Ivan Lovrenović

Ivan Lovrenović (18 April 1943) is a Bosnian and Herzegovinian publicist, writer, historian, essayist, and editor.

Early life and education

He was born in a family of Bosnian Croats in 1943 in Zagreb, but soon moved to Mrkonjić Grad, where he finished elementary school and lower real grammar school, and then return to Zagreb where he finished a grammar school and studied at the Faculty of Philosophy, at the Department of Serbo-Croatian language and Yugoslav literature, taking as an auxiliary discipline ethnology.

Teaching and diplomatic career Until 1976, he taught literature at the grammar school in Mrkonjić Grad, then worked in Sarajevo as an editor in the magazine for culture and social issues Odjek, and as editor-in-chief in the publishing houses Veselin Masleša and Svjetlost.

Since 1992, after fleeing the occupied Sarajevo district of Grbavica, he has lived in besieged Sarajevo for a year. Since 1993, he has lived in Zagreb and worked as a diplomat at the BiH Embassy, and an editor with the publisher Nenad Popović, and then moved to Berlin.

Return and engagements After the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed and subsequent reintegration of Grbavica in 1996, he returned to Sarajevo. He lives as an independent publicist, and columnist for the Sarajevo magazine BH Dani, which he co-founded in 1992 with several other prominent writers and publicists.

Journalistic work and writing Lovrenović's diagram, from Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Cultural History, explaining how of Bosnia and Herzegovina culture is structured. He has been publishing literary prose, essays, newspaper articles and commentaries since 1970. He has collaborated in all major newspapers and magazines in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia. His prose, articles and essays have been translated into German, English, Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish, Polish, Czech, Dutch, Slovenian, Macedonian and other languages. From 1992 to 1996, his essays and articles on aspects of ethnic conflict and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina were published in newspapers and magazines such as New York Times, Frankfurter Rundschau, Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Le Messager Europeen, etc.

P. E. N. Bosnia and Herzegovina Ivan Lovrenović, together with several Bosnian writers, was one of the co-founders of the Bosnian P.E.N. Center on October 31, 1992, in Sarajevo.

After the letter of the Association, signed by 42 members and published on May 9, 2020, protesting the commemorative Mass for the Bleiburg massacre in 1945 in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Sarajevo on May 16, 2020, Lovrenović with Ivica Đikić, Miljenkom Jergovićem, and Željkom Ivankovićem in an open letter published on Lovrenovic's website, stated that he does not consider himself a member of this association anymore. One of the reasons cited in the letter was both Association and the Sarajevo administration alleged tolerance of nationalism and fascism, which allows the glorification of the Ustasha movement through naming the streets using movement sympathizers and members names.