"Guglielmo Oberdan. Biography of a Political Myth": A Reflection between History and Memory at Caffè San Marco

On Tuesday 16 December, at the Antico Caffè San Marco in Trieste, a meeting was held dedicated to the figure of Guglielmo Oberdan, a central protagonist in the city’s political and civic history and in the national imagination between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The lecture, entitled “Guglielmo Oberdan. Biography of a Political Myth”, was delivered by Luca G. Manenti as part of the series promoted by the Manlio Cecovini International Society for Social and Ethical Historical Studies.

The evening was opened by Giuseppe Antonione, former President of the Association, who welcomed the audience and introduced the speaker, recalling how Manenti’s contribution marks the beginning of a broader research project devoted to Oberdan. In his address, Antonione also wished to commemorate two recent losses deeply felt by the Triestine cultural community and by the Association: the bookseller Sergio Zorzon, a key figure in the city’s cultural life, and the lawer Guendal Cecovini Amigoni.

During the lecture, Luca G. Manenti offered a nuanced and problem-oriented reading of Oberdan, based on the distinction between the historical man and the political myth: two different figures, the former ending tragically at just twenty-four years of age in 1882, the latter destined to endure over time, crossing periods, political cultures and contrasting interpretations. As the quintessential martyr of Italian irredentism, Oberdan was in fact appropriated over the years as a symbol by republicans, interventionists, fascists and anti-fascists alike, each reshaping his memory to suit different needs and visions.

The talk retraced the main stages of Oberdan’s biography: his birth in Trieste, his schooling, his approach to republican and Mazzinian circles, his desertion from the Austro-Hungarian army, his experience of exile in Rome, and the gradual radicalisation of his political action. Considerable attention was devoted to the Orsini bomb, a symbol of nineteenth-century subversion, and to the attacks that marked the summer of 1882 in Trieste, in particular that of 2 August during the veterans’ torchlight procession, which remains shrouded in questions and grey areas.

Manenti then analysed the military trial, the death sentence and Oberdan’s execution, emphasising how the rigidity of the Habsburg apparatus itself contributed decisively to the construction of the myth. With the hanging, the man disappears but the symbol is immediately born, fuelled by patriotic literature and by figures such as Giosuè Carducci, who defined Oberdan as a “martyr of the religion of the fatherland”, a key expression for understanding the secular yet sacral dimension of nineteenth-century patriotism.

The lecture went on to trace the evolution of the myth over time: from the central role it assumed during the First World War as a model for volunteers from the Julian March and Dalmatia, to its full appropriation by Fascism, which transformed the image of the young martyr into a virile and monumental hero, and finally to anti-fascist and Resistance reinterpretations. Oberdan thus emerged as a multifaceted figure, constantly reinterpreted and contested, capable of reflecting the political and identity tensions of different eras.

Particular attention was paid to the question of Oberdan’s national identity, often the subject of historiographical disputes. Through an analysis of the sources, Manenti showed how such categories are fluid in a border city like Trieste, stressing that Oberdan’s Italianness should be understood above all as a conscious choice of belonging rather than as an ethnic or biographical given.

The final discussion, animated by contributions from Giuseppe Antonione and Roberto Spazzali, further explored the relationship between Oberdan and Fascism, the iconographic construction of the figure, urban planning issues connected with sites of civic memory, and the many hypotheses surrounding the attack of 2 August 1882, bringing to light documents, testimonies and questions that remain unresolved.

The meeting marked the final event in the 2025 programme of the Manlio Cecovini International Society for Social and Ethical Historical Studies. The Association’s activities will nevertheless continue on Monday 22 December at 5.00 p.m. at the Old London Pub in Via Caprin, in the San Giacomo district, with the presentation of the volumes “History of Italian Freemasonry. From Its Origins to the New Millennium” by Luca G. Manenti and “The Fortunes of the Rag-and-Bone Merchant” by Andrea Comisso, a collection of short stories.

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