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Fin-de-Siècle Sarajevo: The Habsburg Transformation of an Ottoman Town

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Extract

Sarajevo entered the twentieth century larger, more developed, and more European than it had been when Austro-Hungarian troops took control of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878. The cityscape acquired a Western-oriented face superimposed on its previous profile as a classical Ottoman town. Underlying this physical transformation were major changes in demography, political organization, cultural life, and social practices in the city. Taken together these changes may be characterized broadly as “modernization” or “Westernization,” but they reached Sarajevo mediated through the filters of Habsburg and Viennese experience and often mixed unpredictably with local culture and traditions. By 1900 Sarajevo was in two overlapping cultural orbits: a largely traditional world centered in Istanbul and increasingly dominant influences emanating from Vienna.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2002

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References

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20 Another story was added three decades later, giving the building its present cubic appearance.

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35 The Ziviladlatus was the civilian head of the Habsburg administration in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He reported to the Landeschef, typically a general, who in turn reported to the joint minister of finance.

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42 Ibid., 146.

43 Ibid., 166–67.

44 Vidovdan commemorates St. Virus, but it also takes its name from Vid, a pre-Christian Slavic god of the sun and war. It is celebrated on the summer solstice principally in order to observe the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo (June 28, 1389).

45 Ibid., 67.

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