Bordering and memorializing the Northern Adriatic and Central Europe : introductory notes on Borderlands of memory

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements ix xiii Borut Klabjan Bordering and Memorializing the Northern Adriatic and Central Europe: Introductory Notes on Borderlands of Memory 1 Hannes Grandits 1 Changing Legitimations of State Borders and ‘Phantom Borders’ in the Northern Adriatic Regions 13 Marta Verginella 2 Slovene Mapping of Urban Centres in the Austrian Littoral in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 33 Borut Klabjan 3 Habsburg Fantasies: Sites of Memory in Trieste/Trst/Triest from the Fin de Siècle to the Present 59 Vanni D’Alessio 4 Divided Legacies, Iconoclasm and Shared Cultures in Contested Rijeka/Fiume 89 vi Nancy M. Wingfield 5 he Sonnenwende: From Traditional German Folk Festival to Radical Right-Wing Mobilizing Ritual along Austria’s Language Frontiers 119 Pieter M. Judson 6 ‘he border took him’: he Ambiguous Peoples of ‘Der Fremde Heimat’ 149 Matic Batič 7 ‘Le Terre Redente si presentano a noi come vecchie terre italiche’: Building italianità in the Provincia di Gorizia between the Two World Wars 163 Klaus Tragbar and Elmar Kossel 8 Conquest through Architecture? Italy’s Strategies of Appropriation in Alto Adige and the Trentino ater 1920 187 Gašper Mithans 9 Burnt Villages in the Julian March as Memorial Landscapes 211 Oto Luthar 10 Memory, Revision, Resistance: Reviving the Partisan Monuments along the Slovenian-Italian Border 235 Mila Orlić 11 Italians or ‘Foreigners’? he Multilayered Memories of Istrian Refugees in Italy 253 vii Vida Rožac Darovec 12 Commemorating Anti-Fascism: Remembering TIGR in the Northern Adriatic Borderland following Slovenian Independence 271 Katia Pizzi 13 Trieste, Film and the Cold War: Sites of Memory in the Borderlands 289 Notes on Contributors 301 Index 307 Borut Klabjan Bordering and Memorializing the Northern Adriatic and Central Europe: Introductory Notes on Borderlands of Memory he contributions to this volume analyse the interplay between memory and space in the Adriatic and Central European borderlands during the region’s long twentieth century. hese links are richest and most complex in ethnically and/or religiously mixed regions with a long record of political border changes. Such regions provide a particularly appropriate setting in which to develop a more nuanced understanding of feelings of identity, belonging, citizenship, nationality and related myths, and the symbols that express these various forms of identiication. his analysis of memory landscape examines the mnemonic qualities not only of architectural landmarks and monuments, but also of place names and historic sites. Based on the idea of a broadly deined physical environment encompassing both natural and man-made settings, this topography is absorbed in memories that are part of the public sphere. Taking the northern Adriatic borderland as a case study, this book aims to apply and combine the tools of diferent disciplines in order to understand how the cultures of remembrance and the politics of memory are formed and how they intertwine and overlap in border and transnational areas. hus, the book will enhance the understanding of the role of representations of the past and the complexity of identiications and memories in borderlands. As early as 1994, Andreas Huyssen wrote that ‘collective memory has become an obsession’.1 Ten years later, Joanna Bourke concurred with this 1 Andreas Huyssen, ‘Monument and Memory in a Postmodern Age’, in James E. Young, ed., he Art of Memory. Holocaust Memorials in History (New York: Prestel, 1994), 11. 2 Borut Klabjan observation in her introduction to the special issue on ‘“Remembering” War’ in the Journal of Contemporary History.2 During the last decade, studies of memory have increased exponentially.3 Many researchers have analysed 2 3 Joanna Bourke, ‘“Remembering” War’, Journal of Contemporary History 39/4 (2004), 473–485. It is worth mentioning some of the most important works that have contributed to a scholarly dialogue and inluenced the conceptualization of this volume: Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); James E. Young, he Texture of memory. Holocaust memorials and meaning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993); John R. Gillis, Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Reinhart Koselleck and Michael Jeismann, eds, Der Politische Totenkult. Kriegerdenkmäler in der Moderne (München: Fink, 1994); Jay Winter, Sites of memory, sites of mourning. he Great War in European cultural history (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Alon Conino, he Nation as a Local Metaphor. Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Timothy G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper, eds, he Politics of War Memory and Commemoration (London: Routledge, 2000); Konrad H. Jarausch and Martin Sabrow, eds, Verletztes Gedächtnis. Erinnerungskultur und Zeitgeschichte im Konlikt (Frankfurt, New York: Campus, 2002); Jan-Werner Müller, ed., Memory and power in post-war Europe. Studies in the presence of the past (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Heidemarie Uhl, ed., Zivilisationsbruch und Gedächtniskultur. Das 20. Jahrhundert in der Erinnerung des beginnenden 21. Jahrhunderts (Innsbruck : Studien-Verlag, 2003); Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts. Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); Eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps. Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003); Daniel J. Walkowitz and Lisa Maya Knauer, eds, Memory and the impact of political transformation in public space (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Konrad H. Jarausch and homas Lindenberger, eds, Conlicted Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary Histories (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007); Niamh Moore and Yvonne Whelan, Heritage, Memory and the Politics of Identity. New Perspectives on the Cultural Landscape (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Michal Kopeček, ed., Past in the making. Historical revisionism in Central Europe ater 1989 (Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2008); Antoine Marès, ed., Lieux de mémoire en Europe centrale (Paris: Institut d’études slaves, 2009); Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the age of decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009); Aleida Assman and Bordering and Memorializing the Northern Adriatic and Central Europe 3 national sites of memory, as illustrated by the examples of France, Czechia/ Czechoslovakia, Italy, Germany and Bulgaria.4 Scholars worldwide have paid speciic attention to these issues deploying a variety of interdisciplinary approaches and comparative methods.5 Despite the quantitative and qualitative relevance of their conclusions, these studies rarely focused on border areas. Borderland studies have become more widespread in the last few decades.6 Memory studies and border studies have, however, heretofore rarely 4 5 6 Sebastian Conrad, eds, Memory in a Global Age. Discourses, Practices and Trajectories (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Zdzisław Krasnodębski, Stefan Garsztecki and Rüdiger Ritter, eds, Politics, History and Collective Memory in East Central Europe (Hamburg: Krämer Verlag, 2012); Marc Silberman and Florence Vatan, eds, Memory and postwar memorials. Conronting the violence of the past (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Filippo Focardi and Bruno Groppo, eds, L’Europa e le sue memorie. Politiche e culture del ricordo dopo il 1989 (Roma: Viella, 2013); Estela Schindel and Pamela Colombo, eds, Space and the memories of violence: landscapes of erasure, disappearance and exception (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Manuel Lof, Luciana Soutelo and Filipe Piedade, eds, Ditaduras e Revolução. Democracia e políticas da memória (Coimbra: Almedina, 2014), Marnix Beyen and Brecht Deseure, eds, Local Memories in a Nationalizing and Globalizing World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, ed., Whose memory? Which future? Remembering ethnic cleansing and lost cultural diversity in East, Central, and East-South Europe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016). Pierre Nora, ed., Les Lieux de mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–1986); Zdeněk Hojda and Jiří Pokorný, Pomníky a zapomníky (Prague and Litomyšl: Paseka, 1996); Mario Isnenghi, ed., I luoghi della memoria (Roma: Laterza, 1996 and 1997); Etienne François and Hagen Schulze, eds, Deutsche Erinnerungsorte (München: Beck, 2001); Claudia Weber, Auf der Suche nach der Nation. Erinnerungskultur in Bulgarien 1878–1944 (Berlin, Münster: Lit, 2006). Some examples include François Hartog and Jacques Revel, eds, Les usages politiques du passé (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 2001); Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner and Claudio Fogu, eds, he politics of memory in Europe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Małgorzata Pakier and Bo Stråth, eds, A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010). Again, only some of the works could be mentioned, such as John W. Cole and Eric R. Wolf, he Hidden Frontier. Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley (New York: Academic Press, 1974); Raimondo Strassoldo and Giovanni Delli Zotti, eds, 4 Borut Klabjan found common ground. Until the last decade, only a few studies had focused on how monuments and related commemorative practices that have an expressive function of nation-building are reproduced and relected in border and ethnically non-homogenous areas.7 Since the pioneering studies 7 Cooperation and Conlict in Border Areas (Milano: F. Angeli, 1982); Peter Sahlins, Boundaries. he making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Michiel Baud and Willem Van Schendel ‘Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands’, Journal of World History 8/2 (1997), 211–242; homas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan, eds, Border identities. Nation and state at international rontiers (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Hans Lemberg, ed., Grenzen in Ostmitteleuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Marburg: Herder Institut, 2000); Kate Brown, A biography of no place. From ethnic borderland to Soviet heartland (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2003); Silvia Salvatici, Conini. Costruzioni, attraversamenti, rappresentazioni (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2005); Etienne François, Jörg Seifarth and Bernhard Struck, eds, Die Grenze als Raum, Erfahrung und Konstruktion. Deutschland, Frankreich und Polen vom 17. bis 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, New York: Campus Verlag, 2007); David Laven and Timothy Baycrot, ‘Border Regions and Identity’, European Review of History 15/3 (2008), 235–242; Eero Medijainen and Olaf Mertelsmann, Border Changes in 20th Century Europe (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2010); Caitlin E. Murdock, Changing places. Society, culture, and territory in the Saxon-Bohemian borderlands, 1870–1946 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010); Dimitar Bechev and Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Mediterranean rontiers. Borders, conlict and memory in a transnational era (London; New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010); Pekka Hämäläinen and Samuel Truett, ‘On Borderlands’, he Journal of American History, 98/2 (2011), 338–361; Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz, Shatterzone of empires. Coexistence and violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman borderlands (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013); Roberta Pergher, Mussolini’s nation-empire. Sovereignty and settlement in Italy’s borderlands, 1922–1943 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Heinz- Gerhard Haupt, Michael G. Mülle and Stuart Woolf, eds, Regional and National Identities in Europe in the XIXth and XXth Centuries (he Hague, Boston, MA: Kluwer Law International, 1998); Hans Knippenberg and Jan Markusse, Nationalising and denationalising European border regions, 1800–2000 (Dordrecht; Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic, 1999); Michael G. Müller and Rolf Petri, eds, Die Nationalisierung von Grenzen. Zur Konstruktion nationaler Identitat in sprachlich gemischten Grenzregionen (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2002). Bordering and Memorializing the Northern Adriatic and Central Europe 5 of the French-German border appeared in the 1990s,8 this important gap has been illed by experts whose focus was largely on Central and Eastern Europe, with its borderlands playing an important role.9 Additionally, scholarly attention has recently turned towards the ways in which diferent European societies remembered and shared transnational experiences such as the devastations brought about by two world wars, forced population movements and genocide.10 Despite the many works that contributed new perspectives to the historical analysis of these multinational areas, borderlands are only rarely the main focus of memory research. hose studies that bring a truly European perspective to studying the border have not yet consistently touched on the Adriatic space.11 I believe the reason for 8 9 10 11 Charlotte Tacke, Denkmal im sozialen Raum. Nationale Symbole in Deutschland und Frankreich im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995). Besides already-mentioned works, see, among others, Maria Bucur and Nancy M. Wingield, Staging the Past: he Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2001); Rudolf Jaworski and Witold Molik, eds, Denkmäler in Kiel und Posen. Parallelen und Kontraste (Kiel: Ludwig, 2002); Nancy M. Wingield, Creating the other. Ethnic conlict and nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003); Patrice Dabrowski, Commemorations and the Shaping of Modern Poland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2004); Markian Prokopovich, Habsburg Lemberg: Architecture, Public Space, and Politics in the Galician Capital, 1792–1914 (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2008); Maria Bucur, Heroes and Victims. Remembering War in Twentieth-Century Romania (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009); Peter haler, Of Mind and Matter. he Duality of National Identity in the German-Danish Borderlands (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009); Todor Kuljić, Umkäpte Vergangenheiten. Die Kultur der Erinnerung im postjugoslawischen Raum (Berlin: Verbrecher Verlag, 2010); Heike Karge, Steinerne Erinnerung-versteinerte Erinnerung? Kriegsgedenken im sozialistischen Jugoslawien (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010); Kimmo Katajala and Maria Lähteenmäki, eds, Imagined, Negotiated, Remembered. Constructing European Borders and Borderlands (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012) Jay M. Winter, Remembering War. he Great War and Historical Memory in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). Jacques Le Rider, Moritz Csáky and Monika Sommer, eds, Transnationale Gedächtnisorte in Zentraleuropa (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2002); Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation. Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial 6 Borut Klabjan this omission lies in the complexity of the Adriatic space, which includes historical, social, linguistic, economic, political, regional, national, sub- and supranational elements that go beyond merely ethnic divisions.12 Taking the 12 Austria (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2006); Madeline Hurd, Borderland Identities: Territory and Belonging in Central, North and East Europe (Eslov: Forlags Ab Gondolin, 2006); Sophie Cœuré and Sabine Dullin, eds, Frontières du communisme. Mythologies et réalités de la division de l’Europe de la révolution d’Octobre au mur de Berlin (Paris: La Découverte, 2007); Christophe Duhamelle, Andreas Kossert and Bernhard Struck, Grenzregionen. Ein europäischer Vergleich vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, New York: Campus Verlag, 2007); Rudolf Jaworski and Peter Stachel, Die Besetzung des öfentlichen Raumes. Politische Plätze, Denkmäler und Straßennamen im europäischen Vergleich (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2007); Ulf Engel, Matthias Middell and Stefan Troebst, Erinnerungskulturen in transnationaler Perspektive/Memory Cultures in Transnational Perspective (Leipzig : Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2012); Bernd Henningsen, Hendriette Kliemann- Geisinger and Stefan Troebst, Transnationale Erinnerungsorte. Nord- und südeuropäische Perspektiven (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschats-Verlag, 2009); Heinz- Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka, eds, Comparative and Transnational History. Central European Approaches and New Perspectives (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009); Tibor Frank and Frank Hadler, eds, Disputed Territories and Shared Pasts: Overlapping National Histories in Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). here are a number of works on the history of the region and the wider northern Adriatic area. Among the most recent are Glenda Sluga, he Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav border. Diference, identitiy, sovereignity in twentieth-century Europe (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); Marina Cattaruzza, ed., Nazionalismi di rontiera. Identità contrapposte sull’Adriatico nord-orientale, 1850–1950 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino editore, 2003); Pamela Ballinger, History in exile. Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Rolf Wörsdörfer, Krisenherd Adria, 1915–1955: Konstruktion, und Artikulation des Nationalen im italienisch-jugoslawisch Grenzraum (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004); Maura Hametz, Making Trieste Italian, 1918–1954 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005); Marina Cattaruzza, L’Italia e il conine orientale, 1866–2006 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007); Jože Pirjevec, ‘Trst je naš!’ Boj Slovencev za morje (1848–1954) (Ljubljana: Nova Revija 2007); Marta Verginella, Il conine degli altri. La questione giuliana e la memoria slovena (Roma: Donzelli, 2008); Piero Purini, Metamorfosi etniche. I cambiamenti di popolazione a Trieste, Gorizia, Fiume e in Istria, 1914–1975 (Udine: Kappa Vu, 2010); Kaja Širok, Kalejdoskop goriške preteklosti. Zgodbe o spominu in pozabi (Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, 2012); Alessandro Cattunar, Il conine Bordering and Memorializing the Northern Adriatic and Central Europe 7 mentioned studies as a starting point and by analysing structural similarities and diferences, the aim of this book is to contribute to a more complete picture of the diferent politics of the past in Europe and how they have evolved over time until the present. In order to address these questions, the authors of this volume explore an as yet underdeveloped position in historical scholarship. If studies on divided, fractured and parallel memories in a speciic historical period have shown us a set of complexities, an interconnected investigation between memory and identiications in the context of constantly changing political regimes and state ailiations has not been fully addressed. he northern Adriatic and Central Europe experienced a regular redrawing of state borders throughout the twentieth century: social frameworks theorized by Maurice Halbwachs have been continually questioned, sites of memory studied by Pierre Nora were oten stable and ixed in this part of Europe, but were not infrequently removed or replaced, reinterpreted, and reconstructed due to a state context constantly in lux. However, their destiny did not necessarily automatically follow a border change. Furthermore, the collective memories of local communities have continually been remodelled and challenged by changing state institutions. How these changes have afected loyalties, identiications, memories and space, and how they interact with each other is the main research question of the book. Herein, the authors discuss the long view of memory from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the region was part of the Habsburg Empire, until the present. his extremely entangled historical time span allows us to identify diferent conigurations of links among space, state and identity. By looking at the longue durée, this volume addresses certain features of engagement with the past that most scholarship passes over by concentrating on the memory of speciic moments in history (the Second World War, in particular) to the exclusion of other periods and events. delle memorie. Storie di vita e narrazioni pubbliche tra Italia e Jugoslavia (1922–1955) (Milano: Le Monnier-Mondadori, 2014); Egon Pelikan, Tone Kralj in prostor meje (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 2016). 8 Borut Klabjan Even if the local geopolitical structure and the international order were drastically challenged already in Napoleonic times, the process of a radical territorial change was made clear especially ater the end of the First World War. It was the Great War that initiated the long-term process of border changes that characterized the twentieth century in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe. he caesura made by the war and its territorial consequences were crucial, and the plans about a possible federalization of Europe ‘never had a chance to move beyond the planning stage’.13 New states were formed or parts of former empires were annexed by neighbouring countries, which were the catalyst for changes that are still on-going. he enlargement of the European Union towards eastern and south-eastern parts of Europe in the twenty-irst century could thus be understood as part of a longer historical process of territorial redeinitions initiated a hundred years ago. he intensity of territorial changes and border drawings shows the need for a transnational perspective on these events. Many important works have contributed to intense historical analysis of this area; however, a transnational perspective has only rarely been adopted. hus, the contributors in this book used various approaches to study the Adriatic and Central European regions as a whole, irrespective of their current political and administrative divisions. I believe that this is an adequate way of transcending national and exclusivist interpretations of the history of the region. his perspective allows us to recuperate a transnational understanding of identiication that transcends nationalist diferences. In line with this approach, the book explores several interconnected case studies introduced in the irst chapter by Hannes Grandits. His essay serves not only as a theoretical overview, but also as a platform for reconsidering the northern Adriatic area and Central Europe within a larger analytical framework of European ‘phantom’ borderlands. he chapter is followed by twelve chapters that represent diferent disciplinary approaches. he northern Adriatic area is the focus, and therefore 13 Istvan Deák, ‘he Habsburg Empire’, in Karen Barkey and Mark Von Hagen, eds, Ater Empire. Multiethnic societies and nation-building. he Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 129. Bordering and Memorializing the Northern Adriatic and Central Europe 9 we begin with three studies on mapping memories in Gorizia/Gorica, Rijeka/Fiume and Trieste/Trst over a longer period, starting from the end of the nineteenth century to contemporary reminiscences in the present. Marta Verginella, Borut Klabjan and Vanni D’Alessio pose challenges to neatly designated visions of state, sovereignty, space, and memory to show the complexity of identiications in three diferent urban settings. he next two pieces by Nancy M. Wingield and Pieter M. Judson broaden our perspective by including larger portions of Central Europe, such as Styria, Carinthia and Tyrol, where the experience of everyday border existence was no less ambiguous than in the Adriatic. Rather than focusing on the experience of living on and by the border, the chapters by Matic Batič, Klaus Tragbar and Elmar Kossel show top-down interventions in the spatiality of two borderlands, the northern Adriatic and Tyrol, annexed by Italy ater the First World War. hese regions experienced similar political changes and they represent fruitful examples of luctuating and contested sovereignties in a post-imperial comparison within an Italian national frame ater the Great War. Gašper Mithans and Oto Luthar, in their contributions, investigate some controversial aspects of the Second World War in the Italo-Slovene borderland. During the war this area experienced large-scale massacres by foreign invaders and as a result of extreme internal violence. How this violence was inscribed in the ‘borderscape’ and how it is still part of on-going debates is discussed from diferent angles. heir analysis shows how the transmission of memory does not have a linear direction, but rather, is a multi-layered process. his is conirmed by the last three chapters by Mila Orlić, Vida Rožac Darovec, and Katia Pizzi. All three, again, from diferent disciplinary angles, remind us of the ambiguous relationship between the collective and the individual in the understanding of memory and space. How this relationship intertwines in a context of constantly changing state ailiations, overlapping memories and conlicting interpretations of the past is the subject of Borderlands of Memory. 10 Borut Klabjan Figure 0.1: Map of Central and Bordering and Memorializing the Northern Adriatic and Central Europe Eastern Europe ater the First World War 11 12 Borut Klabjan Figure 0.2: Map of the northern Adriatic ater the Second World War