On Wednesday, November 12, 2025, from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM, in Room F, DiSU headquarters, in Androna Campo Marzio 10, the presentation of the book "Italian in the Habsburg Empire. Notes on the history of the language at the dawn of the twentieth century" (Franco Cesati Editore, Florence, 2025) by Gualtiero Boaglio (Institut für Romanistik, University of Vienna) will take place.

The author will be in conversation with Tullia Catalan and Francesco Toncich of the Department of Humanistic Studies, University of Trieste.

As historian Pieter Judson has pointed out, the Habsburg Empire demonstrated the possibility of bringing together diverse peoples and languages ​​within a single state: eleven official languages, governed by laws and administrative practices that aimed to unite diverse communities and identities. But what was the history of Italian within this linguistic mosaic?

The book reconstructs the Empire's linguistic policy toward the Italian language, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. After the Congress of Vienna, Italian ceased to be merely the refined language of the court and became a means of communication between the Habsburg administration and the Austro-Italian provinces.
Through extensive archival material, the research explores the criteria used to evaluate grammars and scholastic anthologies intended for schools in Trentino, Istria, and Trieste. Trieste, a city at the crossroads of cultures, offers insights into how Italian was taught, used, and perceived within an environment rich with diverse linguistic influences. The book thus demonstrates how language could become a lens through which to interpret history, education, and cultural coexistence in late-nineteenth-century Habsburg Europe.

Gualtiero Boaglio, associate professor at the Institute of Romance Studies at the University of Vienna, was a translator at the Austrian Federal Chancellery, a fellow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and a contact person for the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation. He specializes in historical sociolinguistics, with a focus on conflicts between languages ​​and cultures, multilingualism, and language policy. He directed the project "Historical Perspectives on Transnationalism and Intercultural Dialogue in the Multilingual Adriatic Littoral." His publications include the monographs "Italianità. Eine Begriffsgeschichte" (2008) and "Geschichte der italienischen Literatur in Österreich. Part 2: Von Campoformido bis Saint Germain. 1797-1918" (2012).

Event organized and funded by the Young Researchers 2024 - MSCA research project "I&OTA: In and Out of the Asylum".

For information: francesco.toncich@units.it