Memorials and Memorial Policy in a Former Habsburg City Trieste

During the 19th century, Trieste was the capital harbor of the Habsburg Empire with an extraordinary poly-national, -ethnic and -lingual urban culture before 1918. Representatives of the modern urban culture in Trieste are at least James Joyce, Italo Svevo and Umberto Saba. Since 1918 the city is, beside different political changes, a more or less peripheral place in Italy. This urban development can be reflected in different cultural political concepts: there is a specific change from Habsburg loyalty in early 19th century to the concept of “Italianità”, inspired by the ideas of “Risorgimento”, to the idea of a local identification in form of the concept of “Triestinità” after 1918 up to nowadays.

Outgoing from this political and cultural frame, the paper asks how the different phases are reflected in the urban memorial policy in Trieste, starting in the Habsburg era, which was overlaid by an Italian approach (e.g. the Verdi-Memorial 1906), radicalized after 1918 in the fascist attempt to create a pure Italian city (e.g. the “Parco della rimembranza”) to a new local orientation as a city of modern literature and culture (e.g. the memorials for Svevo and Joyce, both 2004) and a new post Habsburg-orientation since the 1990 (e. g. the memorial for archduke Maximilian 2009). In the end, the urban memorial policy leads to the concept of a specific Trieste habitus or urban logic.