Director of the Center Against Art Smuggling (CPKU), Dženan Jusufović, in an interview for Fena, warns that the search for missing art and the return of illegally exported cultural goods have been neglected in Bosnia and Herzegovina for years, stressing that institutional disinterest and political blockades seriously threaten the preservation of the cultural identity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Jusufović points out that, although the CPKU has been working for years on collecting and consolidating data on missing works of art, the state does not deal systematically with this issue.
“The search for missing works of art and the restitution of those whose whereabouts are known continue to be neglected. A small number of organizations and individuals deal with this problem, but not the state. In the past 11 years, as long as the Center against Art Smuggling has been in existence, we have carried out a large number of important projects and activities on data collection and their unification. Unfortunately, the institutions that should primarily deal with this work are not interested in this issue,” he emphasizes.
Such a relationship, he says, leaves long-term consequences for the country’s cultural heritage.
“It is disastrous for our country to permanently lose what belongs to it, when it comes to national monuments and cultural assets that represent the identity of the people who lived and live in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he warned.
He particularly pointed to the war events from the period 1992-1995. year, when cultural assets were systematically destroyed and looted, noting that important documentation about their existence was also destroyed, which is a big problem for today’s researchers who are looking for cultural assets of BiH.
“One should ask what the state has done in terms of finding them and returning them,” emphasizes Jusufović.
He believes that the reasons for the absence of restitution should also be sought in the current political context, especially through the multi-year impossibility of the work of the Commission for the Preservation of National Monuments of BiH, which was established by Annex 8 of the Dayton Peace Agreement.
“Blocking the work of the Commission for the Preservation of National Monuments of BiH is a true indicator of the current situation in the country. The political ideologues, who organized the blockade of the work of the Commission, knew that they blocked all the processes important for BiH when it comes to the protection of cultural assets, their restitution, but also search activities,” he emphasized.
When it comes to cultural assets that were illegally taken out of BiH, in addition to looted cultural assets in the war, Jusufović points out that we should not ignore those that were looted several centuries ago by different conquerors who conquered Bosnia.
Referring to the words of professor Dr. Enver Imamović, Jusufović emphasizes that Bosnia and Herzegovina’s cultural treasures are “scattered all over Europe” and are found in museums, archives, state treasuries and private collections, from Rome, Bologna, Venice, through Moscow, Vienna, Budapest, to Petersburg, Istanbul, Dublin, Dubrovnik and Naples. Professor Imamović wrote that “BiH belongs to a group of countries whose cultural heritage has been almost completely plundered and destroyed. We will probably never know exactly what was taken away in the past. Recently, a significant number of such objects have been traced. So far, 56 charters, 31 papal bulls, 36 Bogomil religious books, one medieval novel written in Bosnian script, two wills, one genealogy of the ‘Bosnian lord’, 16 paintings, 14 items of church vestments, three cloaks, one of which is royal, 22 metal art objects, hundreds of Roman and other old coins, hundreds of archaeological objects, and more have been recorded abroad.”
How significant the return of cultural assets is also evidenced by the European integration process of BiH, points out the director of the CPKU, recalling that the European Commission, as part of the preparation of its opinion on BiH’s request for membership in the European Union, sent the Council of Ministers of BiH a series of questions on the protection of cultural heritage in December 2016.
According to the data of the Center against Art Smuggling, there is currently a search for 234 works of art in their database, some of which have been declared national monuments of BiH, which further emphasizes the seriousness of the problem.
As one of the famous examples of missing works of art, Jusufović singled out the painting “Self-Portrait” from 1912, the work of one of the most important Swiss painters, Ferdinand Hodler, which was stolen from the BiH Art Gallery during the war.
“That this is an important collection is indicated by the fact that the National Museum in Belgrade was interested in it in the 60s of the last century. However, in 1966, the collection was bought by the Institute for the Use of Cultural-Historical and Natural Heritage in Sarajevo, which transferred it to the BiH Art Gallery, where it is still located. The fact that in the 60s of the last century the art thief Dragutin Zistler stole this painting also testifies to the interest of certain criminal milieu in Hodler’s collection even in the earlier period, especially in “Self-Portrait”. It was confiscated in one of the actions of the then Yugoslav police. This painting was stolen again during the war from the BiH Art Gallery and is still being searched for. It is found in the missing art databases of the Center against Art Smuggling, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Sarajevo Canton, the BiH Art Gallery and Interpol,” Mr. Jusufovic adds.
He also paid special attention to the case of an icon that disappeared from the collection of the BiH Art Gallery during the war, for which he determined that there were a number of illogicalities during the research for the Louvre Museum. It is about the icon of the Beloved Virgin, and in the research, he says, he discovered shocking data.
“For this icon, information was published on a Russian portal that Interpol requested help from the Orenburg police to find thieves of ancient icons from Russia. This was announced by the press service of the regional police administration, according to the media. It was stated that BiH police confiscated ancient icons representing cultural assets and paintings depicting city streets, and that these works are believed to have been stolen from Russia. However, the photo of the icon, which is presented as a Russian cultural asset and which was said to have been confiscated in Bosnia and Herzegovina, does not represent a Russian cultural asset because it is an icon of the “Our Lady of Mercy”, which disappeared from the Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, a seal with the imprint of the Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina can be clearly seen on the presented photo of the icon – said Jusufović, adding that it is the same icon that Interpol BiH is looking for and whose photo is in the database of missing art of the Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the databases of the CPKU and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Sarajevo Canton.
He also pointed to additional illogicalities in connection with the second icon, whose case, he says, is even more strange, and the case of an artistic painting that was presented in the Russian media as a Russian cultural asset.
“On the second icon, the stamp of the Art Gallery of BiH is clearly visible, but I must note that it is not in any database in BiH, not even in the database of missing art of the Art Gallery of BiH. This icon is also presented as a cultural property of Russia, although it bears the stamp of a gallery from our country. In addition to these icons, the aforementioned announcement by the Russian police also shows an artistic painting that is claimed to have been confiscated in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and which is also assumed to be from Russia. And this is about presenting false information, because it is not about a Russian art painting that shows the city streets of a Russian city, but about an art painting that shows the old core of the city of Mostar and the Old Bridge. Interpol BiH has issued a search warrant for this picture as well, and the search for it is still ongoing,” points out Jusufović.
The director of CPKU also referred to the issue of belonging to cultural property, noting that it is related to peoples, not to states. He cited as an example the case of the Mulabdić family, whose art painting “Magdalene” by Đoka Mazalić was illegally taken out of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war, and is now privately owned on the territory of Serbia.
“This painting has been declared a national monument of BiH and Interpol has launched a search for it. Đoko Mazalić is an artist and collector who was born in BiH, created in BiH and died in BiH. Now the question can be asked: Is it a Serbian or a Bosnian-Herzegovinian painter? Do his works of art belong to the cultural heritage of BiH or the Serbian cultural heritage? Could this mean that the works of art that were illegally taken out of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war no longer belong to the cultural heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but to the cultural heritage of Serbia, because they were made by a Bosnian Serb?,” asked Jusufović.
He also warned against legislative moves that further endanger the cultural heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“One of the last ones happened in 2024 when the BiH entity Republika Srpska amended the existing law on cultural assets in which the name “BiH” was deleted from the name “national monument of BiH” and now the name “national monument” is used without the prefix “BiH”,” he stated.
At the end of the conversation, he pointed out the complexity of the search for stolen cultural property.
“The search for the origin of stolen cultural goods in BiH illustrates the complexity of the process in which, in fact, diplomacy and memory intertwine and influence each other. The Bosnian case emphasizes the need for an integrated approach that is legally rigorous, institutionally coordinated and morally aware of the symbolic significance of heritage,” concluded Jusufović.
