Trentino Historical Museum Foundation
Cesare Battisti
Cesare Battisti’s activities as a geographer and a topographer included handwritten notes on lake Tovel as part of a systematic description of the majority of Trentino lakes in addition to bibliographic notes focusing on the lake as well.
Cesare Battisti (1875-1916) is considered a national hero and one of the most important figures of the Italian irredentism. He was born in Trento when it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and carried out important scientific activities as a geographer as well as being an important political leader of the socialist movement, running its newspapers. He centred his programme on the struggle for autonomy from the Austrian Empire and the annexation of the region to Italy. He was a member of the Vienna Chamber of Deputies (1911) and at the outbreak of the World War I he supported Italian intervention against Austria and joined the Alpini, taking part in different acts of war. He was taken prisoner on Monte Corno on the 10th of July 1916 and was tried, convicted and executed on the 12th of July in Trento at Buonconsiglio Castle.
Battisti was particularly keen on geography, an interest fostered by his meeting with a prominent Friulian geographer named Giovanni Marinelli, professor at the University of Florence at that time. Battisti obtained a degree with the highest marks in 1897 with a thesis entitled “Contributo alla geografia fisica e all’antropogeografia del Trentino”, published the following year by the publisher Zippel of Trento under the title “Il Trentino. Saggio di geografia fisica e di antropogeografia”.
Battisti made a great contribution (see document ) to the geographical and naturalistic studies of his region: indeed in 1898 he was secretary of the Third Italian Geographic Congress held in Florence. In the same year he met the geologist Giovan Battista Trener and founded the scientific journal Tridentum along with him.
He also published some highly regarded guides about Trento and other centres in the region. Of special interest is his participation in the editorial initiative of the Istituto Geografico De Agostini (De Agostini Geographic Institute). Giovanni De Agostini, in fact, had planned the publication of a series of thematic atlas dedicated to the territories of Trentino linguistically and culturally related to Italy. Compared to the traditional geographical monograph, reserved for a more erudite public, the structure of the atlas was easy to understand thanks to the communicative ability of its maps and illustrations. Battisti was asked to create two volumes: the first on the Trentino region which was published in October 1915 and the second one on Venezia-Giulia, which was published posthumously after the end of the war in 1920.
References
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/cesare-battisti.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Battisti.
Cali V. (1983). “Guida all’Archivio e alla Biblioteca Battisti”, Collana di monografie del Museo trentino del Risorgimento e della lotta per la libertà 16, s. n., Trento, Temi, p. 411.
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