The complex intertwining of history, memory, space, place and identity in borderlands is the topic of this edited collection. Using a transnational analysis of multi-layered cases from the northern Adriatic and Central Europe, the essays address fundamental questions in the history of the twentieth century. The geographical areas under scrutiny have experienced regular re-drawings of political borders, reconfigurations of state orders, and changes in ideological frameworks. The symbolic boundaries that formed the mental map of the modern world were located here: West vs East, Latin vs German vs Slavic, European vs Oriental, antifascism vs fascism, capitalism vs communism, etc. These symbolic dimensions influence the local reality, intersecting with international developments and global processes. How these changes in ideology, state and the resulting spatial politics have functioned within varying historical frameworks, and what we can learn from their changing meanings, is the main focus of this volume. Its content represents a privileged perspective on understanding ruptures as well as continuities in memory cultures, commemorative practices, situational identifications and the varying politics of the past in European borderlands.
Table of Contents:
CONTENTS: Borut Klabjan: Bordering and Memorializing the Northern Adriatic and Central Europe: Introductory Notes on Borderlands of Memory – Hannes Grandits: Changing Legitimations of State Borders and «Phantom Borders» in the Northern Adriatic Regions – Marta Verginella: Slovene Mapping of Urban Centres in the Austrian Littoral in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries – Borut Klabjan: Habsburg Fantasies: Sites of Memory in Trieste/Trst/Triest from the Fin de Siecle to the Present – Vanni D’Alessio: Divided Legacies, Iconoclasm and Shared Cultures in Contested Rijeka/Fiume – Nancy M. Wingfield: The Sonnenwende: From Traditional German Folk Festival to Radical Right-Wing Mobilizing Ritual along Austria’s Language Frontiers –Pieter M. Judson: «The border took him»: The Ambiguous Peoples of «Der Fremde Heimat» – Matic Batič: «Le Terre Redente si presentano a noi come vecchie terre italiche»: Building italianita in the Provincia di Gorizia between the Two World Wars – Klaus Tragbar/Elmar Kossel: Conquest through Architecture? Italy’s Strategies of Appropriation in Alto Adige and the Trentino after 1920 – Gašper Mithans: Burnt Villages in the Julian March as Memorial Landscapes – Oto Luthar: Memory, Revision, Resistance: Reviving the Partisan Monuments along the Slovenian-Italian Border – Mila Orlić: Italians or «Foreigners»? The Multilayered Memories of Istrian Refugees in Italy – Vida Rožac Darovec: Commemorating Anti-Fascism: Remembering TIGR in the Northern Adriatic Borderland following Slovenian Independence – Katia Pizzi: Trieste, Film and the Cold War: Sites of Memory in the Borderlands.
About the Author :
Borut Klabjan is Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and Senior Research Fellow at the Science and Research Centre in Koper. He graduated from the University of Trieste and received his PhD from the University of Ljubljana. In 2011 he was Humboldt Fellow at the Institute for South-East Europe at the Humboldt University in Berlin and in 2014 at the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg. His work addresses themes of political, diplomatic and cultural history, memory, border and minority issues in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe.
Review :
«This timely volume puts the latest conceptual and methodological insights from border studies in service to understanding the lands of the former Habsburg Empire, a region constituted by overlapping cultural, linguistic and political boundaries. Covering a wide range of cultural products, such as film, novels, architecture and monuments, the essays illuminate the enduring legacies of historical bordermaking processes in both memory and the built environment. An important contribution to literatures on the Adriatic, Central Europe and borderlands more generally that showcases current work by preeminent scholars in the field.» (Pamela Ballinger, Professor of History, Fred Cuny Chair in the History of Human Rights, University of Michigan)
«The volume fruitfully sits at the crossroads of memory studies, nationalism studies and border studies. The mnemonic entanglements of late imperial times, the World Wars, the Cold War and its aftermath are vividly made palpable and represent a quintessential pars pro toto of European memoryscapes of the twentieth century.» (Sabine Rutar, Leibniz-Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg)
