Interview: Maximilian Hartmuth of 'Balkancities'

For all the Balkan interested people, I would like to present a very interesting website called: KAKANIEN REVISITED.

"Kakanien revisited" is a platform for interdisciplinary research in the field of Central and Southeast European studies supported by the Bundesministerium für (Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research) and the University of Vienna. This project focuses on publication, networking and communication for researchers in Central Europe and South Eastern Europe countries.

One of the contributors is Maximilian Hartmuth who writes about architecture in the Balkans in his weblog "BalkanCities".

Check it out!

Maximilian was very kind and answered a few questions for Balkan-Crew. Her's the Interview:


What was your motivation to write about cities in the Balkan? Why you choose this region?

Well, I do think aspects of the cultural history of the region,including architecture and cities, are greatly understudied and largely ignored in Western academia. I think it's a fascinating place that deserves more attention.
Trying to read more about what struck me as interesting upon "first contact", I couldn't really find the literature I was expecting (or hoping) to find. So I ended up studying (and writing about) the architectural history of the region myself; and I'm still far from the big picture. The weblog accompanies this quest, not least as anattempt to network with those sharing similar interests.


What is your personal connection to the Balkans?

I have lived, worked and/or studied in Sarajevo, Belgrade, and Istanbul for the last 7 years; so that - including the persons I had the pleasure to meet, the stories I've been told, and the experiences I made myself - is my connection to the region.
I try to visit as often as I can.


For whom are you writing? Which kind of readers do yo expect to read your blog?

The weblog actually started as a Yahoogroup in 2005. That after a very short while there were already hundreds of subscribers was quite a surprise to me then, showing indeed that there is a number of people sharing my interests. After a while the social sciences platform "Kakanien Revisited" (which I had known and appreciated for quite a while then) provided me with the possibility to "migrate" my list to a weblog, as they were just starting a weblog project.
Initially, I myself was perhaps the harshest critic of this format. Back then I was subscribed to dozens of mailing lists but hardly visited any weblohgs regularly.
I eventually settled for a compromise: a weblog, but with an email notification service, a sort of digest. I also came to like the fact that my BalkanCities now had an actual home with an actual address (something more tangible than a mailing list), and that I could play around a bit with images links, etc. The old "readers" from listserv-times remained.
At times the individual visits to the weblog amounted to more than 4,000 per month. That alone should be enough to motivate me to maybe develop and maintain it a bit more regularly.


What is your background? What and where did you study?
I was Born in Vienna, and educated there as a historian (with a focus on Southeast Europe, especially on Bosnia, where I then had spent more than a year working for an Non-Governmental Organization), but interested in a much broader spectrum of topics and trying to feel at home in a number of disciplines. After being introduced to history, the interest in architecture came swiftly; initially over trying to understand cities and their planning and re-planning in the present and the past. From that point onwards I developed a broader interest in art and visual culture, anthropology, cultural studies, etc.


What are your plans for your weblog?

Plans for the weblog? Nothing specific as of now; perhaps only to post more regularly. Unfortunately, I don't always have the time, so the frequency of posts fluctuates very much depending on that.

Thank you Max for answering the questions, we will follow you on your blog!