La borghesia triesitna ebraica tra Ottocento e Novecento

Studying the economy and the business history of Trieste, which was a major European city at the end of the 19th and first decades of the 20th century, means understanding the importance and weight of the Jewish elements within the bourgeoisie that was stimulating the economic growth of the city. The historical roots of Trieste’s bourgeoisie date back to the 18th century, to the period of the creation of the free port and the acknowledgment of civil rights and religious freedom. It developed thanks to wide-ranging and open business relationships and participation in the business life of the city. During the 19th century, this fruitful situation led to the founding of important financial, insurance and industrial firms. The commercial and entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, born from the integration of different ethnic and religious communities within the free port, shared the ideals of liberalism and of the affirmation of individual merit. In the middle of the century, the spread of nationalism as a feature of political struggle did not shatter the bourgeoisie's ideals of integration and religious tolerance. Locally, with regard to the upper echelons of the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, there were no cases of anti-Semitism. After 1867, the Jews of Trieste started asking themselves what it meant to be both Jewish and citizens of a national state (or a pluri-national state, as in the case of Austria-Hungary). The answers were very different, with the most extreme being the decision to abandon the community in order to break any connection with a distant past with which the individual felt no tie. The integration of the Jewish members into the upper ranks of the commercial bourgeoisie was a long-lasting process: it began in the 18th century and (as proven by facts) was even able to resist to the Italian racial laws of 1938.