Emerik Blum

Every century, Sarajevo has had one or more individuals who have managed to use their vision to help a trading place grow into a town and then into a city, to eventually become a modern metropolis.

2014/05/29

Author: Sarajevo Navigator

There is no doubt that Emerik Blum was one of the most important figures to work in this city during the 20th century.

Emerik Blum was born in Sarajevo on August 7, 1911 as a Bosnian Jew with Hungarian roots. He graduated from the Polytechnic University in Prague and when he was 20 years old he worked as a collaborator with the progressive and left-oriented art group, Collegium Artisticum.

Concentration camps

When the Nazis occupied BiH, Blum, as a leftist and a Jew, was among the first to be apprehended. He spent the next four years in concentration camps in Sarajevo, then later on the island, Pag, and then in Gospić and finally in Jasenovac. With his engineering training, he was assigned to work on maintaining the electric power plant. The fact that he was “a necessary asset” was all that saved him from a certain and terrible death. In November 1944 he managed to escape and join the Partisans.

After the war he worked as a head engineer with the administration department at Elektroprivreda and then as Assistant State Minister for Elektroprivreda. Although he was offered a position at the Embassy of Yugoslavia in London, he surprised many by his decision to return to Sarajevo, where he undertook the management of a small project office. He also managed to bring 30 experts with him from Belgrade and these individuals served as the main core which later gave rise to the powerful Energoinvest.

The path he took was by no means easy – he had to overcome local prejudices and socialist dogma.... His movements were constantly monitored by the State Security Agency which submitted documents on how Blum went to a different bar every night. It was soon discovered, however, that Blum, who had never taken a holiday in his life, had sold his car to a local worker who had a weakness for alcohol.

No good work is without its craziness

Guided by the motto “no good work is without its craziness”, which means that the foundation of any development is based on young people and their enthusiasm, he started an education system which trained tens of thousands of qualified workers.

As he stated in one interview, “Our understanding was that for there to be success, one had to gather enough professional workers, and when this was put into practice, it proved to be true. Building a space and buying machines was difficult because there was no money yet, somehow, we managed to get by. But this was all useless if there weren't any workers.“

At the helm of Energoinvest for nearly three decades, he managed to create a company that employed about 40,000 people, had a profit of 3 billion dinars, annual exports exceeding 500 million dollars.... The Financial Times referred to him as “the personification of socialism at work“ and the first real socialist businessman. During the harsh Cold War divisions, Blum easily managed to do business with both the USSR and the USA and, at that time, Energoinvest was producing everything from hydroelectric plants to electrical outlets.

Blum ended his career by serving as Mayor of Sarajevo (1981-1983) and was a member of the organizational committee for the 14th Winter Olympic Games. Illness prevented him from realizing his goal of eliminating the complicated bureaucracy which made life difficult for ordinary citizens. He died on June 24, 1984.

A street in Grbavica bears his name and his bust stands in front of the Energoinvest building. If memorials were built from kind words and fond memories, Emerik Blum would surely have one of the greatest monuments in the history of Sarajevo and BiH.