Giuseppina Negrelli

Giuseppina Negrelli , baptized as Gioseffa Franca Elisabetta Giovanna , (* May 27, 1790 in Fiera di Primiero , Tyrol , Austrian Empire ; † December 18, 1842 in Mezzano , Tyrol, Austrian Empire) participated in the armed Tyrolean popular uprising of 1809 and is considered to be Welschtiroler patriot.

Life

The written records that have come down to Giuseppina Negrelli come from the hand of her father, Angelo Michele Negrelli, who wrote an extensive autobiography between 1844 and 1851. Her father worked for one of the most important timber dealers in Primiero before he went into business for himself in 1796. Relatively wealthy, he traveled a lot due to his job and took part in social life. Although he had no regular school education, he read a lot and wrote his own writings, some with a political background, in which he was critical of the changes of his time, symbolized by the French Revolution .

Giuseppina Negrelli was born on May 27, 1790 in Fiera di Primiero as the second daughter of Angelo Michele Negrelli and Elisabetta Württemberg. A total of eleven children resulted from the marriage, ten of which survived childhood. Her younger brother Alois Negrelli von Moldelbe (1799-1858) became world famous in later years for building the Suez Canal .

Giuseppina, who was also called Bepi, was very close to her father. Presumably she knew the writings of her father, or at least she knew his dislike of the French. In her youth, her father sent her to her older sister in Venice for a year and, in 1801, to the monastery in Bassano for two years . According to her father, she showed no calling for monastic life.

When in 1809 the popular uprising against the Bavarian - French occupation of Tyrol broke out, to which the Primiero had belonged since the 14th century and which had been entrusted to the Counts of Welsperg as a Habsburg fief since 1401 , her godfather, Count Giuseppe von Welsperg, encouraged her to defend her Tales to participate. Her father, who was not enthusiastic about the suggestion, could not avoid the Count's request and agreed to the plan, also because his daughter was given two confidants and he knew she was in good hands.

In uniform and with her hair shortened, she joined the territorial militia as Giuseppe and was posted to the border with Veneto , where it was feared that the Bavarian-French troops would advance. The latter, however, never seriously planned to venture into the valley and limited themselves to a cautious reconnaissance of the area. At one of these companies, a French captain disguised as a civilian was stopped while trying to cross the border and was turned back by Giuseppina. According to her father's notes, it was this event that helped spread the word that a young woman from Primiero was at the head of a company of volunteers who secured the border with Feltre .

Presumably Giuseppina was involved in raids by the company in Veneto, at least her father's notes suggest this. There was also a rumor in Veneto that women were also involved in these incursions by these units, known as brigands .

With the peace treaty of Schönbrunn between Napoleon Bonaparte and Franz I of Austria, signed on October 14, 1809, and the Habsburg renunciation of Tyrol, all fighting ended in Primiero and with it Giuseppina Negrelli's military career. After 1809 she helped her father with his business and accompanied him on business trips. After the end of the Bavarian-French rule in Tyrol, Giuseppina Negrelli was awarded two gold medals for bravery in Innsbruck in November 1814 . With that Giuseppina said goodbye to the public stage.

In April 1816 she married the merchant Antonio Luigi Zorzi from Mezzano, against the will of her father, as the latter noted in his autobiography. The marriage had a daughter and seven sons. According to her father's memories, she was not happy in her role as a mother and wife. On December 18, 1842 Giuseppina Negrelli died ten months after her husband and after a long and serious illness. She was buried in the Mezzano cemetery. The events of 1809 were not dealt with in any way in their necrology .

reception

Over time, many stereotypes developed around the character of Giuseppina Negrelli and her role in 1809 . She was portrayed as a defensive defender who, as a young girl , defended her homeland Tyrol without hesitation, in the manner of an Italian-speaking Katharina Lanz . In contrast to the so-called heroine of Spinges , however, she did not wear women's clothes, but a uniform and stood out for her more masculine demeanor.

In their understanding of home, the local reference to their valley, the Primiero, and their village was in the foreground. A reference to the geographical and historical region of Tyrol was only of secondary importance, if at all. The dynastic loyalty to the Habsburg monarchy was far more lively.

In 2000 the Primiero rifle company was named after Giuseppina Negrelli, which brought it back into the public eye as a supposed Welschtiroler patriot. Various memorial plaques erected in the Primiero in the following years commemorate Giuseppina Negrelli.

literature

• Mercedes Blaas (ed.): The uprising of the Tyroleans against the Bavarian government in 1809: according to the records of contemporary Josef Daney. Universitätsverlag Wagner, Innsbruck 2005, ISBN 978-3-7030-4029-0 .
• Cecilia Nubola: Giuseppina Negrelli goes to war: the year 1809 for a girl from Primiero. In: Siglinde Clementi (Hrsg.): Between participation and exclusion: Tyrol around 1800: four women's biographies. Universitätsverlag Wagner, Innsbruck 2010, ISBN 978-3-7030-0480-3 .
• Ugo Pistoia: Il 1809 nelle memorie di Angelo Michele Negrelli. In: History and Region = Storia e regione, n. 2 (2007), Studien Verlag, Innsbruck 2007. PDF
• Ugo Pistoia (ed.): Memorie che servono alla storia della sua vita ed in parte a quella de 'suoi tempi, step da lui medesimo, con difficoltà per l'abbreviata sua vista, negli ultimi anni del suo vivere / Angelo Michele Negrelli. Agorà, Feltre 2010, ISBN 978-88-88422-56-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cecilia Nubola: Giuseppina Negrelli goes to war: the year 1809 for a girl from Primiero. Pp. 78-79
2. ↑ Un'immensa autobiografia. Le Memorie di Angelo Michele Negrelli (Italian). Retrieved May 15, 2018
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Cecilia Nubola: Giuseppina Negrelli goes to war: the year 1809 for a girl from Primiero. P. 80
4. ↑ Cecilia Nubola: Giuseppina Negrelli goes to war: the year 1809 for a girl from Primiero. P. 81
5. ^ Ugo Pistoia: Il 1809 nelle memorie di Angelo Michele Negrelli. P. 187
6. ^ Ugo Pistoia: Il 1809 nelle memorie di Angelo Michele Negrelli. P. 188
7. ↑ ^{a b} Cecilia Nubola: Giuseppina Negrelli goes to war: the year 1809 for a girl from Primiero. P. 95
8. ^ Ugo Pistoia: Il 1809 nelle memorie di Angelo Michele Negrelli. P. 189.
9. ↑ Cecilia Nubola: Giuseppina Negrelli goes to war: the year 1809 for a girl from Primiero. Pp. 86-87.