Giovanni Battista Trener

Giovanni Battista Trener as an Italian officer in the First World War

Giovanni Battista Trener (born January 7, 1877 in Fiera di Primiero ; died May 5, 1954 in Trento ) was an Austro-Italian geologist. He was friend and brother-in-law of Cesare Battisti, who was executed as a traitor by Austria-Hungary .

Life

Early years until 1914

The son of the tax officer Silvio Trener spent most of his childhood in Rovereto and Trento . After graduating from high school in Trient in 1895, the talented Trener enrolled at the University of Vienna to study chemistry. At the university he attended, among other things, the lectures of the two well-known geologists Eduard Suess and Albrecht Penck . After successfully completing his studies in 1900 Trener found a job with the kk Imperial Geological Institute in Vienna and was with geological surveys in the southern Tyrol commissioned to create the geological special maps of Austria-Hungary.

In the same year he returned to Trento, in the city on the Adige he met Cesare Battisti during his studies around 1897 during a joint geological work for the Società degli Alpinisti Tridentini , the Trentino mountaineering association. From then on he had a deep friendship with the geographer Battisti. Together they founded and directed the scientific-historical-literary magazine Tridentum . The solidarity with Battisti influenced Trener in many ways, not only in the professional, scientific and later, during the First World War, political, but also privately. In 1906 they even became related when Trener married Irene Bittanti, the sister of Ernesta Bittanti , wife of Cesare Battisti. The basis of trust between the two can also be seen from the fact that Battisti Trener repeatedly asked to sign with the names Battistis.

Until 1909 he worked first in the Adamello-Presanella Alps , then in the Valsugana and finally in the Lagorai and in the massif of the Cima d'Asta . In the end, the two map sheets Bormio and Passo del Tonale as well as Borgo and Fiera di Primiero from the series of special geological maps of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy were based on his surveys . In the 1920s and 1940s, too, he used the information gathered at that time to create two more maps, now on behalf of the Magistrato alle Acque in Venice .

An expression of this varied creative period in which he dealt with crystallography and petrography , among other things , is also the Trenersche rule named after him . Bruno Sander named this law formulated to determine the deformation of quartz crystals in 1911 after Trener, who first set it up in 1906. Together with Battisti, he proposed to the Trentino mountaineering association that a working group should be set up to deal with hydrological , glaciological and speleological topics and which also found support from foreign sponsors such as the Swiss François-Alphonse Forel , but was not implemented. The Trentino Natural History Museum emerged from the project, to which Trener later devoted a large part of his life. In 1908 he was accepted into the Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati and in 1911 he founded a small mining company to carry out mineralogical surveys on Monte Calisio near Trento and of which Battisti was director from 1912.

First World War

Trener worked for the Imperial and Royal Geological Institute until 1914. His closeness to the irredentist Battisti precluded further work in the tense international situation shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. In late 1914, Trener concluded that war between Italy and Austria-Hungary was inevitable. Encouraged by the fact that his brother-in-law Battisti had already left for Italy in August 1914, he also decided to leave. As a result, he accepted an offer from Giorgio Dal Piaz, Professor of Geology at the University of Padua, to carry out geological surveys in the Brenta Valley and, like his brother-in-law before, left for Italy in January 1915, officially with a passport.

At the end of April 1915, a few weeks before the Italian entry into the war , the military intelligence service of the Italian army initially unsuccessfully contacted Trener via Antonio Piscel, who also came from Trentino, in order to recruit him as a topographical advisor and interpreter. After the outbreak of war, he finally volunteered and was assigned to the territorial militia in Verona with the rank of Sottotenente and entrusted as an interpreter with questioning the prisoners of war. A task that did not do justice to his qualifications and that did not satisfy him.

In December 1915 he was assigned to the intelligence service of the 3rd Army on the Isonzo . Among other things, his new area of ​​responsibility included the evaluation of aerial photographs, during which he did pioneering work in Italy. For his services, he insisted on examining the opposing positions himself, he was awarded several times, including the silver medal of bravery and the War Merit Cross . By the end of the war he rose to become captain. During the negotiations with the Austrian Armistice Commission, headed by General Viktor Weber von Webenau , which led to the signing of the Armistice at Villa Giusti on November 3, 1918 , he was used by the Italian High Command as an interpreter due to his excellent knowledge of German.

After 1918

From November 1918 until his discharge from military service in September 1919, he initially worked in the military administration of the territories occupied by the Italian army under the direction of General Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi and, after his discharge in the summer of 1919, under his successor, civil commissioner Luigi Credaro . After his discharge from the army, he hoped for a job with the geological institute of the kingdom, which he was denied. For him, this meant a turning point in his scientific work, so that he no longer sought an academic career in the Kingdom of Italy. From 1920 to 1945 he worked as a freelancer and soon became one of the most valued geologists in Trentino. His work included, among other things, the geological surveys for the construction of several hydropower plants, including the Santa Giustina Dam . He was also active in the fields of mining, water extraction , water pipe systems , road and rail construction. In 1931, due to his extensive knowledge, he worked as a consultant for the construction of hydropower plants on the Volga and in the Caucasus in the Soviet Union . In 1935 he discovered the slightly radioactive healing water at the Vigiljoch near Merano and worked out the projects for a water pipe system for the Merano spa baths.

In his spare time he continued his scientific research in the field of hydrology, crystallography and petrography. In 1922 he was one of the founding members of the Natural History Museum in Trento, which he headed among other things as director until he had to give up the post for political reasons in 1932 and was only able to take it up again in 1946. In 1931 he became an advisor to the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), the National Research Council, which from 1946 promoted, among other things, climatic studies within the framework of the Centro di studi alpini institute established in the Natural History Museum in Trento and headed by Trener, the Centro di studi alpini .

Until his death in 1954 he underlined the scientific importance of the geographical work of his friend and brother-in-law Cesare Battisti, which was always overshadowed by his political activities.

literature

• Nicola Gabellieri: Un “anello” della Galassia Battisti: Giovanni Battista Trener geologo e geografo . In: Elena Dai Prà (ed.): Cesare Battisti, la Geografia e la Grande Guerra . Centro Italiano per gli Studi Storico-Geografici, Rome 2019, ISBN 978-88-940516-6-7 .
• Marco Pantaloni:  Trener, Giovanni Battista. In: Raffaele Romanelli (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 96:  Toja-Trivelli. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2019.
• Achille Rastelli: La lente di Trener: Ovvero l'arte di interpretare le foto aeree . In: Diego Leoni, Patrizia Marchesoni, Achille Rastelli (eds.): La macchina di sorveglianza: la ricognizione aerofotografica italiana e austriaca sul Trentino: 1915–1918 . Museo storico in Trento, Trento 2001, ISBN 8871970470 .
• Gino Tomasi: Giovanni Battista Trener (1877–1954) nel cinquantesimo della morte . In: Accademia degli Agiati (ed.): Atti dell'Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati . Volume 254, 2004 Series VIII, Volume IV, Atti B, Rovereto 2005. PDF

Web links

Commons : Giovanni Battista Trener  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nicola Gabellieri: Un “anello” della Galassia Battisti: Giovanni Battista Trener geologo e geografo p. 144.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Nicola Gabellieri: Un “anello” della Galassia Battisti: Giovanni Battista Trener geologo e geografo p. 144, 149
3. ↑ Nicola Gabellieri: Un “anello” della Galassia Battisti: Giovanni Battista Trener geologo e geografo p. 151.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Marco Pantaloni:  Giovanni Battista Trener. In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI).
5. ↑ Carl Wilhelm Correns (ed.): The origin of the rocks: A textbook of Petrogenesis . Julius Springer, Berlin 1939, p. 305
6. ^ Gino Tomasi: Giovanni Battista Trener (1877-1954) nel cinquantesimo della morte p. 10
7. ↑ Achille Rastelli: La lente di Trener: Ovvero l'arte di interpretare le foto aeree p. 20.
8. ↑ Nicola Gabellieri: Un “anello” della Galassia Battisti: Giovanni Battista Trener geologo e geografo p. 145, 152.
9. ↑ Nicola Gabellieri: Un "anello" della Galassia Battisti: Giovanni Battista Trener geologo e geografo S. 145th
10. ↑ Gauro Coppola, Antonio Passerini, Gianfranco Zandonati (eds.): Un secolo di vita dell'Accademia degli Agiati (1901-2000) Volume 2 Soci - 1901-2000 - Biography . Accademia degli Agiati, Rovereto 2003, p. 1090
11. ^ Gino Tomasi: Giovanni Battista Trener (1877–1954) nel cinquantesimo della morte pp. 12–13.
12. ↑ Nicola Gabellieri: Un “anello” della Galassia Battisti: Giovanni Battista Trener geologo e geografo p. 153.