Work groups Folgaria and Lavarone

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Location of the factories in today's Trentino-South Tyrol

The work groups or blocking groups of Folgaria (Vielgereuth) and Lavarone (Lafraun) were part of the Austrian fortifications on the border with Italy and consisted of a series of seven independent forts ( forts ). They are located around 20 km south-southeast of Trento and fell to Italy together with South Tyrol and Trentino after the First World War . From southwest to northeast, the works were as follows:

The works (forts) of the Sperrgruppe were built between 1907 and 1913 and thus only a few years before the First World War and were among the most modern fortresses in Austria-Hungary. They lie in front of the line of the older works ( Tenna , Colle delle benne , Mattarello and Romagnano ) from the “Vogl construction period” , were intended to protect the plateaus around the communities of Folgaria and Lavarone against an Italian attack and the plateaus as a possible deployment and deployment area cover an Austrian offensive. Occasionally there is also the imprecise designation as a restricted group of the seven municipalities (Sette Comuni), even if these were actually east of the former border and thus also in Italy before the First World War.

Components

Five of the seven plants were designed as regular standard forts and had four 10 cm howitzers in armored domes as their main armament , which were combined in one or two battery blocks. Further building elements were the casemate block with the accommodations and technical facilities such as the power center, one or more close combat systems with machine guns and a trench built in the Contrescarpe with 6 cm cannons and machine guns. The individual blocks were connected by posterns that were mostly driven underground as tunnels . At least on the fronts and flanks , the works were surrounded by a ditch and therefore free of storms. The individual blocks of the so-called Sommo intermediate plant were further apart. It therefore had no ditch and was also armored with only two howitzers. The Vezzena post consisted of a single block and was armed only with machine guns.

Construction

The fortifications were built entirely from concrete , which was only partially reinforced . The fortifications are not really built underground, but have been sunk into the rock in open construction pits and closed at the top with a 2-3 m thick concrete ceiling. The casemate block was only sunk on the enemy side, on the friend side it also formed the throat side (rear front) and had windows that could be closed with steel shutters. Only the posterns were mostly built completely underground. The guns and machine guns were built into armored domes on the ceilings or in flanking wall gaps behind tanks.

Layout

The Verle and Lusern plants, which were built initially, are much more compact than the Gschwent and Serrada plants, which were built a little later and have larger distances between the individual blocks and howitzers, so that the probability of effective hits by the siege artillery was reduced. Nevertheless, they were basically traditional unit forts that combined artillery and infantry within a trench, while in most of the other fortress regions outside of the mountains before the First World War, a trend towards spatial separation of infantry on the one hand and long-range batteries on the other can be observed. Noteworthy and extremely modern, however, was the large number of machine guns built into armored domes. This and, above all, the Sommo intermediate plant, which is very spatially divided, is reminiscent of the Maginot Line plants in France that were built between the World Wars .

Fighting in the First World War

The battle for the fortifications began on 24/25. May 1915 shortly after Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915 with the fire from the 149 mm cannons of the Italian forts opposite and several batteries of 28 cm howitzers. In particular, the armored armor of the howitzers of the fortifications proved to be too weak and were penetrated several times. Due to the moral impact of the bombing, the commandant of the Verle plant ordered the extensive evacuation of his plant on May 26th, the neighboring plant in Lusern even hoisted white flags on May 28th and was completely abandoned. Both measures were reversed a little later and the factories were occupied again. A major attack on May 30th was repulsed. From August 15, the Italians also used 30.5-cm howitzers, which caused much more serious damage, and the concrete ceilings in the Verle and Lusern plants were now broken through several times. A major attack on August 24th was nevertheless repulsed.

The fighting subsided over the winter, but increased again in the run-up to the Austro-Hungarian South Tyrol offensive since April 1916. Due to the South Tyrol offensive that began on May 15, 1916 , the front was shifted significantly to the south and east, which is why most of the plants were now far behind the front.

The struggles over the Lavarone group of works were processed in the autobiographical novels Granaten und Avalanche (1932) by Fritz Weber and Sperrfort Rocca Alta (1937) by Luis Trenker .

Current condition

Especially at the beginning of the 1930s, the metal parts of the fortifications were scrapped. With the exception of the Gschwent plant, the ceilings were also blown up in order to gain access to the supporting steel girders. Since then, most of the works have been in ruins. A museum has been set up in the Gschwent plant and the other plants have been looked after, especially in recent years.

Literature (sorted by relevance)

  • Hentzschel , Rolf: Fortress War in the High Mountains , Bozen: Athesia, 2008. (Main basis of the article)
  • Rolf , Rudi: Fortifications of the monarchy . The kk and kuk fortifications from Napoleon to Petit Trianon, a typological study. PRAK, Middelburg 2011, ISBN 978-90-817095-1-4 .
  • von Steinitz , Eduard / Brosch von Aarenau , Theodor: The empire fortification of Austria-Hungary at the time of Conrad von Hötzendorf. In: Military Science Communications, also printed as Austria-Hungary's Last War, Supplement 10, Vienna 1937.
  • Grestenberger , Erwin Anton: Kuk fortifications in Tyrol and Carinthia 1860–1918 . Vienna: Austria, 2000. ISBN 3-7046-1558-7 .
  • Nussstein , Wilhelm: Military history travel guide. Dolomites . Hamburg: Mittler, 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0496-0 .
  • Weber , Fritz: Grenades and Avalanches . Leipzig / Vienna / Berlin 1932, DNB  363018530 (also contained in: Weber , Fritz: The end of an army. 1933. and Weber , Fritz: The end of the old army. Bergland-Buch, Salzburg / Stuttgart 1959, pp. 9–116 .).
  • Trenker , Luis: Rocca Alta fortress. The hero battle of a tank factory in Berlin: Knaur, 1937. Further editions Berlin: Knauer 1938, 1949, 1941; Munich: Berg 1977, 1983; Stuttgart: European educational community u. a., 1978.