CONTESTED HEROES – GAVRILO PRINCIP AND RUDOLF MAISTER AS SUBCULTURAL ICONS 
MITJA VELIKONJA 
In the article, the author deals with two heroes: - Gavrilo Princip (1894-1918) was a member of Mlada Bosna, who shot at an archduke, to the successor to the Habsburg throne, Franz Ferdinand; - general Rudolf Maister (1874-1934) was a poet and commander of the South Slavic forces in the lower Styria and Carinthia in the years 1918 and 1919. The author analyzed forty-three examples of graffiti and street art pieces of different formats (graffiti, stencils, stickers, murals etc.), dedicated to Princip and Maister. Theoretically, his research combines graffiti and street art studies with a critical analysis of cult of personality of political leaders. Keywords: Gavrilo Princip, Rudolf Maister, Mlada Bosna, Franz Ferdinand, Sarajevo, Maribor, hero, assassin, World War I V članku avtor obravnava dva heroja, Gavrila Principa (1894-1918), člana Mlade Bosne, atentatorja, ki je streljal na nadvojvodo, na naslednika habsburškega prestola Franza Ferdinanda; in na generala Rudolf Maistra Vojanova (1874­1934), pesnika in poveljnika južnoslovanskih sil na spodnji Štajerski in Koroški v letih 1918 in 1919. Avtor je analiziral 43 primerov grafitov in uličnih umetniških del različnih formatov (grafiti, šablone, nalepke, freske itd. Raziskava združuje študije grafitov in uličnih umetnosti s kritično analizo kulta osebnosti političnih voditeljev. Ključne besede: Gavrilo Princip, Rudolf Maister, Mlada Bosna, Franz Ferdinand, Sarajevo, Maribor, heroj, atentator, prva svetovna vojna 
INTRODUCTION 
Who or what are Lenin, Beethoven, Che Guevara, Franz Ferdinand, Gomulka, Obilić, beside real historical personalities? A brand of vodka, the St. Bernard from the eponymous Hollywood family comedy blockbuster, cigarettes, a Scottish indie-rock band, a Polish multiple-unit train, a Belgrade football club. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello 
– Italian painters or Ninja Turtles? Hemingway – an American novelist or a chain of bars all over the world? Tito – Yugoslav socialist leader or a herbal liqueur? Both; and much much more. As a cultural-studies scholar, I find their real historical existence, role and fate equally important as their present-day cultural interpretations and appropriations. Both positions are a legitimate topic of analysis and they deserve a proper theoretical and empirical engagement. 
The centenary of dramatic events from the times of the First World War is marked not only in official discourses such as national historiography, popular science, media reports, state celebrations, popular culture, monuments etc., but also in the marginal ones. Typical are examples of Gavrilo Princip (1894–1918), a member of Young Bosnia1 and the assassin of the Archduke and heir presumptive to the Habsburg throne Franz Ferdinand; 
Ideological phrases, texts in graffiti and street art, and names of political groups, music bands, mov­ies and books are written in italics throughout the text. 
DOI: 10.3986/Traditio2018470112 TRADITIONES, 47/1, 2018, 213–229 
and General Rudolf Maister Vojanov (1874–1934), the commander of South Slav forces in Lower Styria and Carinthia in the confusing years 1918 and 1919, and a poet. Both were nominally Austrian citizens, but fighting against Austria or what had remained of the once mighty empire. As it happens with all historical personalities, their historic role is controversial and contested. For Slovenians, Maister is considered a fighter for the northern border, while for German Austrians the Butcher of Marburg because of his harsh measures against the German-speaking inhabitants of Maribor. Princip’s role goes much beyond this simple binarity: it is much more complicated. To frame the discussion, here is a sympto­matic comparison of his descriptions in Wikipedia articles in six different languages. In English, “he was a Yugoslav who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand”; in Bosnian, “a Serbian nationalist and member of Young Bosnia organization”; in Croatian, “an assassin of Franz Ferdinand and member of Yugoslav organization Young Bosnia”; in Serbian, “a member of a secret group inside the wider Young Bosnia movement who assassinated the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne Franz Ferdinand”; in Serbo-Croatian, “a Yugoslav nationalist and revolutionary who assassinated the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne Franz Ferdinand”; and in German, “a Bosnian Serb nationalist assassin who perpetrated the assassination of the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914”. 
The ambition of this study is to compare and analyze visual representations of Gavrilo Princip and Rudolf Maister, contemporaries from the fateful pre/post First World War period, and meanings of their images in contemporary urbanscapes. I am mostly interested in how they appear in graffiti and street art in the post-Yugoslav region (which, I must emphasize from the beginning, has a rich and vast graffiti and street-art tradition!). In short, I research their street usurpations by very diverse contemporary subcultural and subpolitical groups; in other words, the ways how they visually structure the contemporary political situation. I noticed that the number and variety of graffiti and street-art pieces about the two increased rapidly over the last two decades – i.e. long before the centenary of the war. 
More than in their historical role I am interested in how they are visualized in public spaces in ex-Yugoslav republics, i.e. how they look now instead of then. Their images are 
– in the words of Paula Saukko of the Loughborough University (2003: 100) – “a site of contestation over meaning, where different groups compete to set forth their understand­ings of the state of the affairs in the world”. Theoretically, my research combines graffiti and street art studies with a critical analysis of cult of personality of contemporary political leaders. On the one side, I therefore rely on the inspiring studies by Craig Castleman (1999), Troy Lovata and Elizabeth Olton (2015), and Lyman G. Chaffee (1993). For the latter, the main characteristics of street art and graffiti as a mass medium are as follows (1993: 8–9): it is primarily a collective medium (used mostly by organized political groups); a partisan, non-neutral, politicized medium (it criticizes, comments, suggests initiatives); it has a com­petitive, non-monopolistic, democratic character (promotes ideas or marginal groups); it is characterized by direct expressive thought (messages are simple, concise, synthesized); and finally, it is a highly adaptable medium (uses different techniques and strategies). Graffiti and street art remain one the most attractive, popular and picturesque ways of expressing political views today. On the other side, my theoretical considerations owe much to the concepts of the French historian Raoul Girardet (1986) on modern cult of personality, and the Austrian social psychologist Klaus Ottomeyer (2000) on the postmodern one. 
The main research method of this study is semiology as developed by its classics Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco and Stuart Hall. It unveils ideological backgrounds of cultural artifacts, in this case urban visual culture. The semiotic method enables us to understand what kind of ideological messages graffiti and street art carry, which power structures they represent and what kind of practical, political consequences they bring. My ambition is to use Barthes’ advice (1993: 9), “on the one hand, an ideological critique bearing on the language of so-called mass-culture; on the other, a first attempt to analyze semiologically the mechanics of this language”. All together I analyzed forty-three examples of graffiti and street art pieces of different formats (graffiti, stencils, stickers, murals etc.), dedicated to Princip and Maister, most of which I photographed myself from 2008 onward in different places in Slovenia, Serbia and in both entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Serbian Republic and Bosniak-Croat Federation).2 I compared them with a similar number of other visuals of them in popular and consumer culture, in art and in official state practices and manifestations. 
THE IMAGE OF RUDOLF MAISTER IN (UN)OFFICIAL VISUAL DISCOURSES 
After the rapid dethroning of partisan and communist heroes beginning in 1991, General Rudolf Maister rose to the top of Slovenian national pantheon as a true national hero. Being a part of the official memory culture, there are eleven monuments, busts and plaques dedi­cated to him: in Maribor,3 Kamnik, Kranj, Ljutomer, Unec, Polenšak, Ptuj, Cerkvenjak, Zavrh and two in Ljubljana. Most of them were erected recently, after 1991. Several streets, squares (Ljubljana, Maribor, Celje, Kranj),4 a park (Ljutomer), two schools (Kamnik, Šentilj) and military barracks (Maribor) are named after him. Since 1997, the patriotic Union of General Maister Associations its 24 branches has been engaged in a variety of activities including publishing a journal called The Voice of Maister. Since 2005, November 23 has become a national holiday, officially called Rudolf Maister Day, with celebrations all over the country. He appears on memory coins, on a stamp (1999) and on medals (golden, silver and bronze) of Slovenian Armed Forces. There are a few YouTube clips dedicated to Maister, a marching song (Rudolf Maister March), a contemporary dance video (2013), a documentary film Image of a Soldier: Rudolf Maister, General and Poet (2013), a series of artistic workshops bearing his name (since 1995, organized by Slovenian Armed Forces) and an exhibition about him in the Slovenian Ministry of Defense (2010). It therefore comes as no surprise that he is among the most important Slovenian personalities: according to a Slovenian public opinion survey in 2003, he came fifth (Toš et al., 2004: 468, 469),5 and in 2012, he came sixth (Toš et al., 2016: 239).6 When it comes to consumer culture, his image appears only twice: a new brewery and a brand of beer are named after him, Maister,7 the second one are T-shirts. 
2  Others were photographed by my colleagues and friends (to whom I express my gratitude) and only a few were found on the internet.  
3  Beside an individual monument to him, he appears also in a collective one, together with his Fighters for the Northern Border (by Drago Tršar).  
4  The inhabitants of the Maister Street in Maribor have a cultural event called Maistrovanje (Maistering).  

But the image of Maister really took root on the other edge of contemporary Slovenian society: in the do-it-yourself culture of football fans and extreme-right political groups. First, he is one of the most recognizable icons of the Viole fan group of FC Maribor, in the recent years the most successful Slovenian football club that completely monopolized him. General Maister’s greatest military achievement was taking Maribor in November 1918 and saving Lower Styria over the next few months: so it is logical that he is more popular in the North-Eastern Slovenia than elsewhere. His portrait appears on football-fan stickers, banners, patches, T-shirts, mouse pads, they loudly celebrate November 23, his image can also be found on their web site8 and in their chants.9 One of their catch-phrases is Vsi na Maistra!, meaning Let’s meet at Maister’s monument!, before going together to the match. And second, Maister also appears in the visual imagery of three Slovenian radical right-wing groups: Tukaj je Slovenija!, Hervardi or Avtonomni nacionalisti Slovenije10 in the form of screen-savers or banners. The new Maister’s monument in front of Ljubljana’s bus and railways station is their meeting point before they go to different protests. His role and image was used by some nationalist groups (nota bene, Maistrova armada/Maister’s Army, 
5 Following the national bard France Prešeren, the protestant writer Primož Trubar, and politicians Milan Kučan and Josip Broz Tito. 
6 When he was outrun by all of the above-mentioned and another politician, Janez Drnovšek. 
7 Proudly announcing that After almost a hundred years, General Maister is coming back to Maribor. http://pivopis.si/dogodek/predstavitev-pivovarne-maister/, access September 23, 2016. 
8 http://www.violemaribor.com/viole/512-rn23november.html, access September 22, 2016. 
9 
Štajerska je naša Styria is ours ljubimo jo mi! we love it! kdor ne ljubi Štajerske whoever does not love Styria koljemo ga mi. we slaughter him. 
Prišo bo prišo He’s coming, he’s coming drugi Rudolf Maister the second Rudolf Maister Štajerska do Tokia Styria all the way to Tokio samostojna država! an independent state! 
http://www.violemaribor.com/viole/multimedia/62-pesmi/244-rudolf-maister.html, access September 22, 2016. 
10 Here is Slovenia!, Hervards and Autonomous Nationalists of Slovenia, acronym ANSi. 

Figure 1: The Maister’s monument in front of Ljubljana’s bus and railways station. 2018. Photo by 
J. Fikfak. 

Figure 2 and 3: Stencils in Celje (2011) and Ljubljana (2013). Photo by M. Velikonja. 
Hervardi etc.) in the uprisings in Maribor of late 2012 and early 2013.11 The Slovenian researcher of subpolitical groups Monika Kropej (2016) identified four main features of his image among football fans and young nationalists: being patriotic, heroic, liberator of Styria, but also a man of culture. 
Maister’s image appears only in the form of stencils and stickers, but not as graffiti, murals or posters.12 In most of them, he is a presented in a “neutral” way, so only with his portrait in military uniform (and eventually his signature), while in some his image is accompanied by other right-wing symbols and slogans (images of the Carantanian Panther or Home-Guard Eagle, and xenophobic messages like Čefurji Raus13 or a sad classic Slovenia to Slovenians). 
THE IMAGE OF GAVRILO PRINCIP IN (UN)OFFICIAL VISUAL DISCOURSES 
The visual appropriation of Gavrilo Princip is very similar: he was and still is almost, but not entirely, monopolized by Serbian mainstream national ideologies and institutions, both during the interwar period and after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. He figures as an indisputable Serbian hero in contemporary Serbian historical textbooks (Stojanović, 2010: 114, 150). His image appears on the cover of the contested book History of Serbian Republic which praises Serbian entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina.14 Although a self-declared Yugoslav nationalist, today almost all of his visual manifestations can only be found in Serbia and Republika Srpska. 
Let’s start on the level of official politics. A monument to him was erected in June 2014 in Istočno Novo Sarajevo, which is a part of Republika Srpska, and another one in June 2015 in Belgrade. Before that, in April 2014, a bust of Princip was erected in Tovariševo in Vojvodina, unveiled by fervent nationalists Emir/Nemanja Kusturica and Matija Bečković. Princip, together with other protagonists of Young Bosnia, appears also in the large public mosaic in Kusturica’s grotesque project Andrićgrad near Višegrad, Republika Srpska.15 He was finally interred in a tomb together with other, as the inscription on the grave goes, Vidovdan Heroes from Young Bosnia in the Sarajevo district of Koševo, in the old St. Archangel Michael Serbian Orthodox cemetery.16 One of the military decorations 
11 Correspondence with Maribor activist Gregor Stamejčič, September 24, 2016. 12 I found most of them in Ljubljana, Maribor, Celje and Nova Gorica. 13 Čefur is a derogatory name by Slovenian nationalists for people from other former Yugoslav nations. 14 Istorija republike Srpske by Nenad Kecmanović and Čedomir Antić (Nedeljnik, Belgrade, 2016). See 
harsh critic on http://www.marks21.info/analiza-redakcije/izmisljena-istorija nepostojece-drzave, access January 23, 2017. 
15 This town was officially opened on the centenary of Princip’s assassination of Franz Ferdinand, on June 28, 2014. 
16 Reports from the last Bosnian war show that this tomb was not even hit once in the course of the siege of Sarajevo, »even though targets all around were devastated« (Rieff, 1995: 108). 
in Milošević’s Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was called the Gavrilo Princip Gold Medal for Bravery. An elementary school in Zemun bears his name. According to my evidence, there are fifteen Gavrilo Princip Streets in Serbia (Belgrade, Kragujevac, Novi Sad, Čačak, Niš, Šabac, Kruševac, Kraljevo, Loznica, Novi Pazar, Sremska Kamenica, Subotica, Vršac, Bačka Palanka and Leskovac), five in Republika Srpska (Banja Luka, Pale, Šipovo, Bijeljina and Vlasenica), plus a park dedicated to him (Istočno Novo Sarajevo), one street in Podgorica, one in Sarajevo and nowhere else. The original plaque and Princip’s footsteps in Sarajevo were deliberately removed twice: in April 1941 (the plaque was immediately sent to Hitler as a birthday gift from the new authorities!) and during the last siege. The new one – in a very technical language – states that From this place on June 28, 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia. The nearby bridge over the Miljacka River also changed its name from Princip’s Bridge to Latin Bridge in 1992. 
Princip’s image is much more present in consumer culture: he appears on T-shirts17 on street stands, in shops (mostly bookstores) and in internet shops. There is also other paraphernalia with his image on: magnets, underwear etc. (see some examples in Novaković, Peters, 2015). Many more or less funny memes related to him can be found on internet.18 He inspired different artists, like the Bosnian illustrator Berin Tuzlić,19 the Serbian digi­tal graphics artist and writer Zoran Spasojević,20 the Danish illustrator Henrik Rehr,21 Serbian writers Biljana Srbljanović22 and Milena Marković,23 and the Serbian-American composer Milos Raickovich.24 He is the main character in many movies: in the Yugoslav movie Assassination in Sarajevo (1968, directed by Fadil Hadžić), in the British short movie The Last Words of Gavrilo Princip (2014, directed by Jacqueline Pepall), in the Serbian movie The Man Who Defended Gavrilo Princip (2014, directed by Srdjan Koljević), in the Austrian movie Sarajevo (2014, directed by Andreas Prochaska), and in the most renown one, The Day That Shook the World, a Czechoslovak-Yugoslav-German coproduction 
17 With lines like There’s Only One Principle – Gavrilo Princip or It’s the Matter of Princip or the classic Keep Calm and Love Gavrilo Princip. 
18 Oh you started a shitstorm? – That’s cute or Gavrilo Princip doesn’t always start wars – But when he does, he starts World Wars or Assassinate a foreign official, they said – It’ll be fun, they said. 
19 Science-fiction graphic novel Sarajevski atentat 2914 (Pixel, Sarajevo, 2014). 
20 See examples of his e-mail art at http://zoran-spasojevic-portreti.blogspot.ba/2011/05/gavrilo-princip. html, access February 5, 2017. 
21 Graphic novel Terrorist: Gavrilo Princip, the Assassin Who Ignited World War I (Graphic Universe, New York, 2015). 
22 Mali mi je ovaj grob (Samizdat, Belgrade, 2013). 
23 Zmajeubice – Junački kabare (Lom, Belgrade, 2014). 
24 The Song of Gavrilo Princip (for tenor and piano), 2014, listen at http://library.newmusicusa.org/library/ composition.aspx?CompositionID=350486 , access January 23, 2017. 

Figure 4: Sticker. Beograd 2014. Photo by M. Velikonja 

Figure 5: Sticker. Beograd 2016. Photo by M. Velikonja Figure 6: Sticker. Beograd 2017. Photo by M. Velikonja 


Figure 7: Mural in Belgrade. 2018. Photo by J. Fikfak. 
(1975, directed by Veljko Bulajić). He found his place in popular music as well: the Serbian nationalist turbo-folk singer Baja Mali Knindža mentions him in the song Vratiće se delija.25 
When it comes to non-official discourses and groups, Princip is used by both, the right- and the left-wingers. First, he is one of the rare common icons of two belligerent football-fan groups, Delije (FC Crvena zvezda) and Grobari (FC Partizan), both from Belgrade and both very much leaning to the political right.26 He appears in Delije’s banners, together with other Serbian heroes from the beginning of the twentieth century like Duke Živojin Mišić and Duke Radomir Putnik. On an occasion, his image on the banner was side by side with Dimitrije Popović (a young Serbian victim of Kosovo Albanians, shot in 2004), Karadjordje and map of Kosovo.27 He also appears in visuals of Serbian national­ists – alone or in the company of Serbian WW I commanders or the Chetnik leader Draža Mihajlović (for example in tattoos). 
But on the other side, he is equally at home among Serbian leftists: he is a reference for local anarcho-syndicalists28 and a street-punk band from Smederevo bears his name.29 His image appears also in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as a sign of resistance: a group of left-wing activists wearing his mask protested around the Sarajevo City Hall on June 28, 2014, carry­ing banners with the claim that they are again occupied, this time by the European Union, by the international community, by fascism, by MMF, by capitalism and by nationalism, and identifying themselves with Gavrilo Princip.30 In that same year, two songs about him 
25 Vratiću se ponovo I’m coming back u Bosansko Grahovo to Bosansko Grahovo tamo gde je Gradina where Gradina is gdje je Princip Gavrilo… where Princip Gavrilo is… 
26 For the connection between these two football fan groups and Serbian nationalist politics, see Čolović, 2011: 109–133. However, as an all-Serbian hero, he is paid respect also by football-fans of the Radnički club from Kragujevac: see the making of graffiti dedicated to him on https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=g1KKFQ40HpA , access January 22, 2017. 
27 https://footballpink.net/2015/07/21/red-star-and-the-land-of-great-knights/, access October 2, 2016. 28 https://www.facebook.com/borbenisindikat/posts/223022167820345, access September 22, 2016. 29 Check their web-pages at https://www.facebook.com/Gavrilo-Princip-313844262159605/ and https:// 
www.facebook.com/gavriloprincip82. Interestingly enough, an Italian indie rock band also bears name of Gavrilo Princip. The other protagonist of the dramatic event also »has« a band: the Scottish indie rock group Franz Ferdinand. Their song All For You Sophia (2004) includes these lyrics. 
Bang, bang, Gavrilo Princip Bang, bang, shoot me, Gavrilo Bang, bang, the first six are for you Bang, bang, the seventh is for me Bang, bang, Gavrilo Princip Bang, bang, Europe’s going to weep… 
Interesting enough, sometimes they perform with a large image of Princip behind them… 30 Ja sam Gavrilo Princip, ne barći u BiH (I’m Gavrilo Princip, Hands Off Bosnia-Herzegovina). At exactly the same time, there was a concert of Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra inside the City Hall, marking a centenary of the assassination. 
appeared in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Herzegovinian alter-pop and reggae band Zoster dedicated him a song entitled Gavrilo which nicely captures his youthful dare and vulner­ability, as well as his present-day ideological ambiguity;31 while the experimental singer-songwriter Dječak iz Vode (DiV)32 from Brčko published a parody song about him Sasvim neobični slučajevi (Completely Unusual Cases) (Lukec, 2016). 
Contrary to Maister, Princip appears in a variety of techniques (graffiti, murals, stickers and stencils), almost always combining picture (his portrait) and text (mostly in the Cyrillic script).33 A few of them bear clear nationalist messages (a mural of Princip and Mihailović together, with an inscription In Honor of Our Grandfathers!, or another one with a Serbian flag in the background, or a sticker of Princip with a Serbian soldier standing behind him), while in the large majority inscriptions accompanying his portrait are more abstract (like Out of the Principle or Immortal Principle or just his name/face) or indeterminably rebel ones (Our shadows will be walking through Vienna, strolling through the court, frightening lords, or Revolt, or Every night I dreamt I’m an anarchist, fighting with policemen or I didn’t want to become a hero, I just wanted to die for my idea, or a dramatic picture of the attentat of Franz Ferdinand etc.).34 
INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS 
According to the French situationist Guy Debord (1994: 57), the function of the spectacle “is to bury history in culture”. A researcher of American popular culture George Lipsitz similarly speaks of the “transformation of real historical traditions and cultures into superficial icons and images”; for him, old forms “lose their power to order and interpret experience, yet they persist as important icons of alienated identity” (1997: 134). So are we facing – in this case – the painless degradation of important political personalities into superficial street-art and shallow pop-cultural icons? I think quite the contrary: the abovementioned examples in fact show their reinvention, their rebirth in a completely new political situation and ideological constellation. They are as important now as they were throughout the last century but in a different way, with different groups investing them with a different political agenda. 
31 With verses like: 
For some he is a hero, for others a criminal, But maybe somewhere in between, his soul wanders... 32 Play on words: the abbreviation DiV reads as div, which means a giant in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. 33 They can be found in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Užice, Pančevo, many in Banja Luka, Bosansko Grahovo etc. 34 Some appear in a series of stickers with a silhouette and quotes by his Young Bosnia fellow Nedeljko Čabrinović. 
First I would like to show some symptomatic similarities of “street-images” of both of them, to later point out important differences. But before the analysis I have to point out one important fact: although the (post-)Yugoslav region has a well-developed graffiti culture, images of Maister and Princip appeared only recently, in the last decade and a half. This proves that contemporary political struggles are increasingly moving also on the walls, to different types of street cultures, representing most different (sub)political and subcultural groups. 
What Princip and Maister have in common is that they are both a part of the official, canonized memory of two nations and their political paradigms, and that they became a part of contemporary political struggles, as well. The image of Rudolf Maister is firmly connected with official Slovenian nationalism (i.e. on the level of dominant institutions and hegemonic discourses) as well as with “street” nationalism (of right-wing subpolitical and football fan groups). As he fought against local Germans after WW I, his image is now used by nationalists in their today’s struggle against new foreigners,35 and by Viole football fans in their clashes with other Slovenian football fans. Gavrilo Princip’s image today is also exploited mostly by different Serbian nationalist institutions and subpoliti-cal and subcultural groups. So despite the clear fact that both of them were pro-Yugoslav oriented,36 they today figure mostly as nationalist icons: in graffiti and street art even more than in other urban visuals. Nationalist ideology always denies itself of being ideological (it defines itself as being beyond Left or Right!), but posits itself “non-politically”, “non-ideologically”. Needless to say, this is the most ideological position of all, which hides its particularity in the veil of “common interest”. That is why only Maister’s and Princip’s portraits (and sometimes quotes) appear in graffiti, murals, stickers and stencils, with no explicit nationalist additives: this “neutrality” implies that it is clear that they fought for our, Slovenian/Serbian cause. 
35 Slovenian nationalism was, until 1945, decisively anti-German. From the late 1980s until a year and a half ago, it was anti-Balkanian, and from the times of the refugee crisis from late summer 2016 onwards, an anti-refugee one. Refugees from the Middle and Near East became the New Other in Slovenian nationalist ideology and practice. 
36 Maister was commanding what were nominally South-Slav and not Slovenian forces (although the large majority of troops were ethnic Slovenians): at first of the short-lived and internationally unrec­ognized State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and from December 1, 1918 of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In his famous proclamation from November 9, 1918, he referred to his country­men as Citizens, Yugoslavs! (Državljani, Jugoslovani!). Serious scholars agree that Princip and most of the other members of Young Bosnia were undoubtedly South Slav revolutionaries: they “shared vague concepts of a republican, egalitarian Yugoslav federation” (MacKenzie, 1989: 137); they “were, for the most part, poverty-stricken Bosnian students, imbued with anarchistic and patriotic ideals” (Deák, 1990: 75); their goal was “the creation of a progressive, anarcho-socialist South Slav state and even­tually a similar world” (Deák, 1996: 13); and they were “fighting for an independent federal state of the Southern Slav peoples” (Galántai, 1989: 25). For the Yugoslav historian Vladimir Dedijer, Young Bosnia was a heterogeneous, politically progressive secret group “with one common goal: revolutionary destruction of Habsburg monarchy” (1978/I: 223) and “liberation of South Slavs” (1978/II: 23, see also 237): the latter were explicitly called, by Gavrilo Princip himself, “Yugoslavs” (Dedijer, 1978/II: 22). 
But on the other side, there are important differences between contemporary urban repre­sentations of Maister and Princip. In terms of their number, the Princip one leads by far. Maister stands firmly in Slovenian nationalist discourse as the most important hero of Slovenians: but he remains only on the local level, rarely anyone outside Slovenia knows about him. In contrast to Maister’s exclusivism, the Princip figure is much more inclusive, open to interpretation: his shots were “heard around the world” (Mojzes, 1994: 32) and his act fascinated many people abroad.37 His murderous act became a global synonym for killing important political personalities.38 
He was/is integrated in three parallel and antagonistic ideological paradigms. First and foremost, he was decisively Serbianized, although his act did not represent the official Serbian policy of that time.39 Nevertheless, he was included in the long row of prominent Serbs which continues from the Kosovo battle on as the one of the Vidovdan Heroes (Jezernik, 2013: 32, see also Monnesland, 2013: 42, 43). Not the most important one, but one of many. This usurpation persists today in both dominant institutions and discourses40 as well as in subpolitical and subcultural groups. Second, in Yugoslav times, “Gavrilo Princip was celebrated as a hero, the bearer of the idea of freedom and Yugoslavism” (Dragićević Šešić, 2014: 74). Dedijer for example linked his assassination of Franz Ferdinand to an alleged “old Serbian-Croatian folklore theory of tyrannicide” (Čolović, 2016: 351-356). However, advocates of the Yugoslav idea and Yugoslavia lost the ideological battle for the heritage of Princip (and Young Bosnia) to Serbian nationalist revisionists although he was an atheist, a republican and was aiming toward a creation of South Slav state: so definitely pro-Yugoslav and not pro-Serb (see Lampe, 1996: 89, 98 and Popović, 2016). A part of the reason for this marginalization of his Yugoslavism was the fact that in the first Yugoslavia all credits for its unification went to the Karadjordjević dynasty and in the second to Tito and the partisan resistance. Third ideological paradigm, much less spread: he preserved because of his clearly expressed anarchist convictions, his authentic rebellious, anti-establishment, anti-imperialist identity, symbolizing undefined, but vigorous defiance against any occupation and authority in general (and Austrian in particular). He is therefore a celebrity also for the political Left and has become a broader symbol of revolt against the power. 
37 Check for example how many times he is mentioned in Rebecca West’s travelogue (1943)! 
38 For example, reporters openly compared the murder of the Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov in December 2016 with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in June 1914. See http://www. express.co.uk/news/world/745301/World-War-1-Russian-ambassador-murder-Turkey-Franz-Ferdinand, access January 31, 2017. 
39 For the prolonged, a century old controversy whether Princip and Young Bosnia worked on their own or he/they simply executed orders from Dragutin Dimitrijević-Apis’ Black Hand secret military organization, see MacKenzie, 1989: 123–137. 
40 Just to mention nationalists like the writer Matija Bečković and the historian Radoš Ljušić (Čolović, 2016: 395, 440). The latter directly calls Princip a national hero. In his poem Spomen Principu, Miloš Crnjanski also links him to the Serbian medieval and Vidovdan tradition. On the other side, and somehow surprisingly, Princip was not listed among the one hundred most prominent Serbs in his­tory in the book with an eponymous title (Belgrade, Principi, Novi Sad, Š-Jupublik, 1993). 
Maister’s image almost does not appear outside politics and the football fan culture, while Princip’s image is popularized also in mass culture, art, design and consumerism. And the last important difference between visual representations of the two: Maister does not face any symbolic opposition from his time – no one really celebrates his opponents from the 1918 and 1919. While in Princip’s case, Franz Ferdinand (and his Sophie) figures like a counterpart (mostly) in the consumer culture of Sarajevo: one can go to the Franz Ferdinand Hostel and the Franz Ferdinand Apartments, the tea house Franz & Sophie World of Tea, go on an Assassin Tour41 or buy paraphernalia related to him.42 
Using Girardet’s typology heroes, Maister appears as a local incarnation of the myth of Moses (1986: 78–80), i.e. as an experienced and clairvoyant leader, a prophet, liberator and protector who leads his people toward the future and embodies their will of freedom (which was, at the time, a union with other South Slavs). Princip’s image is much more ambiguous than Maister’s and, in Girardet’s terms, he represents the myth of Alexander (Ibid.: 74–77). He figures as a young, fearless fighter, an inspired adventurer, struggling for a greater cause but dies in his young age: so a hero of his nationalist project (Serbian or Yugoslav) or of the global resistance against any authority. Their contemporary images have more to do with the classical notion of an “old time hero”, someone above or in front of his people who unconditionally follow him, than with the contemporary ones, as discussed for example by Ottomeyer (2000).43 
Visual – and in recent times also street – representations of Rudolf Maister and Gavrilo Princip travel through time and their meanings are by no means fixed but constantly (re) invented, (re)negotiated and (re)contested, depending on the hegemonic/counter-hegemonic 
(i.e. prevailing/oppositional) political discourses in societies for which they are relevant. In Barthes’ words (1993: 144), “men do not have with myth a relationship based on truth but on use: they depoliticize according to their needs”. Both of them can therefore easily fit into ideological compositions of new ethno-nationalisms, as well as of the new Left. Any predictions about their future transformations – except that they will also be applied by the new media – are uncertain. But judging from the radicalization of political discourses and practices in the recent years, I can conclude that the trend of their visual appearances in the urban culture will rise, as well as the struggle for their appropriations amongst very different groups and their ideological paradigms. 
41 With Franz Ferdinand, and not Gavrilo Princip, on display! 42 Like magnets, pen purses etc. 43 In his analysis of the cult of personality of the controversial Carinthian politician Jörg Haider, he 
found him performing in three partial roles: as Robin Hood (protector of common people), as a sports­man (always elegant and erotic, in best shape), and as a simple man (a buddy to have a beer with and to chat about everything). 
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SPORNI HEROJI. GAVRILO PRINCIP IN RUDOLF MAISTER KOT SUBKULTURNI IKONI 
Kdo ali kaj so še Lenin, Beethoven, Che Guevara, Franz Ferdinand, Gomulka, Obilić poleg tega, da so stvarne zgodovinske osebnosti? Kakor se dogaja z vsemi zgodovinskimi osebnostmi, je njihova zgodovinska vloga kontroverzna in sporna. 
Dramatični dogodki iz časa prve svetovne vojne so zaznamovali ne le uradne diskurze, npr. nacionalna zgodovinopisja, medijska poročila, dali ali posojali so tudi vsebino državnim proslavam, zaradi njih so nastajali spomeniki itn. Njihov resnični zgodovinski obstoj, vloga in usoda so za raziskovalca kulture enako pomembni kot njihova današnja kulturna interpretacija in raba. 
V članku sta obravnavana dva heroja, Gavrilo Princip (1894–1918), član Mlade Bosne, atentator, ki je streljal na nadvojvodo in habsburškega prestolonaslednika Franza Ferdinanda, in general Rudolf Maister Vojanov (1874–1934), pesnik in poveljnik južnoslovanskih sil na spodnjem Štajerskem in Koroškem v letih 1918 in 1919. 
Recepcija obeh herojev je ambivalentna: za Slovence je npr. Rudolf Maister borec za severno mejo, za nemške Avstrijce pa mariborski mesar, predvsem zaradi svojih strogih ukrepov proti nemško govorečim Mariborčanom. Gavrilo Princip je že v Wikipedijah in enciklopedijah razložen različno: v angleščini je »Jugoslovan, ki je umoril nadvojvodo Franca Ferdinanda«; v bosanskem jeziku je »srbski nacionalist in član organizacije Mlada Bosna«; v hrvaščini »atentator na Franca Ferdinanda in član jugoslovanske organizacije Mlada Bosna«; v srbščini »član skrivne skupine v okviru širšega gibanja Mlada Bosna, ki je ubil naslednika avstro-ogrskega prestola Franca Ferdinanda«; v srbohrvaškem jeziku »jugoslovanski nacionalist in revolucionar, ki je ubil naslednika avstro-ogrskega prestola Franca Ferdinanda«; v nemščini »nacionalistični morilec, ki je 28. junija 1914 izvedel atentat na naslednika avstro-ogrskega prestola Franza Ferdinanda in soprogo Sofijo v Sarajevu«. 
Analiza rabe podob herojev kaže na različne prakse. Maistrovi podoba in vloga sta npr. drugačni od Titove. Slednji lahko nastopa kot nekdanji jugoslovanski socialistični vodja, lahko pa je upodobljen na zeliščnem likerju ali vinu. Podoba Rudolfa Maistra pa se skoraj ne pojavlja zunaj politike in kulture nogometnih navijačev. Podoba Gavrila Principa, popularizirana tudi v množični kulturi, umetnosti in oblikovanju, nakazuje različna ideološka ozadja kulturnih artefaktov. 
Avtor je analiziral 43 primerov grafitov in uličnih umetniških del različnih formatov (grafiti, šablone, nalepke, freske itn.). Večina je bila postavljena pred kratkim, po letu 1991. Raziskava združuje študije grafitov in uličnih umetnosti s kritično analizo kulta osebnosti sodobnih političnih voditeljev. 
Po Girardetovih tipoloških junakih se Maister pojavlja kot lokalna inkarnacija mitov o Mojzesu. Po premiku pozornosti z druge na prvo svetovno vojno se je dvignil na vrh slovenskega nacionalnega panteona kot pravi narodni junak. Njegova podoba je trdno povezana z uradnim slovenskim nacionalizmom. 
Podobo Gavrila Principa pa danes večinoma izkoriščajo različne srbske nacionalistične institucije in subkulturne skupine. V sodobnih srbskih zgodovinskih učbenikih velja za nespornega srbskega junaka. 
Raziskava tako pokaže načine, kako so vizualno strukturirane sodobne politične podobe in razmere. Vizualne in v zadnjem času tudi ulične predstavitve Rudolfa Maistra in Gavrila Principa pa niso fiksirane, temveč so predmet nenehnega izmišljanja, pogajanj, vsekakor pa so odvisne od hegemonskega diskurza. 
Prof. Dr. Mitja Velikonja, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, Kardeljeva ploščad 5, SI-1000 Ljubljana, mitja.velikonja@fdv.uni-lj.si