Badge of the 28 k.u.k. Infantry Regiment, the lions of the Hermada. Their nickname was “Prager kinder” (Prague children).
We decided to actively rewrite our history. To tell the true history of Trieste. The history cancelled by Fascist Italy, which occupied us in November 1918 and annexed us in 1920 with the Treaty of Rapallo, after WWI.
And which in 1954, after disastrously losing WWII, had its new Republican Government entrusted with the temporary administration of the newly established Free Territory of Trieste and of its international Free Port, only for this administration to be soon turned into a simulation of sovereignty: a deathly embrace for Trieste, once again and ever since by the nationalism of the Italian State.
When they came, Italians colonized us, taking our identity and substituting it with their own. We were nothing but conquered land. And so they forced their own system of Government, to destroy ours: the Italian fascist bureaucracy of corruption and mafias took the place of the well-run and honest administration of Austria-Hungary. And Italian violence, a tradition of fascism, born from a nationalism that is not going away, is itself part of democratic Italy to date.
We the people of the Free Territory of Trieste – FTT are now willing to affirm historical truth and the very rights of the citizens of a city that has never belonged to Italy, but was annoyed to it by force. A State-city for more than half a millennium, and by its on free choice, a proudly Austrian city, and pride of Austria-Hungary, being its main port, at the service of all of Mitteleuropa
The Hermada project serves also to repel the fascist nationalism that Italian authorities force as early as during school years. But also to restore Trieste’s cancelled identity. Our identity, recognized by the 1947 Treaty of Peace. This is why we start from Mt. Hermada, Austrian-Hungarian bulwark that represented the undefeated defense of Trieste during World War I.
A line that stood still, which is now the Free Territory of Trieste – Italy State border. Hermada project, planned and carried out by the Free Trieste Movement, starts in November. And is open to the active contribution of all people, from Trieste and from abroad, who stand for the FTT, for Trieste’s true history, and who stand for legality.
Translated from blog “Ambiente e Legalità” – “Environment and Legality” by Roberto Giurastante
The “Boys of 1900”: Triestine volunteers in the Austrian-Hungarian army.
