Page - 169 - in Die Repräsentation der Habsburg-Lothringischen Dynastie in Musik, visuellen Medien und Architektur - 1618–1918

The Presentation of the Habsburg Dynasty in Bosnia and Herzegovina 169 Occupational period 1878–1908 In the occupational period, which lasted from the occupation in 1878 until the an- nexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, the construction of monuments was exclusively in the hands of the Austro-Hungarian regime, and resulted in only a few and quite modest achievements. In this period, monumental statuary, which blos- somed in European cities in the late nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries, precisely because of its possibility to express the ideals of national countries and civil structures by means of allegorical contents9, was almost completely absent in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The occupational regime even prevented the rare initiatives which came from the local people, and which referred to raising ‘civic monuments’ to local writers, precisely to Serbian poet Simo Milutinović in Sarajevo in 189110 and to the Franciscan and Croatian revivalist Ivan Frano Jukić in Banja Luka in 1893.11 The refusal stemmed from the context of the former policy of ‘bosniakhood’ which was imposed by Benjamin von Kállay, Minister of Joint Finances and chief administrator of the country, and which suppressed any kind of nationalistic ideology that could endanger the interests of the Monarchy in the Balkans.12 Kállay’s regime in the occupied territories had a far better harmonised policy of rais- ing military monuments, i. e. memorials that glorify events connected to the House of Habsburg. Therefore, Austrian troops and soldiers who fell during the occupation of 1878, fulfilling the will of their “most beloved ruler”13, were the first to be com- memorated in Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the incentive of military circles, simple monuments in the form of pylons and obelisks were raised to honour the fallen, and they were mainly unveiled to mark the birthday of Emperor Franz Joseph.14 Due to that occasion, as well as due to the fact that they were usually followed by the narra- tive of sacrifice which was endured for culture and the advancement of the occupied countries15, these monuments marked a ‘turning point’ in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and simultaneously emphasised the role of the Habsburgs in it. Something similar could be said about the first monument raised to honour Em- peror Franz Joseph himself, i. e. his first “contact with the grounds of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. An obelisk of nine meters height, crowned by a double-headed eagle, with the Emperor’s initials on its shaft and a commemorative plate fixed to the pedes- tal, was unveiled in Bosanski Brod on 24 October 188716, and it was in fact destined to remind the people of the moment when the Emperor, coming from Slavonia, set foot into Bosnia and Herzegovina for the first time (Fig. 1).17 The (notably private) initiative for its construction allegedly came from the prominent residents of all con- fessions of this small city at the northern border of the country18, while its realisation was entrusted to the prominent Croatian architect Hermann Bollé19, whose task it