The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

for which they had to defend the monarchy against the Ottomans. In
the Ottoman areas in turn, because of tax and other advantages, some
Christians converted to Islam. They were seen as traitors by the Christians
– and are to this day. Peasant resistance built up against the severe
violations of existing village autonomy and justice – the Ottoman administrator
usually claimed the “right of the first night” of a bride – and the
unbearable tax burden; if no money or goods could be produced, male
children were taken and brought up as soldiers, “Janissaries,” who
might later, as adults, even be sent against their own relatives.
These struggles still are sung of today in epic songs, including the traumatic
battle of the Kosovo Polje – the “Field of the Blackbirds” – in 1389,
when the Serbian kingdom was crushed and Prince Lazar killed. Only
afterwards would this battle be developed into a mythical, identity-creat -
ing super-tale of heroism and betrayal, the “curse” of which might only
be overcome by the restoration of the old kingdom – so says the Serbian
Orthodox Church. What the church doesn’t say is that the other Balkan
peoples, Albanians and Croatians, also fought together with the Serbs,
and that they, too, were slaughtered there. It would be a good thing if it
would say that, so that the hatred might be overcome.
The yearning for freedom and the formation of nations
In the nineteenth century, the Serbs rose up several times against the
overwhelming Ottoman power. They gained autonomy, and then continued
their rebellions. A small vanguard trained in the west tried to impose
the idea of nationhood, to which the majority of the peasant
population developed strong resistance. In 1844 Ilya Garashanin, the
then foreign minister, formulated a secret programme for the liberation
of the “fellow tribespeople” and the restoration of the Serbian kingdom.
His programme and the idea of a Serbian state became the guiding concept
of Serbian nationalism – and remains so to this day. After additional
areas were conquered, the independence of Serbia was declared at the
Berlin Congress of 1878. The wars over territory continued – against Turkey,
against Bulgaria, against the Central Powers in the First World War.
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