Selected works
Zeni's works include the following: [3]
- Briciole: ricordi di una donna in guerra (1926)
- Irredento (1928)
- Figli d'Italia (1932)
Luisa Zeni (Arco, 1896 - 1940) was an Italian secret agent and writer. [1] [2]
She was born in Arco, Trentino, in 1896. The daughter of a blacksmith, she lost her mother when a small child.
She lived in the early years of the twentieth century, in the climate of growing tension within the Austro-Hungarian Empire between Italians and Germans. An irredentist, she came from a region hesitant between a centuries-old loyalty to the Habsburgs and the call for Italian independence. After crossing the border in 1914, she played an important role in the pro-war propaganda within the Committee of the Adriatic and Trento Irredents (Comitato degli Irredenti Adriatici e Trentini). She also wrote of her experiences. [1]
In the lead-up to the war, the Command of the First Army recruited Trentino inhabitants willing to participate in an espionage operation aimed at disclosing enemies' movements from Ala up to the Brenner Pass. Zeni was recruited in 1915 by Colonel Tullio Marchetti, Chief of the Information Office. On May 22, 1915, Zeni crossed the border, entering Austrian territory in the Ossenigo area. [2]
Due to her knowledge of the German language and of the Trentino, in the weeks following her arrival Zeni gathered information, which she noted down in minuscule papers that she later hid in the buttons of her coat. Her cautiousness saved her life at the end of July: she was arrested, but the accusations against her were dropped. She avoided the destiny of other Italian spies, who were found out and executed during the same period.
Zeni's works include the following: [3]
The Dolomites, also known as the Dolomite Mountains, Dolomite Alps or Dolomitic Alps, are a mountain range located in northeastern Italy. They form part of the Southern Limestone Alps and extend from the River Adige in the west to the Piave Valley in the east. The northern and southern borders are defined by the Puster Valley and the Sugana Valley. The Dolomites are located in the regions of Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Friuli Venezia Giulia, covering an area shared between the provinces of Belluno, Vicenza, Verona, Trentino, South Tyrol, Udine and Pordenone.
Tyrol is a state (Land) in western Austria. It comprises the Austrian part of the historical Princely County of Tyrol. It is a constituent part of the present-day Euroregion Tyrol–South Tyrol–Trentino. The capital of Tyrol is Innsbruck.
The history of Tyrol, a historical region in the middle alpine area of Central Europe, dates back to early human settlements at the end of the last glacier period, around 12,000 BC. Sedentary settlements of farmers and herders can be traced back to 5000 BC. Many of the main and side valleys were settled during the early Bronze Age, from 1800 to 1300 BC. From these settlements, two prominent cultures emerged: the Laugen-Melaun culture in the Bronze Age, and the Fritzens-Sanzeno culture in the Iron Age.
Asiago is a minor township in the surrounding plateau region in the Province of Vicenza in the Veneto region of Northeastern Italy. It is near the border between the Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol regions in the foothills of the Alps, and about equidistant (60 km) from the major cities of Trento to the west and Vicenza to the south. The Asiago region is the origin of Asiago cheese. The town was the site of a major battle between Austrian and Italian forces on the Alpine Front of World War I. It is a major ski resort destination as well as the site of the Astrophysical Observatory of Asiago, operated by the University of Padua.
Magasa is a town and comune in the province of Brescia, in Lombardy in northern Italy.
Trentino officially the Autonomous Province of Trento, is an autonomous province of Italy, in the country's far north. The Trentino and South Tyrol constitute the region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, an autonomous region under the constitution. The province is composed of 177 comuni (municipalities). Its capital is the city of Trento (Trent). The province covers an area of more than 6,000 km2 (2,300 sq mi), with a total population of 541,098 in 2019. Trentino is renowned for its mountains, such as the Dolomites, which are part of the Alps.
The 1st Army was an Royal Italian Army field army, in World War I, facing Austro-Hungarian and German forces, and in World War II, fighting on the North African front.
Modern-day South Tyrol, an autonomous Italian province created in 1948, was part of the Austro-Hungarian County of Tyrol until 1918. It was annexed by Italy following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I. It has been part of a cross-border joint entity, the Euroregion Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino, since 2001.
The Battle of Asiago(Battle of the Plateaux) or the Trentino Offensive, nicknamed Strafexpedition by the Italians, was a major counteroffensive launched by the Austro-Hungarians on the Italian Front on 15 May 1916, during World War I. It was an unexpected attack that took place near Asiago in the province of Vicenza after the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo.
The Operational Zone of the Alpine Foothills was a Nazi German occupation zone in the sub-Alpine area in Italy during World War II.
Arco is a comune in Trentino-Alto Adige in northern Italy. The town is faced on one side by sheer limestone cliffs jutting up like a wall protecting it and its ancient hilltop castle. King Francis II of the Two Sicilies died here in 1894.
Nago–Torbole is a comune (municipality) in Trentino in the northern Italian region Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, located about 30 kilometres southwest of Trento on the north shore of Lake Garda.
Ettore Tolomei was an Italian nationalist and fascist. He was designated a Member of the Italian Senate in 1923, and ennobled as Conte della Vetta in 1937.
This article is about Italian military operations in World War I.
Marta Verginella is a Slovenian historian from the Slovene minority in Italy in Trieste, notable as one of the most prominent contemporary Slovene historians. Together with Alenka Puhar, she is considered a pioneer in the history of family relations in the Slovene Lands.
Rovereto railway station serves the Comune of Rovereto in the autonomous province of Trentino, northeastern Italy.
Tre Sassi fort is a fortress and museum on the road to the Passo di Valparola, within the comune of Cortina d'Ampezzo in the southern (Dolomitic) Alps of the Veneto region of Northern Italy. Hidden between the Ampezzo valley and the high Val Badia, it was built by Austrians between 1897 and 1901 as a fortification against attack from the Italians on the Falzàrego and Valparo. During World War I it was a favorite target for the Italians, and the fort was destroyed as there was inadequate artillery to defend it.
Italy entered into the First World War in 1915 with the aim of completing national unity: for this reason, the Italian intervention in the First World War is also considered the Fourth Italian War of Independence, in a historiographical perspective that identifies in the latter the conclusion of the unification of Italy, whose military actions began during the revolutions of 1848 with the First Italian War of Independence.
Margherita Ancona was an Italian teacher and active in the women's suffrage movement in Milan. She was the secretary and later president of the radical bourgeois Comitato lombardo pro suffragio and member of the Italian branch of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). One of the leaders of the Italian women's suffrage campaigns, she was the only Italian woman to serve in her era on the board of the IWSA and was as a delegate to the Inter-Allied Women's Conference of 1919.
The White War is the name given to the fighting in the high-altitude Alpine sector of the Italian front during the First World War, principally in the Dolomites, the Ortles-Cevedale Alps and the Adamello-Presanella Alps. More than two-thirds of this conflict zone lies at an altitude above 2,000m, rising to 3905m at Mount Ortler. In 1917 New York World correspondent E. Alexander Powell wrote: “On no front, not on the sun-scorched plains of Mesopotamia, nor in the frozen Mazurian marshes, nor in the blood-soaked mud of Flanders, does the fighting man lead so arduous an existence as up here on the roof of the world.”
