The witness

“It is the year 1920. Salamon Tannenbaum is sitting in the inn of the Austrian Emperor, which was given a different name two years ago, but, just like Salamon Tannenbaum, no guest calls it the Three Deers Inn, as prescribed by the city. Furthermore, when Salamon throws his hat from one end of the room to the other, and always hits the hat-rack, he shouts: Moni has come to the Austrian emperor! And the sots present reply like this: may Good God give Him long life!”

Miljenko Jergović: Ruta Tannenbaum

In Sarajevo, which, with the exception of a few terrible years, has been avoided by history, and where the layers of time pile up on each other, from the small Turkish cemeteries through the Art Nouveau ledges to the Cubist buildings, like unstirred litter in the forest, there stands next to the Baščaršija bazaar, in Brodac Street, where the founder of the city, Beg Isa Ishaković in 1460 established his first dervish monastery, a small three-door stop. It is not known how long it has been closed. Perhaps it is one of those of which Ozren Kebo writes in his Sarajevo za početnike (Sarajevo for beginners), dealing with the 1992-1996 siege:

“The first month of April in war was marked by a great exodus. The wise fled in panic. The less wise did not know how to recognise the panic. The city was shutting down. At Baščaršija, two shops were still selling burek, one traditional food, one čevapčiči, with just two cake shops. Every morning a padlock appeared on a different one. It had been just two weeks since the first shots were fired and no one knew what kind of hunger was coming our way.”


This shop, however, has no padlock. Its shutter has been pulled down only halfway, maybe there was no time to do more before the escape. So the rusty inscription of the shutter label is still clearly visible.

“Patent Polivka & Paschka, Budapest”

We have already written about the imperial and royal shutter manufacturer Paschka from Csepel Island in southern Budapest, that its products still designate the boundaries of the former Monarchy. After a hundred years of destruction, they still can be seen in Lemberg and Košice, Bačka and the Böhmerwald. And, as we see, also in Bosnia, placed under Austro-Hungarian protection by the Berlin Congress of 1878. Wars and sieges subside, ustashas and chetniks come and go, but the shutter label to the Austrian emperor, just like the inhabitants of the city, perseveres.