The Observer (2022-01-09)

The Observer

World 09.01.22 29

‘There used to be a buzz

here. Why can’t we recreate

the old energy of Sarajevo?’

Bosnian capital hopes

for cultural revival

with restoration of

Olympic village hotel

of Berlin’s Tresor nightclub , to include

a music venue in the refurbishment.

“I wanted to turn it into a cul-

tural lighthouse,” Hegemann said. “It

should be a place where people can

overcome ethnic differences – it is a

special place with a special power. But

I don’t have to own it.”

The hotel had 162 rooms and a cin-

ema that Hegemann believes would

make a perfect venue, and create the

same conditions as clubs such as

Berlin’s Tresor and Berghain , which

were created after the fall of the Berlin

Wall and provided a place for young

people from West Germany to mix

with their eastern bloc counterparts.

Such a club would bring tourists

to Sarajevo, Hegemann believes, and

he has interest from international DJs

such as Jeff Mills and Mark Reeder to

create an outdoor festival this sum-

mer among the ruins of the ski jumps

in the hillside forests.

“The problem is that the young cre-

ative people from the region are emi-

grating. They feel they have no future

there and no space to test themselves

and experiment ,” said Hegemann.

Sarajevo has not prospered since

the Dayton peace accords ended the

war in 1995 , and there are few cultural

landmarks left. The Skenderija centre ,

where Jayne Torvill and Christopher

Dean won gold in the fi gure skat-

ing for Great Britain, was renovated

in 1999 after sustaining light

damage during the war and

includes a concert venue, but there

is now talk of selling it.

A bout half a million people are

estimated to have left Bosnia -

Herzegovina in the past six years,

and a survey by the United Nations

in November found that nearly half

of the country’s under 30s are con-

sidering emigrating.

Christian Schmidt, the UN

high representative for Bosnia -

Herzegovina, warned last year that

the country was in danger of breaking

apart , with the Bosnian Serb leader

Milorad Dodik threatening to create

a new army. The US imposed sanc-

tions on Dodik last week , and the EU

has 700 soldiers from its Eufor peace-

keeping force in the country.

Edin Forto, the prime minister of

the Sarajevo canton, one of the coun-

try’s 10 regions , is desperate to bring

investment to revive the city’s for-

tunes. Granov and his backers opened

another hotel on Mount Igman in

2020, and Forto is pleased the Igman

hotel has fi nally been sold to a decent

investor. But he believes Hegemann’s

plans are important for Sarajevo.

“We aren’t going to be the new

Berlin but we can be the old Sarajevo,

because it was a cultural hub in the

80s,” he said. “Everyone wanted to

come here and create theatre, music,

fi lm. There was a buzz. Why can’t we

just recreate this energy?”

Sarajevo used to be the centre of

rock and pop music, but that has

ebbed away, he said. “It seems like

people in the villages won the war.

Urban culture is dying. Now the most

popular thing here is turbo-folk. I

think it’s disgusting. We were the hub

of urban popular culture and now

we’re the hub of nothing. Now we

import culture from Serbia and not

the best kind. I don’t want to sound

pessimistic – I’m in politics to change

things. But we need allies.”

James Tapper

Dean won gold

ing for Great Bri

in 1999 aft

damage du

includes a con

is now talk of sel

A bout half a

estimated to h

Herzegovina in

and a survey by

in November fou

of the country’s

sidering emigrat

Christian Sc

high represent

Herzegovina, wa

the country was in

apart , with the B

BELOW

Torvill and Dean

on the ice in

the Skenderija

centre during

the 1984 Games.

Rex/Shutterstock

and bombed, and since the fi ghting

stopped it has lain derelict, ignored

by everyone except graffi ti artists and

the occasional tourist.

Now, as the 30th anniversary of the

siege approaches, the hotel is set to be

restored to its former Olympic glory.

Hotel Igman was sold last week,

at the 13th attempt, by the Sarajevo

authorities. The new owners, who

include former Bosnia -Her zegovina

international footballer Emir Granov ,

paid 5.1m Bosnian marks (£2. 2m).

Granov told local media that they

will spend a further £6m on renova-

tions, in the hope that tourists choose

Sarajevo as a new destination.

One of Granov’s fi rst decisions will

be to consider a proposal from a rival

bidder, Dimitri Hegemann, the owner

LEFT

The Igman

complex in 1984,

and, far left,

soldiers play

cards as it burns

in 1993. Reuters

When the siege of Sarajevo began in

1992, Ratko Mladić ’s Bosnian Serb

army took up positions in the moun-

tains surrounding the city.

For his headquarters, Mladić chose

Hotel Igman, a breathtaking piece of

brutalist architecture that was the

jewel of the 1984 Winter Olympics.

The hotel was part of the Olympic

village, a base for ski jumpers and

alpine skiers, but Mladić – now serv-

ing a life sentence for genocide and

crimes against humanity – used it to

oversee the shelling of the city and

his enemies used it as a prison and

execution site. During the four years

of the war, the hotel was blasted

when engineers released the fi nal,

second segment of mirrors which

slotted into the mirror’s central core,

thus completing the telescope’s vast

6.5 metre diameter mirror. Last night

engineers were completing the fi nal

latching manoeuvres that will hold

this last segment in place.

“I just feel this kind of glow in my

chest just seeing that mirror deployed

all together,” N asa scientist Michelle

Thaller said in a live webcast. In the

Nasa control room, staff from the

Webb mission team cheered.

Described as a “time machine” by

scientists, the James Webb telescope

will allow astronomers to study the

beginning of the universe shortly

after the big bang, 13.8 billion years

ago, and to hunt for signs of life-sup-

porting planets in our own galaxy.

The James Webb, named after a

former Nasa administrator, still has

to travel 400,000 miles to its desti-

nation and will then need fi ve more

months for its instruments to be care-

fully calibrated.

For astonomers, the James Webb

offers the prospect of capturing

images of the fi rst galaxies to form

after the big bang, understanding how

stars are born and evolve, and investi-

gating the potential for life to appear

in planetary systems. All this will have

to be done in a decade, its maximum

likely lifetime. After 10 years, it is

expected the telescope will run out of

fuel and slowly drift off course.

Nasa engineers yesterday completed
the fi nal unfolding of the huge pri-
mary mirror of the agency’s James
Webb space telescope. The manoeu-
vre was the fi nal step of the $10bn
observatory’s two-week deployment
phase that began with its launch on
Christmas Day.
The telescope , which has already
travelled more than 600,000 miles
across space, is the largest, most pow-
erful space telescope ever built and
had to be folded up tightly, so it would
fi t inside its Ariane 5 launch rocket.
Since then, engineers have been
directing the slow unfolding, piece

Another small step for man as Nasa unfolds space telescope

Robin McKie

Science Editor

by piece, of the observatory as it

heads on its voyage to a gravitation-

ally stable point a million miles from

the Earth. Its tennis-court size sun

shield – which will keep its delicate

instruments cold – have already been

deployed as well its secondary mirror.

Last week, Nasa began the fi nal

manoeuvres involved in deploying

the Webb’s main mirror, which will

collect light from the furthest depths

of the universe and which is made up

of 18 gold-coated segments: a cen-

tral section plus two three-segment

side panels. In a sequence of delicate

moves, the fi rst panel was success-

fully deployed on Friday, a process

that took fi ve-and-a-half hours.

And this was followed up yesterday

Nasa’s Bill Ochs

monitors the

unfolding of

the James Webb

yesterday.