Milena Preindlsberger Mrazović

Milena Preindlsberger-Mrazović (28 December 1863 – 20 January 1927) was a Bosnian journalist, writer, pianist and composer in Austria-Hungary. Mrazović is credited for introducing Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she lived for 40 years, to the German-speaking public. She was the first Bosnian journalist and the author of the first classical compositions on its soil but remains best known for the travel books she wrote during her long journeys. While horseback riding through remote mountain villages, Mrazović recorded Bosnian oral tradition and collected traditional costumes, building a valuable collection.

Early life

Milena Mrazović was born on 28 December 1863. There are no precise records on her birth, and sources give conflicting information. She comes from a noble family from the town of Bjelovar, at the time part of the Croatian Military Frontier, Austrian Empire, and it is possible she was also born there. Belonging to a middle-class family, she was educated in a girls school in Budapest. She moved with her family in 1878 to Banja Luka, where her father Andrija was appointed an administrative officer, several weeks after Bosnia-Herzegovina was occupied by Austria-Hungary. The next year, the family moved to Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina's capital. Eugen von Toepfer, who had come from Vienna to Sarajevo in 1881, bought the newspaper in 1886. Shortly after becoming engaged to Mrazović, Toepfer became terminally ill. He named Mrazović his sole heir and died in 1889. In September 1889, the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina granted Mrazović permission to continue publishing the Bosnische Post as her fiancé's heir. In February 1896, at the invitation of the Ethnographic Society, she gave the first lecture about Bosnia-Herzegovina in Vienna.

As a travel writer, Mrazović presented Bosnia-Herzegovina to the German-speaking world. Accompanied by the painter Augusta Bock, Mrazović traveled throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina on horseback. The women reached very remote places, recording folk tales, riddles, customs, and recipes. On these journeys, Mrazović collected and classified traditional costumes. Two of her travel books were published in Innsbruck: Bosnisches Skizzenbuch in 1900, followed in 1905 by a collection of folk tales called Bosnische Volksmaerchen. Mrazović's greatest success came with Bosnische Ostbahn, published in Vienna in 1908.

Exile, death, and legacy

During the World War I, Mrazović accompanied her husband to Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and Italy, assisting him as a nurse. Austria-Hungary was defeated and dissolved, with Bosnia and Herzegovina becoming part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Mrazović and her husband were deported to Austria, which she considered a "foreign land". She was already gravely ill when she gave her final lecture about Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Urania, Vienna, in May 1926. She died on 20 January 1927 in Löw Sanatorium.

After the World War II, one of Mrazović's two sons brought his mother's ethnographic collection to Bosnia and Herzegovina and donated it to the National Museum in Sarajevo, as she had wished. Despite being described as a "celebrated Bosnian writer", Mrazović and her works, almost all written in German, remain little-known in Bosnia and Herzegovina.