Introduction: The Cultural Heritage of the Isonzo Front
Introduction: The Cultural Heritage of the Isonzo Front

Summary/Abstract: One of the greatest, most tragic, and largely overlooked campaigns during the First World War was the Isonzo Front, which ran through an area inhabited by an ethnic Slovenian majority and, in the part along the southern reaches of the Isonzo River, by Italians, Friulians, and Germans. The region was part of the pact between the Triple Entente and Italy, which declared war on Austria-Hungary in 1915. This was a territory that is believed to have been visited by Dante Alighieri and that was described by Ernest Hemingway in one of his novels. This issue of Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore is dedicated to the First World War – specifically, the use and production of cultural heritage during that period – with an emphasis on a lesser-known front in the “non-West”. According to John R. Schindler, the reasons for neglecting and forgetting this front, which involved over a million soldiers, over 300,000 of whom were killed in battle, lie in the fact that “[f]or most English-language historians, battles and campaigns of the Great War that did not happen on the Western Front or involve English-speaking troops apparently are not worth exploring” (Schindler 2001: xiii). Consequently, all the horrors of war and human victims have also been forgotten alongside it. The area that became part of Italy after the war has become the subject of various heritage discourses, strategies, and practices of the winners (i.e., Italians) and the losers (i.e., non-Italians).

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