TRIESTE
Population Statistics of Trieste
The usual Austrian practice is to consider a person as belonging to the nationality of which he speaks the language. For Trieste, instead, the principle was adopted that the language of his parents should be considered. In spite of this, the results not being satisfactory to the authorities, a revision of the census was ordered and entrusted to a committee composed of Slavs and Germans, with no Italian representatives.
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The Austrian Central Commission on Statistics in Vienna, with regard to the census of December 31, 1910 (Vol. II, No. 1) states the “Slav immigration during the last two years tends to diminish,” and “it would seem that at Trieste the numerical data on the language in use does not correspond to the facts.”
Police Oppression
(It is significant to note that the following are incidents typical of the treatment given by Austrian officials to Italians in times of peace.)
In 1910 six lectures by Italians on scientific subjects were forbidden by the government in Trieste within three months.
In November, 1910, all the Sunday lectures of the Extension University were forbidden. Among the forbidden lectures were one by D'Annunzio on Aviation and two by Orsi on Cavour and Bismarck. The Chief of Police of Trieste, in the case of Orsi, who was an Italian citizen, insisted that he should go to police headquarters and dictate his lectures to two policemen, so that the police officer in charge of the lecture room could control exactly his words. Orsi of course refused to give the lectures.
The [Austrian] police of Trieste forbade the playing of the Inno di Garibaldi and of the Marcia Reale.
In December, 1911, Antonio Visentini in Monfalcone received the order of destroying the winged lion of Venice which he had put on his house, as that “was to be considered as a political demonstration.“
The Bach police regulations, dated April 20, 1854, gave the police almost absolute power over the destinies and comfort of the citizens. The police can arrest any person for any act committed on the street or in public places which the police deem objectionable. The arrested person is taken to the police station, and by the high police officials can be sentenced without any formal proceedings, without right of defense, without even an explanation of the sentence, to light prison sentences which are sufficient to exclude that person from all public offices for the rest of his life. Moreover, the state attorney can. hold people in state of arrest for an indefinite time pending investigations. The most serious part of this is that the police of Trieste, as we saw, is almost totally made up of Slovene officers.
An Italian newspaper vendor was standing before a moving picture theatre in San Giacomo, one of the suburbs of Trieste, one Sunday, when two Slovenes passed him; they jeered at him, one struck him, saying, “You Italian swine,” the other planted a knife in his heart and killed him. When the two were arrested, they gave no excuse for their act, except this: he was an Italian. The murderer was sentenced to four months in prison.
Banks
Italian banks have not been allowed by the Austrian Government to open branches in Trieste. The main banks remain the German-Austrian banks, with which the Italians transact all business. These German banks are run quite impartially as purely business enterprises, and have almost entirely Italian staffs. The Slavic banks, however, are very powerful, much more so than would require the rather indifferent business activities of the Slovenes in Trieste.
Some strange facts are to be noticed in this Slavic bank world.
The most important of these banks is a branch of the Zivnostenska Banka of Prague, that is, Czecho-Slovak, which is the main backbone of all the Slavic activities-business and otherwise of Trieste.
Among the purely Slovene banks comes first the Jadranska Banka, with 8,000,000 kronen capital; the Lubianska Kreditna Banka, which has a slender budget of 28,000 kronen; the Trzaska Posojlnica in Hranilnica, which has a capital of 133,000 kronen and yet a movement of eleven million kronen of business. Besides this, there are two or three small banks with a capital of 8000 kronen which do business amounting many hundred thousands a year. There is no real business to keep these banks going and the Czecho-Slovak bank is called upon very often to save them from trouble with the money, which the Slovak bank draws from unknown sources.
The chief activities of these banks seem to be to buy Italian property and Italian business wherever they can get it and at any price, provided their position is such that it affords an opening for the Slav invasion.
Some curious examples of the business transactions of these banks are the following:
Grignano is a small town not very far from Trieste. The Trzaska Posojlnica in Hranilnica has bought large holdings of land on the shore of this town, built hotels and bath establishments and created from nothing a summer resort for Slavs, excluding from it all Italian traders and all Italian signs. The town had a small dock on the shore at which the small steamers of an Italian company from Trieste used to tie up. Now the bank has excluded from the use of the public dock, in a town in which many Italians pay taxes, the steamers of this company, reserving its use for the steamers of a Slovene company. An Italian peasant nearby, having had a barge full of bricks. sent to him, was not allowed to use the dock for unloading, and had to build a temporary dock and piles for himself. The Austrian Government, which has control of all the seashore rights, never made a move.
The Jadarska Banka financed lavishly a large Italian lumber firm; then with the threat of foreclosure of the mortgage imposed its own Slovene manager, then Slovene employees, and finally Slovene workmen. Similarly the bank has succeeded in getting control of an Italian brewery; and in the case of a merchant, a certain Gustavo Marco, lent him 240,000 kronen for a glass factory, gradually imposed on him managers and workmen Slovenes, Slavs, Croatians and finally reduced the owner to the rank of a nominal superintendent with a salary of fifty kronen a week to begin with, reduced later to thirty kronen.
A bank of Gorizia, the Trgovsko-obrtna Zadruga, with 5000 kronen capital, has 21/2 millions of deposits, and invests the whole of its holdings in the building of a national house in Gorizia and in the purchase of a hotel of the Süd-Bahn—the first an enterprise with no returns, and the second an enterprise with no profits. The Government, which has the supervision of the banks, did not interfere.
In Zara a small Croatian bank was discovered, during a suit for bankruptcy, to have lent money without any mortgage instruments, had a board of directors who were paid ten kronen for every session, and never had any sign of activities. A government inspector made a report, but the government ignored it until the crash came.
Yet most of these banks manage to go through almost all crises, thanks to help from the Czecho-Slovak bank or other secret sources, which are known to have been Russian to the point that in Trieste the Russian ruble was circulated almost as freely as the Austrian kronen.
Slav Invasion
The center of Slavic agitation in Trieste is the Narodni Dom, a huge building right in the middle of Trieste, which directs all the campaigns of attack against the Italian population. The expenses for the building were borne by the Slovene Bank of Deposits and Loans and Loans (Trzaska Posojlnica in Hranilnica). The house, however, always shows a deficit, which is paid from secret sources. Connected with the house there is a Hotel Balkan. The Austrian Government, in a circular to the army, has advised the officers passing through Trieste to use the Hotel Balkan, “to increase its revenue and spite the Triestans.”
The central organization of the Slovenes is the Edinost Union, which is a political association and has its seat in the Narodni Dom. It spreads all through the districts of the mixed population of the Friuli.
One of the chief purposes of the Edinost seems to be the directing to Trieste of the largest possible emigration of Slovene workmen, which it it does by means of an employment office that supplies strike breakers when necessary or useful.
The Edinost has also founded two primary schools in Trieste with 1722 pupils in 1912, and a trade school with 79 students in 1913. One of the two primary schools cost 500,000 kronen, the origin of which is unknown.
It is at the suggestion of the then president of the Edinost, Dr. Rybar, a Slovene, that the Governor of Trieste, Prince Hohenlohe, published four decrees in 1910 excluding from the employment of the municipality of Trieste all the Italians of Italy.
The Edinost
The Edinost, which is also the newspaper of the organization, has been so violent in attacking the Italians that it has had even to be seized and suppressed by the Austrian authorities.
Here is the program for national propaganda as it appears in the columns of that paper in the number of January 7, 1911:
“Tomorrow the Slavs of Trieste must speak. We are here and we will stay here and enjoy our rights. Tomorrow we shall throw the gauntlet of defiance to the coterie which dominates, and then will begin the duel which we shall not give up until the day when we have under our feet, crushed to dust, the artificial Italianism of Trieste. So far our struggle was for equality. Tomorrow we shall say to the Italians that the future struggle will be for domination. We shall not stop until WE command in Trieste; we Slovenes, Slavs! The Italianism of Trieste, which is now ebbing, is now celebrating its last orgy before its death. Tomorrow we, the Slovenes of Trieste, shall invite these voted to death to recite the confiteor.”
Employees
1. Unionbaugesellschaft — employs all Italians.
2. 1900-10. Population of Carniola increases 3.3 per cent., Slavs in Trieste 130 per cent.
3. Railroad of Tauri imports 700 Slovene families of railroad workers.
4. New harbor of Sant'Andrea. 2500 laborers, all Slovene.
5. New harbor of Sant'Andrea. Beginning work of discharging ships, 64 Slovene stevedores against 160 Triestine applications.
6. Austrian Lloyd. 1300 Slovenes out of 3000 shipyard workmen.
7. Triestine Technical Works: By order of the Government all Italians and many Triestans are discharged, their places being filled with Slovenes, Croatians and Germans.
Bureaucracy (1910)
4000 positions for subordinate government employees and 3700 given to Slovenes.
Government railroads of 828 station employees: 728 are Slavs, 70 Italian, 30 Germans.
Post Office: 358 clerks — 245 Slavs and 95 Italians.
Customs-house Officers: 500 — 146 Italians.
Police: 661 — 100 Italians.
Südbahn (private): 1913
Station: Employees 369 — 260 Slavs, 70 Italians, 30 Germans.
Laborers: 380 — 354 Slavs, 6 Italians, 20 Germans.
Journeymen: 300 — 298 Slavs, 2 Italians.
Inspectors: 50 — 47 Slavs, 3 Italians.
Railroad restaurants: Slovene signs and Slovene waiters.
A Triestan [who speaks] Italian, Slovene [and] German was refused for mail carrier; accepted Slovenes speaking only their own language.
Schools
Trieste had an Italian gymnasium dating from 1619; amplified by Napoleon; in 1815 was suppressed; petitions for the reopening of the gymnasium were presented to the government in 1824, 1833, 1840, 1851, 1859, 1861, 1862. In 1862 the government gave permission, provided the city would pay expenses. The city immediately decided to do so, but permission was suspended. Finally, 1863, the gymnasium was opened, but its examinations are not considered valid for state purposes.
There are no Italian high schools in Pirano; Rovigno with 5000 Italian inhabitants; Monfalcone with 12,000 Italians.
In Gorizia there were allowed Italian classes in the German gymnasium under the principalship of a Slovene, with the limitation of the number of pupils to 50.
Italian primary schools in Trieste, all supported by the city, were founded in 1868, with 6819 pupils. In 1911 there were 21 schools with 16,470 pupils. Illiteracy has dropped from 43 to 14 per cent.
Heroic Episodes in Fight for Schools
At San Colombano, in Istria, 89 family heads were tried and sentenced to jail for insisting that they wanted an Italian school instead of a Slovene school.
At Servola, a suburb of Trieste, in 1911 there used to come every morning a child of six years, Celestina Rosa, accompanied by three brothers, coming from Bagnoli, another village, having to walk every day four hours to come and go.
In Trieste the government has forbidden the teaching of the history of Trieste itself.
An order of the last Governor of Trieste, Prince Hohenlohe, dated June 24, 1913, forbids the town council of Trieste to give the names of Dante and Petrarca to two schools of which the city pays the entire expenses.
The Church
The Church is one of the most potent vehicles of the national agitation among the Slavs, and this is equally true of the Catholic Church as of the Orthodox.
At present the diocese of Trieste has 290 priests, of which 190 are Slovenes. The Church has even tried to introduce Slav influence into the convents and monasteries. The priests at Daila, in Istria, who were all The Italians, are all Slav now. monastery of the Minor Observant, in Capodistria, is already partly filled with Croatian monks. Croatian nuns from Agram [Zagreb] have opened a school in Pola. The Slovene nuns of Cilli tried to open a school in Trieste, but they got badly tangled up in financial matters and the Government saved them from bankruptcy by buying their building for 900,000 kronen.
On the other hand, the Italian friars of Pirano who had asked to open at their own expense a branch of their monastery in Pola, were refused the permission.
In 1909 there was a Eucharistic Congress at Ragusa, in Dalmatia. 600 Croatian priests from Agram [Zagreb] went to Fiume to board a steamer for Ragusa and traversed the city marching on a front of four, like soldiers, with Croatian flags and singing war songs. As the steamer passed Zara, they renewed their demonstrations, shouting insults to the Italians of that city. Great tumult followed, with blows and pistol shots. The Slavs who were arrested were at once released, while the Italians who were arrested had to stay for several days in jail. And this was all for a religious ceremony.
In Spalato, a man known to be of Italian sentiment died; the Croatian priest refused to assist him in his last moments, refused to open the church for the funeral, refused to allow him to be buried in a cemetery.
In Istria, at Topolovatz, the priest, a man called Knavs, refused to bury an Italian girl, who was left for two days and two nights in her home.
In Sterna the priest Nedeved refused the last rites to a carpenter of Uberton because he was Italian.
At Lindaro, near Pisino, a Croatian priest refused to baptize a child because the father requested that the formula be said in Latin instead of Slovene.
On October 28, 1913, the master of the Italian school of Sovignaco, in Istria, was tried before the court of Rovigno for “disturbing the functions of the Catholic religion for having, during the procession of St. Mark, made the Italian school children sing the litanies in Latin, while the priest Klun and the other believers were singing in Croatian.”
In the diocese of Trieste the Italian priest of Roviano was suspended a divinis by the bishop for having refused to sing tantum ergo in Slav, while the Vatican orders it sung in Latin.
Courts
From 1781 to 1895 proceedings were held in the language of the country, hence in Italian. Later Slovene wa
s introduced.
In 1903, all hearings were held in Slovene, and, despite vigorous protests, there was no response from the Government and Slovene was imposed.
Elections
A Jugo-Slav writer in a newspaper recently complained that in Trieste during the last elections, 14,000 Italian votes could elect four members to the Reichsrat, while 10,000 Slovene votes elected only one, giving this as an example of the favoritism of the Austrian Government toward the Italians. The writer, to begin with, forgot 9000 Socialist votes which are entirely Italian, because the Slav Socialists vote for their own people, and secondly forgot that in the present arrangement of majority representation, this fact is simply proof of the minority of the Slavs and nothing else.
In Connecticut, for instance, there are five members of Congress, four of whom are Republican and one is Democratic, and yet the Democratic party polled some 75,000 votes against 86,000 of the Republican. But the Slavs would like to have majority representation where they are in the majority, and proportional representation where they are in the minority.
Register of Land Surveys
The register is compiled with notes in Slovene, German and Croatian. The Diet proposed one in Italian with authentic Slovene translation but the Government refused.
Zara: Italian register of land surveys (1914) was translated into Croatian and the names were changed.
FIUME
(From Current History, January, 1918)
Fiume was just outside the terrain of evacuation; still, it has a predominating Italian population of 45,000. The Mayor was Italian, so was the Town Council. Armed bands of Jugo-Slavs under orders from the Jugo-Slav Council at Agram entered the town, forced the resignation of the Mayor and Town Council, and ordered them to take down the Italian flag and hoist the Jugo-Slav banner in its place. Gatherings of Italians to celebrate the Italian victory were dispersed by rifle and machinegun fire. Italian soldiers on the heights above the city looked on and saw their fellow countrymen thus terrorized and were powerless to help them until orders came from General Diaz for their take possession of Fiume and protect the Italians there. Meanwhile similar, although not so serious, Jugo-Slav demonstrations commander, General Raineri, to had taken possession of Fiume and Pola, where they had been suppressed by the respective military Governors, General Petitti and Admiral Cagni.
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DALMATIA
November 1910: Court clerk called before disciplinary commission of the Court of Appeals of Cittavecchia to answer to the charges of:
1. Leader (instructor) of an Italian music band.
2. Had his daughter baptized in Italian.
3. Had his daughter baptized in Mafalda.
1914: Italian register of the survey of lands (libro catasto) translated into Croatian and names altered.
The Oesterreichische Rundschau in Vienna, May 1, 1909, wrote:
“We must act at Trieste as we did in Dalmatia; help the non-Italian propaganda in order decidedly to suppress the Italian element.”
See also:
Italy's Case Against the Jugo-Slavs
