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“The fascists aimed to change the memory of World War I”

Hannah Malone is an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Department of History and Cultural Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.

Mar 20, 2018

The ossuary on Monte Grappa, in the north of Italy, is built on an enormous scale.

The ossuary on Monte Grappa, in the north of Italy, is built on an enormous scale.
Image Credit: Hannah Malone

Hannah Malone in her office at the Art History Department at Freie Universität.

Hannah Malone in her office at the Art History Department at Freie Universität.
Image Credit: Leonie Schlick

“The powerful have always used death as an instrument in significant ways,” says Hannah Malone.

The Irish scholar, who previously did research at Cambridge, is sitting in her office at the Art History Department of Freie Universität on Koserstraße, in Berlin’s Dahlem district. From there, she immerses herself daily in 1930s Italy.

“I study monuments that were erected during the fascist period in Italy to honor soldiers who fell in World War I,” Malone explains. The fascists aimed retrospectively to give the memory of this war positive connotations, she says.

Malone’s Research Combines History and History of Architecture

Malone, an art historian, plans to spend two years working on a research project entitled “Death, architecture and propaganda: Italy’s Fascist ossuaries of the First World War,” and to compile the results in a monograph.

As her research subject is interdisciplinary by design, Malone is being supervised at Freie Universität by two professors from the Department of History and Cultural Studies: the art historian Christian Freigang, who focuses on the history of architecture, and Oliver Janz, a historian.

Malone’s Research Ties in with That of Her Advisors

Freigang’s fields of research include the connection between authoritarian notions of the state and modern architecture, especially in France and Germany. His associate Christine Beese, who has a doctorate in art history, has also published an important study on urban development in fascist Italy. “Hannah Malone is a perfect fit for the focus at this division of the Art History Department,” Freigang points out.

Janz, who also studies the history of World War I and is one of the three founding editors of the international online encyklopedia “1914-1918-online,” which is coordinated at Freie Universität, brought toMalone’s attention the opportunities offered by a Humboldt Research Fellowship for postdocs at a conference in Oxford in 2015. “Her research was really interesting to me because it ties in with mine,” Janz says.

There has been practically no research on the fascist monuments in Italy so far, Janz says. While “La Grande Guerre” had always been viewed positively in France, for example, World War I was initially “not very popular” in Italy, not least because it could not be presented as a defensive war. “The soldiers’ remains were buried where they fell.” Under Mussolini, these local military cemeteries were dissolved, and the remains were exhumed. Instead of the local sites, gigantic monuments to the fallen were erected in seven or eight places in Italy.

Seven to Eight Ossuaries in Italy

One particularly monumental example is the ossuary on Monte Grappa, in the north of the country. Thousands of soldiers died here during World War I. With the monument built in the 1930s, the fascist regime celebrated the soldiers as heroes while presenting Italy’s role in the war as heroic. “The fascists wanted to give the memory of the war a ‘positive overtone,’” Malone says.

And they succeeded; Janz says, “Nowadays, the First World War has primarily positive connotations in Italy.” The fact that monuments built during the fascist period are used as part of the cult surrounding the war, he explains, attracts little critical attention.

Malone Grew Up in Ireland and Italy

Malone plans to reconstruct the history of the fascist monuments through photos, letters, and sketches. She has regularly undertaken research at the archives of the Italian Defense Ministry, in Rome, with this aim.

Her interest in Italian history is no coincidence; Malone grew up in Italy, where her parents moved when she was seven. She continues to spend a great deal of time in the southern European country as a scholar.

Malone feels very comfortable at Freie Universität for various reasons including the good scholarly supervision she receives. Now all she needs to do is learn German, she says. In her next research project, she plans to focus on fascist Italy and Germany during the Nazi period – and for that, she will need to be able to analyze German-language sources as well.

Further Information

Dr. Hannah Malone, Freie Universität Berlin and University of Cambridge, Email: hannaholiviamalone@gmail.com