Auf der Flucht vor dem Krieg. Trentiner und Tiroler Deserteure im Ersten Weltkrieg

Überegger, Oswald

doi:10.1524/mgzs.2003.62.2.355

Cited by 2 publications

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“…For the same concern regarding their putative disloyalty to Austria-Hungary, the army withdrew them from critical frontlines. 37 Whereas in the Tyrolean regiments, they had made up around 40% alongside 60% German speakers, in the other units, they were generally among the smallest minorities. 38 As a result, most Italianspeaking Tyrolean soldiers experienced the end of the war in ethically and lingually mixed units in the southern and eastern theatres.…”

Section: Minority Soldiers As Parts Of Imperial Armiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imperial Nationalism of Minority Soldiers. Italian-Speaking Tyroleans and Irishmen in the First World War

Steinbacher

2023

Studies on National Movements

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In the First World War, national minorities fought on all sides. How did these soldiers negotiate their identity as a national minority with their loyalty to and identification with the state for which they fought in the severest war of nations in modern times until then? This paper explores the complex landscape of this question by comparing Irish soldiers in the British Army and Italian-speaking Tyrolean soldiers in the Habsburg forces. Using a sample of war diaries from combatants on both sides and drawing on the more recently upcoming literature on minorities in the First World War, perceptions of these groups about their nationality are examined. The analysis will show how combatants were integrated into a network of loyal relationships to the respective empire through factors such as culture, language and emotions. This is made productive through the analytical category of imperial nationalism. The article emphasises the importance of regiments bridging national identity and imperial loyalty. Italy’s entry into the war (1915) and the Easter Rising (1916) were critical events for soldiers of each side regarding their national self-image. The soldiers’ reactions show the broad spectrum of individual national identity, ranging from increased identification with the Empire to disintegration. Subsequently, both groups increasingly faced discrimination, to which they reacted differently. While the Italian-speaking Tyroleans tended to gradually distance themselves from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Irish soldiers mostly maintained their imperial loyalty. These different results illustrate the complex interplay of allegiance, identity and nationality of minority soldiers and the impact of changing circumstances on these factors during the Great War.

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Section: Minority Soldiers As Parts Of Imperial Armiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imperial Nationalism of Minority Soldiers. Italian-Speaking Tyroleans and Irishmen in the First World War

Steinbacher

2023

Studies on National Movements

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“…As such, Molina shared the opinion of a sizeable contingent of Italians who, at the turn of the twentieth century, argued that the addition of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (as well as the Julian March to the east) helped complete Italy's nineteenth-century unification movement, the Risorgimento. 12 To make this assertion, irredentists like Molina relied on internationally recognised assumptions about nationality and national selfdetermination that entwined Italian entitlement to the territory and its people to the degree of their 'Italian-ness'. 13 This equation was regularly employed (and manipulated) to justify territorial and political claims across Europe as nationalists sought to revise the map for a post-war reality.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Un-‘Common Sense’ of National Identity: Luigi Molina, Trentini and the Fascist Italianisation Campaign in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol

McLean

2023

Contemporary European History

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This article employs the recently discovered memoir of Luigi Molina – the superintendent of schools in Italy's multilingual borderland of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol from 1923 to 1944 – to demonstrate the sizeable and problematic rift between purportedly ‘common-sense’ understandings of ‘Italian-ness’ (italianità) as they were manifested in Italy's newly annexed Alpine territory and in Rome. In particular, the author focuses on the state's treatment of the region's Italian speakers (trentini) in its attempts to ‘Italianise’ their German-speaking neighbours and solidify fascist control of Italy's northern border. Ultimately, Molina's recollections recount how Rome's struggles to articulate and implement clear and consistent criteria for Italianisation led to the weakening of regional officials’ moral authority, political support and ‘totalitarian’ façade. The simultaneously vague and critical project of Italianisation did not simply illuminate fascism's inability to inculcate an ‘Italian identity’ among Tyroleans, however; it also served to highlight fundamental difficulties in defining national identities in any nation-state.

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Auf der Flucht vor dem Krieg. Trentiner und Tiroler Deserteure im Ersten Weltkrieg

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Imperial Nationalism of Minority Soldiers. Italian-Speaking Tyroleans and Irishmen in the First World War

Imperial Nationalism of Minority Soldiers. Italian-Speaking Tyroleans and Irishmen in the First World War

The Un-‘Common Sense’ of National Identity: Luigi Molina, Trentini and the Fascist Italianisation Campaign in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol

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