Monografski broj / Special issue
LEO WEICZEN VALIANI
Fiuman, European, Revolutionary, Historian
Uredio / Edited by Vanni D’Alessio
Department of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka Sveučilišna avenija 4, 51 000 Rijeka, Hrvatska
Za izdavača / On behalf of the publisher:
Ines SRDOČ KONESTRA, Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Rijeci
Uredništvo / Editorial board:
Vanni D’ALESSIO (glavni urednik / editor in chief),
Mila ORLIĆ (zamjenica glavnog urednika / vice editor in chief),
Kosana JOVANOVIĆ (tajnica – urednica prikaza / secretary – book review editor)
Međunarodni urednički kolegij / International editorial board:
John ASHBROOK (Sweet Briar College, VA), Pamela BALLINGER (University of Michigan), Daniel BARIC (Université François-Rabelais, Tours), Vesna BAUER MUNIĆ (Sveučilište u Rijeci), Emilio COCCO (Università di Teramo), Maja ĆUTIĆ GORUP (Sveučilište u Rijeci), Vanni D’ALESSIO (Sveučilište u Rijeci / Università di Napoli Federico II), Diego D’AMELIO (Trst), Darko DAROVEC (Inštitut Nove Revije, Ljubljana), Franko DOTA (Sveučilište u Zagrebu), Mila DRAGOJEVIĆ (The University of the South, TN), Igor DUDA (Sveučilište Jurja Dobrile u Puli), Darko DUKOVSKI (Sveučilište u Rijeci), Guido FRANZINETTI (Università del Piemonte orientale), Kosana JOVANOVIĆ (Sveučilište u Rijeci), Aleksej KALC (Inštitut za slovensko izseljenstvo in migracije ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana), Heike KARGE (Universität Regensburg), Borut KLABJAN (Univerza na Primorskem, Koper, European University Institute, Fiesole), Marino MANIN (Institut za povijest, Zagreb), Mila ORLIĆ (Sveučilište u Rijeci), Gherardo ORTALLI (Università di Venezia), Vjeran PAVLAKOVIĆ (Sveučilište u Rijeci), Tea PERINČIĆ (Pomorski i povijesni muzej Hrvatskog primorja Rijeka), Maja POLIĆ (Zavod za povijesne i društvene znanosti HAZU, Rijeka), Dominique REILL (University of Miami), Sabine RUTAR (Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung, Regensburg), Ludwig STEINDORFF (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel), Franjo ŠANJEK (Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti), Lucijana ŠEŠELJ (Sveučilište u Rijeci), Fabio TODERO (Istituto regionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione in Friuli Venezia Giulia, Trieste)
Jezična redakcija / Text revision:
Autorska
Grafička priprema / Graphic design:
Lea ČEČ
Klasifikacija znanstvenih članaka (UDK):
Knjižnica Filozofskog fakulteta u Rijeci, Sveučilišna avenija 4, Rijeka
Tisak / Print:
Tiskara Pro print, Rijeka 2016.
Naklada / Copies:
150 primjeraka
Kontakti / Contacts:
Tajnica/Secretary: Kosana JOVANOVIĆ (e-mail: panoptikon@ffri.hr / tel: +385 (0)51 265-728) Copyright © Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Rijeci, Odsjek za povijest, Sveučilišna avenija 4, Rijeka
Sva prava pridržana
WEST CROATIAN
HISTORY JOURNAL
Monografski broj / Special issue:
LEO WEICZEN VALIANI
Fiuman, European, Revolutionary, Historian
Laurence COLE
Leo Valiani’s La Dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria in Historiographical Context
Guido FRANZINETTI
Comments on Laurence Cole’s article
C. Prikazi i izvještaji / Reviews and Notes:
Marko MEDVED,
Riječka crkva u razdoblju fašizma.
Nastanak biskupije i prvi talijanski upravitelji (Andrea ROKNIĆ BEŽANIĆ)
Slaven BERTOŠA,
Barban i mletački Loredani: život u pokretu, ljudi i događaji (Maja ĆUTIĆ GORUP)
Nevenko BARTULIN,
The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia: Origins and Theory (Lovro KRALJ)
Luca G. MANENTI,
Massoneria e irredentismo. Geografia dell’associazionismo patriottico in Italia tra Otto e Novecento
(Carla KONTA)
Projekt „Tragovi prošlosti vidljivi u sadašnjosti”, Ekonomska škola Mije Mirkovića Rijeka
(Ivana KOLIĆ, Katarina KRUŽIĆ, Dejan TROHA, Bruno VIGNJEVIĆ)
Treća medievistička znanstvena radionica u Rijeci (Lea HRLEC, Ivana JEROLIMOV, Elena SALAJ, Paola SAMARŽIJA, Matija VURUŠIĆ)
Upute budućim autorima
Guidelines for future submissions
Sadržaj
/ Contents
Proslov Prefazione Foreward
Vanni D’ALESSIO
Leo Weiczen Valiani and his Multilayered Identities: An Introduction
A. Znanstveni radovi / Scholarly articles:
Ivan JELIČIĆ
The Waizen Family and Young Leo Valiani in Fiume Guido FRANZINETTI
Leo Weiczen:
Communist, Democratic Communist, Revolutionary Democrat Marco BRESCIANI
The Search for a New Revolution:
Leo Valiani and the Legacy of “Giustizia e Libertà” Andrea RICCIARDI
Leo Valiani 1953-1956. Dalla speranza alla delusione
B. Dodatni i stručni tekstovi / Additional Writings and Contributions:
Ivan JELIČIĆ – Lea ČEČ
Katalog izložbe Od Lea Weiczena do Lea Valianija Il catalogo della mostra Da Leo Weiczen a Leo Valiani Ervin DUBROVIĆ
Intelektualci, fašisti i antifašisti Ilona FRIED
Leo Valiani and Arthur Koestler - A Friendship for Life. Letters Between 1942 and 1953
6 7 8 11 25 45 63 77 99 123 131 145 157 162 169 175 181 183 188 194 195
Proslov
Na Filozofskom fakultetu Sveučilišta u Rijeci održan je 2015. međunarodni znanstveni skup Od Lea Weiczena do Lea Valianija. Cilj je skupa bio predstaviti javnosti djelovanje intelektualca židovskoga podrijetla, europskih razmjera, rođenog i obrazovanog u Rijeci gdje se politički angažirao, a svoj antifašistički aktivizam nastavio je razvijati u talijanskim zatvorima i internaciji te u emigraciji u Francuskoj, Španjolskoj i Meksiku. Tijekom rata bio je među vođama pokreta otpora protiv fašizma u Italiji, a poslje rata član Ustavne skupštine Talijanske Republike, da bi potom nastavio rad kao plodan povjesničar i novinski komentator. Predsjednik Sandro Pertini dodijelio mu je status doživotnog senatora Talijanske Republike. Bio je i počasni predsjednik
Società di studi fiumani u Rimu.
Ideja o ovom znanstvenom skupu potaknuta je već 2014., a u realizaciji su sudjelovali Odsjek za povijest i Odsjek za talijanistiku uz podršku dviju uprava Filozofskoga fakulteta i Grada Rijeke. Usto skup je promoviran na manifestaciji Settimane della cultura italiana Talijanskog konzulata u Rijeci. U sklopu skupa predstavljena je i izložba neobjavljenih materijala o Valianiju/ Weiczenu, te o njegovoj obitelji kao članici židovske zajednice u Rijeci, kojeg je omogućio Državni arhiv Rijeka. Izložbu su postavili Ivan Jeličić i Lea Čeč, uz pomoć učenica Talijanske srednje škole u Rijeci (“Licea”), te je ona bila dostupna javnosti po završetku skupa u prostorima Filozofskog fakulteta.
Časopis za povijest Zapadne Hrvatske Odsjeka za povijest Filozofskoga
fakulteta u Rijeci objavljuje tekstove izabranih izlaganja sa skupa koji su prošli recenzentski postupak. U drugom dijelu publikacije predstavljeni su i dodatni, stručni radovi, uključujući katalog izložbe, kojima se zaokružuje i ostvaruje uvid u razne aspekte lika i djela Lea Weiczena/Valianija, od Fjumana i europskog intelektualca i revolucionara do proslavljenog austro-ugarskog povjesničara.
Predrag Šustar,
Dekan Filozofskog fakulteta u Rijeci od 2009. do 2015. godine. Ines Srdoč Konestra,
aktualna Dekanica Filozofskog fakulteta u Rijeci.
Prefazione
La Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia di Fiume ospitò nel 2015 il convegno scientifico internazionale Da Leo Weiczen a Leo Valiani. Si trattò di un simposio dedicato a un intellettuale di estrazione e di spessore europei, nato a Fiume e qui formatosi anche nel suo impegno rivoluzionario antifascista, proseguito nelle galere e nel confino fascisti e nell’emigrazione in Francia, Spagna e Messico. In guerra fu uno dei maggiori leader della Resistenza partigiana in Italia, quindi membro della Costituente della Repubblica italiana, e ritirato a vita privata prolifico storico e opinionista sulla stampa. Il Presidente Sandro Pertini lo nominò Senatore a vita della Repubblica italiana. Fu anche Presidente onorario della Società di studi fiumani a Roma.
L’iniziativa della conferenza partì nel 2014. Il Dipartimento di storia e il Dipartimento di italianistica si impegnarono ad organizzare l’evento, che ottenne il sostegno della presidenza uscente e della nuova presidenza della Facoltà, cui si associò la Città di Fiume. L’evento fu anche inserito nelle
Settimane della cultura italiana del Consolato italiano a Fiume. All’interno
del convegno fu presentata una mostra su Valiani/Weiczen e la sua famiglia inserita nella rete ebraica fiumana, con materiale inedito fornito dall’Archivio di Stato di Fiume. I pannelli della mostra, allestita da Ivan Jeličić e Lea Čeč con l’aiuto di alcune studentesse del “Liceo” italiano di Fiume (Scuola superiore
italiana di Fiume), rimasero in esibizione più di un mese nei locali della Facoltà.
Oggi la Facoltà di Filosofia pubblica un numero speciale della rivista del Dipartimento di storia (Časopis za povijest zapadne Hrvatske / West Croatian
History Journal), in cui alcuni degli interventi al convegno sono stati selezionati
e adattati per la pubblicazione e dopo essere stati valutati da revisori anonimi hanno trovato spazio come saggi scientifici nella prima sezione della rivista. Nella seconda sezione del numero speciale hanno trovato spazio il catalogo della mostra e altri interventi che contribuiscono a completare e arricchire i vari aspetti della figura di Leo Weiczen/Valiani, da fiumano a intellettuale europeo e revoluzionario, a storico di fama dell’Austro-Ungheria.
Predrag Šustar,
Preside della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia di Fiume dal 2009 al 2015. Ines Srdoč Konestra,
Foreward
In 2015 the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Rijeka hosted the international conference From Leo Weiczen to Leo Valiani. The aim of the conference was to present and discuss the work and life of an intellectual of European calibre, born and raised in Rijeka, where he started his antifascist activism. Weiczen/Valiani continued his revolutionary activism in the following years of internment and imprisonment in Italy, and as political émigré in France, Spain and Mexico. During World War II he became a prominent leader of the partisan movement in Italy, therefore a member of the Constituent Assembly of Italian Republic. Having abandoned his political career, he became a proficient historian and newspaper commentator. President Sandro Pertini proclaimed him senator for life of the Italian Republic. He was also honorary President of the Società di studi fiumani in Rome
The idea of this conference dates 2014. The Departments of History and Italian Studies of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences shared the organization of this conference, wholeheartedly supported by two faculty managements. The City of Rijeka also promoted this event, which was inserted by the Italian Consulate in the manifestation Weeks of Italian Culture in Rijeka. The conference hosted an exhibition on Leo Valiani/Weiczen and his family imbedded in the Rijeka Jewish network with documentation from the State Archive in Rijeka. The curators of the exhibition were Ivan Jeličić and Lea Čeč, who were helped by the students of the “Liceo” (Rijeka’s Italian high school). The exhibition was open to the public after the conference in the hall of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
This special issue of the journal of the Department of History (the
West Croatian History Journal) selected some of the papers of the conference,
modified by authors into scholarly articles and peer reviewed before being accepted. In the second part of this publication you will find some additional works, including the catalogue of the exhibition, which will hep the reader to get a more comprehensive picture of the various aspects of the life and work of Leo Weiczen/Valiani, from his “fiuman” environment, to his experiences as European intellectual and revolutionary, and as respected historian of Austria-Hungary.
Predrag Šustar,
Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science from 2009 to 2015. Ines Srdoč Konestra,
Leo Weiczen Valiani and his Multilayered Identities:
An Introduction
Vanni D’ALESSIO
University of Rijeka, Croatia University of Naples, Italy UDK: 929Valiani, L.
32-05Valiani, L.
This volume “Leo Weiczen Valiani: Fiuman, European, Revolutionary, Historian”, appears as a special thematic issue of the West Croatian History Journal. In September 2015 the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Rijeka hosted the international conference “From Leo Weiczen to Leo Valiani”, to present the life and activities of this prominent European intellectual originally from Rijeka for the first time to a Croatian audience and in a Croatian institution. Born in Habsburg Hungarian “Fiume”, Valiani spent the World War I years as a schoolchild in Budapest, was raised in a German-speaking family and in the Italian-speaking environment of Rijeka’s turbulent postwar. In Rijeka he became an antifascist subversive, and in World War II a leader in the Italian resistance movement, and subsequently member of Italian Constitutional Assembly. As a prolific historian and newspapers commentator, he was also appointed Senator for life. Our aim is to discuss this multifaceted prominent intellectual as Fiuman, European, Revolutionary, and Historian.
Keywords: Leo Weiczen/Valiani, Multilayered identities, Rijeka/ Fiume, Anti-fascism, Revolution.
Fiuman, European, Revolutionary, and Historian are the qualities of
Leo Weiczen Valiani we presented and examined at the conference From Leo
Weiczen to Leo Valiani and that was the basis for further discussion in the pages
of this volume. This edited volume, published as a special edition of the West Croatian History Journal, offers various kinds of contributions: in the first section you will find scholarly (double-blind peer reviewed) articles, of which three were developed from the selected presentations offered at the conference and one that is a completely original paper; in the second section you will find an outline of Rijeka’s interwar milieu, a commented paper on Valiani as historian of Austria-Hungary, a text with the correspondence between Valiani and the writer Arthur Koestler, and a reproduction of unreleased archival
documents on Leo Weiczen and his family in Rijeka. These documents, from the Rijeka State Archive were displayed at the special exhibition on Weiczen/ Valiani opened during the conference, and are here presented as a catalogue with a new commentary by the curators. This commentary includes some basic biographical information in Italian and in Croatian on Valiani, someone still unfamiliar to the present day inhabitants of his birthplace, Rijeka.
It is not always true that Nemo propheta in patria. Very often the people who accomplished great things far from home are sooner or later celebrated in the place from which they came. In Valiani’s case this has not quite happened yet, among other reasons because he became a prominent European political and intellectual figure outside Rijeka, although he had been already actively engaged in his hometown, and had been recognized as a prominent and dangerous political leader by the Italian Fascist authorities. Leo Weiczen was a socialist and then a communist antifascist in the late 1920s and early 1930s Rijeka, at that time part of the Italian state ruled by Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship. As a socialist he was arrested in Rijeka and confined to the island of Ponza, where he joined the Italian communist party, and resumed his political agitation in Rijeka where the police recognized in him the new leader of the local communists and again arrested him, sentencing him to more than twelve years of prison, a sentence later reduced to five years. An engaged journalist in the Spanish Civil War, he followed the destiny of other former fighters of the International Brigades in the French prison of Le Vernet. Later he had a leading role in the World War II Italian partisan fight: as a member of the leading insurrectional board of the Liberation Committee for Northern Italy (Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia), along with Sandro Pertini, Emilio Sereni and Luigi Longo, he formally launched the final uprising against the Nazi forces, and sentenced Mussolini to death. In this board, with socialist Pertini and communists Sereni and Longo, Valiani acted on behalf of the democratic and liberal-socialist Partito d’Azione, a party based on “strong ideas” rather than “on interests”, as often claimed by its adherents. In the Italian partisan fight he was no longer a communist, and therefore, in the immediate postwar, he did not fit into the Yugoslav communist narrative on the history of antifascism in Rijeka. Among those in the Italian speaking community who after the war were locally either celebrated as martyrs, as Mario Gennari, Corrado Illiasich or the Duiz brothers, or were recognized for their efforts against fascism, had been fighters or agitators during the war, along side the Yugoslav partisans. Those who had survived accepted and joined the Yugoslav socialist revolution. Valiani had chosen to commit himself to the Italian liberation and reconstruction, and to join the free democratic electoral competition and as a prominent member of the Partito d’Azione, he was elected to the Italian Constitutional Assembly.
In the eyes of the new rulers in Rijeka there was hardly any reason to recognize or establish contacts with a former communist of the long disbanded, and therefore unsuccessful, Italian party in town. Moreover Valiani, as a
member of the Italian constitutional Assembly, did not support the 1947 Peace Treaty and the annexation of Rijeka to Yugoslavia. In 1954, though, Valiani approved the Memorandum that settled the Italo-Yugoslav dispute and followed closely the events in Yugoslavia, establishing important contacts with the political and intellectual elite of that country. Valiani organized and edited the special issue on Yugoslavia for the Italian political magazine Il Ponte in 1955, with Yugoslav politicians and intellectuals, among them? Edvard Kardelj, Rodoljub Čolaković, Miloš Žanko, Đuro Lončarević, Jaša Davičo and Ivo Andrić, but this did not bring him closer to the Yugoslav Rijeka milieu.1 After leaving Rijeka for Italian prisons in 1931 he never returned to his
birthplace, and was never celebrated afterwards. In the late 1970s the Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti got recognized with a central square in town dedicated to him, and in the immediate postwar the local administration had named another square in honor of the Italian socialist martyr Giacomo Matteotti, though the former square had its name changed again in the post-socialist transition, and the latter square simply vanished with the erection of a new building, leaving no trace of Matteotti. Local Italian anti-fascists still appear in the names of some streets in Rijeka, but Valiani has not even received a plaque on his Rijeka address, in Pomerio 9.
Ignored in Rijeka, Valiani became a relevant personality in Italian culture and politics, in which he became engaged, albeit as a commentator and analyst and not as a consequence of a political career, after the disbandment of the Partito d’Azione. From the 1950s to the 1960s he wrote much on the history of socialist movements and ideology, on the Resistance, and on Austria-Hungary.2 He was further an authoritative, consistent, and critical
presence in the Italian printed press, and distinguished himself in the dark years of the 1970s terrorism, “defending the democracy”3 from the violent and
self-deluded wannabe sons of WW2 partisans. Sandro Pertini appointed him Senator for life in 1980, and for two decades he dynamically participated in the politics of the Italian Senate.
Although Valiani did not fit in the commemorative spaces of Yugoslav or post-Yugoslav Rijeka, he appeared in a 1970s collection of war memoirs by the Center of Historical Research (Centro di ricerche storiche), established in Istria by and for the Italian minority in Yugoslavia,4 and more recently in a
couple of texts in Croatian language, as Ivan Jeličić noted in the introduction
1 „La Jugoslava d’oggi”, Il Ponte - Rivista mensile di politica e letteratura, XI/8-9 (1955).
2 Among his many books of that period I mention just a few: Questioni di storia del socialismo, Torino: Einaudi, 1958; Dall’antifascismo alla Resistenza, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1959; Il partito socialista italiano nel
periodo della neutralità 1914-1915, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1963; La dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria, Milano:
Il Saggiatore, 1966.
3 Leo VALIANI, Sessant’anni di avventure e battaglie. Riflessioni e ricordi raccolti da Massimo Pini, Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 1983, 103.
4 Parlano i protagonisti, Memorie e documenti raccolti per una storia di Fiume nella Lotta popolare di
liberazione fino al 1943, Il „Battaglione Fiumano“ e il „Battaglione garibaldi“, (ed.) Lucifero MARTINI,
to the catalogue of the exhibition he prepared with Lea Čeč.5 Nevertheless,
Valiani is still basically unknown in his hometown, which was not merely his birthplace, as was the case for Ödön von Horváth or János Kádár. In Rijeka he finished his schooling, started his profession in a bank (which he revived after abandoning his political career), became politically aware and engaged in antifascist activities, and in this town he became an insurrectional leader. He did not forget Rijeka, or rather Fiume, and accepted with enthusiasm the honorary presidency of the Società di studi fiumani in Rome.6
To make up for the lack of recognition of this eminent figure in his hometown, the former Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka, Predrag Šustar, suggested we organize a conference in honor of Leo Valiani. From the start we already knew that some of his qualities and features were going to be emphasized and discussed, including his biographical connections to Rijeka, although we were cautious about the real possibilities of producing an original and fruitful discussion on this issue. This was accomplished thanks to the presence of Andrea Ricciardi - author of an important monography on Valiani’s early life and engagement until the beginning of World War II,7 but also thanks to the original research of
Ivan Jeličić, who placed Leo and the Weiczens in Rijeka’s Central European framework and networks. Jeličić collected and organized the archival material of Leo Weiczen and his family that was framed and exhibited by Lea Čeč, and appear here in the catalogue. To me, as an historian of the Adriatic and, at large, of the Central and Southern Eastern European areas, the conference was also a fantastic occasion to discuss an internationally acclaimed historian of the Austro-Hungary Empire.8 I have to thank primarily Laurence Cole, but
also Rok Stergar, Tamara Scheer and Guido Franzinetti for analyzing at the conference the work of Valiani as an historian. Cole’s presentation on Valiani’s book appears in this volume as well.
Other features of Weiczen - Valiani acquired a central place in the presentations and discussions at the conference, and I consider them highly relevant in depicting him, his European dimension and his revolutionary attitude. In preparing the conference, during the event, and eventually in gathering and discussing the material for this publication, Valiani revealed himself more and more as an intellectual of wide European culture and connections. Jelčić had already placed Valiani’s Rijeka in a larger Central European framework. Marco Bresciani, Guido Franzinetti, and Ilona Fried
5 See Ivan JELIČIĆ – Lea ČEČ, “Katalog izložbe Od Lea Weiczena do Lea Valianija, Catalogo della mostra da
Leo weiczen a Leo valiani” (in this volume) for a detailed account on these publications and for an introduction
to Valiani in Croatian and Italian languages.
6 For an interestig interview with Valiani and on his stances and views on Rijeka, especially in the post-war transitions after World War I and World War II, see Guglielmo SALOTTI, “L’esodo dall’Istria e dalla Dalmazia quarant’anni dopo, A colloquio con Leo Valiani”, Tempo Presente, 82-83 (1987), 53-62.
7 Andrea RICCIARDI, Leo Valiani. Gli anni della formazione. Tra socialismo, comunismo e rivoluzione
democratica, Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2007.
8 The aforementioned book was translated into English as Leo VALIANI, The end of Austria-Hungary, New York: Knopf, 1973 [c1972].
pushed the discussion into a wider European context, raising ideological issues and problems, reviving the interwar situations and places, but also the actors around Valiani. Among the latter there is primarily Arthur Koestler, whose correspondence with his “Mario” from the novel Scum of the Earth is presented here in this volume by Fried, who had met and interviewed Valiani on several occasions.9
In this volume Bresciani and Franzinetti focus on the European Valiani, émigré and journalist between Spain and France, and on his personal and ideological journey from communism to democratic revolution and liberal socialism. Both Bresciani and Franzinetti discuss his abandonment of the communist camp. The refusal of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was indeed a crucial element in this. Franzinetti stresses the importance that played in Valiani’s ideological and political evolution the relationship he established with Arthur Koestler in the French prison of Le Vernet. Valiani was expelled from the Italian communist party while, still in the French prison, he condemned not only the USSR’s international, but also the domestic policies and the repression. Afterwards he gained again some respect by the four thousand imprisoned communists by not seeking liberation, which he could have, had he made public his condemnation or the expulsion from the party.10 Valiani’s
political engagement was consistent. After prison he fought fascism until the end of the war and he further pursued his research for a new democratic and liberal way for socialism. In 1956 he eventually wrote to Gaetano Salvenini: “my ‘ideology’ remains that of liberal socialism. I acquired gradually, painstakingly”,as quoted in this volume by Ricciardi,11 whose article in this
volume focuses on a period that appears to be the final stage of his intellectual evolution and journey as a revolutionary.
After his return to Italy he was still connected to a large European and global framework, but his interests and motivations became predominantly directed towards the Italian case and cause. The question of the International revolution in the European dimension was still an important question to debate, but the Italian problems often surfaced in these discussions, as is shown in the letters that Valiani exchanged with Franco Venturi and that Ricciardi presents and analyzes here. Ricciardi focuses on the years from 1953 to 1956, i.e. from the death of Stalin to the Hungarian crisis and its consequences, discussing what revolution meant to Valiani in that precise moment in European history and in his individual intellectual stance and trajectory. This was the period in which the USSR’s revolutionary drive appeared eventually at its end, also in the eyes of large sectors of the European left which had once supported international communism.
9 Ilona FRIED, Colloqui milanesi con il senatore Leo Valiani (1993-1997), Udine: Designgraf-Artestampa, 1999. Fried published also a monograph on Rijeka (Emlékek városa: Fiume, Budapest: Ponte Alapítvány, 2001), translated into Italian as Fiume città della memoria, 1868-1945, Udine: Del Bianco, 2005.
10 VALIANI, Sessant’anni di avventure e battaglie, 62-63.
11 “La mia ‘ideologia’ rimane quella del socialismo liberale. L’ho acquisita gradualmente, faticosamente”. Andrea RICCIARDI, Leo Valiani 1953-1956. Dalla speranza alla delusione (in this volume).
From the end of 1943 Valiani had made his home in Italy, was granted Italian citizenship and maybe also for practical reasons Italianized his surname from Weiczen to Valiani as his sister had already done many years before. Valiani’s engagement in Italy and his political stances in the Italian debates are beyond the scope of this volume, as they are also far from the usual angle of purview of our journal. The result is that the book enhances his broad views on the European scale and focuses on his interest in and concerns for, but also personal commitment to, a revolutionary transformation of society. The discussion on his European identity, network and perspective, of his revolutionary attitudes, and of his contribution as historian, all explain the title of this volume. Last but not least, there is the issue of Rijeka, for us a particularly relevant one that was also discussed during and after the conferences and that deserves to be elaborated on, as the role of Rijeka for Waiczen/Valiani was more than simply a biographical data point. Valiani, who lived very close to the Governor’s palace, from where D’Annunzio made famous speeches, said that as a child he was incredibly moved and impressed by the orator. Maybe he was also positively impressed by his radicalism. Later he started to develop his antifascism witnessing the fascists’ violent behavior in town and the putsch against the elected government of Zanella, and this was indeed a crucial formative experience for Weiczen’s political stance?, but also for his readiness to act according to what he believed in. In which other ways was Rijeka important for him? And in what sense was Weiczen and/or Valiani a “Fiuman”?
Fiumano and Riječanin are not mere words that simply express in two
different languages people’s belonging to the city of Rijeka. The reason for this, for a start, is that already Fiume and Rijeka did not always refer to exactly the same place. Rijeka and Fiume could be concretely identified with one another after the 1948 unification of the city. As Tito solemnly announced right after the Peace Treaty that handed Rijeka to Yugoslavia, the “artificial border” had finally disappeared. His words are in evidence on the stone plaque on Titov
Trg, Tito’s square, which physically and symbolically unites the two banks
of the river in place of the former Italo-Yugoslav border. Tito’s words were pronounced at the time when the Croatian Communist Party was effectively recognizing and promoting Italian language and culture in town, along with the Croatian language.12 Though, the plaque was written only in Croatian
language. The reunification was not between Croatian Sušak and Italian, mixed or predominantly Italian “Fiume”, but between two sides of a Croatian city. From this perspective, generally shared by Yugoslavs and Croats before
12 On these aspects see the research by Andrea ROKNIĆ BEŽANIĆ, “Rijeka od oslobođenja 1945. do Pariškog mirovnog ugovora 1947. godine”, doktorska disertacija, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, 2012.; and the article by Marco ABRAM “Integrating Rijeka into Socialist Yugoslavia: the Politics of National Identity and the New City’s Image, 1947-1955”, Nationality Papers (in press). See also: Antonella ERCOLANI, Da Fiume a Rijeka.
Profilo storico-politico dal 1918 al 1947, Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2009, 289-358; Vinko ANTIĆ, Zdenko
BEKER et al., Povijest Rijeke, Rijeka: Skupština općina Rijeka – Izdavački centar Rijeka, 1988, 395-403, 431, 433, 446-448; Luciano GIURICIN e Giacomo SCOTTI, “Una storia tormentata (1946-1991)”, in Italiani a Fiume. Nel
Sessantesimo del Circolo Italiano di Cultura / Comunità degli Italiani, 1946-2006, Fiume: EDIT, 2006, 15-102.
and after Tito, Rijeka was always an urban area in which both sides of the river constituted a single Croatian town. For the local population that identified “Fiume” as an Italian town, and Leo Weiczen/Valiani was one of them, Sušak was not Rijeka. Moreover, precisely because Rijeka was a highly contested city, with Croatian and Italian historians still challenging the Other’s national perception and mental map of the city, the idea of Valiani as Riječanin or, to give an example, Drago Gervais as Fiumano, sounds odd and misplaced, as much as national historiographies have inclined to categorize Budweisers into Czech or Germans.13
Leo Valiani did not speak much of Leo Weiczen and of Rijeka. We know that he maintained his Hungarian citizenship while in Rijeka and when he was arrested. After his Spanish, French and Mexican emigration he returned to Italy as an Italian, and already in 1944 started to use his new surname Valiani, following the example of his sister, who already had Italianized her surname.14 His Italianness was also a matter of cultural, social and political
immersion in the new framework, and he cultivated it in the following years, but not as a crucial aspect of his personality, beliefs, and identity, which were connected to his ideological positions. He felt like an Italian from Rijeka, but specific research should be dedicated to discussing his fiumanità, in many terms, as this term in itself connotes different things in different periods and social circumstances. Moreover, the number of meanings attached to the categories of Fiumano and Riječanin are so invasive, as much as the term Istrian seems to be now imbedded with hybridity, although it is not so easy to find multinational Istrian historical figures, as Dominique Reill managed to find them in Dalmatia, at least in the mid 19th century.15 Classifications
are peculiar aspects of historical narrations, as much as generalizations are. Not only phenomena to be linked in social, economic, political and cultural processes are forced into categories by historians, but also human beings. In multilingual areas the classification of human beings into national categories meant that in historical narrations ethnicities often prevailed, oversimplifying the multifold human identities. This is a reason for the huge success of Tahra Zara’s and Pieter Judson’s literature on national indifference.16 Valiani
13 On Germans and Czechs in Bohemia, see Jeremy KING, Budweiseirs into Czechs: A Local History of
Bohemian Politics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. On contested cities in Europe see Anthony C.
HEPBURN, Contested Cities in the Modern West, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan 2004; James ANDERSON, “From Empires to Ethno-National Conflicts: A Framework for Studying Divided Cities in Contested States”,
Divided Cities, Contested States Working Paper, 1 (2008); Vanni D’ALESSIO, “Divided and Contested Cities in
Modern European History. The Example of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina”, in Beyond the Balkans: Towards an
Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe, (ed.) Sabine RUTAR, Münster: LIT Verlag, 2013.
14 On this see the article in this volume by Ivan JELIČIĆ, The Waizen Family and Young Leo Valiani in Fiume. 15 Dominique REILL, Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg
Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.
16 On national indifference see: Tara ZAHRA, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis.” Slavic Review 69, 1 (April 1, 2010), 93–119. Pieter M. JUDSON, Guardians of the Nation:
Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 2006; Tara
ZAHRA, Kidnapped Souls. National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands,
1900-1948, Ithaca: Conell University Press, 2008. See also James E. BJORK, Neither German nor Pole Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central European Borderland. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008.
reaffirmation of his italianità is clear, but it seems that for many years this element was not as relevant as other aspects he cultivated.
In the discussion about the Italian character of the city, Valiani was eloquent. When he did not vote in favor of the 1947 Peace Treaty at the Italian Constitutional Assembly, he knew that Rijeka was bound to stay in Yugoslavia and that vote would not change much.17 In his 1983 memoirs
Valiani stressed that “the population of Rijeka (“Fiume”) was in great majority of Italian mother tongue: there was a Croatian minority, but also German was spoken because we were in the Mitteleuropean area”.18 Valiani was evidently
speaking about the historical Fiume, annexed by Italy in 1924, and of the historical Hungarian Corpus Separatum. In fact, after World War Two Rijeka became a single unit not only with Sušak, but also with the parts of Zamet which had been previously in the Yugoslav state: a much larger city with a much larger Croatian component, let aside the fact that Italians had already started to flee the old city and Croats had already started to populate it. The perceptions of the city as Croatian or Italian would still be at the center of disputed narratives. The idea to dub Valiani as Fiuman depends in part on the fact that Rijeka, or the Valiani’s old town of Fiume, appears here in the works by Jeličić and by Ervin Dubrović, but also serves as a provocative category, counter balanced by the epithet “European”. Valiani, born Weiczen son of German speaking Hungarian Jew coming from Bosnia, did not share any apparent elements of Croatian identity and culture, as many other Fiumani did, and today necessarily do. He was definitely not simply an “Italian” from Fiume, or being Fiumano should be understood in many more complex and multifaceted ways. His multilayered identifications are also due to his political and cultural orientations in which religion played a negative role and some languages were eventually abandoned or less cultivated. Nevertheless, there is no definitive or even “real” identity that we historians are bound to uncover. There are continuities in people’s lives, belongings and personal approaches, but circumstances change. Valiani had German as his mother tongue and this was the language used in his family, but he also spoke Italian to his sisters, and remained proficient in Hungarian, at least for the first part of his life. He went to Hungarian elementary schools and after he was expelled from Rijeka’s local high school for openly defending the legitimate Head of the Free State of Rijeka (Stato libero di Fiume) Riccardo Zanella, victim of a pro-Italian Fascist putsch in 1922, he got his diploma from the local Hungarian High School
17 See on this his speach at the Constitutional Assembly (Leo VALIANI, Discorsi parlamentari, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005, 40, 61), but also the above mentioned 1987 interview: SALOTTI, “L’esodo dall’Istria e dalla Dalmazia quarant’anni dopo, A colloquio con Leo Valiani”, 57. See also the 1990 interview of Amleto Ballarini with Valiani for the journal Fiume. Rivista di studi fiumani, 20 (1990), more recently published as “Il Trattato di pace del 1947 e la questione adriatica nella testimonianza di Leo Valiani. Intervista a Leo Valiani”, in Giovanni STELLI, La memoria che vive. Fiume, interviste e testimonianze, Roma: Società di Studi Fiumani, 2008, 35-54.
18 “La popolazione di Fiume era in grande maggioranza di madrelingua italiana: c’era una minoranza croata, ma si parlava anche il tedesco perché eravamo nell’area mitteleuropea”. VALIANI, Sessant’anni di
avventure e battaglie, 15.
when he was eighteen years old. Young Leo Weiczen was a socialist from a very young age and never professed any religion, but his family was Jewish, and his mother, as Ivan Jeličić illustrates in this volume, kept her connections to the the rich Jewish network of interwar Rijeka alive. Antonello Venturi has stressed in an interview to Ricciardi, that Valiani was an atheist and his “Jewish condition” was not a “central component of his culture”, but he believes that it influenced his life and that his internationalism was also connected to his Austro-Hungarian origins.19
Austria-Hungary is brought back into the picture, and not only for historical interest. Valiani was a European coming from that mixed Middle Europe spanning from Germany to Russia and also his polyglotism, although remarkable, was not so special in that area. Already in Rijeka Leo Weiczen spoke German, Italian, Hungarian and French, to which he added Spanish and English in emigration, and could read Russian “Serbo-Croatian”.20 On
his obituary the “Economist” wrote: “Leo Valiani was an old European, using the term in a respectful and slightly awed sense”.21 Leo Valiani died in 1999
and was of another century, specifically in the combination of a consistent and radical political engagement and his wide-open Central European cultural background, enriched by multilingual skills and attitude.
Laurence Cole, in his precious overview and discussion on Valiani’s “lucid, objective evaluation” of the collapse of Austria-Hungary, a “classic of the scholarly literature on the Habsburg Monarchy”, stresses also its “international” form, attitude and perspective, transcending the national historical narratives and borders.22
In conclusion, I have to express my gratitude to many people for their contributions and help in the conference and/or in this volume. I thank the participants of the conference, hence the anonymous reviewers and the authors of this volume. Among the members of the International Board I have thank in particular Guido Franzinetti for supporting this project from the very beginning with his intellectual curiosity and engagement. My gratitude goes also to the other members who have followed us. I thank Ivan Jeličić for the enthusiasm he devoted to his research, exhibition and work with the students
19 Antonello Venturi, historian and son of Valiani’s longtime friend, political patner, and historian Franco Venturi, said to Ricciardi that “la condizione di ebreo per Valiani non era una variabile centrale della sua cultura, era ateo. Tuttavia, pensando per esempio a sua madre, credo che una qualche influenza sulla sua formazione l’abbia avuta. Quanto al rapporto tra internazionalismo socialista ed ebraismo, in risposta al nazionalismo aggressivo, antisemita e razzista, bisogna stare attenti. Gli ebrei italiani, fino al 1938, erano soprattutto assimilazionisti, non certo sionisti. Di fronte al fascismo, molti sono morti o sono emigrati senza diventare socialisti o internazionalisti. Penso che l’internazionalismo di Valiani fosse figlio soprattutto dell’Impero austro-ungarico da cui egli proveniva”, RICCIARDI, Leo Valiani. Gli anni della formazione, 18n. 20 L’utopia necessaria. Leo Valiani a cento anni dalla nascita, a cura di Corrado SCIBILIA, Annali della Fondazione Ugo La Malfa, Roma: Gangemi Editore, 2012, 128; VALIANI, Sessant’anni di avventure e
battaglie, 41-42.
21 “Leo Valiani, a maker of modern Italy, died on September 18th, aged 90”, The Economist (Oct 2nd, 1999), http://www.economist.com/node/245285 (30.11.2016).
22 Laurence COLE, Leo Valiani’s La Dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria in Historiographical Context (in this volume).
of the city high school in Italian language, known as Liceo, and Lea Čeč for her artwork for both the exhibition and this publication. Ivan and Lea were both pupils of the Italian high school, whose Director Michele Scalembra, and the professors Marko Zotić and Dario Ban I also thank for their collaboration. Apart from Marko Zotić, who is from Poreč, all the others are “Fiumani”, and I can assure you that the multilayered complexity of their identification patterns is not banally due to romance or Slavic first names or second names, but it goes well beyond it. Another former pupil of that school is Carla Konta, to whom goes my gratitude for the great help in the organization of the conference. I also thank Gianna Mazzeri Sanković, Luka Skansi, Fracesca Rolandi and Lorella Radin for their contribution to the conference, Predrag Šustar for coming up with the idea and Ines Srdoč Konestra for supporting it as the new Dean.
I thank Mila Orlić and Kosana Jovanović for their precious work for the journal and for welcoming the idea of a special issue on Leo Weiczen Valiani. Curiously, this may be the last number of the journal with this title. We are in West Croatia but our interest and scope reflect the wider Adriatic connection of Mitteleuropa, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. The journal will not be discontinued, but it is a good sign that a volume dedicated to Leo Weiczen Valiani, a native German speaker, a liberal socialist secularized Jew and son of Central Europe, of Hungarian origin and citizenship, eventually of Italian nationality, umgangssprache and belonging, appears in the West Croatian History Journal, established and still alive as Časopis za povijest Zapadne Hrvatske.
Fiuman, European, Revolutionary, Historian:
ZNANSTVENI RADOVI /
SCHOLARLY ARTICLES
The Waizen Family and Young Leo Valiani in Fiume
1 Ivan JELIČIĆ University of Trieste Italy UDK 929.52Weiczen(497.5Rijeka)“192“ 323.15(497.5Rijeka=411.16)“192“ 32-05Valiani, L.Izvorni znanstveni rad / Original scientific paper Primljeno / Received: 21. 02. 2016.
Prihvaćeno /Accepted: 18. 05. 2016.
This paper analyses the integration of the Waizen family in Austro-Hungarian Fiume (Rijeka) and the political formation and national affiliation of young Leo Valiani until his first arrest in 1928. The local Jewish community and its position in the Fiuman multilinguistic context is still a relatively unresearched topic. Despite that, it seems that many Jews adopted the Italian national identity. Therefore, the Waizen family offers an interesting case study for an outline of the problem of Jewish integration into multilingual urban communities characterized by Italian speaking dominance. Additionally, through the family’s social network mentioned by Valiani himself, the paper seeks to address the process by which Leo Waizen gradually became the Italian antifascist Valiani. The research is based on the documentation regarding Leo Valiani and his family that can be found in the State Archive of Rijeka.
Keywords: Leo Valiani, Leo Waizen/Weiczen, Fiume/Rijeka, Austria-Hungary, Jewish community, National identity.
1 In the paper, I am referring to Leo Waizen/Weiczen as Valiani since he is better known with this name. For the other members of the family, I am using the form Waizen instead of Weiczen, as Waizen was chronologically the first form of their surname that the author traced in public documents, i.e. Clemente LOUVIER (compilata da), Guida di Fiume, Stabilimento Tipo-litografico Emidio Mohovich, Fiume, 1902, 140. The individual names are used in the Italian form, as they were registered as such by the authorities, however with this decision I am not implying any inherent national affiliation for the Waizens. A first draft of this article was presented at the International Conference “Da Leo Valiani a Leo Weiczen”, Rijeka, 29 September 2015. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that contributed to improving the paper.
Introduction
Leo Valiani (Fiume, 1909 - Milano, 1999) is mostly known as an Italian politician, historian and journalist, whose studies on Socialism and, above all, the Habsburg Empire, have been considered influential in Italy as well as abroad. Valiani’s La dissoluzione dell’Austria Ungheria, first published in 1966, was defined as a masterful study on the breakup of the Monarchy, valued for the many sources used2, from a cosmopolitan point of view3, and subsequently
translated into English in 1973 as The End of Austria Hungary. Despite his interest in the Habsburg Monarchy, Valiani never wrote comprehensively about Fiume. He considered relevant mentioning recollections of his hometown only in the context of specific historical events.4 Additionally, Valiani was
particularly discreet about his private life and his family.5 As a consequence,
research regarding the Waizen family in Fiume is, to say the least, a tricky task. Undoubtedly, being born in the only Hungarian port, a territory detached from Croatia-Slavonia, where the language of the civic institutions was Italian, and being of Jewish parents who spoke mainly German, was a favourable circumstance for Valiani in order to understand first-hand the complexity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and to become one day historian of the Dual Monarchy. In addition, his large family network, spread among various Central European and East European cities, in particular his well known socialist uncle, also contributed to the cultural and political formation of young Leo.6
In spite of this large multicultural environment and his description of Fiume as part of the Hungarian Mitteleuropa, a type of Central Europe different from Austria, Valiani strongly emphasized the Italian ethnic character of the city.7 Moreover, as member of the Italian Constituent Assembly, Valiani voted
against the Peace Treaty that ceded his hometown to Yugoslavia. Valiani’s antifascist engagement, his shift from socialist sympathies to communist militancy, and subsequently his involvement in the non-communist Italian
2 William A. JENKS (book review), “La dissoluzione dell’Austria Ungheria”. By Leo Valiani, The American
Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 4, July (1967), 1434-1435; Bernard MICHEL, “Le démembrement de
l’Autriche-Hongrie”, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 25e Année, No. 6, Novembre-Décembre (1970), 1625-1626; and Gale STOKES (book review), “The End of Austria-Hungary. By Leo Valiani and America, Italy and the birth of Yugoslavia (1917-1919). By Dragan Živojinović”, Slavic Review, Vol. 33, No.3, September (1974), 592-593. 3 Angelo ARA (book review), “Leo Valiani, La dissoluzione dell’Austria Ungheria”, Slavic Review, Vol. 26, No. 3, September (1967), 488-489.
4 Angelo ARA, “Leo Valiani, uomo e storico della Mitteleuropa”, in Fra Nazione e Impero. Trieste, gli
Asburgo, la Mitteleuropa, Milano: Garzanti, 2009a, 554.
5 Andrea RICCIARDI, Leo Valiani. Gli anni della formazione. Tra socialismo, comunismo e rivoluzione
democratica, Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2007, 36.
6 Wilhelm Ippen, Valiani’s uncle on his mother’s side, member of the socialist party, lived in Czernowitz, Bukovina, present day Ukraine, while an unnamed relative from the Herzl’s side, a physician, lived in Budapest. Though different addresses given to the police by Valiani, quoted by Ricciardi, resulted false, it is still reasonable to believe that many family members lived in territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. A. RICCIARDI, Leo Valiani, 37; 39-40; 145-146 and 153-154.
7 Leo VALIANI, “Prefazione”, in In cattività babilonese. Avventure e disavventure in tempo di guerra di un
giovane giuliano ebreo e fiumano per giunta, Paolo SANTARCANGELI (ed.), Vago di Lavagno: Del Bianco
Editore,1987, 10-11.
left-oriented movement Giustizia e Libertà8 and Partito d’Azione, his being
one of the main figures of the Italian Resistance, are perhaps the best known aspects of his political biography.9 Although Valiani’s path towards an Italian
political and national affiliation, as Ricciardi showed, was not an obvious decision10, the role of Fiume in forming his national affiliation and political
figure is still open for discussion. Therefore, the starting point of this essay will be setting the Waizen family in the context of the late XIX and the early XX century Fiume. Leo Valiani’s life will be followed until 1928, the year of his first arrest and the consecutive internments by fascist authorities, as afterwards his social life was primarily influenced by political militancy.11
The Waizens in Fiume
The modest trader Oser Wolf, or Adolfo, Waizen, born in 1874 in Jánosd, Transylvania, today Ianoşda (Romania), arrived in Fiume in 1891. Though born in Jánosd, Adolfo was legally domiciled in Nagyberezna (today Velykyi Bereznyi, Вели́кий Бере́зний, Ukraine), at that time a small town in the North of the Kingdom of Hungary, bordering with Galicia, a province of the Austrian half of the Monarchy.12 Upon his arrival in Fiume, Adolfo was
aided by other members of the Waizen family who also reached the Adriatic coast seeking potential earnings from trade business. As a result, by 1892, a Waizen brothers firm was registered in Fiume, and the owners were Jacques and Samuele Waizen, brothers of Adolfo.13 The firm traded with flour and
spirits, while Jacques (Jača) additionally registered a firm in Sušak that dealt in liqueurs, which went bankrupt in 1898.14 However, thanks to the family
support, Adolfo settled in Fiume, and in 1906 registered his own company, which mainly dealt with trading flour.15 The connection between flour and
Fiume was not accidental, as in this period flour was one of the two main goods exported from Hungary through the small port-city.16 More important
was the presence of a network to rely on. As shown by Anna Millo in her study on the Jewish Vivante family in Trieste, also for the Waizens, traders
8 On this, see the articles by G. FRANZINETTI and M. BRESCIANI published on this special issue of the
West Croatian History Journal.
9 RICCIARDI, Leo Valiani, 7-32.
10 RICCIARDI, Leo Valiani, 55-79.
11 RICCIARDI, Leo Valiani, 113-130.
12 Državni Arhiv u Rijeci (further: DARi)-22, Magistrato Civico di Fiume, L25/1920, Domanda di Adolfo Weiczen per l’accettazione nel nesso comunale.
13 Clemente LOUVIER (ed.), Guida di Fiume, Stabilimento Tipo-litografico Emidio Mohovich, Fiume, 1902, 140. Jacques was domiciled in Fiume, Samuele in Budapest. We do not have further information on Jacques. The names of Samuele’s parents match with those of Adolfo: Mose and Rebecca, born Jakobovich. DARi-536, Anagrafska zbirka, Scheda personale, Popolazione precaria, Weitzen Samuele.
14 Irvin LUKEŽIĆ, “Židovi na Sušaku”, Sušačka revija, broj 26/27 (1999), 113.
15 DARi-179, Camera di industria e commercio, Libro 53, Registro delle ditte protocollate presso il R. Tribunale dal 1876-1921, Lettera W, 43.
of modest origins, the family network17 had a crucial role in establishing a
successful business. Especially in a new environment, family and community ties were fundamental networks for a trader.18
Leo’s mother, Margherita Geller, born in Brčko, Bosnia and Herzegovina, also part of the Habsburg Empire, joined her husband in Fiume in 1906. Shortly after, the family was enlarged by the birth of their first child Selma in 1907, followed by Leo in 1909, and Clara, born in Budapest in 1914. Leo’s grandfather was a Bank director19 and the Ippen family, relatives on the
mother’s side, were wealthy traders.20 This suggests the possibility that their
marriage was, to some extent, a strategy for business advancement.21
The Waizen family, like other families of traders, settled permanently in Fiume at the end of the XIX century, when the city was still a corpus separatum of the Kingdom of Hungary. According to the census data, between 1890 and 1910, an increase in the population from 29.494 to 49.806 individuals had been registered. These numbers, without taking into consideration the nearby development of Sušak, confirm the strong demographic growth the city was experiencing due to immigration.22 According to the Hungarian
census, which collected data on the residents’ mother tongue23, in 1910 almost
half of the population had Italian as their mother tongue; one fourth spoke Croatian, while the Hungarian-speaking community rose to form 13% of the population.24 Italian was the dominant language in the public sphere, and
its position in the local government was not challenged by the Hungarian authorities until 1896, a year which is generally considered a landmark in the relationship between Budapest and the local élite by the local historians. The rise of the Autonomist movement in Fiume, produced primarily by the new politics of centralization of the prime minister Bánffy, (rein)forced the national tensions between groups. However, in terms of substantial changes, until the outbreak of the First World War, the Italian language maintained its privileged status in local administration and society.25
17 A social network is a network of ties between an individual or individuals, not necessarily knowing each other, that interact or could interact. See Fortunata PISELLI, “Reti sociali e communicative” in ID, Reti.
L’analisi di network nelle scienze sociali, Roma: Donzelli editore, 1995, XIII.
18 Anna MILLO, Storia di una borghesia. La famiglia Vivante a Trieste dall’emporio alla guerra mondiale, Libreria Editrice Goriziana, 1998, 28 and 30. The noticeable difference between Trieste and Fiume is the period when the economic development occurred. Consequently, Waizen’s enterprise took place almost a century after that of the Vivante family. 19 “Leo Valiani”, in Stefano JESURUM, Essere ebrei in Italia, Milano: Longanesi,1987, 40.
20 RICCIARDI, Leo Valiani, 40.
21 MILLO, Storia di una borghesia, 32-42.
22 Povijest Rijeke, 233.
23 On the use of the term, which had a much broader sense, see Pieter M. JUDSON, The Habsburg Empire, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Belknap Press, 2016, 309-310.
24 For the distribution of population per mother tongue in 1910, see “1. A fontosabb demografiai adatok községenkint,” category: Anynanyelv for Fiume város és kerülete, in A Magyar Szent Korona Országainák 1910
évi Népszámlálása, 42 kötet, Budapest, 1912, 459.
25 The best accounts on that period are two still unpublished PhD thesis: Ljubinka KARPOWICZ, “Riječki corpus separaum 1868-1924”, PhD theses, Univerza Edvarda Kardelja u Ljubljani, Fakulteta za sociologijo, politične vede in novinarstvo, Ljubljana, 1986, and William, KLINGER, “Negotiating the Nation. Fiume: From Autonomism to State Making (1848-1924)”, PhD thesis, European University Institute, Department of History and Civilizations, Fiesole, 2007.
The Jewish community, estimated exclusively by religious affiliation, also increased consistently during the last fifty years of Hungarian rule. According to the census of 1890, there were 489 Jews in Fiume, and in 1910 the number increased to 1,696. This represents a huge increase, as in 1880 there were only 89 Jews in town.26 In 1890, 54.19% of individuals of Mosaic
faith declared Hungarian as their mother tongue, 20,65% German, 19,42% Italian and/or other languages, and 4,7% Croatian.27 In 1900, the number
of Jews whose mother tongue was Hungarian reached approximately 63%28,
stabilizing to 62% ten years later.29 Hence, the statistics suggest that the Jewish
population was for the most part integrated into the Hungarian speaking community. Therefore, the Jewish population adopted partially or entirely the cultural patterns and values of the Hungarians.30 As Rina Brumini recently
observed, we lack a study on the cultural dynamics of the Fiume Jewish population during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and, without doubt, one of the main drawbacks is the absence of the community archive, which was destroyed during the Second World War.31 The few remaining studies on the
Jews in Fiume are concentrated on the community during the two World wars, on the implementation of the Racial laws, and on the tragedy of the Holocaust.32 Certainly the observations of Paolo Santarcangeli33, born Pál
Schweitzer and, like Valiani, a Fiuman of Jewish origins, are worth quoting:
26 For the number of Jews in Fiume from 1869 to 1890, see “6. A jelenlevő népesség hitfelekezete szerint 1869-től 1890-ig. - Popolazione presente secondo religioni, dal 1869 al 1890.”, in Statisztikai adatok. Fiume városáról
és forgalmáról / Dati statistici relativi alla città di Fiume ed al suo movimento commerciale e marittimo, Az
Athenaeum Irodalmi és Nyomdai Részvénytársulat könyvnyomdája, Budapest, 1901, 4. For their number in 1910, see A Magyar Szent Korona Országainák 1910 évi Népszámlálása, 61 kötet, Budapest, 1916, 165. 27 Statisztikai adatok. Fiume városáról és forgalmáról, 4. The other languages in the list were Slovak, Romanian, Ruthenian, and Serbian, which all together reached 1%. Italian was specified separately, however the Italian language data was merged with others, i.e. the remaining unmentioned languages. However, the quoted data, due to the specific conditions of Fiume, represents mostly, if not exclusively, the Italian speakers. Italian was not mentioned as a category in the classification of the population by religion in the two following publications. 28 A Magyar Szent Korona Országainak 1900. évi, Népszámlálása, 42 Kötet, Budapest, 1907, 236; 355; 359; 375 and 383. In total there were 737 Jews of Hungarian mother tongue from 1172 people of Mosaic faith in Fiume. The distribution of the other languages was the following German 271 (23,12%), Others (9,64%) and Croatian (3,24%). For the lacking percentage and the meaning of other languages see the above footnote. 29 A Magyar Szent Korona Országainák 1910 évi Népszámlálása, 61 kötet, Budapest, 1916, 165; 249; 253; 269 and 277. In 1910 there were 1045 Jews of Hungarian mother tongue, while the total number of the population of Mosaic faith in 1910 was 1.696. The distribution of the other languages was the following: German 375 (22,11%), Others 197 (11,61%) and Croatian (4,54%). For the explanation of the categories see footnote 29. 30 On the integration of the Hungarian Jews, and the definition of the term, see András KOVÁCS, “Jewish Assimilation and Jewish Politics in Modern Hungary”, in Jewish Studies at the Central European University, Vol. 1 (1996-1999), available online (http://web.ceu.hu/jewishstudies/pdf/01_kovacs.pdf, last visited on 18.10.2016). 31 Rina BRUMINI, La comunità ebraica di Fiume, Trieste: La Mongolfiera, 2015, 40 and 46.
32 Teodoro MORGANI, Ebrei di Fiume e Abbazia (1441-1945), Roma: Carucci editore, 1979; Silvia BON, Le
comunità ebraiche della provincia italiana del Carnaro: Fiume e Abbazia, 1924-1945, Roma: Società di Studi
Fiumani, 2004; Federico FALK, Le comunità israelitiche di Fiume e Abbazia tra le due guerre mondiale: gli ebrei
residenti nella provincia del Carnaro negli anni 1915-1945, Roma: Litos, 2012 also available online: http://www.
bh.org.il/jewish-spotlight/fiume/ (last accessed on November 16, 2016); Sanja SIMPER, Od emancipacije do
holokausta: Židovi u Rijeci i Opatiji, 1867-1945, Rijeka: Muzej grada Rijeke, 2013.
33 On Santarcangeli see Ornella D’ORAZIO, “Paolo Santarcangeli”, Fiume, Anno XX, N.1, gennaio-giugno (2000), 122-126 and Martina SANKOVIĆ, “Le immagini perdute dello scrittore fiumano Paolo Santarcangeli (1909-1995)”, Tesi di laurea triennale in discipline letterarie, archelogiche e storico-artistiche, Dipartimento di Studi umanistici, Università degli Studi di Trieste, 2014.
the choice was easier, since the two ruling groups, the Italian at the local level, and the Hungarian at the State level, were not intrinsically rivals, though approaching the World War the leaders of the national groups41 sought to
increase the awareness of the need to embrace an exclusive cultural-linguistic affiliation. The Jewish population developed, as Rozenblit’s study reveals for Cisleithania, a tripartite identity: politically loyal to the State, affiliated with the major culture of the region they were living in, and still preserving a sense of Jewish ethnicity.42
By way of the short description Leo Valiani gave of his father, we can definitely include Adolfo Waizen in this framework: “My father, apolitical but enthusiastic for the Russian liberal revolution of March, was terrified of the Bolshevik revolution, which was linked to the destruction of order, religion and family.”43 He also stated: “My father – without being interested
in politics - always voted for Zanella”.44 These few lines indicate that Adolfo
was respectful of the order that we can link to the Hungarian state; he was a voter of the Autonomist party and thereby lined up with the dominant Italian culture in Fiume; and finally, he was bound to Jewish values in the spheres of family and religion. Adolfo’s request for Fiuman domicile, written evidently with the aim of pleasing the local authorities, attests to how he felt like part of the dominant majority or at least pretended to: “I have never done politics against the national interests of the free city of Fiume, and now I am sincerely devoted to its rightful aspirations.”.45 Furthermore, the fact that Leo Valiani
mentions that he had learned Italian from his father confirms the integration of Adolfo with the local community.46
Unfortunately, other sources, such as the Register of Population from 1890, do not provide more detailed information on the connection of the family with the local society. The Waizens were included in the Register only after the First World War, when they were granted, at Adolfo’s request, the legal domicile (pertinenza) to the city of Fiume.47 Therefore, from the time of their
first settlement in Fiume to 1920, the Waizens were part of the large group of “foreigners”, i.e. people who lived in the territory of the corpus separatum but did not possess rights guaranteed to those who were considered members of
41 For the definition of the term, see Benedict ANDERSON, Imagined Communities, London-New York: Verso, 2006, 5-7.
42 Marsha L. ROZENBLIT, “The Jews of Austria-Hungary on the Eve of World War I”, in ID., Reconstructing
a National Identity: the Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I, Oxford-New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001, 14-38.
43 “Mio padre, apolitico ma entusiasta della rivoluzione liberale russa del marzo, era terrificato da quella bolscevica, che veniva associata alla distruzione dell’ordine, della religione, della famiglia.” in L. VALIANI, “Riflessioni vissute su due rivoluziaoni”, Nuova Antologia, fascicolo 2170, Firenze, aprile-giugno (1989), 84. 44 “Mio padre - senza occuparsi di politica - votava da sempre per Zanella.”in L. VALIANI, Prefazione, in P. SANTARCANGELI, In cattività babilonese, 10.
45 “Non feci mai politica contraria agli interessi nazionali della libera città di Fiume, ed ora sono sinceramente devoto alle sue giuste aspirazioni” in DARi-22, Magistrato Civico di Fiume, L25/1920, Domanda di Adolfo Weiczen per l’accettazione nel nesso comunale.
46 “Leo Valiani”, in JESURUM, Essere ebrei in Italia, 40.
47 DARi-536, Anagrafska zbirka, Registro di popolazione del 1890, Libro T-Z, Waizen Adolfo e famiglia.
Many of our Jews - who were married to Catholic women, perhaps converted from youth or even born as Catholics and, what counts more, completely «fiumanized» and some of them, woe to us, fascists «of the first hour» – had forgotten or almost forgotten, that they were so ( I want to say «Jews» and not fascists).34
In Santarcangeli’s narration, again a description of the Interwar period and not of the Austro-Hungarian era, the only existing distinction was between the “fiumanized” and the orthodox Jews.35 While there is no distinction
between assimilated and integrated Jews, that is between the converted and those who preserved some features of religious and/or ethnic Jewish identity36,
it seems clear that the majority of the Jewish community adopted the dominant “Fiuman ways”. Comparing Santarcangeli’s description and the statistics about the use of the mother tongue in 1890, 1900 and 1910, it seems obvious that in Fiume there were two main cultural-linguistic integration processes available for the Jewish population: the Italian and the Hungarian. Significantly, the two were not necessarily in opposition to one another, since the affiliation with the Italian language and culture was not an indication of irredentist attitudes per se.37 The ruling Autonomist party, whose founder was Michele
Maylender, son of a Hungarian Jew converted to Catholicism, was grounded on the defense of the Italianness of the municipality (Comune), but was not hostile to Fiume belonging to Hungary or rather to the Kingdom of Saint Stephen.38 As for the Jewish population whose mother tongue was German,
their language statement could result from the difficulties to express Yiddish as a spoken language, a category not listed in the census, which did not offer any possibility for a statement on the affiliation with that culture and language. Again, this was an affiliation not inherently adverse to the Hungarian State. However, as Catherine Horel indicates, since the Jews were a minority, they did not want to join another declassified group.39 Consequently, they did not
become part of the Croatian community in Fiume, but would have done so if they had settled in Sušak, the Croatian centre adjacent to Fiume.40 The
Jews became part of the society that allowed them integration, and in Fiume
34 “Molti dei nostri ebrei – sposatisi a donne cattoliche, magari convertiti dall’infanzia o addirittura nati cattolici e, ciò che più conta, completamente “fiumanizzati” e alcuni di loro, ahinoi, fascisti “della prima ora” – avevano dimenticato o quasi di essere tali (voglio dire “ebrei” e non “fascisti”).” in P. SANTARCANGELI, Il
porto dell’aquila decapitata, Udine: Del Bianco editore, 1987, 92.
35 See also the description of the orthodox Jews by the same author Ibid, 87-89.
36 For a discussion on Jewish identity, see Barbara ARMANI, “L’identità sfidata: gli ebrei fuori dal ghetto”,
Storica, n. 15 (1999), 69-104.
37 In 1896, the Hungarians were still encouraged by an official publication to take part in the Italian Circolo
letterario, and Hungarians were members of different Italian cultural associations. See Ilona FRIED, Fiume città della memoria, Udine: Del Bianco editore, 2005, 144-148.
38 William KLINGER, “Dall’autonomismo alla costituzione dello Stato: Fiume 1848-1918”, in Forme
del politico. Studi di storia per Raffaele Romanelli, Emmanuel BETTA, Daniela Luigia CAGLIOTI e Elena
PAPADIA (eds.), Roma: Viella, 2012, 45-60.
39 In particular see Catherine HOREL, “Jewish Associations in the Multicultural Cities of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy around 1900”, Colloquia. Journal for Central European History, XVIII (2011), 94-95. 40 LUKEŽIĆ, “Židovi na Sušaku”, 109-129.
