Authors from Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo to meet in Tuzla, 4 July

VIENNA, 2 July 2001 (OSCE) - At the invitation of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Freimut Duve, the three founders of the initiative Gruppe 99 will meet in Tuzla on 4 July to lecture and take part in discussions in the framework of the 'mobile.culture.container' project. The founders of Gruppe 99 are Filip David from Belgrade, Ivan Lovrenovic from Sarajevo, and Nenad Popovic from Zagreb. The author Igor Stiks from Zagreb, whose latest novel has received much attention by the critics, will also attend the meeting.

The town of Tuzla was not chosen by chance. During the war of 1992-1995 it maintained a surprisingly high level of democracy, civil consciousness, tolerance, and co-operation between different groups of society.

The foundation of Gruppe 99 - an independent platform for the free exchange of ideas and books - goes back to an initiative taken by Freimut Duve during the Leipzig Book Fair in 1999. The initiative was supported by the Association of German Book Trade and the former director of the Frankfurt Book Fair Peter Weidhaas. Today, young authors continue to join Gruppe 99. Biljana Srbljanovic, a famous Belgrade dramatist is one example.

Ivan Lovrenovic (1943) is the author of Die Welt ohne Brücke (The World without Bridge), Köpenick, 1994, and Bosnien und Herzogowina: Eine Kulturgeschichte (Bosnia and Herzegovina: A History of a Culture), Vienna/Bozen, 1998. Filip David (1940) is a famous Serbian essayist, scenarist, and narrator who has demonstratively published his Kristallgitter (Crystal bars) in the besieged city of Sarajevo. Nenad Popovich (1950) is a publisher in Croatia; last year the German PEN awarded him with the Hermann-Kesten-Medal.

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For further information please contact the office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, tel. + 43 1 512 21 45-0, Fax + 43 1 512 21 45-9.