Page - 179 - 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 179 enna. In a place such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, statues of the Monarch that were two meters high and were placed on pedestals of equal height were certainly unfa- miliar and novel, so they must have appeared impressive, demonstrating in an explicit manner the imperial presence of a ruler in the country. While unveiling war monuments in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was often highlighted that they should be “a living proof of the love of the peoples who had the duty to wash off the stain that was cast upon them by the criminal hand of the depraved”.79 The narrative of re- demption for the assassination was most clearly expressed in the Expiation monument built for the murdered Arch- duke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie von Hohenberg (Fig. 7). Although the initiative for building this memorial was conceived in 191480, the monument was unveiled in Sarajevo on 28 June 1917 at the spot where the heirs to the throne had been assassinated, right beside the bridge Latinska ćuprija.81 It consisted actually of three parts, the commemorative plate made of cast iron on the street, a bench made of stone to the right side of the Latin bridge, and an architecturally and sculpturally formed monument on the left side of the bridge. The monument which was made by the Hungarian architect and Lieutenant Eugen Bory had clear dynastic elements in the form of relief busts of the Archduke and the Duchess, placed in the middle of the monument, and their coats of arms and crowns placed on the sarcophagus above the massive columns. An additional part which was supposed to emphasize the sacrifice of the devout heirs to the throne consisted of religious elements, more precisely of a sculptural group of the Pietà in the niche placed on the lower part of the memo- rial. As can be found in the periodicals from back then, the initiative for building monuments came from the ruling and military circles, while the collection of con- Figure 6: Theodor Maria Khuen, Statue of the Emperor Franz Joseph, unveiled in Sanski Most in August 1915.