THE JULIAN ALPS AND THE IDEA OF EUROPE

by FULVIO “MARKO” MOSETTI

March 1953, Stalin’s death ended the years of tension between the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that had followed one another since Tito’s decision, in 1948, to break away from the communist bloc of Eastern Europe. Tensions that had inevitably also been reflected on the relations of the populations and on the borders of our region with the then Yugoslavia. The territory of Trieste, the so-called Zone A, was still under the control and government of the Allies. Demonstrations, even with civilian and military victims, of the Italian-speaking population of the city were frequent. And the victory, in 1952, of the Sanremo festival of the apparently innocent “Vola Colomba” played by Nilla Pizzi had not helped to calm the spirits. It should not be forgotten that in these territories, along this border, in the previous forty years two bloody wars had been fought interspersed with a regime that had division, violence, and oppression between peoples in its hallmark.

It was in this certainly not serene climate that the monument to Julius Kugy was inaugurated in Val Trenta on 3 August 1953. Lawyer and entrepreneur, but better known as a mountaineer and writer, from Trieste but born, by chance, in Gorizia at Palazzo Coronini Cronberg in 1858 who, despite having great notoriety especially in the countries of central and eastern Europe thanks to his poetic writings dedicated to the Julian Alps, from the annexation of Trieste to the Kingdom of Italy following the First World War was silently isolated from the Italian mountaineering environment. The reasons can be identified in his not well accepted supranationality, he spoke the three local languages being the son of a Carinthian and a Slovenian; he accompanied himself on his alpine excursions indifferently with Slovenian and Friulian guides; he had voluntarily lent his mountaineering experience to the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War as an instructor of the Alpine troops. Although he had declared his loyalty to the new State, he continued to be viewed with suspicion and considered not very Italian as, precisely with the absolute superlative, was required of the new subjects of the Kingdom. Thus, after his death in 1944, his memory, in his city and region, suffered a sort of damnation: locked up, forgotten and buried in a dungeon of history.

On that distant Monday in August, at the inauguration of the monument to the singer of the Julian Alps, in the certainly not serene climate of the political and social moment, the idea of supranationality and Alpine brotherhood so dear to Kugy returns to prevail. Around the bronze man who, sitting on a boulder, looks nostalgically at the summit of Jalovec, old friends that the old man had known meet. The Carinthians Karl Kuchar and Hermann Wiegele, the Slovenian Miha Potočnik, the Friulian Giovanni Spezzotti and Mario Lonzar for the section of the Italian Alpine Club of Gorizia. The meeting was a seed that would bear fruit a few years later when, in 1965, the first “Julian Alps” Conference was held in Villach. Conferences that have been repeated annually since then and during which the representatives of the three neighbouring mountaineering associations, the Italian Alpine Club, the Delegation of Friuli Venezia Giulia, the Oesterreichischer, the Alpine Authority, the Landesverband Kärnten, Planinska, Zveza Slovenije, discuss the problems of their mountains. This is, perhaps, Julius Kugy’s most important legacy, bringing together peoples who had divided nationalisms, ideologies and wars through love for the mountains.

From the idea, in those years of closures, of making the passage on the border mountains free for mountaineers, other important initiatives have descended that over the years have passed from the world of mountain enthusiasts to that of politics, understood as a noble art. The idea of Europe seems to be, today even more present, much more present on mountain paths and in alpine refuges rather than in Chancelleries and Ministries. Between 1964 and 1965 the first signals were launched and relations and dialogue were opened between the Municipalities of Gorizia and Nova Gorica. Promoter and protagonist of these first, difficult and courageous, passes the then Mayor Franco Gallarotti who, coincidentally, was also an active member of the city section of the Italian Alpine Club. I do not think it is wrong to hypothesize that the push for these institutional initiatives may also have been inspired by the concomitant openings of the cross-border mountaineering world. The mountain understood as a cultural fact has also represented an important point in the political life of the city until relatively recent times. The evidence can be seen by observing the group photos of the social outings of the city section of the CAI, where until the end of the 70s you can recognize well-known personalities of political, social, cultural, majority and opposition life, united in a common ideal.

Today times and men have changed and Gorizia’s relationship with the mountains is seen as something marginal, forgetting its human, social, cultural, poetic and political values. Underestimations that reflect the decadence of the understanding that the mountains and mountaineering have had and still have for the lives of all of us who live in these lands. Mountains and mountaineering are not only recreational sports facts but, equally, cultural, social and political relationships. So it was that in 1967, at the behest and initiative of the Gorizia section of the CAI, in particular of the then President Mario Lonzar and Celso Macor, that the classic text of Kugy’s work “From the life of a mountaineer” was republished in the unparalleled translation of another great Gorizia, Ervino Pocar. And this date marked the new Gorizia birthplace of the poet from the Julian Alps.

The living memory of Julius Kugy through the publication and dissemination of his writings, the meetings that are dedicated to him, the “Julian Alps” Conferences that have followed one another annually since 1965 – although now with a new name but with an unchanged spirit -, the commitment and memory of many scholars, intellectuals, politicians and simple enthusiasts, have contributed, in continuity between past and present, to fill ditches and build bridges between people. Of the mountains and beyond. But they have also contributed, by removing stone by stone, to demolish those anachronistic walls that had been erected on a land that, as Celso Macor wrote, was “created so that it had no borders”.

It is starting from the mountains that surround it that the reinterpretation of the cultural and historical destiny of Gorizia can start to allow it to make peace with its history and to plan a future consistent with its geopolitical vocation. The extraordinary result of Nova Gorica-Gorizia, united although divided by a state border, European Capital of Culture 2025 is the result of a journey that started from afar and of many difficulties. A path that has also passed on the ridges and peaks of our mountains. It is my conviction that a part, and not a small part, of the merit of this success must be attributed to the cultural, moral, civil heritage of Julius Kugy and of those men who had the strength and foresight to make it their own.