Bøger af Robert Elsie

To many people's surprise, the Albanian epic is still alive and kicking. Even in the second decade of the twenty-first century, one can still find a good number of singers, called lahutars in Albanian, who are able to sing and recite the heroic deeds of Muja and Halili and their thirty Agas. These are men, and now a good number of women, who have inherited their repertoires as part of an unbroken oral tradition passed down from generation to generation. One can safely assume that they are the very last native singers of oral epic verse in Europe! In 2011, a major project was initiated to record and document the Albanian epic in the five Balkan countries in which it is still sung: Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The wealth of material collected from 2012-2014 shows that the Albanian epic, although perhaps not what it was in former years, is by no means moribund. About 4,000 lines of verse were translated into English for this volume.

Johanna Jutta Neumann, née Gerechter, was born in 1930 of a Jewish family in Hamburg. With the rise of the Nazis, she fled with her parents to Albania where she spent the Second World War. Her memoirs narrate the story of her childhood, of her years in Albania under Italian and German occupation, and of her family's survival.

"Through the Lands of the Serb," originally published in 1904, was the first book of the English traveller and writer Edith Durham (1863-1944). It is a literary reflection of three of her early expeditions to Montenegro and Serbia (as well as northern Albania and Kosovo) in 1901, 1902 and 1903, and provides great insight into regions of Europe that were little known and rarely visited at that time. One cannot help but admire the energy, resolve and courage of this indefatigable Edwardian lady travelling on her own through regions that were reputed to be extremely dangerous.

In late January 1945, the new communist rulers of Albania began a campaign to prepare and sensitize public opinion in the country for the Special Court for War Criminals and Enemies of the People. The daily newspaper Bashkimi decried the leaders of Balli Kombëtar and Legality as traitors, noting on 2 February: "All without any exception will give accounts before the Albanian people and before Albania. Today or tomorrow the sword of Albanian justice will fall on their necks..." The Special Court, set up on 25 December 1944 by order of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council, opened its doors at the Kosovo Cinema, the building later to house the National Theatre, on 1 March 1945. On trial were sixty men.

"The Struggle for Scutari," originally published in 1914, was the fourth book of the English traveller and writer Edith Durham (1863-1944). She had already made a name for herself with "Through the Lands of the Serb" (1904), "The Burden of the Balkans" (1905) and especially "High Albania" (1909). This book is perhaps Durham's most ambitious piece of writing. It is the fruit of her longest stay in the Balkans (mostly in Montenegro and Albania) - three and a half years from April 1910 to September 1913. "The Struggle for Scutari" deals with the border conflict, and then with the bloody war waged by the tiny Kingdom of Montenegro under King Nikola upon a crumbling Ottoman Empire, of which Albania was still a part. Caught in the middle of the conflict, between a rock and a hard place, were the Albanian highland tribes that Edith Durham knew and loved. "The Struggle for Scutari" is not only a reliable source of history for the period between 1910 and 1913, based as it is on first-hand experience, but also facilitates an understanding of events in the Balkans up to this very day.

Wenn Peter Bartl uns als Höhepunkt der albanologischen Geschichts- und Religionsgeschichtsforschung erscheint, so gründet sich dies in erster Linie auf seine weithin bekannten Monographien und seine exemplarische Editionsarbeit von sehr umfangreichen Archivmaterialien. Untermauert wird seine zentrale Rolle in der albanischen Geschichtsforschung allerdings auch durch seine zahlreichen Beiträge: größtenteils Studien zu Einzelproblemen der albanischen Geschichte und der Religionsgeschichte sowohl in den albanischsprachigen Ländern wie auch in der Diaspora in Süditalien und Griechenland. Sinn und Zweck der vorliegenden Ausgabe ist, dem Fachkundigen das Wichtigste von Peter Bartls seit fünfzig Jahren vielerorts erschienenen Beiträgen zusammenzustellen und zu ordnen.

Diese Zusammenstellung von 100 Buchbesprechungen ist eine Rückschau auf ein Vierteljahrhundert der Auseinandersetzung mit Albanien, einem Land des schnellen Wandels und schwerer Erschütterungen, das die Annäherung an die Europäische Union anstrebt und doch weiter als fast alle osteuropäischen Länder von einem Beitritt zur EU entfernt ist. Angeordnet nach den Erscheinungsjahren der Titel, dokumentiert sie nicht so sehr das Land, sondern vor allem die sehr verschiedenen Blickwinkel darauf, weil nur wenige dieser Bücher in Albanien selbst erschienen sind.

The Canadian scholar and writer Robert Elsie, who was born in Vancouver in 1950, has been working and publishing in the field of Albanian Studies for about thirty-five years. The present book is a compilation of his major articles and essays on Albanian culture (history, literature, philology, religion, etc.), a reflection of his constant endeavour to make the tiny Albanian nation better known in the world.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the writers of Shkodra in northern Albania were profoundly aware of the misery around them, and it is perhaps the extreme diversity of their social environment which furthered their talents. They looked to the West and longed for a new, European Albania, yet they found themselves in an archaic society, one so bound by the force of tradition and custom that progress was impossible. Their writings reflected and gave full expression to this dilemma. The present collection brings together a number of well-known short stories and prose sketches by two of the finest Albanian writers of the first half of the twentieth century: Ernest Koliqi and Migjeni. These two men of Shkodra, one raised as a Catholic and the other as Orthodox, could scarcely have been more different.

At the end of 1903, the British traveller and writer Edith Durham (1863-1944) departed for a five-month stay in the Balkans to take part in humanitarian work on behalf of the Macedonian Relief Committee. This journey and the appalling situation in the rebellious region are the focus of her book 'The Burden of the Balkans' (published initially in London in 1905). It also includes an account of her first lengthy expedition, on horseback and on foot, through the wilds of southern and central Albania. With the many dashes of irony and humour, at which Edith Durham was a master, 'The Burden of the Balkans' is a work that can still be savoured by all.

High Albania is perhaps the most delightful book ever written about Albania and the Albanians. It has been widely read and enjoyed since its initial publication in London in 1909 and has influenced views of Albania more than its author, Edith Durham (1863-1944), would ever have thought. High Albania is an account of the British traveller and writer's travels through the previously little explored and thus very exotic mountainous regions of northern Albania and Kosovo in 1908, in the wake of the Young Turk Revolution that first enabled foreigners to visit the 'closed lands' for a time.

Kosovo is the newest country in Europe. It is the seventh and probably last state to arise from the ruins of former Yugoslavia. It is also one of the poorest countries in Europe. Kosovo's long struggle for identity, self-determination and independence has been bitter, and it will be in need of international assistance for a while before it can become a normal European nation like the others. This book provides a short overview of the history of Kosovo for the general reader.

Die hier vorliegende Chronologie albanischer Ereignisse von 1990 bis 2015 beruht auf der laufenden chronologischen Berichterstattung in den "Albanischen Heften", der Vierteljahreszeitschrift der Deutsch-Albanischen Freundschaftsgesellschaft, seit 1990. Im Mittelpunkt steht Albanien; die Berichterstattung bezieht den übrigen albanischen Raum - besonders Kosovo - ein, aber nicht mit der gleichen Tiefe wie das "Mutterland". Naturgemäß stehen politische Ereignisse im Mittelpunkt. Meine Quellen dafür waren die albanische Tagespresse, zunächst in ihren Printausgaben, später in ihren Onlineauftritten, sowie albanische Nachrichtenportale im Internet. Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass eine Ereignisgeschichte Albaniens für das erste Vierteljahrhundert der Transitionsphase, die noch immer nicht abgeschlossen ist, für viele von Interesse ist, die sich mit diesem Land, mit Ost- und Südosteuropa oder mit postsozialistischen Gesellschaften auseinandersetzen.

Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle offers the reader a passionate overview of events in the Balkans in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It focuses primarily on Montenegro and Albania, but also deals with Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia. By the time of its initial publication in 1920, its author, the British traveller and writer, Edith Durham (1863-1944), had attained fame in the region and was well-known in the English-speaking world for her insight and first-hand knowledge of the western Balkans. This book constitutes a culmination and synthesis of Edith Durham's writing and can in many ways be regarded as her memoirs. Few foreigners had been in such intense, hands-on contact with the wild Balkans and no one in Britain knew the region as well as Edith Durham.

Die hier vorliegende Chronologie albanischer Ereignisse von 1990 bis 2015 beruht auf der laufenden chronologischen Berichterstattung in den "Albanischen Heften", der Vierteljahreszeitschrift der Deutsch-Albanischen Freundschaftsgesellschaft, seit 1990. Im Mittelpunkt steht Albanien; die Berichterstattung bezieht den übrigen albanischen Raum - besonders Kosovo - ein, aber nicht mit der gleichen Tiefe wie das "Mutterland". Naturgemäß stehen politische Ereignisse im Mittelpunkt. Meine Quellen dafür waren die albanische Tagespresse, zunächst in ihren Printausgaben, später in ihren Onlineauftritten, sowie albanische Nachrichtenportale im Internet. Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass eine Ereignisgeschichte Albaniens für das erste Vierteljahrhundert der Transitionsphase, die noch immer nicht abgeschlossen ist, für viele von Interesse ist, die sich mit diesem Land, mit Ost- und Südosteuropa oder mit postsozialistischen Gesellschaften auseinandersetzen.

Die hier vorliegende Chronologie albanischer Ereignisse von 1990 bis 2015 beruht auf der laufenden chronologischen Berichterstattung in den "Albanischen Heften", der Vierteljahreszeitschrift der Deutsch-Albanischen Freundschaftsgesellschaft, seit 1990. Im Mittelpunkt steht Albanien; die Berichterstattung bezieht den übrigen albanischen Raum - besonders Kosovo - ein, aber nicht mit der gleichen Tiefe wie das "Mutterland". Naturgemäß stehen politische Ereignisse im Mittelpunkt. Meine Quellen dafür waren die albanische Tagespresse, zunächst in ihren Printausgaben, später in ihren Onlineauftritten, sowie albanische Nachrichtenportale im Internet. Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass eine Ereignisgeschichte Albaniens für das erste Vierteljahrhundert der Transitionsphase, die noch immer nicht abgeschlossen ist, für viele von Interesse ist, die sich mit diesem Land, mit Ost- und Südosteuropa oder mit postsozialistischen Gesellschaften auseinandersetzen.

The History of Albania by Tajar Zavalani (1903-1966) is the first full-length history of Albania to have been written in English. It covers the period from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century and provides the reader with a good overview of the historical development of a Balkan nation, which has to a large extent been ignored, even by scholars and specialists in Southeast European history. Retrieved after fifty years of oblivion, the fruits of Zavalani's imposing project are now available to the reading public for the first time. Tajar Zavalani was born in Korça (Albania) and fled to Italy with the rise of the dictatorship of Ahmet Zogu. There, Soviet agents recruited him and offered to let him study in Russia as a "victim of counter-revolution." In November 1930, after several years of study in Moscow and Leningrad, he left Russia, about which he now had serious misgivings. After the Italian invasion of Albania in 1939, Zavalani was interned in northern Italy, from where he escaped with his wife, Selma Zavalani (1915-1995), former lady-in-waiting to Queen Geraldine, via Switzerland to France and then in 1940, with King Zog's party, on into exile in England. In November 1940, Zavalani was given a job in the BBC's new Albanian-language service, which he came to head and where he worked until his death in an accident on 19 August 1966. He was a well-known and active figure of the Albanian exile community in Britain. The present History of Albania was composed for the most part between 1961 and 1963. About the Editors: Robert Elsie is an internationally recognized expert in the field of Albanian studies and the author of many books on the history and culture of Albania. Bejtullah Destani is a British-Kosovar scholar and founder of the Centre for Albanian Studies in London. As a diplomat, he has served recently at the Embassies of the Republic of Kosovo in London and Rome.

The hundred years between 1750 and 1850 were an age of astounding orthographic diversity in Albania. In this period, the Albanian language was put to writing in at least ten different alphabets - most certainly a record for European languages. This book introduces the diverse forms in which this old Balkan language was recorded, from the earliest documents to the beginning of the twentieth century. They consist of adaptations of the Latin, Greek, Arabic and Cyrillic alphabets and, what is even more interesting, a number of locally invented writing systems. Most of the latter alphabets have now been forgotten and are unknown, even to the Albanians themselves.

The copybooks with Bible translation in Todhri script that the Austrian consul, Johann Georg von Hahn, came across during his travels through Albania in the mid-nineteenth century were long regarded as lost. Their discovery in the Austrian National Library, after a century and a half of oblivion, could rightly be described as a sensation for Albanian studies. These little copybooks have previously never been transcribed or translated. Indeed they have probably not been read and used since the nineteenth century. Todhri script was an original Albanian alphabet invented and used in central Albania in the eighteenth century. The last person to write in Todhri script is said to have died in the 1930s.

Der Albanienforscher, Paläontologe und Geologe Franz Baron Nopcsa (1877-1933) war einer der schillerndsten Forscher und Gelehrten seiner Zeit. Er kannte die Berge Nordalbaniens und ihre befehdeten und schwerbewaffneten Bewohner wie kaum ein anderer. Seine hier vorgestellten Lebenserinnerungen, die die Jahre 1897-1917 umfassen, geben einen einmaligen Einblick in das Albanien vor hundert Jahren sowie in die Machenschaften der Politik Österreich-Ungarns.

This reader presents the best of classical Albanian literature, from the end of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century. It includes the best-known works of the age, poetry in particular. After a sluggish start, Albanian literature flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. By the mid-1930s, it reached a zenith, when intellectual life in the country was finally on a sound footing. A modern literature had been created in Albania and the nation had come of age. Alas, it was a brief blossoming in the shadow of the apocalypse which loomed in the form of the Stalinist regime that seized power in 1944 and would snuff out all genuine literary production for decades to come.

Richard Busch-Zantner (1911-1942) hat seinen Bericht über eine Reise nach Albanien zwischen dem 11. und dem 28. Dezember 1927 geschrieben, wie er handschriftlich auf dem Titel des Typo-skripts notiert hat, und Anfang 1928 leicht überarbeitet. Seine im Vorwort sichtbare Absicht, ihn in Buchform erscheinen zu lassen, trog ihn. Der Grund dafür dürfte genau der sein, der diesen Text so faszinierend macht: wir haben hier die Arbeit eines knapp 17jährigen vor uns.

The present volume endeavours to throw some light on the historical dimension of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. It consists of a collection of texts, written from 1912 to 1944, which make it evident that ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and Macedonia was a cornerstone of Serbian Government policies from the moment Serbian forces seized Kosovo and much of Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire in 1912-1913.

Jean-Claude Faveyrial (1817-1893), né à Usson en Forez, village des montagnes de l'Auvergne, fut envoyé par la Congrégation de la Mission Lazariste à Monastir (Bitola) en Macédoine. De 1859 à 1861, il était, dit-on, l'âme du mouvement bulgare. Il devint aussi un grand ami des Valaques et, vers la fin de sa vie, des Albanais. De 1867 jusqu'à sa mort, il servait à Monastir comme professeur du lycée valaque où il donnait des cours de français et de philosophie. 'Les Albanais, ' écrivait-il, 'forment une nation, une race forte et vaillante, qui demande son indépendance. Les Mirdites sont pour la France comme les Maronites du Liban. Bib-Doda, leur prince, m'a souvent répété cette parole. Je désire que la Congrégation s'intéresse aux Albanais comme aux Valaques, et ne les sépare pas'. L'Histoire de l'Albanie de Jean-Claude Faveyrial fut écrite entre les années 1884 et 1889. Elle est la première oeuvre à tracer l'histoire entière de l'Albanie, de l'antiquité jusqu'à la deuxième moitié du dix-neuvième siècle.

Folktales are still very much alive in the mountains of Albania, a land of haunted history. They are recited in the evenings after a day's work or out in the fields, are learned by heart and pass, as if immortal, from one generation to the next. Whose imagination could not be captured by the cunning of the Scurfhead, by the demands of the Earthly Beauty, by the heroic feats of Muja and Halil or by the appearance of a fiery Kulshedra in the forest? Included in this collection are not only folktales but prose versions of some of the best-known Albanian legends (based on historical or mythological events and figures). The adventures of Muja and Halil and their band of mountain warriors are still told and indeed sung in epic verse in the northern Albanian mountains, and the exploits of the great Scanderbeg, the Albanian national hero who freed large parts of the country from Turkish rule in the fifteenth century, are recounted everywhere Albanians gather, as if events five centuries old had taken place yesterday.

The folktales of this collection were gathered and translated into English by the noted Scottish anthropologist Margaret Hasluck (1885-1948) in the late 1920s and 1930s. She collected them, for the most part, not from experienced storytellers, but directly from the children, young people and elementary school teachers she met during her long years of stay in Albania. The narratives are accordingly simple, taken, so to speak, from the mouths of babes. The Hasluck Collection of Albanian Folktales comprising 115 tales, is by far the largest ever to appear in English.

Die vorliegende Sammlung albanischer Volksmärchen stellt mit über hundert Märchen die bisher größte Zusammenstellung albanischen Erzählgutes in deutscher Sprache dar. Sie beruht auf frühen Sammlungen und Anthologien deutschsprachiger Gelehrten, viele davon Sprachwissenschaftler, die unverfälschtes schriftliches Material für ihre Forschung der albanischen Sprache benötigten und aufzeichneten. Hierunter befinden sich auch die frühsten fremdsprachigen Übersetzungen albanischer Märchen.

Albania is a small country in southeastern Europe. It is situated on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the southwestern part of the Balkan Peninsula and borders on Montenegro to the north, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east, and Greece to the south. But a few decades ago, Albania was something of a curiosity on Planet Earth. Perhaps only North Korea was as isolated from the rest of the world as Albania was. For left-wing idealists, it was a distant Shangri-la where all social inequalities had been done away with; for those few individuals with concrete knowledge of the realities of the Stalinist regime that held power until 1990, and for the vast majority of people living in Albania, it was hell on earth. Despite its sombre past, Albania is, in essence, a European nation like any other and will soon, it is to be hoped, advance and take its proper place in Europe and the world. This book provides a short overview of the history of Albania for the general reader.

Am Ende des 19. und am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts war Albanien ein Land, das es zu entdecken galt. Das ewig unruhige Balkanland gehörte noch zu dem in Zerfall begriffenen, großen Osmanischen Reich und war für europäische Reisende nicht einfach zugänglich. Dennoch strömten viele europäische Forscher und Reisende nach Albanien, um den letzten weißen Fleck auf der Karte Europas zu erkunden. Unter ihnen spielte der österreichische Ingenieur Karl Steinmetz eine besondere Rolle. Im Gegensatz zu den meisten Entdeckern und Reisenden war er auf seine Expeditionen gut vorbereitet. Er lernte albanisch, scheinbar gut, und war dadurch in die Lage versetzt, selbstständig kreuz und quer durch die bis dahin schwer zugänglichen Berge zu reisen und mit den angeblich so schießwütigen Einheimischen umzugehen. Diese Ausgabe umfasst die drei Reiseschilderungen des abenteuerlustigen Karl Steinmetz aus den Jahre 1903, 1904 und 1905.

'Behind Stone Walls' is a sociological, or more specifically, a social anthropological study of traditional Albanian society. It focuses, in particular, on the formation and evolution of household and family structures among the Kosovo Albanians and was written on the basis of field work carried out by the author in the village of Isniq in western Kosovo in 1976. The study provides the reader with a fascinating glimpse into an exotic world which will soon belong to the past, as the author predicted.