.

Friedrich Achleitner, poet and architectural critic, has been a close friend of Bogdanović during the latter’s years of exile in Vienna. Achleitner has visited all memorials, first together with Bogdanović and, after the artist’s death in 2010, on his own. In this new book Achleitner presents what he has seen during his travels in essays and images.

This publication is available at ERSTE Foundation Library.

Florian Bauer

Director Social Finance, Sustainability and Innovation
Since 2023, Florian Bauer has been responsible for social finance, sustainability and social innovation at ERSTE Foundation. Prior to this role, Florian worked in the NGO & Social Entrepreneurship sector for more than 13 years. He led the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), an international multilateral NGO that works to accelerate market-based deployment of renewable energy and energy efficient systems in developing countries, and was Managing Director & COO of the Impact Hub Vienna. From 2020-2023, Florian established strategic alliances with key partners and helped to create innovative semantic technology solutions at Semantic Web Company (SWC), a leading IT company in semantic AI solutions.