Description

This richly illustrated unusual pamphlet, printed in Tunis, describes the anarchistic movement Young Bosnia, founded before WWI in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The book was written by a brother of one founders of the movement.

The nationalistic movement of Young Bosnia, was founded as a response to the Austrian-Hungarian annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Its founders were mostly Serbs, as well as Bosniaks and Croats, who believed the country should become a part of lands, dominated by the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty. The members of Young Bosnia were plotting assassinations of Austrian officials and well as the members of the ruling Habsburg family. The successful assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a member of Mlada Bosnia Gavrilo Princip (1894 – 1918) in 1914 in Sarajevo, caused the Central Powers (including Germany and Austria-Hungary) and Serbia’s allies to declare war on each other.

The book includes a series of photoreproductions and transcriptions of published as well as first-hand documents, collected by a Bosnian Serb Vojislav Gaćinović, who was a brother of Vladimir Gaćinović, one of the founders of the Young Bosnia movement. Vladimir was plotting assassination of the Austrian Governor in 1914. In 1917 he was travelling to the United States to seek aid and volunteers for Serbia. He was poisoned with arsenic in August 1917 in Fribourg, Switzerland.

His brother, the author of this book, lived in the 1960 and 1970 in Paris, United States and Tunisia, was publishing pro Serbian books in his native language. He died in 1980 in Belgrade, Serbia.

The book is very rare. We could only trace three examples in institutions worldwide (Library of Congress, University Library of Ljubljana, Bavarian State Library).