Page - 168 - in Die Repräsentation der Habsburg-Lothringischen Dynastie in Musik, visuellen Medien und Architektur - 1618–1918

168 Sektion II: Herrscher, Staat, Nation according to the given identity, lies at the core of commemorative practices. Accord- ing to Gillis “memories and identities are not fixed things, but representations or constructions of reality, subjective rather than objective phenomena.”2 As Hobsbawm also put it: in times when a society goes through rapid changes that abolish the for- mer social and political order, new cultural forms ensue to replace old traditions.3 Commemoration that results in raising monuments, as one of these forms, arises when and where there is a sense that a break with the past has happened due to politi- cal and economic changes. Bosnia and Herzegovina experienced exactly such a break when it was entrusted to the Rule of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy according to the decisions made at the Congress of Berlin. These neglected, isolated and war-weary Ottoman provinces were occupied in 1878 in order to be put through a ‘civilising mission’.4 In the almost 40 years of its rule over this territory, the Austro-Hungarian government brought deep changes to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the political, economic and socio-cultural sphere, and these changes are generally marked as a modernisation of a ‘deeply orien- talised land’.5 The process of adopting the acquis of the West-European circle of ci- vilisation was in fact quite a complex and multifaceted process, which was not always accepted with enthusiasm by the confessionally and socially diverse local population. The largest challenge for the so-called ‘enlightenment mission of the Habsburgs’, which had above all political and strategic goals in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was the population’s split into three dominant groups: “Each of them had a different histori- cal picture, and oriented themselves politically and culturally according to a different spiritual-political outer centre – Serbian Orthodox to Serbism, Muslims to Islam and the Ottoman Empire, and Catholics to Croatism with Yugoslavic elements”.6 The division was also felt throughout this entire period in the political and public life between the Austro-Hungarian regime, the protagonists of which were foreign im- migrants, administrators and soldiers, and the aforementioned local population, who did not have a unique identity, but began a national wake.7 Although it often dis- abled the realisation of particular social and cultural initiatives8, this division tended to result in unexpected actions of both the regime and the local structures. This will also be shown in the case of commemorating and raising monuments in honour of the Habsburgs. In order to be more understandable, these initiatives and their realisa- tions will be further presented in the framework of three epochs – the occupational period, the annexation period and the period of World War I.