"Despite all the pressure, the conservator of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Nenad Leibensperger, and his colleagues fearlessly did their job and refused to delete the General Staff from the register of protected cultural assets", in short, this is the explanation of our newspaper's editorial board for the 2025 Person of the Year selection.
Leibensperger is a representative of the profession, one of those who make the institutions still exist, because of which the sentence "he was just doing his job" acquired a heroic tone, because in our time it implies constant resistance to pressures and threats, intimidation and bribery attempts.
photo: private archivePICTURES FROM LIFE: Krupanj, ossuary of the victims, 2006;...
Historian and conservator, Leibensperger is the head of the Register of Immovable Cultural Properties at the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments. He was born in 1979, he received his doctorate at the Faculty of Philosophy on the topic "Victims of the Second World War in the politics of the Yugoslav state (1945-1980)".
As soon as our interlocutor entered the editorial office, he began to browse through the archive of old issues of "Vremena". It takes the number from May 8, 1999. In the text about what was bombed in the previous days, among other things, it is written: "The new building of the General Staff belongs to an important recent architectural heritage. It is the work of the famous architect Nikola Dobrović, a member of SANU, one of the recognized researchers of new forms, to whom a bust was erected in the hall of the Faculty of Architecture. Probably according to the wishes of the investors, the building, according to the chronicles, was inspired by the battle on Sutjeska (...) The citizens of Belgrade got used to that building and accepted it as one of the city's symbols." The fight for this building led by Leibensperger and his colleagues is still going on.
photo: private archive...the end of the commemorative plaque to Duke Vuk in 2016;...
"WEATHER" In the last year, the resistance of the profession, of certain institutions, but also citizens in general, it works much more powerfully, as if many brave men had suddenly awakened. For years we have, however, listened to how no one complained, Everyone only looks after their own interests.... Did they exist before? "ne" and within the system, but they simply did not reach the public?
NENAD LEIBENSPERGER: Both. The student rebellion certainly woke us up to a great extent and encouraged a part of society. On the other hand, during the previous decade and more, the voice of the profession and every kind of opposition were systematically suppressed; the hoop gradually tightened until the situation became untenable. The fall of the canopy - apparently due to precisely such pressures, the need to open the station as soon as possible, as well as corruption and a chain-based way of doing business - caused us to move. The tension that already existed in society then flared up and made it possible to see any opposition to the government much more clearly than before, as well as to get out of the narrow political arena. Because previously it was often thought that only opposition politicians were fighting against the government, while those who opposed the system within the system were mostly not noticed. They were too small, not loud enough, and that kind of struggle is often much more difficult than public political conflicts, because within the system they can punish you very concretely and in different ways.
Guesting at the end of November on television, You talked about how you and your colleagues have been dealing with daily pressures at work for years. What kind of pressures are we talking about?? What do they look like specifically??
In the protection service, it looks like this: someone wants to build or build on a building that is an immovable cultural asset or is located in an immovable cultural asset protection zone. In order to do this, he must obtain technical protection measures, that is, clear conditions of what he can and cannot do and, ultimately, permission to see if such an operation is allowed at all. When he does not get that permission, various forms of pressure begin.
Sometimes they are subtle, in the form of conversation. Then there are attempts to impose opinions, and sometimes open orders. When you persistently refuse all that, it happens that they simply bypass you. They find someone else to give the consent or the manager does it himself, someone who is hierarchically above you. And you are simply removed from that subject, "removed" from future work on that immovable cultural property, at the same time it is difficult for you to work on other jobs, in the backroom you are spoken of as an "uncooperative" person...
photo: private archivePICTURES FROM LIFE: 2023 awarding of doctoral degrees.
Pressures come from inside the house or from outside?
Mostly from within, but we also have pressures coming from outside, from other institutions with which we cooperate. These are various municipal authorities, councilors or presidents of municipalities, employees of local self-governments, but also people from the Ministry. Such requests also come through secretaries and ministerial assistants, the messengers convey what they have been instructed to ask of you.
What does it look like to try to convince you that something that is not in accordance with the law actually is?
The thing is, a lot of work is based on expert opinion. There are general rules and a law that stipulates that you have to issue protective measures, but each object is specific and for each there is an individual decision that defines what is allowed and what is not, that is, the framework in which you can act. Your expert opinion is exactly that - where you will draw the line within that framework. This is where disputes arise. You are expressing a professional opinion based on the rules of your profession and international conventions, and someone else is trying to impose theirs on you.
photo: private archive…in front of the Peace Palace in The Hague 2024;…
We have the example of the K-District - many of us thought that the project would devastate the Belgrade Fortress, that it would obscure the views, and then someone else said "no, it's far enough away", "it's not that important"... And now, when it's built, some people mind, some don't.
Also, the laws are not precise enough, especially since until a year ago we were still working according to the Law on Cultural Properties from 1994, which is incomplete in many segments. In the meantime, technological and social developments, not only here, but globally, have made some of its provisions practically unenforceable. So there is a lot of figuring out, some things are not even well resolved, some are unclear and offer the possibility for different interpretations. And then you interpret it in accordance with the profession and its rules, and someone answers you, "but it's not written exactly anywhere in the law, so it doesn't have to be like that".
Theoretically speaking, if only people who are more loyal to the government than to the profession work in the Institute, such "obedient Institute" he could practically agree to anything without it being recognized as a clear violation of the law?
Yes, it is, but still there are certain prescribed frameworks and things that should not be agreed to.
How do you see the relationship between loyalty to the profession and obedience to the authorities?? Is that it?, basically, moral issue?
photo: private archive...with colleagues at Kajmakcalan in 2016.
Every person is a complex personality. She is determined not only by the work she does, but also by her character, upbringing, values she carries from her family and the environment in which she grew up, and professionalism builds on that. We adopt these basic values - morals above all - very early and they are deeply woven into our character, which is more or less shaped later. Within that complexity, each individual makes a decision about what is really important to him. For me, it is moral consistency, that you live what you advocate at all times, either in your private life or in your professional work. If we ourselves do not agree to machinations and breaking the rules, then we rightly expect the same from others.
The role of the state should be to prevent immorality and arbitrariness. A society in which certain rules and laws are respected gives us security in life, that we can go out on the street and feel safe, that we are not afraid of what will happen to us. Unfortunately, we live in a country where there is no rule of law, and we are not sure that we will return home because someone may decide right then to break the law, knowing that they will probably not be held accountable, because they are close to the ruling circles.
Until recently, the phrase "I was just doing my job." had an extremely negative connotation, connecting with the justifications of people who presented themselves as faceless cogs in totalitarian systems. However, in the last year in Serbia, it has taken on a completely different tone. People who "they are just doing their job" today they protect buildings, universities and other citizens, precisely when the government is against them. How important is the role of such an individual in a situation where the state becomes the opposite of what you are talking about?
It is extremely important that we recognize what it means to truly do our job. This implies exactly the moral dimension that I mentioned. I believe that no one has the right, nor should they, to force another to do something immoral or illegal. And every man must find the strength to resist it, if he is under pressure. Of course, discipline is necessary, but it must exist within clearly prescribed frameworks. We are taught this since childhood. You know the one: "If everyone jumps into the well, will you too?" A person must learn to think for himself, to distinguish what he should and should not do, to build and defend his personal integrity and to know what he must reject.
When you talk about those almost daily pressures in the Institute, o "attacks" to immovable cultural heritage that needs to be rejected, whether it is primarily about the interests of investors?
It is about intertwined political and economic interests. Sometimes these are the interests of politicians - someone comes up with an idea, secures money, wants to show what he has "done" and believes that he must now do it the way he imagined. And then he is stopped on the way by the security service, who says: it can't be done like that, you can't make Disneyland the way you want, but you have to respect certain norms. However, much more often it is about investors who want to build, to erect a building or to intervene in the space, so they exert pressure - sometimes directly, but first of all by finding politicians who will provide them with everything they want.
Some objects, the institutes managed to preserve the spaces and monuments, and some are not. When we look at Belgrade, but also other cities, It seems like in these "years of locusts" much of value irretrievably eaten. From your perspective, whether more is lost or more is saved?
I think that, despite everything, we managed to save much more than was destroyed. Destruction sometimes happens outside of our control - for some cases we find out only afterwards, and for some at the very beginning we try to prevent the realization of the planned work. Sometimes we fail in that, and sometimes we don't. Unfortunately, my colleagues sometimes also participate in these negative processes: they give approval for what the majority of the profession would not agree to, or something is rejected for years, only to find someone who will give approval in the end. Those are grueling struggles, but yes, more is saved than lost.
And then we come to the General Staff. When the first information appeared that something was going on around the General Staff, How did that work for you??
I thought, here's something else they've come up with, there's another fight to come. But neither my colleagues nor I expected that everything would take on such proportions. In earlier cases, it was mostly about requests for certain works in a certain area, never about the demolition of immovable cultural property, nor about removing its protection, because this happens extremely rarely. As the story heated up, it seemed to us that the situation was completely clear: there are laws that precisely define what can be done, and our expert opinion was that the protection must not be removed. However, there was an escalation, the resignation of two directors, Dubravka Đukanović and Olivera Vučković, and then we became aware that the government will replace them with directors who will be ready to implement everything that is asked of them.
We knew it would be a different fight. We were preparing for her, watching with wide open eyes. However, we missed something in the first moment, because that's exactly how it was done, so it couldn't be seen.
Think, we assume, on the proposal that was.d. director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Goran Vasic, sent to the Ministry of Culture. What was controversial about that proposal?
photo: marija janković...
There is a clearly prescribed procedure for determining the status of immovable cultural property, but also for losing that status. Those procedures are defined by the laws and regulations of our profession. Some of the key steps in that process must be public and, first of all, the profession must participate in them. To begin with, two institutes were headed by people who had not passed the professional exam. The law, however, expressly stipulates that only persons who have passed a professional exam can deal with the protection of immovable cultural property. In other words, a director who performs a managerial function can manage an institution, but not perform professional tasks without passing a professional exam, which means that he cannot even draw up that proposal.
Furthermore, every document sent from the Institute or to the Institute must go through the registry office, be filed in the appropriate books and leave a clear trail: who sent the document, when, who received it, processed it and to whom it was forwarded. In this case, there was none of that. Instead, the Government at one point made a decision on the termination of the status of the General Staff as an immovable cultural property, without having previously carried out a professional and legal procedure. No expert has drawn up such a proposal, nor has the procedure been followed.
In addition, the obligation of public advertising in one of the media is prescribed so that the owners, users and other interested parties are informed of the intention to lose the status of a certain immovable property as a cultural property. It is impossible that such an announcement existed without anyone in the entire country seeing it.
The letter that went from the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments to the Ministry of Culture, and which was drawn up by the director, legally does not exist. Because it is about falsifying a document. He was not registered in the books, because Goran Vasić went to the office, asked for a blank paper on the letterhead of the Institute and filed it under the number related to solving his housing issue. On that memorandum, he then wrote a proposal regarding the General Staff and personally took it to the Ministry of Culture. There was no trace of that document in the Institute. This is precisely the abuse of official position and the falsification of an official document - criminal acts for which they are all accused.
Did Vasić ever ask you for access to the Central Registry??
After the removal of the protection, we received a letter from the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade requesting the deletion of the General Staff from the Register. We replied that we cannot do that because the procedure was not carried out in accordance with the law. At that moment, Vasić begins to demand access to the information system of immovable cultural assets. That access was granted to him only in data review mode, without the possibility of modification, because he did not have the appropriate training. He was told that he had to undergo training. Meanwhile, he was arrested.
During the next three months, he was not allowed to come to the Institute, because he was forbidden to approach the witnesses, which means about thirty employees. After returning to work, he tried again, in different ways, to access the information system, but it was pointed out to him that this would also constitute a criminal offense because our laws clearly stipulate that unauthorized persons may not change data in information systems, and in this case he is an unauthorized person.
Have you been contacted by someone from the authorities??
After the resignation of Dubravka Đukanović, I was contacted by certain persons, whom I would not like to name, with the question of how to remove protection from the General Staff and how it could be implemented. I explained to them that, given the position of the profession, there is no legal way to do this. They repeated the same question to me several times, and my answer was the same every time.
And then they gave up on you.?
That's right.
What does lex specialis mean for society?
The lex specialis was another devastating episode for the entire society, along with many others that defy both logic and common sense. You are passing a special law to destroy your own heritage and allow someone else to build a hotel on the site! This renders the entire protection service, our profession and everything we have been fighting for decades meaningless. At the same time, it is a continuation of entrenched anti-intellectualism - intellectuals and experts are insulted, they are told that they know nothing, while those who say it often do not know anything at all.
Now it covers 15 buildings. How to fight it?
The lex specialis covers plots of land on which there are four immovable cultural assets, and then it was expanded to 11 more through interpretation. This shows that the government does not respect its own decisions, nor does it know what it wants and what it is doing. When they say that they will only deal with the General Staff from the second half of the 20th century, and not the barracks of the Fifth Regiment or the old General Staff, it is clear that they cannot be trusted. No one can guarantee that any building within that scope will remain protected and preserve its monumental integrity.
We are ready to fight in a civilized way. There is also a need, which part of the public has clearly expressed - asking for support from us as a profession, to which some of us have agreed - that, if the demolition begins, we defend the buildings physically. The old Sava bridge and Hotel Yugoslavia, unfortunately, have not been preserved, although such resistance existed, some other spaces and objects have. In any case, our next steps will depend on the government's moves. We know the legal framework, but we also know that the government does not follow the law.
Yet, in those defeats came the news that Jared Kushner had given up construction.
That day we received two important news. In the morning, we learned that an indictment was filed against four people, including the minister, two directors and a secretary in the Ministry of Culture, and in the evening that Kushner had given up on the project. Some of us were genuinely elated. However, we are aware that this does not mean the end of the fight, which, of course, does not diminish the joy of small but important victories.
photo: Aleksandar Mijailović / Fonet...
You mentioned in public that SANU had certain ideas about how the General Staff could be used. What all the possibilities are there?
It was not about a written proposal, but about an exchange of opinions at the gatherings organized by the Academy in 2022, on the occasion of celebrating the 125th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Dobrović. The very location of the General Staff complex, as well as the size of the facilities, open up numerous possibilities. Ideally, the complex would remain in military service. However, if the army is not interested in that, there are other state institutions that could be entrusted with management, and Belgrade University is certainly one of them.
In that case, the state should finance the renovation of the buildings, and then leave them to the University, which could decide on their future use. This would also be a certain type of compensation, bearing in mind that a significant part of the property was confiscated from the University of Belgrade after the Second World War, and that a large number of these buildings cannot be returned today. It is known that the University has a serious problem with the lack of space - both for individual faculties and scientific institutes, as well as for student dormitories.
Some museums also do not have adequate spaces, and there would be a possibility of establishing new ones. For example, the University of Belgrade could establish a museum of the student movement within the General Staff complex, in which all key student protests would be presented - from the period of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, through 1968, then the protests of 1996/97, all the way to these in the 21st century.
How powerful are institutes in general to preserve immovable cultural property? Are there any guarantees that the investor will comply with their requirements, especially when it comes to preserving the authentic appearance of the object? And what happens if those requests are not met?
In organized societies, i.e. in states where there is a rule of law, institutes for the protection of cultural monuments have a real possibility to carry out control and ensure compliance with their conditions. In our country, however, due to the fact that the laws are not systematically respected, neither the Republic Institute nor other institutes can guarantee that something will not be carried out outside the procedure, that is, that their conditions, measures and opinions will be respected. Unfortunately, even the top government does not want that. The law gives us the possibility to prescribe measures, to give consent or to reject the project, some works... If someone does not comply, we do not have the possibility to prohibit it ourselves, but we have the possibility to ask the construction inspection to do so. Then the building inspection - again, if there were laws - would have to comply with it. In practice, however, the situation is different. The protection service is small and limited in terms of personnel, we cannot achieve everything, nor can we send everyone away. The construction inspection, on the other hand, is often impossible to stop the works. That is why many operations are carried out beyond our solutions and beyond legal frameworks.
So, you leave, you see something happening beyond your solutions, notify the building inspection, they go out on the field and what happens next?
Experience says - in most cases nothing. It is very rare that, when the building inspectorate issues an order to stop work, it is actually carried out. Often, the inspection stipulates that the investor must, at his own expense, restore the space to its original state. But in practice - sometimes the damage has already been done and a return to the original state is not possible, and sometimes investors simply turn a deaf ear to everything.
So, you say something, the building inspection supports you, investor says "puj pikes does not apply" and nothing to anyone?
Exactly.
You mentioned that much more was saved than was lost. We see the lost., and what is saved??
There are a number of memorial complexes that are large spaces, parks with memorials or places of historical importance, which is what I do. For some of them, we have constant requests for construction, which we manage to prohibit. For example, we have been asked several times to build a hotel on the site of the Sremski Front memorial near Adasevac, and the construction of a large number of facilities and sports fields within the Šumarica memorial park has also been requested. We prevented that.
You have heard from members of the government that conservators are paid too much, to work against the interests of the state... How did you feel??
Spicy. The general public knows very little about what institutes for the protection of cultural monuments do. We are a small service, the number of employees is smaller than a few decades ago, practically decimated since 2014, due to the ban on employment, while our competences have been significantly expanded during the 2000s, without an adequate increase in personnel. Today, one man does the work that would normally be done by three people. Our salaries are at the level of the national average, and our colleagues in other institutes have even less. All this is not close to the incomes of MPs. We asked that our institution send a protest letter because of the insults of the government representatives, but the acting director refused.
We would also like to talk about you and your family. First of all, your last name is atypical for these spaces.
Yes, the surname is German, Volksdeutsche, from lower Srem. My ancestors came in the Teresian migrations back in the 18th century, but the families mixed, so there is, in addition to German, Hungarian blood and Serbian blood, Serbian the most. But the last name remained. It is interesting that in the former Austria-Hungary it was passed down through the female line, since several grandmothers and great-grandmothers ran away from home because of love, and then gave birth to children who received their mother's surname. Those were the rules back then. My father is from such a mixed family, my mother is from a purely Serbian family from the vicinity of Lajkovac. We have ancestors who fought in the partisans, who were on the Thessaloniki front, on Cer, on Kolubara, and on many other battlefields. We also have insurgents against the Turks, so it is not much different from the history of many people in these areas, the only thing is that the last name is different.
And how does the family react to your public appearances in the past months?
My wife absolutely supports me, and the children are still small - my son is 15 years old, my daughters are 12 and 10. The youngest says: "You spoke well, dad, but I didn't understand anything."
You studied history in 1999?
No. I was in the army. At that time, military service was still mandatory, but since I enrolled in university, I could postpone it. However, I didn't want to. I wanted to repay, as they said then, the debt to the motherland. I knew that there was a war going on in Kosovo, that there were ongoing battles between the rebels and our police and the army, although it was officially said in Belgrade that the army was not participating in it. But I had a lot of friends who served in Kosovo and we all knew what was going on. So I spent two and a half months in training, then I was transferred to Pristina, where I participated in military activities during the entire NATO intervention, returned to Belgrade, went to university, then participated in protests. I worked in parallel with the university because I needed to be independent, so I paid for my studies myself.
I think that resistance also has something to do with what I do professionally - researching patterns of remembrance of wars and war victims. In addition to civilian victims, I deal a lot with soldiers who gave their lives for this country or their health, and how the state treated them afterwards, how they felt and how my comrades, with whom I was in the war, and I still feel today.
What do you feel??
The state's ingratitude for what we were willing to do. That I, as someone with a German surname, someone who enrolled in university and could postpone the army, in the end and not serve it considering that it was later abolished, still went, and people who were much more, much louder proud of their Serbianness postponed it as long as they could. And then they didn't even serve her. But they are bigger Serbs because of the surname ending in "ić", than I, whose surname ends in "er".
Looking at people from the past who were ready to give their lives for their country, you can't help but wonder - do you have the right to remain silent in the face of the injustice you see around you? In the memories of many of those soldiers, you read how someone saved their life, often dying alone, and you realize how hypocritical it is to deal with something related to those people, as I do, and not to fight for a better society.
How much do you think that experience of the war marked you??
It certainly is. When you serve in the army for 19-20 years, you have completely different thoughts than later, at 30 or 40... At one point, reservists joined us, they were people with already formed families, children, occupations, some kind of career. Their attitude towards the war was completely different. They were much more careful. We were children, young men, without fear, full of adrenaline, full of desire. We thought we were the smartest in the world. We don't know what the future holds for us all. And they had already experienced something and understood that there are other things in life and that they have something to save for. But that's how it works. When we look at all wars, the most killed and the bravest are young men. The average age of the partisans who died in the Second World War was slightly above 20 years. Back then, we didn't understand reservists at all, but now, when I have my own children, of course I understand them.
Why is the past important?
The past, whether personal or collective, forms part of our identity - both as an individual and as a group. It tells us who we are, what we have done and what we represent, both to ourselves and to others. All people strive for self-affirmation. The richness of the past tells us that we are valuable, that we matter. That is why we mention the great Middle Ages, the great Nemanjić dynasty, the glorious victories in the First World War... We want to present ourselves as important. In this, the greats who came from our environment play an important role and mean to us, whether they are rulers, national heroes, writers, artists, athletes, scientists...
And what will we do with that past that is not bright?
Of course, there is another side - forgetting, non-memorialization, the desire to forget what was done in our name. But we must face the crimes and injustices of the past. If we don't do it, others won't either, and the chain of conflict and revenge continues. It is necessary to individualize the culprits, to know who committed the crime and why, and to answer for their actions.
Examples from today's Europe testify to the importance of dealing with the past. The Second World War broke out because of the poorly arranged relations after the First World War. The Allies understood this well and did not repeat the mistake towards Germany, but they did their best to make every German aware of Nazi crimes. Denazification, as they call it, was carried out successfully there, which may not be the case in Austria or in some European countries.
