Minorities and the First World War (CfP)

African American soldiers

We agree on the premise of this Call for Papers and that's why it makes sense for us to post it and to support the initiative in this way. 


 






The experience of minorities in the First World War is one of the most significant, yet least developed aspects of the conflict’s history. It is now over twenty years since the major conference on ‘National and Racial Minorities in Total War’ which spurred the highly influential volume: Minorities in Wartime. With the centenary of the First World War fast approaching, it seems a particularly appropriate time to revisit this subject.

Over the preceding decades, there have been massive shifts in the writing of ethnic and minority histories, which have started to excavate areas of convergence as well as departure. At the same time, our understanding of the social and military history of the First World War has expanded massively. No longer is the history of the conflict confined largely to the trenches of the Western Front, it now encompasses everything from non-combatants and the home front through to occupation and the memory of war.

The aim of this two-day conference is to mesh recent developments in the military history of the First World War with those in the field of minority studies. We welcome proposals covering any ethnic or national minority group involved in the conflict. There is no limit to geographical area, though we are aiming to focus primarily on the main belligerent nations.

Potential themes and questions may include: 
- Minorities as both opponents and enthusiastic supporters of the conflict 
- Minorities as prisoners of war 
- Racism, antisemitism and exclusionary politics during the conflict 
- Religious and ritual practices during the First World War 
- The decoration and promotion of soldiers from minority groups 
- Responses to colonial troops and their wartime experience 
- The treatment of minorities in territory occupied during the war 
- Enemy aliens: Internment, repatriation and social hostility 
- The remembrance (and forgetting) of minority combatants

Please send abstracts (max 300 words) and a short biography to: ww1minorities@chester.ac.uk by 31 May 2013.

Speakers include: 
Professor Tony Kushner (University of Southampton) 
Professor Humayun Ansari OBE (Royal Holloway) 
Professor Panikos Panayi (De Montfort University, Leicester) 

1914: War and the Avant-Gardes. An International Conference (CfP)

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

We'd like today to draw the attention to the Call for Papers reported below. The interdisciplinary conference which has to be organized next December 2013, aims to discuss how visual arts reacted to and suffered from the Word War I, focusing on the single year 1914. This could offer a chance to reconsider this very special field of human production and innovation, both from an intellectual-spritual and a material-economical point of view, and to appreciate so the role played by the avant-gardes of the early century. 


International Conference
1914: War and the Avant-Gardes
Call for Papers 


With its origins in military vocabulary, the metaphor of the « avant-garde » ran through the art world with particular intensity at the beginning of 1914. In both Europe and the United States, contemporary arts tackled modes of conflict and rupture, the leveling of the recent past and the authoritarian conquest of a utopian future. This militant train of thoughtcan be traced in the fine arts, as well as in other forms of visual expression, from photography and cinema to decorative arts, the arts of industry and other image technologies. These practices were as concerned with theoretical and critical discourse as they were with material production. In this context, the phenomenon of internal fragmentation – of groups, trends, inspirations – existed alongside an aim for universalism, driven by the dream of abolishing the boundaries between the arts and, more radically, between different world views. The quest for crossover and interaction between the languages of philosophy, music, dance, visual arts and literature led to the desire to interweave time and place, cultural and religious traditions, and to abolish the hierarchies between different forms of expression. Around the notions of “primitive”, “popular”, “infantile”, as well as “technological”, “rational” and “scientific”, a common psychological and anthropological horizon seemed within reach, to put an end to the fractures between nations, as well as individuals. Yet rivalries continued: national consciousness continued to sharpen in the field of the “avant-garde”, to ensure the mastery of the future. Kandinsky, a Russian living in Germany and exhibiting in France, made abstraction into the intuitive grammar of the language of “humanity”; but, in homage to Matisse or Delaunay, he also denounced the “sensuality” of the French tradition. 

In August 1914, real and immediate violence seized individual destinies and brutally reoriented them: foreigner and enemy, Kandinsky was forced to flee Germany to evade internment; his German friends of theBlauer Reiter-groupjoined the frontline, where August Macke was killed only a few weeks later. In Paris, Guillaume Apollinaire, who was preparing to give a conference in Berlin in January 1915, became the spokesman for a virulent patriotism and immediately signed up to fight. The young Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who had been living in London since 1910, moved from anti-militarism to a poetry of modernist violence in the circle of Ezra Pound, before dying in the trenches in 1915. Those such as Romain Rolland, Pierre-Jean Jouve, Maurice Loutreuil or, more briefly, André Masson who chose exile in neutral Switzerland or Italy to maintain their pacifist discourse were rare. 

This interdisciplinary conference aims to interrogate the complex relations between the visual arts, in their largest sense, and history, at a moment where the European crisis of conscience crystallized into catastrophe. Restricting itself to strict temporal parameters – between 1st January and 31st December 1914 –it will explore the intellectual and practical circumstances of visual creation during the first six “ordinary” monthsof the year, whilst also seeking to understand as precisely as the possible the nature of the realizations provoked by the start of the war as well as by its first engagements. Works and objects, the orientation of taste and of the market, critical and theoretical discourse will be exploredin order to dissect that which was shattered in western representation between January and December 1914. 

*

This conferenceisorganizedjointly by the "Centre allemand d'histoire de l'art"/Deutsches Forum fürKunstgeschichte, l’université de Paris Ouest – Nanterre – La Défense and l’Institut universitaire de France. It will take place in Paris on 5th and 6th December 2013, at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art and the Deutsches Forum fürKunstgeschichte. Oral presentations, of twenty-five minutes in length, will be in French and English. They will address visual culture in Europe in its largest sense, within the strict parameters of the year 1914. 

A provisional title and proposal in French or English, of no more than 300 words, should be sent, in one document along with a brief C.V., to Marine Branland colloque.arts1914@hotmail.fr, before 15 February 2013.  

Organized by : 
Annette Becker (Institut universitaire de France, université de Paris Ouest – Nanterre – La Défense)
Andreas Beyer (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris)
Itzhak Goldberg (université Jean Monnet – Saint-Etienne)
Godehard Janzing (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris)
Rémi Labrusse (université de Paris Ouest – Nanterre – La Défense)

The Great War and the development of mountaineering in the area of Julian Alps. A documentary

Here is a recommentation of a fascinating documentary about the development of mountaineering just before, during and after the Great War in the area of the Julian Alps, between Eastern Italy and Slovenia. The film comes in four languages (Italian, Slovenian, German and the local language of Friuli region) and examines the meeting point (and sometimes also the contrasts) between the alpinist movement's rise and the pivotal ridge represented by the Great War, dwelling on that particular war inside the war represented by battles in the Alps. We mentioned the contrasts between alpine pioneers and the army chain of command because, especially in the Italian army, the strife between the higher ranks and their alpine consultants were strong and harsh. 

The outstanding figures of Vladimiro Dougan, Osvaldo Pesamosca and, above all, Julius Kugy are the main characters of this documentary that gives a new overview on this part of the front also thanks to accurate interviews with experts (historians, alpine guides). The pioneering stage of mountaineering in the Julian Alps bumped against the war's outbreak in 1915, with Italy entering the war, and became basic know-how for all belligerent armies. At the end of the war, all was ready to catapult these Alps in the dangerous grinder of nature and history tourism.


Vie di Pace | Viis di Pâs | Poti miru | Wege des Friedens
DVD length: 38'
Written by Sergio Beltrame and Samantha Faccio
Directed by Samantha Faccio
A production by Videomante and Officina Immagini
Historical consultancy: Davide Tonazzi and Bruno Marcuzzo

Novels of the Great War: "The enormous room" by E. E. Cummings

1922. Two masterpieces not only of English modernism, but also of the world literature of the XX century were released: Ulysses, by James Joyce and The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot. Both works provide a sort of diagnosis of the astonishment and disillusion of a generation which survived the Great War, not its long-lasting effects. But 1922 is the year of publication of a third novel, which equals the two above mentioned works in importance and maybe completes the choir with a ruthless accusation of the true essence of WWI. We are talking about The enormous room, by E. E. Cummings.

Even if he is best known as a poet, Cummings is also the author of this “hybrid novel”, both autobiographical and fictional. The book is in fact based on his personal experience on the Western front, where he served as an ambulance driver in France. Questioned about a friend of him - William Slater Brown, in the book simply “B”, whose pacifistic attitude aroused suspicions - Cummings supported him. Both were therefore arrested in summer 1917 and sent to La Ferté-Macé, where they arrived few days after the commission that had to review also their case had left. Cummings and his friend were stuck till the next meeting of the commission in November. Meanwhile, they lived in an "enormous room" with other detainees, in foreseeable dreadful conditions. Cummings, thanks to the intervention of his father, was finally released and came back home in January 1918. 

The interesting in this novel is not mainly the plot, nor the autobiographical or fictional content. The enormous Room is more a sort of diary, a telling of the day-to-day lives, and above all a description of different people in the camp. Cummings' skill in connecting physical aspect and personality, in revealing the one through the other, makes this novel a manual of portraiture, as testified by the accurate description of the Delectable Mountains, four characters that Cummings and B encountered in the French detention camp.

His portraiture skill is however placed on the background of the WWI. The novel is thus a sort of eye directed towards the Great War from a very special point of view: not that of the soldier at the front, not that of the civil society at home, rather that of the “suspected traitor” behind its home front. It describes somehow the administrative idiocy which affects people’s life, restricts personal freedom and reduces human beings to objects (no matter if useful objects to fight at the front or useless – even dangerous – objects to keep in prison); it reveals how the relation with the governments has changed in the first decades of the 20^th century under the pressure of the growing nationalisms. It also discloses the climate of suspicion which pervaded Europe during WWI (let’s think about the desertion or riot episodes and, on the other hand, the pervasive propaganda and censorship machine to control information and behaviors).

Cummings tells us what get wrong in human life during the first world war, even far away of the trenches and the battles. He tells us how WWI seeped through all - spiritual and material - layers of human life, undermining also the sense of appartenence at the same "nation", of fight for the same "ideal". Yet, the novel never neglects its picaresque style in portraiting the different characters, nor its mood of adventure, leading so the reader to walk with the author, smiling despite all with him, in the "beautiful darkness" of The enormous room.

Women's Movements and Female Activists in the Aftermath of the First World War, 1918-1923 (CfP)

Below is another interesting Call for Papers (still a few days to submit your abstracts). With this project we are here in the aftermath and for us this is the opportunity to stress one thing that might seem obvious: the First World War is not only the five-year period between 1914 and 1918 but what comes before and, above all, what this tragedy scattered afterwards. Also the First World War Centenary is going to become a great opportunity for all the nations celebrating it if its action and meaning will go further, without stopping at November 2018. If that is not going to happen, the Centenary is going to become another lost chance. 

Women’s Organisations and Female Activists in the Aftermath of the First World War: Central and Eastern Europe in National, Transnational, International and Global Context.

An interdisciplinary, international conference to be held at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary. 17th-19th May 2013. Recent developments in the social and cultural history of modern warfare have done much to shed new light on the experience of the First World War, and in particular how that experience was communicated in popular and high culture, and in acts of remembrance and commemoration after 1918. The post-war period (ca 1918-1923) is distinctive, both within individual nations and as a point of international comparison. It is characterised by the often troubled transition from a wartime to a peacetime society; continued conflicts over the repatriation of refugees and POWs; revolutionary and counter- revolutionary violence in parts of Central Europe; and new ethnic and national conflicts arising from the collapse of the former Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires, and the cultural anxieties that surrounded these events. Within this context, the role of organised women's movements and female activists in the post-war period takes on a new importance. The aim of this conference is to explore major comparative themes such as citizenship, suffrage, nationalism, commemoration, revolution and militarised technology from a national, international and transnational perspective. It will have a particular focus on movements and activists operating in or communicating with Central and Eastern Europe. It will examine the work of organisations and individuals able to move across international borders, such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) or the journalist Eleanor Franklin Egan, who reported on social conditions throughout post-war Europe. The role of such women and organisations in bringing about reconciliation and facilitating cooperation between former enemy nations (cultural demobilisation, ‘the dismantlement of the mindsets and values of wartime’—John Horne) will also be examined, as will the role of nationalist women's organisations in perpetuating discourses of war and in facilitating the rise of new forms of ethno-nationalism and racial intolerance (‘cultural remobilisation’) during the period 1918-1923. This conference is the fourth in a series. The first conference, The Gentler Sex: Responses of the Women’s Movement to the First World War, 1914-1919, London, held in 2005, was followed in 2008 with Aftermaths of War: Women’s Movements and Female Activists 1918-1923, Leeds, and in May 2012 with Women’s Organisations and Activists: Moving Across Borders, Hamline. Publications arising from the earlier conferences include special issues of Minerva: Journal of Women and War and two edited volumes: Fell, A.S. and Sharp, I.E. (eds) (2007) The Women's Movement in Wartime. International Perspectives 1914-1919. Palgrave Macmillan and Sharp, I.E. and Stibbe, M. (eds) (2011) Aftermaths of War: Women’s Movements and Female Activists, 1918-1923 (Brill). The Budapest Conference is linked in particular with the Hamline Conference which focused on the US experience and transnational organisations. It is supported by a network grant from the UK-based Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Two special issues of a peer-reviewed journal and a volume of comparative essays are planned for 2014, based on papers given at both conferences.  

Confirmed speakers include: Judit Acsády (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest) Alison Fell (University of Leeds, UK) Susan R. Grayzel (University of Mississippi, USA) Gabriella Hauch (University of Vienna, Austria) David Hudson (Hamline University, USA) Ingrid Sharp (University of Leeds, UK) Olga Shnyrova (Ivanonvo State University, Russia) Matthew Stibbe (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) Nikolai Vukov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia).

Proposals for papers and/or panels that deal with the work of women’s organisations or female activists between 1918 and 1923 are invited in the following areas: 
- Commemoration and discourses of heroism; 
- transnational organisations and activities transcending the nation state; 
- peace-building and reconstruction: cultures of resistance to war and the mind sets of war; 
- right-wing women and culture remobilisation; 
- on-going campaigns for suffrage and women’s organisations post-suffrage, specifically in the Central and Eastern European context; 
- socialist women and revolutionary violence; 
- women and the technology of war; 
- women’s involvement in relief work and social activism, particularly in the Central and Eastern European context;
- cultural reflections of post-war society in art, literature and film, particularly in the Central and Eastern European context

Contributions are welcome from any field or discipline, including literary and cultural studies, sociology and social anthropology, women’s and gender studies, peace and war studies, as well as history itself. Please send abstracts (500 words in English) to Ms Ingrid Sharp i.e.sharp@leeds.ac.uk and Professor Matthew Stibbe m.stibbe@shu.ac.uk by Friday 7th December 2012

Photo Reportage #6: the gallery of Castelletto (in the Tofane range)

Professional and amateur photographers that are willing to share their images in a 100% First World War dedicated platform can write to this email address giving a small abstract of their work (place, country, main features, reasons of interest) and a zipped folder with the images in *.jpeg format in video resolution 72dpi (please in your email consent to World War I Bridges publishing your photos). It goes without saying that the long term purpose of this little digitale initiative is to crowd-source digital stuff to preserve the memory of the Great War and to channel the energies of professional or amateur photographers on this.

Like the first two, also this new photo reportage taken in the gallery of Castelletto (Dolomites, Tofane range) was kindly offered to World War I Bridges by Ugo Agnoletto. We thank him for his precious help in the start-up of this unit of World War I Bridges. By walking inside this gallery you can understand what historians called the "war of mines" in the Dolomites, a relevant and unique stage of the Great War in Italy.

The Great War in Post-Memory Literature, Drama and Film (CFP)

A frame from Uomini contro 
by Francesco Rosi (1970)

We below post the Call for Papers announcement of an alluring project to be developed under the supervising action of the Universities of Warsaw and Graz.

We invite all the institutions with similar CfP about the World War I to send their text to the email address you find beside. We will be more than happy to spread their announcements and to support their initiatives.

The Great War in Post-Memory Literature, Drama and Film

Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz, University of Warsaw, Poland
Martin Loeschnigg, University of Graz, Austria

The Great War has never ceased to haunt the imagination. Across time and nations, the subject of the first major conflict of the twentieth century has returned over and over again in prose fiction, drama, and film. The oncoming centenary is a very good time for a reconsideration of the place and meaning of this conflict in our contemporary post-memory culture. We plan to edit a volume of essays that will bring together scholars from all over the world in order to chart the predominant tendencies in the textual and visual representations of the Great War since the 1970s up till the present day. Though defining the beginning of post-memory texts of culture is inevitably arbitrary, it is from the 1970s onward that we witness the appearance of a number of important films and literary works about the Great War by authors from the generation for which this past conflict is history and not memory: William Leonard Marshall’s The Age of Death, Susan Hill’s Strange Meeting, Derek Robinson’s Goshawk Squadron, Jennifer Johnston‘s How Many Miles to Babylon, Timothy Findley’s The Wars, Roger McDonald’s 1915, Uomini Contro (dir. Francesco Rosi), Aces High (dir. Jack Gold), the TV remake of All Quiet on the Western Front (dir. Delbert Mann) or the BBC series Wings. Since then, other notable writers have addressed this subject, including Sebastian Faulks, Pat Barker, David Malouf, Robert Edric, Reginald Hill, Mark Helprin, Marc Dugain, Jane Urquhart, Antonia Arslan, Ben Elton, Jeff Shaara, Sebastien Japrisot, Sebastian Barry, Jack Hodgins, Frances Itani, Jody Shields, Robert Goddard, Tom Phelan, Geert Spillebeen, Joseph Boyden, Kevin Major, Alan Cumyn, Nigel Farndale, Jacqueline Winspear, Charles and Caroline Todd, Michael Morpurgo, Michael Foreman, Iain Lawrence, Theresa Breslin, as well as the playwrights Stephen MacDonald, David Haig, Peter Whelan, David French, R.H. Thomson. Among the most important films, there are Galilipoli,  Life and Nothing But, Les fragments d’Antonin, Joyeux Noel, The Lost Battalion, All the King’s Men, My Boy Jack, Deathwatch, The Red Baron, Flyboys, Anzacs (TV series). Le Pantalon, War Horse, The Trench, Passchendaele , Beneath Hill 60, to mention but a few. The volume will be international in scope, highlighting transnational themes as well as identifying discrepancies stemming from particular national histories.

The suggested range of topics includes (but is not limited to the following):

1. Parallel Times: Constructing Contemporary Meanings of the Great War
2. Concealed Histories: The Search for Other Wars in the Great War
3. Genre and History: The Impact of Convention on Representations of the Great War (detective fiction, political thriller, horror, romance, comedy, grand-historical narratives etc.)
4. Experimental Fictions: New Approaches to Writing/Showing the Great War
5. The Great War on the Contemporary Stage: The Historical Vision of Playwrights
6. From Text to Film:  Contemporary Adaptations of Prose Fiction about the Great War
7. Commemorative Narratives: Writing the Great War through Family History, Battlefield Pilgrimages, and War Memorials
8. The Trauma of the Great War: Ravished Minds and Disabled Bodies
9. Over and Beyond the Trenches:  The Great War at Sea and in the Air
10. The Great War from a Post-Colonial Perspective
11. National Versions of the Great War (English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Canadian, Australian, American, German, Austrian, French, Polish, Latvian, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech, Russian, etc.)
12. Writing the Great War for Children and Teenagers
13. Legends, Myths, Mysteries of the Great War
14. The Literary and Cinematic Portrayals of the War Poets
15. The Heroes of the Great War: From Grand-Historical Figures to Sacrificial Victims
16. The Anti-Heroes of the Great War: Cowards, Deserters, Murderers, Criminals
17. Gendering the Great War: The Female Protagonist
18. Relocating Historical Significance: Textual and Cinematic Narratives of the Aftermath of the Great War

Please submit an abstract (up to 200 words) and a short biographical note to Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz (m.a.sokolowska-paryz@uw.edu.pl) and Martin Loeschnigg (martin.loeschnigg@uni-graz.at) by  January 31, 2013. The deadline for accepted articles is September 1, 2013. The articles should use MLA citation style and should be no longer than 6000 words.

Photos of animals in World War One: a French soldier with a pet fox

Photography is probably the main media shaping our perceptions and feeling of the Great War time. We may find some videos, we could read important books or diaries generated by a raw realism, but the five years of the World War I represent somehow a pressing debut of photography in the world social history, and not only during the hectic moments of the battles and assaults. Think about the role of photography in the militarized civil affairs and industries, think about the women and kids portrayed during the Great War. A picture like the one above is a kind of buffer between the military use of photography and its employment in a civil context. Forgetting for a while the strange presence of the small animal (probably not so strange for the time), we should rather take into consideration the person who shot this image. The English Romantic poet William Wordsworth once wrote about "emotions recollected in tranquillity". He was describing his poetry, but we could apply those words to this scene framing a French soldier (we see only his helmet hiding his face), the vague gaze of the fox and the caress provisionally joining the two protagonists. Just behind them some war signs appear...

We took the picture from Great War Primary Document Archive:Photos of the Great War, a rich source of perfectly tagged and elapsed copyright images that we are linking beside and from where we are drawing again in the future.

"L’illusione dell’acciaio". An exhibition in Gorizia from 9th November till 9th December 2012

Felt and wool. Maybe other textiles of the traditional uniforms. In any case, steel was not in the standard equipment. As the Italian soldiers in 1915 reached the front line, they wore almost exclusively simple cloth cap. And this was not only the case of Italian troops. Soldiers of most nations went into battle in the same traditional hats. The only exception, German soldiers wearing the Pickelhaube helmet. It took only few months and a huge number of victims of head wounds to note that a successful war required not only “clever heads” to devise new strategic solutions, but also “protected heads” to survive the front, where Shrapnel and later high-explosive caused about 80% of the injuries among troops in the open.
That's how Adrian was conceived: the first modern steel helmet was designed for the French Army in summer 1915 and named by his inventor: August-Louis Adrian. Weighting only 765gr, much less than the almost contemporary British Brodie helmet – delivered to the troops starting from 1916 – and the German Stahlhelm – adopted between end 1915 and beginning 1916 –, it was so effective against the shrapnel, that many other armies adopted it by the end of the World War I. Each model was then modified and improved during the WWI. The new exhibition in Gorizia,“L’illusione dell’acciaio - Soldati, elmi, scudi e corazze sul fronte dell’Isonzo 1915 - 1917”, reviews this history of the helmets, and generally of the steel protection, during the First World War. It is directed anyway not only to experts and enthusiasts of military history. This exhibition deals in fact first of all with soldiers, it tells their story concealed under cloth caps and under helmets, and disclose maybe the illusion of the steel, protecting the heads from the bullets, not really from other war traumas. We wonder if the curators had this in mind, as they gave this title to the exhibition. To confirm this supposition, we just have to visit it.
The exhibition takes place at Scuderie of Palazzo Coronini Cronberg from the 9th October till the 9th December 2012. Further information here.

Photo Reportage #5: the Great War sites in the Treviso province (by Franco Cogoli)

In the Treviso province, a forty minute drive from Venice, are concentrated some of the most relevant landmarks and signs of the eastern front of World War I. The Monte Grappa range, between the provinces of Vicenza and Treviso, could be the perfect initiation of all First World War battlefield itineraries that could follow the Piave river course (Pederobba, the Montello hill, Nervesa della Battaglia, Ponte della Priula, the Papadopoli Island, down to its Adriatic mouth in the province of Venice). 

Today we have a great opportunity, since we are hosting in WWIB the first photo reportage made by a professional photographer. His name is Franco Cogoli and you can easily see what he has done so far by checking the below biography. We warmly thank him for giving us the permission to publish these great images he shot a few years ago. For him we make even an exception and we post nine photos instead of the usual eight pictures expected in this section of World War I Bridges.

With the nine images we discend from the Monte Grappa touching the following landmarks: an overview of the Monte Grappa range (1), a shot taken inside a fronzen "Vittorio Emanuele II" gallery on the summit of Monte Grappa (2), a view of the Italian and Austro-Hungarian Sanctuary covered with snow, always in the summit of Grappa (3), a clear blue sky over the winter parched grass of Col Fenilon with its cross, an important theatre of the Battle of the Solstice (4), the French Memorial in Pederobba (5), a superb view from the Montello hill embracing the Piave and Colli Asolani at sunset (6), the river Piave, Nervesa,and its military Sanctuary (7), a picture taken in the rooms of the World War I Museum of Maserada sul Piave, the institution behind this site and fully concentrated to study the presence of British Army along the river after during the Italian campaign (8) and finally a picture of the "Museo della Battaglia" in Vittorio Veneto (9) which is now under restauration works. Vittorio Veneto is the ideal end of this journey in the wake of images (just click on the first to start the show).

Franco Cogoli is travel photographer based in Italy, in the Veneto region; he started as professional photographer in 2000, having worked for several regional editions; after a three months experience in Alaska, he published the first reportage with Weekend Viaggi magazine; then he worked in assignment for some italian travel magazines like Bell'Italia, Bell'Europa, InViaggio, QuiTouring, with many reportages and covers published. He currently produces, together with the journalist Auretta Monesi, a food and wine column for the monthly magazine Bell'Italia. In 2005 he started working with the photoagency Simephoto, which represents part of his work throughout the world.  With Sime Books he has collaborated on few books. In 2011 he was commissioned to produce the pictures for the book "Semplice e buono", on the Dolomites traditional cooking and published by Athesia. He made a lot of reportages in Croatia and  I was awarded by the Croatian Tourist Board with the "Zlatna Penkala" (Golden Pen). He has a special interest on his country, the Veneto region, winning an award for the best reportage on the Veneto palladian villas, rewarded by the Istituto Regionale Ville Venete, and published on the monthly magazine ItinerariTravel; he also worked for some tourist boards of the Veneto region, with an important assignment by the Regione Veneto on seven beach resorts and some works commissioned by the Cavallino Treporti Tourist Office and the Asiago7comuni Tourist Office. He is working on a web-site, an online archive, on the Veneto region.

"Verso la Grande guerra": a new exhibition starts today at Vittoriano, Rome

A cover from "La Tradotta",
the weekly newspaper
of the Italian 3rd Army

The 4th of November is armistice day in Italy, and this is why a new exbition is opened today until the 6th of January at Vittoriano, Rome. The collection of more than 200 documents is intended to be the first step of a three event path leading to 2014, the year when all countries are officially starting the celebrations.

The visitors will go through a layout that is shaped with several kinds of documents: postcards, trench newspapers, diaries, letters, postcards, films, books, carvings, paintings, etc. The curators are Romano Ugolini, president of Institute of History of Italian Risorgimento and Marco Pizzo, vice director of Museo Centrale del Risorgimento di Roma.

The layout concept takes its cue from the general idea that will inspire all the First World War Centenary celebrations in Italy: the Italian population as the central point, not only during the war years but also before and after. This is what assures also Paolo Peluffo, the president of the Committee for Commemmoration. 

The different sections of the exhibition develop from the crisis of the late Nineteenth Century, the so called "Giolitti's age", the Italian industrial revolution and the colonial parenthesis, the roles of the predominant social groups (the Catholics on one side and the Socialists on the other) and do not forget to contemplate a prominent figure like Gabriele D'Annunzio and his peculiar position in this scenario, both from a political and from a literary point of view.

The entrance is free.

Calendar of the Upcoming Meetings on WWI by EHESS and DHI in Paris

Allons enfants de la Patrie,
a book by Manon Pignot

The new series of one-day-conferences organized by the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in collaboration with the German Historical Institute (DHI) in Paris is now available. The program of this cycle of meetings entitled “1914-2014” aims to support the research on Great War and stimulate the increasing interest about the topic from the perspective of a double “moment 14”. Each single conferences will focus both on 1914, i.e. on the social, political and cultural occurrences of the Great War, and on 2014, i.e. on methodological approaches and on social and political impact of the WWI memory in the history. This new series of conferences carries on the research interests of the group connected with the DHI and joins in the worldwide debate on WWI, which slowly gains visibility and importance with the approaching of the centenary.

All meeting will take place, starting from 9.00 a.m. at the DHI in Paris. 

Here the program:

1. November 19th 2012 - L’histoire militaire de l’entrée en guerre
Wencke Meteling (Marburg), Damien Baldin and Emmanuel Saint-Fuscien (EHESS)
2. December 3rd 2012 - L’entrée en guerre de la jeunesse
Aurore François (UCL & Ulg), Manon Pignot (Amiens)
3. January 7th 2013 - La mobilisation des empires
Richard Fogarty (Albany), Daniel Steinbach (Exeter)
4. February 4th 2013 - Les émotions de 1914
Hervé Mazurel (Paris I), Clémentine Vidal-Naquet (EHESS)
5. March 18th 2013 - L’entrée en guerre des neutres
Marc Frey (Jacobs University Bremen), Andrea Geuna (EHESS)
6. April 15th 2013 - Obéissance/désobéissance
Paul Simmons (Oxford), Nicolas Mariot (CNRS-CURAPP)
7. May 13th 2013 - Temporalités — de la guerre ou de la commémoration
Nicolas Beaupré (UBP Clermont-Ferrand)

Further information also here.

Aerial photography of World War I: a conference in Treviso

"Alisto" is the name of a Slovenian and Italian project about aerial photography. The acronym stands for "ALI sulla STOria" which means "wings on history". If we look at the collective imagination, the First World War was a kind of battle of solitary heroes with their warplanes (think about the Italian "ace" Francesco Baracca). And there is also a definite contrast between the motionless war of the trenches and the new war that saw its debut in the sky (and that was going to refine until the extreme consequences of the air raids of Second World War). This contrast shouldn't lead us to undervalue the importance of the sky in the Great War (three-engined aircrafts, zeppelins, bizarre hot air ballons used to scan the enemy lines, etc.).

An international conference about all these aspects will held in the venue of the Treviso Province next Monday, the 5th of November. The panel is rich and international, and will focus on the state of the art of Italian and Austro-Hungarian aviations during the conflict. We have today a huge legacy coming from that first development of aviation (landmarks, diaries, itineraries, small flying camps and thousands of aerial photos that can be used to study that landscape and to compare it with the one we find today in the same places). This relevant heritage could be today the starting point to pick over those Italian-Slovenian war places approximately between the rivers Soča and Piave.

Infoline:
Unità Operativa Relazioni Internazionali
europa@provincia.treviso.it
Tel: +39 0422 656891
(Here is the link to download the *.pdf of the leaflet.)

(For us, this is also the opportunity to remember the important book by Fabio Caffarena about Italian aviation during the Great War: Dal fango al vento, Einaudi, 2010. The translation of the title is "From the Mud to the Wind", but we guess it hasn't been translated into any language so far. It's really a compelling study and already a reference book for the enthusiasts).

First World War one day itineraries through Italy. Suggestion no. 7: "Hemingway's War Circuit" in Fossalta di Piave (Venice)

This 11km round trip in the area of Fossalta di Piave will be launched next Sunday, the 28th of October in a tribute to the author of A Farewell to Arms. The new achievement was possible thanks to the common efforts of Regione Veneto, Provincia di Venezia, Comune di Fossalta di Piave and, as it often happens in Italy, to the enthusiasm of a group of close friends working on a voluntary basis. Everything comes with a audioguide system that people can hire in the bars of the area or grab via QR code. At regular intervals the visitors will find the blue signals showing "La guerra di Hemingway" (Hemingway's war) and on those spots they can play the audioguide and listen to the corresponding passage. As anticipated, this 90 minute multilanguage audioguide and the related map will be available as download to your smartphones and tablets thanks to the QR codes you will find at each milestone of the path. The historical and literary circuit is perfect also for bicycles (you can take into consideration of renting a bike at the local bike shop) and develops both on public and dirt roads. This is the reason why it is subjected to the traffic laws now in force. The concept of this start-up project is simple and great at the same time: forget about the possibility of reconstructing the dreadful tragedy of the First World War as a whole and let's go back to the words that still today enchant millions of readers. Then go back also to the places of the Great War. Walk them or ride a bike and discover how those words resonate when you walk that way.

Google Maps starting point: Fossalta di Piave.

(A dedicated website is coming soon and will be hosted in the list of links here beside.)

The river Piave in Fossalta and the stone 
dedicated to Hemingway

Photo reportage #4: Monte Meatte and Monte Boccaor

Professional and amateur photographers that are willing to share their images in a 100% First World War dedicated platform can write to this email address giving a small abstract of their work (place, country, main features, reasons of interest) and a zipped folder with the images in *.jpeg format in video resolution 72dpi (please in your email consent to World War I Bridges publishing your photos). It goes without saying that the  long term purpose of this little digitale initiative is to crowd-source digital stuff to preserve the memory of the Great War and to channel the energies of professional or amateur photographers on this.

The reportage we share today is the logical consequence of the last itinerary (the sixth) we suggested a few days ago. Once again we bring you to Monte Meatte and Monte Boccaor. The sequence of eight pictures show the Path 153 to Meatte, the gallery path climbing to Meatte Road, the starting point of trenches of Monte Boccaor, the trenches, a curious pool to collect rainwater, the trenches leading to fire position, the Meatte road and the Path 152. The trench path of Monte Boccaor has been re-established in 2010 by the volunteers of "Alpini" (the Italian Alpine troops) belonging to the local group of Paderno del Grappa. Their highly commendable intervention will go on until 2015.

Photos of animals in World War One: the pigeon with the camera

Pigeons were widely used since the antiquity to carry messages and for the same purpose they served all Armies – not only the British Intelligence Service – during the WWI, and even later, during WWII. Faster than dogs, these birds were trained to fly, even for a long period and through the bombardments. Each time a telephone line or a radio connection was not available, pigeons were able to keep important dispatches from the front to a settled position – generally the headquarters –, no matter where they were released. Besides, they were sometimes fitted with cameras in order to take pictures of the enemy position, so important was the aerial photography in the strategic conflict (this is the case of the picture we post today). It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that pigeons have to be regarded as soldiers at all intents and purposes. Stories such that of Cher Ami confirm this statement: probably the most famous carrier pigeon, Cher Ami served on the French front in 1918, during the last stage of the Great War; it helped to save 200 Americans soldiers surrounded by the enemy, because it succeeded in delivering the message to the headquarter, although it was badly wounded – renowned is in fact its picture without the left leg. Harry Webb Farrington devoted even a poem to this war bird. Pigeons were decorated during the Great War as human beings were and memorials devoted to war pigeons can be found in many countries, such as at Worthing, England or in Brussels, Belgium.

(If you wish to contribute with a picture, feel free to write an email to the beside address. We will mention your name in the recommendation's credits. Thank you!)

First World War one day itineraries through Italy. Suggestion no. 6: Monte Meatte, Monte Boccaor Trenches,Val delle Mure

Monte Grappa #1
(This aims at being the first of a series of itineraries dedicated to Monte Grappa)

Monte Grappa needs no presentations: as a crucial and strategic point during the whole conflict, it hosts on its summit one of the most representative monuments of WWI in Italy. It has however much more to offer, such as the innumerable itineraries in its surrounding, that run through old military roads and trenches and allow to discover and admire many concealed “botanic garden” amidst the war ruins. Moreover, you can find the right itinerary in every season of the year, even in winter (obviously, only if you have the required training and a good experience to manage with the – sometimes sudden – weather changes). The first suggestion concerns Monte Meatte and the newly restored trenches of Monte Boccaor. The hike is not so overwhelming, it only requires an appropriate mountain equipment. The whole tour lasts about 5 hours (take something to eat with you, for a short break on the summit, in the case) and it is fascinating especially in autumn.

Google maps starting point: Valle San Liberale, Rifugio Bellavista. (Via San Liberale, 5, Paderno del Grappa Treviso, Italia)

From Paderno del Grappa, locality Fietta, drive up to the Valle San Liberale, till the end of the road, where you can easily park. Before start walking, you may have a look to the informative labels which describes the trenches and the military buildings still partially present in the San Liberale Valley, which was in fact the starting points of many paths used to bring supplies to the troops at the front line. Take then the path n. 153, to hike up to Meatte Mountain. It is a large military road, which preserves in the first section the original stony pavement, turns then into a smaller path. Everywhere you can discover caves, used as shelters and bivouacs. During the ascent in the wood, pay attention to the signals and the labels, since there are some interconnections with other paths, such as the n. 151 (that will be the one of descent) and the Via Ferrata Sass Brusal, a short, yet wonderful climbing, which has to be undertaken only by very experienced hikers. The path n. 153 on the contrary leads easily out of the wood, runs in its final section through small galleries (torch is in this case not required) and small saddlebackes, and reaches the path n. 152 on the crest. 



From this intersection, if you take on the right, you can easily reach Cima della Mandria and Malga Archeson. But we suggest you to take on the left, following the path n. 152, to the “Meatte Path”, a road made by the military Engineer Corps in 1918 on the southern slopes of mount in order to assure supplies to the troops and enable their movement. You can follows this panoramic road between the rocks, with a spectacular view on Valle San Liberale and – if the day is bright – on the venetian plateau.

We propose, however, a small variation to the common tour, in order to visit the newly restored trenches of the Monte Boccaor, beside Monte Meatte. On the path n. 152, as you reach three small fountains on the right (no potable water available), few meters ahead, again on the right, starts a small tracks. If you walk few steps along it, you can immediately recognize on the left, climbing the crest, the starting point of the trenches. We highly recommend this particular itinerary (even if it means, you won't walk the whole “Meatte path”, except in the case you have some extra time to visit both) because you'll have so the chance to walk inside the trenches, feel the tiny space between the stones where the soldiers spent their nights and days, visit the shelters , try to lie in the fire position or have a look to the pool used to collect rainwater. In short, we highly recommends this track because it enables you to understand bodily what spending time in a trench meant. In autumn, the fog may increase the feeling, so as in winter the snow and the frozen temperature do. You can walk the entire trenches line till Val delle Mure, a docile, green, glacial valley. Val delle Mure became from 1917 a sort of “no mans land”: the Italian troops fighting on the summit had to pass through this valley, under the fire of Austrians-Hungarians, in order to transport supplies and wounded down to San Liberale. From here, do not walk on the provincial road, take instead short on the left, walk through the meadows and reach again path n.152, which it's easy to recognize on the crest, with its stony pavement. Follow for some meters the path n. 152 again, till you reach the intersection with path n. 151, a easy track which leads down back to San Liberale. If you want to rest and eat something, two restaurants are placed beside the parking.