The Risiera de San Sabba was one of 4 Italian concentrations camps, the only one with its own crematorium. According to the Italian historian Elio Apih, “it was a microcosm of the forms and methods of Nazi policies and repression, where techniques of racial and political deportation and elimination were applied….” The camp was a hub for organizing Nazi military actions to round up partisans and Jews; it served as containment station for the Jews who were then deported to Auschwitz and other camps; it was also the place where political prisoners were killed.

Up to 5000 of them, is estimated by the latest historical research; a trial against the commanders in1976 was unable to establish exact figures. What was confirmed, though, was the fact that most of the killings were perpetrated by clubbing and beating to death. Hanging was second, and occasionally people got shot. The room where these atrocities were committed was immediately adjacent to the cells where prisoners were held, so that they were surrounded by the screams soon to be their own.

Screams were heard and tolerated by the Italian neighbors, who by this time were whipped up into a fascist frenzy by Mussolini, and had no problem with the German occupation, having been manipulated into nationalistic hatred against Bolshewiks and Slavic refugees/or Italian, Slovenian and Croat resistance fighters.

The building was originally a rice husking factory at the outskirts of Trieste. Himmler sent his forces to San Sabba in 1943 to start the killings. The factory housed the SS, some Ukranian collaborators,  and 17 micro-cells for those awaiting their death in place. Each cell, 1.20 meters long and 2 meters high held up to 6 prisoners, sometime for up to 6 months.

The Hall of Crosses, next to them, housed the Jews slated for transport. The upper floor were used for forced labor of the prisoners.

The inner courtyard now displays a large metal sculpture and a large metal plate on the ground, delineating the crematorium, the smoke path and the chimney. Ashes were thrown into the nearby sea.

The memorial site is extremely well designed with cement walls enclosing the sides not occupied by the original buildings, adding to the claustrophobic nature of the place. There are traveling exhibits about other horrors committed under fascism, and visitors are mainly school groups; not too many tourists to be seen.

There was a trial against two of the commanders of the Risiera camp in 1976. One of them received a life sentence, but never served since the German authorities were not obliged to hand him over due to some 1942 bilateral agreement…. (!) The museum was built and eventually opened in 1975 as a National Monument.

Part of me understands why one would not want to spoil a holiday in such a beautiful area with the darkness that surrounds you when entering the memorial.

Part of me wants to make it obligatory so that we understand the nature of  (creeping) fascism and the horrors that ensue.

Trieste has a long and checkered history, a unique blend of ethnicities, cultures, religions and political systems. For centuries it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During the 1930s it became a fascist bastion, fueled by the influx of slavic refugees who provided an easy target for nationalism. Immediately after World War Two, Trieste, on the border with Yugoslavia, was recognised as a free state under international law, though it remained under military occupation until 1954, when it was returned to Italy. For Churchill it was the southern outpost of the “Iron Curtain” dividing the West from the communist East.

The architecture of the city mirrors this past. The main square, Piazza dell’ Unita, has three sides occupied by splendid Habsburg buildings; the fourth is the sea. A plaque commemorates the spot where Mussolini announced his policy of racial laws against the Jews. The Catholic Church of Saint Antonio shares space on the Grand Canal with the Serbian Orthodox Church; the synagogue is two minutes away.

If you think of the lay-out as concentric half-circles, this is the core of the historical wealth of the town, with shipping insurance buildings, town hall, stock exchange and so on, flanked by yacht and industrial harbors. The next ring up consists of small alleys (formerly the ghetto) leading to streets with imposing houses of the (upper middle class.)

Eventually you get to the real, non-touristy quarters where much of the population lives, and then the peripheral apartment blocks for the working class.

It is a city of riches, which those who fight for Trieste’s independence on the basis of a 1947 United Nations Security Council charter (which recognised Trieste and its surroundings – including parts of what is now Croatia and Slovenia – as a free state, with both Italian and Slovenian as official languages, subject to the appointment of an internationally recognised governor,) don’t want to share with Italy. They get laughed off by both the law and their fellow Triesteans, who have a rather optimistic outlook on life and easy going mentality.

And when you walk so much you find the best little osterias sans touristes…..

I can never remember if it’s today or tomorrow that a young friend of mine celebrates his birthday. To err on the side of being early, I dedicate this sampling of Trieste’s people to him today. He is brave and cheerful enough to wear red scarves hand-knit by yours truly, wickedly smart, provides the best book recommendations, and occasionally saves my son from being eaten by leopards and giraffes (don’t ask.)

The women of Trieste transport the kiddos

Deal with mopey teenagers

Do the shopping

Love color

Navigate the uneven streets in high heels

Stick by their guys

And walk the dogs

The men hang out

P

OK, they walk the dogs, too

And e v e r y o n e wears these shades….

Happy birthday, Conor! I hope one of these days we’ll travel en famille.

Scores of people come to this ancient seaport town each year to pay homage to James Joyce, who wrote his Ulysses   here. The city accommodates them by putting up plaques at about every corner, bridge, staircase, churchyard ever touched by his foot, seemingly not a millimeter of Trieste not once traversed by the master.

My first-day pilgrimage, though, honored a different man – one who is a serious contender on my who to take to a deserted island list. (Remind me to do a week of blogs about the rest of them.) Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the founder of art history and art criticism as we know it, known as the father of modern archeology, is buried here.

The man’s life reads like a Russian novel. Born into extreme poverty in Prussia, his father a cobbler, he dug his way out by his wits. Scholarly excellence landed him at a number of universities, studying first theology, then medicine, but ultimately falling in love with ancient languages and developing a passion for Greek art. He devised a system of learning new languages in what is claimed 6 weeks, eventually able to converse in 12 of them. He was appointed to ever more prestigious posts as researcher/librarian/envoy for German aristocrats and then various Italian cardinals who opened their ancient art collections to him and enabled him to participate at the digs of Pompeii and Hercanuleum. As papal antiquarian and later secretary to Cardinal Albani he had found a space that allowed for his intellectual acumen to blossom. And, one might add, his homosexuality to be silently tolerated.

Say what you want about dead, old, white men, or the idealization of the Greek male body, Winckelmann wrote the first defining book of how to approach art, both in terms of systematizing epochs of creative output, and also how to read an individual work of art. His 1764 History of the Art of Antiquity was recognized to be revolutionary, and had an influence on many great minds of his time: Kant, Herder, Goethe and Lessing, the painters Mengs and Oeser among them. It lays out a scientific methodology to approach both art and archeology.

It is not dry scholarship, though. If you read his 1755 Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks  you’ll find someone thinking through such cultural and technical factors as climate, freedom, and craftsmanship in explaining the art of a people all in a schmoozing writing style that feels like having a personal conversation. That probably helped to make him so influential in renewing Northern Europeans’ interest in the ancient Greeks.

Which, as we know, had some dire consequence independent of the gains for the world of art history. His enchanted proclamation of the linkage between ancient Hellas and Germany found eventually a willing ear in the philhellenic Führer of the third Reich: just look at the Olympics and then his propaganda surrounding the art of war, all wittingly embraced by all too many Germans steeped in classical education. Eliza Butler wrote a scathing analysis of the implications already in 1935, The Tyranny of Greece over Germany.  https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Greece-over-Germany-Eighteenth/dp/1107697646 

On his way back from Vienna to Rome in 1768, the guy met his premature end in Trieste, being murdered by a chance acquaintance he took to his bed, who coveted some coins he saw which turned out to be medals that Empress Maria Theresia had just bestowed on the writer. He was buried at a local church, but his bones were mixed up with others. Eventually they erected a cenotaph at the local Museo d’Antichitá. http://www.museostoriaeartetrieste.it

The neoclassicist sarcophagus is crowned with a melancholic figure holding a medallion with Winckelmann’s portrait. Underneath is a relief that shows him in a toga, shining a torch on representations of:  painting, sculpture, architecture, history, critique, philosophy and, sitting, archeology.

Can’t but grin, when you look at it. Unless you are a Reed Professor teaching Hume 110 and thinking about the current crop of students who want nothing to do with all of this any longer.

Outside is a lovely, quiet courtyard, seemingly untouched by the masses pursuing James Joyce, or any other masses, for that matter.

Ever heard of the Austrian Friedrich Stowasser? Yes, you have. You just know him under the name Hundertwasser, the short form of his chosen pseudonym Friedenreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (full of peace rainy day darkly colored hundred water.)

Yesterday offered views of an apartment house he built and a museum dedicated to him in a building of his own design (Kunsthaus Wien).

It is  sort of funny that I was reminded of an exclamation mark when looking at the output of a man who abhorred straight lines.

Also notable that an artist, who fought standardization at every step, created a major oeuvre without changing much through the years, having found a certain schtick and sticking with it until the end. (Judging this by what I saw at the museum, I am not familiar with his painting in depth.)

The straight exclamation mark-impression was triggered by the ways attention is demanded by every design trick in the book, beyond the absence of right angles. Look here!!! Here is color!! Here is surprise! Here is daring!! Here is norm breaking!! All delivered with messianic zeal, once you read the artist statements. Let’s show photos of all the famous company I kept! Let’s be flamboyant!!!!!!

My reaction was perhaps strengthened by the contrast effect provided by an exhibition of images by Finnish photographer Elina Brotherus across the upper two floors of the Hundertwasser house.

https://www.kunsthauswien.com/en/exhibitions/elina-brotherus/. 

Her art, on the whole, elicited associations to a colon: that threshold that invites you into something new and noteworthy. Brotherus, not particularly known in the US, is represented in major collections across European Museums and rightfully so. Her’s is quiet, piercing work, focused on self and landscape, depicting emotion with clarity and courage, confronting the viewer with deep personal revelations.

The mid-career exhibit also shows trajectory rather than stagnation – the recent years demonstrate less a focus on self and more an engagement with the world, through means of appropriation, choice of topics and collaborators and infusion of wit, rather than that nordic darkness so pressing in the early years.

A remarkable exhibit in content as well as form. My only quibble was the choice of image used to introduce the show: a reenactment of Kaspar David Friedrich’s “Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer” which allows you to see only the back of a person. It seemed motivated by the recognition factor of another famous piece of art and not all point to the strength of Botherus’ overall engagement with the viewer: looking straight at us in almost every photograph, face to face.  (I realized, by the way, when sorting through my photographs of the day – which were not only permitted but invited by exhibit instructions – that I had not taken a single one of her looking at me even though those comprise the majority of the show. It felt like the intimacy of her gaze demanding empathy had elicited just that – not to be disrupted by intrusive documentation. Maybe that explains the curatorial decision making.)

Another thought provoking day in Vienna. Another photographer among the multitudes ….

“We rarely see tourists here,” said the friendly woman at the neighboring table at a cafe.  “Are you looking for something specific? Have you finished the central district with all the palaces?” No and no were the respective answers – just wandering off the beaten path. Although impressed by the architectural symbols of power and wealth around the monumental palaces and national buildings, the beauty of a city that breathes history at every street corner, I am always more curious to see how people actually live.

Neighborhoods in the 6th and 7th district, for example are incredibly diverse, both with regard to architectural substance and groupings of wealth – some ritzy enclaves exist right next to streets and passages that have seen better times, approximately 300 years ago….

To give you a taste, I’ll first post some images of central Vienna, with its museums and imperial buildings.

Next there are your average neighborhoods, with a few new modern buildings thrown in, and with some streets that have the old core buildings intact and nicely renovated on one side, and ugly 1950s housing on the other erected after bombs destroyed the old substance.

Here are some incredible details that can be found on buildings everywhere.

And here is the truly interesting history: The planned housing of Red Vienna. (The following tidbits are excerpts of a comprehensive article on the socialist politics of Vienna in the 1920s) https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/red-vienna-austria-housing-urban-planning

The granting of the right to vote to women and workers in 1918 led to an immediate rise to power by the Austrian social democrats. Through tax-based wealth redistribution, they engaged in massive investment in infrastructure after the catastrophe of world war I in general and in decommodifying shelter in particular. Vienna in the 1920s was the 5th largest city in the world and had catastrophic housing conditions. Trying to undermine speculation, the government bought up property, becoming the single largest real estate owner in the city by 1924. Between 1923 and 1934, it built over sixty thousand new apartments, which also served as job creators.

One huge project was the Karl Marx Hof, a massive apartment complex with 1400 units that hailed green inner courtyards, running water and toilets in each apartment, and in some areas communal kitchen to lighten the load of working women, and strengthen community ties.

“Neither the complexes nor the various companies and services established to support them were intended to make a profit. The city administration continued to run public services like gas, water, power plants, and public transportation and pushed to take over private industries including garbage disposal and the canals.Rents were calculated to cover these operating costs and nothing more; in 1926, they averaged about 4 percent of a worker’s monthly wage.”

With the advent of the economic crisis of 1929 and the festering conflicts of the urban/rural divide things went downhill fast. Loans from the League of Nations were to tie over the republic, but with austerity measures as strings attached. Restructuring programs dismantled the social infrastructure and actively slashed workers’ rights. Add the Nazi take-over, and the socialist dream was toast.

Today you can still visit the site and see the apartments, but history has not been on the side of socialist ideals, now even less so after the last election…..