11 Nobel laureates from the Balkans

Wars with many victims in the Balkans, once the Greek veto, then the Bulgarian veto, corruption and the influence of mafia groups in politics have damaged the image of the region in the world. But the Balkans also has another side: that of knowledge, culture, humanism - an example of this is 11 Nobel laureates

1. From Ljubljana to Graz: Friderik Pregl - "Nobel" prize for chemistry, 1923

Pregl was born in 1869 in Ljubljana, which was then known by the German toponym Laibach. He studied in Graz, Austria, where he spent most of his life and career. He died in 1930. In Ljubljana, a square bears his name, in Graz, a university institute. He was awarded the "Nobel" prize for the microanalysis of organic substances.

2. From Vukovar to Zürich: Lavoslav Stjepan Ruzhička - "Nobel" prize for chemistry, 1939

Ruzhička was born in 1887 in Vukovar, Croatia, which at that time belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied chemistry in Karlsruhe, Germany and later worked at the Zürich Polytechnic University (ETH). Here he received the title of university professor (in 1918) and in 1929 he was promoted to full professor. He died in 1976 as a Swiss citizen. During the Serbian aggression against Croatia in the early 90s, his house in Vukovar was also destroyed. Meanwhile, it has been reconstructed and serves as a museum. In Croatia, Ružička is honored as "the first Croatian Nobel laureate".

3. Anarchist, Yugoslav diplomat and great writer: Ivo Andrić - "Nobel" prize for literature, 1961

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In 1892, in Kumrovec, Croatia, Josip Broz Tito, the later Marshal of Yugoslavia, was born, and in the same year, in Travnik, Bosnia, Ivo Andrić was born into a Croatian family. He studied in Zagreb and Graz, and on the eve and during the First World War he was a member of the anarchist organization "New Bosnia", which had also organized the assassination in Sarajevo against Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Andrić was a supporter of the idea of ​​a kind of Yugoslav nation and an opponent of two empires - Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian. In 1919 he moved to Belgrade and until 1941 served as a diplomat of the Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom. He is the author of a pamphlet with proposals for the annexation of Northern Albania by the Kingdom of Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian - a fact that is not given so much importance in the West. The year 1941, when Hitler's Germany attacked Yugoslavia, found Andrić in the post of ambassador in Berlin. In 1945, the publication of his Bosnian trilogy began in Belgrade, of which the novel "Bridge over the Drina" stands out, which has been translated into Albanian and many other languages. Andrić was a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and a supporter of the Yugoslav multinational state. Even today, a fierce battle takes place between Croats and Serbs over what Andriqi was: a Croat or a Serb? In terms of ethnicity, without a doubt, Croat, but in terms of political attitudes and public engagement, he was more inclined towards Serbs - at the same time, in the Muslim society of Bosnia, he is accused of spreading anti-Muslim stereotypes in his books. The Serbian side emphasizes that Andriqi, on the occasion of his wedding in 1958, described himself as a Serb. The "Nobel" committee honored Andriqi because of the "epic power with which he shaped motifs and destinies from the history of his country".

4. Izmir, Paris, London, Athens: Jorgos Seferis - "Nobel" prize for literature, 1963

The Greek Jorgos Seferis received the greatest recognition of literature in the world with this rationale: "...for his excellent lyrical poetry, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic cultural world". Seferis was born in 1900 in a town near present-day Izmir, Turkey, which was then a city dominated by Greeks and known as Smyrna. In 1914, his aristocratic family moved to Athens. Seferis studied in Paris and served as his country's diplomat from 1926. Among other things, he was ambassador in London. With his poems and essays, he influenced modernism to penetrate Greek literature. In 1969 he published a manifesto against the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1967. He died in 1971 in Athens. At the funeral ceremony many participants sang his song "Refusimi", which was banned. Almost 100 years after his birth, in 1999, the Turkish authorities of Seferis' hometown decided that a street should be named after him. Turkish nationalists opposed this, but after the intervention of the then prime minister, Mesut Ylmaz, the street was named after the great poet.

5. Romanian from the Rockefeller Institute: George Emil Palade - "Nobel" prize for physiology and medicine, 1974

"For his discoveries on the structural and functional organization of the cell", the Romanian George Emil Palade won the "Nobel". He was born in 1912 in Iași, Romania, studied medicine in Budapest and in the United States of America. In 1953 he became a professor at the Rockefeller Institute. Died in 2008 in California. During the communist dictatorship in Romania, he refused the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's offer to take over the leadership of an institute. In 2007, Palade received the highest Romanian order.

6. From Sarajevo to Zurich: Vladimir Prelog - "Nobel" prize for chemistry, 1975

Prelog was born in 1906 in Sarajevo to a Croatian family. At that time Bosnia-Herzegovina was under Austro-Hungarian administration. Vladimir's father, Nika Prelog, was a historian originally from Zagreb, where the family moved in 1915. After studying chemistry in Prague, Vladimir Prelog returned to Zagreb to work at the University there. In 1941, the aforementioned Lavoslav Stjepan Ruzhiçka invited Prelog to Zürich, where he became a full professor and later Ruzhiçka's successor. In 1986 he was admitted to the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences. He died in 1998 in Zürich, but his ashes were placed in the Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb. Prelog received the "Nobel" for his research in the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions.

7. Surrealist from Crete: Odysseas Elytis - "Nobel" prize for literature, 1979

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Elitis was born in 1911 in Heraklion, in the then state of Crete (Greek island). He received the "Nobel" for "his poetry, which (...) with sensual power and intellectual clarity shapes modern man's struggle for freedom". Elitis studied in Athens and, influenced by surrealism, began to write poems, in which he exalts and celebrates the life of the common man. During the Second World War he was a member of the anti-Nazi resistance. During the military dictatorship in Greece, he lived in exile in Paris for a while. He died in 1996 in Athens.

8. From Skopje to Calcutta: Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa) - Nobel Peace Prize, 1979

The year 1979 will hardly be repeated in terms of the distribution of the "Nobel" prizes: that year two personalities from the Balkans were awarded with high recognition - the Greek poet Odise Elitis and the Albanian humanist Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. He was born in Skopje in 1910, two years before Albania's independence was declared and the Ottoman Empire withdrew from the Balkans. Gonxha came from a relatively wealthy family for the circumstances of the time. In 1928 she was accepted into a Christian order and went to Calcutta, India, where she worked as a teacher, missionary and anti-poverty fighter. In 1947 he received Indian citizenship. Three years later he founded the "Missionaries of Charity" order, which cared for the poor, the sick and the homeless. He died in 1997 in Calcutta. In addition to being honored with the "Nobel" prize, Mother Teresa has been criticized for her work, among others, for allegedly inadequate treatment of the sick in her hospitals, for opposing abortion and managing donations. In Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, squares, streets and churches bear her name. The airport of Tirana is called "Mother Teresa".

9. From Bulgaria's Ruschuk to Zürich: Elias Canetti - "Nobel" prize for literature, 1981

Canetti was born in 1905 in Ruse, Bulgaria (Turkish: Rusçuk), a town on the border with Romania and on the Danube. In 1911 the wealthy Jewish Canetti family moved to Manchester - with Ottoman passports. A year later, in 1912, after the death of the father, the family lived in Lausanne, Vienna, and from 1916 in Zürich. Canetti lived in Frankfurt, Vienna - where he earned a doctorate in chemistry - and London during Nazi rule. From 1952 he was a British citizen, but he lived mainly in Switzerland and in 1994 he died in Zürich, where he is buried next to the writer James Joyce in the Fluntern cemetery. Among his main works by critics are "Mas and power" (1960) and his autobiography. In her first volume "The Saved Language", Canetti also mentions the Albanians who lived in his hometown: "Ruschuk on the lower Danube, where I first saw the world with my eyes, was a wonderful city for children , and when I say that it is found in Bulgaria, then I give an incomplete image of it, because there lived people of the most diverse origins, during a day you could hear seven or eight languages. In addition to the Bulgarians, who often came from the village, there were also many Turks who lived in one of their neighborhoods, and next to this was the neighborhood of the Spaniards, our neighborhood. There were Greeks, Albanians, Armenians, Roma. Romanians came from the bank opposite the Danube, my mother-in-law, who I don't remember, was Romanian. There were also Russians here and there.
(…)
Ruschuk was an old port on the Danube and as such had considerable importance. As a port it had drawn people from all over, and the Danube was always talked about. There were stories about special years, when the Danube froze; for ice sledding to Romania; for the hungry wolves, who ran after the sleds.
Wolves were the first wild animals I had heard of. Werewolves appeared in the fairy tales told to me by Bulgarian peasant girls, and my father scared me one night with a wolf mask over his face.
It will hardly succeed in reproducing here the variety of these early years in Ruschuk, its passions and terrors. Everything I experienced later once happened in Rusçuk. The other world there was called Europe, and when one traveled up the Danube to Vienna, one was said to be going to Europe, Europe began where the end of the Turkish Empire was. Most Spaniards were still Turkish citizens. Under the Turks they had always lived well, better than the Christian Slavs of the Balkans. But since many of the Spaniards were wealthy merchants, the new Bulgarian regime maintained good relations with them, and King Ferdinand, who ruled for a long time, was known as a friend of the Jews."

10. Auschwitz survivor and supporter of the liberation of Kosovo: Elie Wiesel - Nobel Peace Prize, 1986

Wiesel was born in 1928 in Sighet, Romania. In 1944 his family was deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp. In 1945, Wiesel was in the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp, which was liberated by American troops. After World War II, Wiesel lived in the USA, where he became a prominent human rights activist, publicist, professor of Judaic studies, founder of the Holocaust Museum in Washington and author of books on the fate of the Jews. In 1999, he was one of the main supporters of the NATO intervention to liberate Kosovo from the terror of the Belgrade regime.

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11. Opponent of Stalinism: Herta Müller - "Nobel" prize for literature, 2009

Müller was born in 1953 in Romania; is a member of the German minority in this country. He studied German and Romanian studies in Timisoara and was active in opposition circles of writers. The themes she deals with in her works are dictatorship, censorship, persecution, surveillance and interception by the secret services and deportation. Müller left Romania in 1987. Her relationship with Romania remains strained: she believes the country is still dominated by former Communist Secret Service figures, so Müller refuses to have her work appropriated by her former homeland. . It is an uncompromising criticism of many Romanian writers, whom he accuses of opportunism during the dictatorship and of trying to present their non-political works today as heroic acts against the communist system. During the 90s Müller was a strict opponent of Slobodan Milosevic's regime and in many texts she accused some Western intellectuals of wrong approach to the conflicts in the Balkans: according to her, these intellectuals did not make clear the division between who was the aggressor and who victim. In the eyes of Herta Müüler, there is no doubt that it was the Milosevic regime that caused the Balkan tragedy in the 90s.