Adventures in Bosnia-Herzegovina

This chapter details the period from 1908 to 1911, when László served as an Austro-Hungarian official in Sarajevo. As a financial expert, he played a peculiar dual role, working simultaneously as an operative of the Austro-Hungarian civil administration and as a representative of Hungary’s independent imperialist ambitions. As a result, he labored in the service of two separate empire-building projects. The “oriental” cultural atmosphere of Bosnia-Herzegovina had a profound effect on László; the literary accounts and journalistic reports László produced in this period are characteristic of the mindset of European Orientalism. Between 1908 and 1918, Zoltán László played an active role in importing orientalist objects d’art into Hungary.