Reflections on the composition of Trieste citizenry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
A demonstration on the example of Sergij Vilfan’s family history
Keywords:
Trieste, citizenry, nineteenth century, early twentieth century, Vilfan, Jeanrenaud, Jugovic, ŠavnikAbstract
The data from Austrian population censuses of 1880 and 1890, in which multilingual inhabitants were to select only one language as their predominant means of communication, do not reflect the real composition of the then Trieste population and the intertwining of various ethnic and religious groups that were drawn to the city. The family history of several generations of the Trieste families of Vilfan and Jeanrenaud (since 1903 connected through marriage) demonstrates highly variegated ethnic, religious, and language ties that were forged even within a family nucleus. In occupational and economic terms, the presented Slovenian middle-class families of Vilfan, Jugovic, and Šavnik lived in conformity with the overall middle-class patterns of their time and constituted a socially equivalent part of Trieste’s ethnically mixed citizenry. The national affiliations that individual members of the families concerned subsequently developed were a result of not only their family ties but also of education, occupation, work environment, and place of residence. The First World War represents an important watershed in the history of Trieste and the lives of the representatives of the families under examination, which left Trieste, mostly by the end of the 1920s and definitively after the Second World War.
