Biography

Zoran Djindjic was born on August 1st 1952 in Bosanski Šamac. He graduated from Belgrade University’s Philosophy Faculty in 1974. He spent the period between 1977 and 1990 in Germany at a number of universities and social sciences institutions in Konstanz, Bonn and Frankfurt. He received his doctorate at the University of Konstanz in 1979, where he worked as an assistant lecturer.

He was one of the founders of the Democratic Party and served as President of the Executive Board from September 1990, and as President of the Party from January 1994. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy and Social Theory, member of all three multiparty sessions of the National Parliament of the Republic of Serbia and of the Council of the Republics in the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He was a lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad.

He was elected Mayor of Belgrade on the 21st February 1997, representing the Together coalition, which topped the polls in many Serbian cities in the 1996 local elections. He was dismissed from the position of mayor on the 30th September 1997. The motion for his dismissal was passed by votes from members of the SPO, SPS and SRS parties.

In a court dispute with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia, Mirko Marjanović, he was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment on 20th September 1996, suspended for two years. The Serbian Supreme Court amended the sentence, passing a new one in which he was sentenced to seven months in prison, suspended for three years.

In June 2000, Djindjic took on the role of coordinator in the Alliance for Change and then became head of the Central Election Committee and promotional campaign coordinator of the Serbian Democratic Opposition (DOS) for the elections held on the 24th September 2000. Djindjic was elected a member of the Council of the Republics in the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in these elections.

He became Prime Minister of Serbia on 25th January 2001, after the victory of DOS in the Serbian parliamentary elections in December 2000. He was president of the Organizing Committee of the 12th Water Polo World Cup in 2002.

In September 1999, the American weekly Time ranked him among the 14 leading European politicians of the third millennium.

He was the recipient of the distinguished German Bambi Award for politics in 2000. In August 2002, Djindjic received the Polak award in Prague for his contribution to the development of democracy in Serbia. The award is given every year for contributions to democratic and economic reforms in Central and Eastern Europe.

He was the author of the following books: Subjectivity and Violence (Subjektivnost i nasilje), An Autumn of Dialectics (Jesen dijalektike) and Yugoslavia as an Incomplete State (Jugoslavija kao nedovršena država). He was Editor-in-Chief of Theoria magazine, the official publication of the Serbian Philosophy Society.

Zoran Djindjic was murdered on March 12th 2003 in front of the Serbian government building, for striving to liberate Serbia from her past and to lead her into the future. Djindjic left behind his wife Ružica, daughter Jovana and son Luka.