Remembering a True Great: The Day Professor Nikola Kovač Left Us

On this day, September 24, 2007, the prominent Bosnian-Herzegovinian essayist, writer, translator from French, Professor Dr. Nikola Kovač, passed away at the age of 71. He was a top European intellectual. He lectured at the Department of Romance Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo and the University of Mostar. Back in 1974, he received the April 6th Award of Sarajevo, the "Svjetlost" publisher's award for novel of the year, and the highest decorations of the Republic of Italy and the Republic of France.

He remained in occupied Sarajevo until he was appointed Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Paris by the Presidency of BiH.

He once told his friends that he was proud of his compatriots who did not want war but a peaceful life together with their neighbors. He used to say that the greatest Serbian intellectuals remained in besieged Sarajevo, and then he would list dozens of top academics and intellectuals of Serb ethnicity who stayed in Sarajevo, under shelling, preserving their dignity.

As early as April 9th, the Serb Consultative Council was formed in Sarajevo. The president was academician Prof. Dr. Ljubomir Berberović, the deputies were Prof. Dr. Nikola Kovač and lawyer Žarko Bulić, and the secretaries were Rajko Živković and Milan Stević.

Throughout this time, he defended the interests of BiH and its people through his actions. According to the Ambassador of BiH to the UN, Muhamed Šaćirbej, the French President François Mitterrand, biased in his stance towards the Bosnian tragedy, made an incomprehensible outburst against Prof. Dr. Nikola Kovač. Several international mediators for former Yugoslavia wrote about Mitterrand as a pro-Serbian French president. Šaćirbej bitterly recalled a moment from negotiations held in Paris: Mitterrand called our then-Ambassador to France, the refined and moral Nikola Kovač, a "traitor to the Serbs."

Šaćirbej recalled how all those present were shaken, while Professor Kovač remained calm. All those present looked at each other, unable to believe their ears that the president of powerful France could present himself so miserably.

He never agreed to the division of human beings within multinational BiH. At the beginning of peace, he noted: "In the multinational community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the concept of separatism, born and strengthened by wartime violence and population displacement, is absurd and unsustainable. Absurd, because it contradicts the facts of centuries-long coexistence and mutual respect of different faiths and traditions; unsustainable, because contemporary Europe dictates cooperation and exchange among states and peoples regardless of their origin and beliefs. The question is how separatists will negotiate and reach agreements with foreigners if they are unable to do so with compatriots of the same origin and language."

When peace came, he immediately went to his Trebinje and his family home. He was endlessly in love with that city.

He was buried in Sarajevo with full honors and in the presence of numerous diplomats and his many Sarajevo friends.