Family sure is a funny thing… I don’t think many of us ever realise quite how influential they can be until we look back and see how we, ourselves, have been shaped and moulded by their actions and example.

The first time I went alone seems to stand out most clearly in mind. My uncle had bought me a “Koh-I-Noor – Versatil” lead holder pencil as a sort of welcome present… And it proved to be a handy tool with which to write my varied Sci-Fi ideas down with… Back then I was drawing heavily… Mainly characters from the 2000 AD comic strips i.e. Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Zenith, Tharg’s Future Shocks, Chopper For Oz, etc… But also dragons and crazy puzzles, along with some very weird cartoon characters of my own. There wasn’t a lot more to do in the cold wintery month that I had arrived in. Just the very memory of it still seems to bluster through my mind. My uncle was rather busy too… So these fantastical characters seemed to offer a focus for my attention in the very apparent midsts of an un-namable rising angst. For these were the years preceding the Yugoslav civil war. A time in Yugoslavia’s history when peace and equanimity were threatened by the same mistrust of too many religious decrees living under one socialist banner. I distinctly remember feeling the tension even back then… Though I was not properly aware of the impending threat that it would ultimately result in.

The Yugoslav Wars were a series of military campaigns fought in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995 (with wars and ensuing infighting still continuing within the region). The wars were complex: they have been characterized by bitter ethnic conflicts among the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, mostly between Serbs (and to a lesser extent, Montenegrins) on the one side and Croats and Bosniaks (and to a lesser degree, Slovenes) on the other; but also between Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia (in addition to a separate conflict fought between rival Bosniak factions in Bosnia). The wars ended in various stages, mostly resulting in full international recognition of new sovereign territories, but with massive economic disruption to the successor states.

Often described as Europe’s deadliest conflicts since World War II, they have become infamous for the war crimes they involved, including mass ethnic cleansing. They were the first conflicts since World War II to be formally judged genocidal in character and many key individual participants were subsequently charged with war crimes.[2] The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established by the United Nations to prosecute these crimes.

Although tensions in Yugoslavia had been mounting since the early 1980s, it was 1990 that proved the decisive year in which war became more likely. In the midst of economic hardship, the country was facing rising nationalism amongst its various ethnic groups. At the last 14th Extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in January 1990, the Serbian-dominated assembly agreed to abolish the single-party system; however, Slobodan Milošević, the head of the Serbian Party branch (League of Communists of Serbia) used his influence to block and vote-down all other proposals from the Croatian and Slovene party delegates. This prompted the Croatian and Slovene delegations to walk out and thus the break-up of the party, a symbolic event representing the end of “brotherhood and unity”.

I remember coming back to Reyk and Sabina’s apartment one evening and seeing snails doing their best to climb out of the open plan kitchen’s sink, all while being pushed back by Sabina into the salty water that was washing them. Sitting on the couch, my uncle puffed on a pipe and exhaled the sweet, rich blue smoke of honey-dew tobacco. I resided in the corner playing Hungry Horace on the ZX Spectrum. Out the corner of my eye I observed them as they spoke in dulcet Slavic tones of lively banter, while the poor writhing molluscs slowly cooked in butter and garlic to perfection. It was almost as though there was such a difference in this country to the way people led their lives… No television, no hamburgers and chips, no popular music worth talking about, all our food being purchased in markets that abounded through the rickety old, thriving streets of Sarajevo… Here, in Yugoslavia, one simply enjoyed what one had… Nothing to tempt one on further, like the promise of a sports car, or another story of monetary success… Here knowledge and freedom were the orders of the day, where the only distractions came from subtle pleasures: fine pipe tobacco, salami wrapped in freshly made bread, freshly ground espresso coffee, and snails that had been gathered in the markets the same day. This alien land enthralled me… I was almost as though it was too simple to understand… And yet behind its minimal ways there stood a vibrant and rich culture of ideas and family values, all of which were mingled with distrust and confusion. How poetic it seemed to me. These people didn’t hide their feelings. They expressed them in any company they found themselves in. It was here that I realised how prim and proper the British really were… How they hid their deeper emotions from view, only showing revelry and joy as a front. I honestly still can’t tell you which way of life I’d prefer to enjoy. They certainly both had their merits.

And as if to certify this temperament, my uncle wrote me a letter by before he died that winter…

Prague, 9 January 1998

Dear Karl,

I was delighted reading your letter. First of all, thank you for your good wishes for the New Year and your advice concerning T’ai Chi Ch’uan. Since a certain time I am myself a little bit involved in Tao reflections, but uniquely related to meditation. I will try to find here a (possibly good) T’ai Chi Ch’uan teacher and to follow your advice.

In addition I am glad that you continue with a PhD study… // …do the same job only for earning money.

Your mother told me that soon you might have an access to the Internet and I hope that we will be able to communicate directly through our respective e-mail boxes. I have the chance that I got an Internet connection directly at my home computer through a small research grant in which I was involved, so after finishing this letter I will look for new messages and send some to my friends around the world. It helps me to deal with my most recent project, in which I intend to develop strategical and practical instruments for local war prevention.

Since a certain time I am trying to make a final point in my rather long mental and intellectual preoccupation with former Yugoslavia. In discussions with a few friends of mine (some by way of e-mail) I had the idea to learn from this tragic experience in order to help preventing possible similar tragic outcomes in other regions and countries. Unfortunately, the book fro Sarajevo was never published in English, but if you are interested, I could send you the first paper of my project draft. Under the long title and even longer subtitle “The Possibly Avoidable Conflict In Former Yugoslavia – The Prevention Of Wars In Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina Was Possible And The Approaching War In Kosovo May Well Be Avoided” I try to give a short description of the whole process and of the forces which caused it. It is no longer that 12 pages and I could send it once you have your e-mail address.

We have, Sabina and myself, spent only 5 days in Sarajevo last August, but it was a depressive experience. We made the journey in a Land Rover type of car, with a former student of mine from Vienna driving it. The man is now an Austrian diplomat working in Sarajevo and has free access to every part of the country, so we had the very unpleasant opportunity to see and cross a lot of completely devastated towns, cities and countryside. I do not think that I will return there anymore.

We both wish you that your dreams become fulfilled this year, at least these which could be accomplished during a year of (possibly moderately) hard work at the University and some additional labor for the pocket money.

Much Love to you, dear nephew,

Reyk

Aside from being a real influence in my life… Something which I didn’t really realise until recently… I felt like he was a father to me too. Thus, in his good memory, I’d like to take the time to introduce my uncle… Professor Dr Raymond Rehnicer… Or as my mother (his sister) and I used to affectionately call him, Uncle Reyki… By providing you with an essay he wrote on about multiple identities and boarders within the human mind, which seems to high light for me why we should all cultivate and expand our varied stances of perception to break down all impassable boarders within the human collective mind.

Multiple Identity And Borders Within Human Mind

The industrial society did not only entirely change the means to transform the human environment, but marked also the spiritual and political shape of the environment. The most consequential was – and still seems to be – the concept of nation and nation-state. Until the national-state emerged as the most decisive cultural and political factor a multiform ethnical and religious mixture was usual and even desired in border zones. It was rather difficult to integrate these mixed zones in the homogenous nation-states and that were the most frequent reasons for numerous quarrels in europe during the last two centuries.

I was born and spent the major part of my life in a mixed region. By the most recent conflict within the old military frontier that occurs throughout former Yugoslavia I was forced to leave my country. Now I live in Czech Republic – where the painful “solution” of similar problems before and after the World War II did not bring ultimate peace to the soul of concerned people.

From Sarajevo – the oldest preserved multicultural city in Europe – I went to Prague, which lost its multiculturality by this painful “solution” of the mixed border zones some fifty years ago. Thanks to a guest professorship at the technical University in Vienna I have now the opportunity to discover a new kind of arising contemporary multiculturality. From my experiences, I accumulated in Sarajevo, Prague and Vienna, I will here try to formulate some ideas about the modern multiculturality. The now disappearing inherited multiculturality of Sarajevo seems to be a relic of the past, therefore I will attempt to develop some more modern concepts of multiple identity borders within human mind.

Borders and its perception

Two remarks from my friends in Vienna were important for my own understanding of that city and Austria in general.

To the simple question concerning my own national identity I was unable to give a simple answer. Some people in my country considered my family name as a typical Jewish one – the family name being a usual form of identification there. From a Jewish viewpoint my father was not a Jew, despite our name. His mother, my grandmother, was born in a strong catholic Polish family from northern Bosnia. In order to marry her my grandfather – a rather agnostic Jewish physician – converted to the roman church. On my mother’s side the grandfather was Hungarian and his spouse a Croatian protestant – but there too things were not as simple as they seem. In the Hungarian language my mother’s maiden name signify “Turk” – and that was the name given to immigrants from southern regions under Turkish rule. Some Hungarian Jews had the same family name, but he could as well be a Bosnian, Serb or even a genuine Turk. My friends reacted with the remark that I am essentially a typical Austrian, or that I have at least similar roots like most people from Vienna.

The second remark concerns my Balkan origins. One friend said that the Balkans are not as far from Vienna as it is generally supposed, because the border occurs along the famous Vienese circular road – Gürtel. The other considered that Vienna itself is a Balkan city. Both these images are imprinted by the typical European concept – shared by ourselves from Balkans – that the whole Balkan region is nothing else than a highly problematic border zone. In one simple word this concept implies the large variety of unsolved national questions, that are made extremely complicated by nation-states. The possibility that Vienna encounters problems similar to these border zones was rather a surprise for me.

Borders, as well as their ethnic foundations, are principally a result of the culture. Our cultural circle originated in eastern Mediterranean and eventually spread out over the whole Earth, so it now influences the larger part of humankind. This cultural circle generated a remarkably complex form of culture, that is customarily described as civilisation. Civilisation is a result of urban style of life and its name comes from the Latin word for the city. By its essential characteristic, civilisation is not simply a farther development of culture; it also tends to substitute the pre-urban culture in its original culture, that evolved in its own way. Contrary to civilisation, original culture in its original form. However, the spread of civilisation did not fully replace the original culture. It remains much more simple, even simplistic, and it is not surprising that there is a continual – albeit more latent than openly admitted – conflict between these two styles of culture.

The original, pre-urban culture is based on the extremely strong spirit of a closed group that is ruled by the primitive spirit of family clan, which is – regardless its formal manifestation – based upon the concept of race, ethnic group or nation. In the city a person is considered a complete citizen if she/he accepts and respects the complicated rules of urban life style. One inherits the membership in a pre-urban culture by her/his birth, but the membership in an urban group is the result of a free choice.

Nowadays a rising part of humankind lives in cities and the ‘industrial culture’ – which produced the actual nation-state – rapidly transforms itself into something we do not know yet how to describe. Moreover, the spread of global communication makes it impossible for human groups to continue to be isolated by nation-state borders. After the disappearance of communism, this evolution is the growing trend and not only in Europe. While the outer borders lose their importance, numerous people feel some apprehension when they have to define their own identity. Lacking precisely defined borders, they are distressed by the question how to defend themselves from the potentially dangerous “others”. Within the rising number of big cities there are no clear borders and people search to re-create some new, comprehensible frontiers as the accustomed backbone to their own identity.

Borders and the identity

In Vienna, as well as in most other big cities, it is extremely difficult to define comprehensible frontiers between “us ” and “others”. Therefore one can easily conclude that the overall conditions in Vienna are rather similar to these in a problematic zone, for example, in the Balkans.

On the other hand, due to the general paranoid communist attitude, Prague had for almost half a century an unequivocal viewpoint of an ethnically “clean” population. At the time I went there, at the end of 1992, this situation was ending. Some of my Prague friends were delighted that their city had developed again into a similar mode of prosperous multi-culturality seen in the first republic and the Austro-Hungarian empire. Numerous others were troubled by the rapid progression of cultural diversity. With more than twenty thousand North Americans, many miscellaneous emigrants from the former Yugoslavia, along with numerous immigrant workers from Poland, Ukraine and Vietnam, the national situation changed rapidly. For many Prague citizens the question of their own identity became a controversial one, particularly because they suddenly missed the usual clear line between “us” and “others”.

Of course, my explanation that we in Sarajevo had a really rich and happy life in a greatly mixed multicultural environment did not persuade my Prague friends. It is certainly not easy to understand that the actual bloodshed in former Yugoslavia is not an inevitable consequence of the urban cultural mix, but the extreme expression of the ancient conflict between two styles of culture – the civilisation and the original pre-urban culture. The conflict did not erupt from within our cities, nor was its purpose to gain control over cities – rather its objective is much more the deliberate destruction of urban cultures without any aim for control whatsoever. The ultimate purpose of the war is the final eradication of these places that reject the visible borders between “us” and “others”. Under the pretext of liberating Vukovar the city has been destroyed. The same thing happened over more than three years in Sarajevo, and even in the presumably “liberated” Banja Luka, that is the Serbian capital of Bosnia.

This way of destructive “liberation” from all that city life implies by nationalists is nothing new in European history. The Nazi movement wanted to re-establish the German national identity by eradicating even the word city – within the Third Reich there was no room for cities, all purified Germans should live in “settlements”. In the same spirit – and because the urban environment refuses distinctive borders, creating ambiguous and multiform identities – early Soviet planners invented a particular urban planning practice that was called “de-urbanization”.

The Nazi and Soviet rulers, as well as our fervent defenders of Yugoslav national purity, were unable to consider this basic problem of identity without clear limitations. They simply saw it as a threat to their own identities. Therefore they all detest the city, where these borders do not even exist. But on the contrary, most of my friends consider the city to be the best place to live. I appreciate very much the ability to immerse myself in a totally different environment without being worried about crossing some paranoid frontier – and this is possible only in a truly multicultural city like Vienna. Since I have lived in Prague there are more and more opportunities for similar experiences. The diversity and tolerance of the city allows numerous people to have simultaneous equanimity and at the same time more than one basic identity – without becoming schizophrenic. One can feel absolutely Viennese without being forced to abandon her/his ancestral Balkanic, Italian – or other – identities. It is a place where one can at the same time feel strongly homosexual or atheist, without any constraint to be less Viennese.

Imposed and elected identity

This way of building one’s own multiple identity is certainly not easy. Although we in Europe consider ourselves highly civilised, the majority of us still have a strong need for clear and unequivocal borders of mind, along with a need for a feeling of belonging to the nation of our forefather. The process of urbanisation was extremely fast and only a minority has been able to cope with all the consequences of individual freedom and responsibility. The old pre-urban culture seems to have had such a strong influence on so many present day urban people, many of whom were forced into this new mode of being without choice, and thus many have had huge difficulties reconciling the magic of their own unequivocal identities with those of the culture they presently reside in – and thus many have felt, whether rightly or wrongly, their own lineage of imposed identity seems to be more attractive than the effort required to strengthen these multiple, and somewhat alien, identities.

I am convinced that the deliberate choice of one’s identity, if given freely by individual conscience and responsibility, is the modern (or post-modern) world. Within the actual “global village” there are no efficient ways to isolate and defend some group from the multitude and diversity of influences from “others”. So we have to learn to live with these numerous intrusions in our most intimate privacy and, if possible, take an advantage of them. It is certainly not a great achievement of civilisation, but it is a marvellous feeling around the Viennese Naschmarkt (flea market) one can choose between the traditional Austrian and Italian, Greek or Turkish food… !!!

If we do not want to smuggle into the “global village” the obsolete and uncivilised customs of strong borders and unique national identity – as it occurs now in former Yugoslavia – we should accept and cultivate the more civilised understanding of a multiple, freely chosen identity.

by Raymond Rehnicer, Prague, March 18, 1996

To find out where I sourced this article from, please click here.