The research presented in this article was financed by the grant of the Polish National Science Center: Social Changes of the Muslim Communities in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Bulgaria in the Second Half of the 19th and at the Beginning of the 20th Century: Comparative Studies (2020/39/B/HS3/01717). For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC-BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.

In 1878, Austria-Hungary received a mandate in Berlin to exercise power in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During this period, they pursued a policy of deosmanisation and Europeanisation of the country. Vienna’s actions, however, differed signifi cantly from the policies of neighbouring Serbia or Bulgaria, where the deosmanisation processes resulted in the partial or complete elimination of Islamic culture from the public space. Therefore, the article aims to outline the cultural policy of Austria-Hungary in Bosnia and Herzegovina, primarily in the context of the culture of remembrance, and to show the Austrian visions of the approach to the local past. The capital city of Sarajevo served as an example of this policy, where the processes mentioned above are best seen in terms of the actions of the authorities themselves, the preserved archival legacy, and professional literature.