Emerik Blum was born on February 12, 1911 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Emerick Blum's father and mother were Hungarian Jews who were immigrants in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time. Blum departed to Prague to study electrical engineering.

Prior to the Second World War, many students from Sarajevo studied in Vienna and Prague, so they passed on their knowledge to younger individuals, high school students, opened new horizons and presented them with books by authors such as Plekhanov, Marx and Engels. The students learned quickly that they were living on the eve of the revolution - they already foresaw the coming of fascism. This became especially clear to Blum and his colleagues when they organised a field trip to Berlin seeing the rampage of the Nazi mob and brutal attacks on Jewish shops. Emerik Blum, then a third-year student of electrical engineering took the frightened students to the Yugoslav Embassy in Berlin, where they were assured that all would be ok. Blum however was aware that the world was on the verge of collapse. He believed that all our students must be ideologically and politically aware and educated. The Yugoslav students in Prague started to strongly believe that socialism could oppose the coming fascist evil.

Blum eventually graduated in electrical engineering from the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1939. After graduating from college, he returned to Sarajevo with his wife Matusija. Already during his schooling in Sarajevo and Prague, he stood out with his advanced ideas, which did not correspond to the then ruling policy.

As a top intellectual, and above all an anti-fascist, during the socialist rule he performed a number of functions and quickly became the head of the Ministry of Industry of BiH, and later the assistant minister of electricity of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It can without a doubt be said that Blum initiated one of the largest economic booms in the history of the western balkans.

Emerik Blum was an advocate of the idea of ​​building the capacities of large industrial plants, and in the foreground the aluminum plant in Mostar, as well as the Alumina Factory "Birac AD". in Zvornik. His vision included the creation of capacities in the production of electrical and mechanical equipment locally. Thus, the "TAT" factory was built in Ilidža, the electric power plant in Lukavica near Sarajevo, factories in Doboj, Odžak, Črnuč, Tešanj, Višegrad, Priština, Tuzla and other places in Yugoslavia. Emeric founded the "Laboratory for Welding and Defectoscopy" in 1954, in order to form a welding company in SR BiH, as well as a welding school.

In 1951 Emerik Blum founded Energoinvest, the largest company in the former Yugoslavia with its headquarters in Sarajevo, where he was the first director. He united two companies, one in which he was the director of "Elektroprojekt" and the other "Elektromont” to create "Energoinvest”.

Energoinvest was established as a small design office, with just over 90 employees, under the name of "Elektroprojekt" [3] in 1951 with Emerik Blum at the top of the company. Energoinvest has developed into a modern European company whose business is based on the system engineering model of the realized project "turnkey". By 1955, the enterprise was doing well enough to branch. out into the manufacture of electrical and other equipment. Five years later, the enterprise —named Energoinvest by now —opened three research and development centers, a training facility and its own export organization. The primary business areas were electricity , hydro construction , construction , thermal power, process plants and communications technology.

In 1958, Energoinvest was an export-oriented company conducting business in global markets from Mexico to Malaysia. At one stage it had offices in 31 countries, including the United States. It had built generating plants, transformer stations and transmission lines in India, the Sudan, Iraq, the Soviet Union, Cypress, Zambia and other developing countries.

Since the mid-1960s, Energoinvest worked towards a business and development strategy that would guarantee technological advancement and competitiveness on the global and domestic market. Factories and research centres developed in Bosnia and throughout the Yugoslav space with the aim of producing for the foreign market. In this context, Yugoslavia’s geopolitical leading position in the non-aligned movement was instrumental to Energoinvest’s global development. In the 1960s and 1970s, the company progressively assumed a leading role as the centre of a web of economic contacts and exchanges between the global South, Western Europe and the Soviet Bloc; it rapidly became the first exporter in Yugoslavia.

The success of Blum and of Energoinvest were the result of Yugoslavia's abandonment of state‐dominated economic planning and management in the early nineteen‐fifties. Under the reform, socialist enterprises were given power of self‐management, an innovation in Marxist practice that outraged central‐planning ideologists in Moscow. Blum utilised this to bring in modern styles of management. He invested heavily into his employees, educational institutions and development of best practices. Over the years, Energoinvest provided scholarships for more than 10,000 young people, directly trained more than 20,000, and through on-the-job training improved the careers of more than 100,000 people. He provided scholarships and education to experts of various technical profiles and introduced the permanent practice of specialization of Yugoslav experts in Russia, America, Germany, France, England and other countries. Even today, Energoinvest scholarship alumni can be found in the most prominent technology hubs in the world.

Guided by the motto "no job is without madness", which means that the foundation of any development is based on young people and their enthusiasm, he launched an education system that trained tens of thousands of skilled workers. As he said in an interview, “Our understanding was that it is necessary to gather enough skilled workers to succeed, and when this was applied in practice, it turned out to be true. Building the space and buying the machines was difficult because there was still no money, we somehow managed to get through. But all this was useless without workers.

Blum was clever, knowing that to be best, you had to learn from the best. He employed American consultants from McKinsey & Co., New York management consultants, to streamline Energoinvest's sprawling operations. A bold move at the time. Needless to say this caused some lifting of eyebrows and angry muttering among more conservative socialist circles in Yugoslavia.

He enthusiastically accepted all the ideas that led to the development of Energoinvest, and when the conditions (technical, political and financial) did not allow it, new directions of development and new products were born. It is interesting that in the 70's Energoinvest used digital data processing, and at the end of the 80's it started its own production of personal computers [4]. He introduced machine data processing with the digital computer "GAMINA 30" and the analog computer "PACE 231" [6], which in 1964 was a marvel of technology and the first in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

With his engineering visions, Blum managed to create a company which in 70 years of its work, marked in 2021, operated in 105 countries around the world. Through the bureaus of Elektroprojekt & Energoinvest, hydroelectric power plants of HPP Jablanica, Rama, Jajce I and II and Dubrovnik were designed, and then numerous others. The Thermal Bureau designed and performed works and supervision over the largest thermal power plants in BiH, and it is worth mentioning the Indian thermal power plants Kandla, Kanpur and Kalakot, as well as TPP Makasar, Palembang and Medan in Indonesia. The transmission line bureau designed and built tens of thousands of kilometers of transmission lines in Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Zambia, Kenya, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Pakistan, Indonesia, the United States and other countries with hundreds of substations of all voltage ratings. Emerik Blum was also behind the establishment of the Aluminum Plant in Mostar, as well as the Alumina Factory in Zvornik to minimise the reliance of imports and strengthen Energoinvest exports.

The quality of Energoinvest's projects is also recognized across the Atlantic. One of the largest high-voltage lines of 500 kilovolts, 450 km long, with a construction of 17,000 tons and a total value of 5.5 million dollars, was built through three federal states in the United States (Arizona, Utah and Nevada).

He opened joint factories with foreign partners in Mexico, Iran, Egypt and BiH, demonstrating his entrepreneurial and visionary capacities, which were maintained after his death, until the breakup of Yugoslavia. Mexico (EnergoMex), Libya (ELPCO), the USSR (ENHA) and Pakistan (EnergoPak). It also had partnerships in Western Europe (such as IterEnergo in France and Germany) and the United States.

He was said to be above average intelligent with a very modest lifestyle. What adorned him was that he was approachable to colleagues and workers, and extremely honest. His visions could not be followed even by those who were with him in the Communist Party. Due to that, he often had problems, and the biggest one was with the State Security, when he gave scholarships to young people, and especially when students from the Oriental Faculty also started receiving scholarships. It turned out that he was right in everything. He sent students from oriental faculties to representative offices in many countries and thus made his personal project "Energoinvest" famous in third world countries. He was always rescued from the State Security by his colleagues from the Central Committee, of which he was a member, and he said that if they had not been there, he would have ended up in prison due to his wild ideas.

As the bearer of the Partisan Memorial in 1941 and a participant in the National Liberation War, he knew Tito well, who understood him and gave him support, in his desire to create a Sarajevo company that would be the first in the country at the time. And in 1966, with Tito's arrival in Sarajevo, Blum exhibited the Energoinvest development project. It was an official victory over those who did not love him. Then, with a warm hug, Tito told him to just continue his work.

By 1987, Energoinvest was the largest exporter in the former Yugoslavia in reaching its business peak turnover of one billion dollars with 42,000 employees. Energoinvest has tens of thousands of kilometers of transmission lines, thousands of substations, a number of hydro and thermal power plants, and process and industrial plants on all continents. [4]. Its yearly contribution to the Federation’s export was roughly 4%, very significant component of Bosnia’s and Yugoslavia’s industrial production. Energoinvest was the third biggest company in Yugoslavia in terms of both overall revenue and number of employees.

During these seven decades, Energoinvest has operated in 105 countries around the world, where it has built over:

• 164 hydro and thermal power plants

• 60,000 kilometers of transmission lines

• 7,300 substations

• 400 complex infrastructure projects

• How simple and confident Blum was in his ideas is best shown when a large cargo of "Energoinvest" of 300 tons was required go to the Soviet Union. A special wagon was made, which could not be made in the "Vaso Miskin" factory, but in Kraljevo. The load was in one piece and so loaded on the train it had to get to the Port of Ploce (Croatia). Blum himself boarded the locomotive and came to Ploče with the train driver to ensure it arrived safely without a glitch.

• We cannot ignore the fact that Blum founded the Collegium Artisticum a contemporary art gallery in Sarajevo with his friends Oskar Danon, Meša Selimović, Ismet Mujezinović and Voja Dimitrijević. It’s just one thread of his closeness to the art he nurtured within himself. It is no coincidence that, in addition to everything, he was said to be an artist.

• He was not very enthusiastic about sports. But, as he followed the matches of the Basketball Club "Bosna", which became the European champion, when its rise was evident, that changed. And many will say that he had great merits for that, providing them with selfless support.

• He was also one of the initiators of the idea to organize the Olympic Games in Sarajevo. He knew that Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo and his "Energoinvest" could organize it.

• He constantly thought of his "Energoinvest", and even when he was mayor, he was in the management board. He developed it so quickly and widely until the moment he died, on June 24, 1984, as mayor at a time when our Olympic Games were declared the best organized in the world.

• The Financial Times called Bloom a "personification" of socialism in action businessman. During the sharp Cold War divisions, Blum easily managed to do business with both the USSR and the USA, and at that time Energoinvest produced everything from hydroelectric power plants to electric sockets.

• Charles Show, McKinsey's lead partner, who led the Energoinvest business improvement project, wrote in the Energoinvest Monograph (2002): “I learned more from Blum than I did in my 30 years of consulting where some of my clients were the presidents of the world's largest companies. ”

• One of the documents on the life and work of Emerick Blum states this: "whether it is about technological processes, concepts of research work, company management or restructuring of production forces, Emerik Blum resolutely, and sometimes against numerous resistances, introduced innovations and the boldest ideas". It is known that the phenomenon of the emergence and development of Energoinvest was seriously analysed by all levels of government and enterprise.

• Emerik Blum sought from the start to expand beyond the federal borders of Yugoslavia; his paradigm was the following: ‘We cannot live of Yugoslavia! The market here is too small. It can serve as a training terrain, but we will play the real game abroad’

Some of the roles Emerik once took on include:

• Appointment for mayor of Sarajevo for two years, starting in 1981

• Director of “Elektrobih” and “Elektrocentar”

• General engineer of the general direction of the trade union electric power industry

• Director General of the Directorate for Electricity Industry of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia [SFRY]

• Assistant Minister of Electricity of the SFRY Chairman of the Electricity Industry Committee.

• Member of the Organizing Committee of the 1984 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XIV Winter Olympics, held in Sarajevo.

He received a large number of awards:

• Order of Bravery

• Order of the Republic with a silver wreath

• Order of the Republic with a gold wreath

• 1966 - The Sixth of April Award - Sarajevo.

• 1974 - Knight of the Legion of Honor of France.

Bosnia & Herzegovina Futures Foundation would like to thank the following individuals and organisations for the contributions to this tribute page:

Zlatko Marjanovic and Dr. Eddie Custovic

1.      (Čovjek kojeg je Tito podržavao: Holivudska životna priča Emerika Bluma - Azra Magazin, 2022)

2. (The Director of Sarajevo “ENERGOINVEST” witness of Slana - Јадовно 1941. - КУЛТУРА СЈЕЋАЊА, 2022)

3. Raymond H. Anderson (Oct. 7, 1972) Yugoslav Enterprise Prospers. nytimes.com The New York Times. Retr. on Sept. 20 2017

4. Energoinvest. (n.d.). Retrieved January 14, 2022, from https://energoinvest.ba/index-news-bos.php?newsid=208

5. Huang, Daniel (June 25, 2014). "What Happens When the Vulture Funds Start Circling". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 6, 2016.

6. "PACE 231R analog computer, 1961" (PDF). http://s3data.computerhistory.org/brochures/eai.231r.1961.102646219.pdf. computerhistory.org.