1882: Guglielmo Oberdan
December 20th, 2007 Headsman
On this date in 1882, Italian nationalist Guglielmo Oberdan was hanged for attempting to assassinate Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph.
A native of Trieste, a melting pot of Italian and Slovenian ethnicities, Oberdan was of mixed parentage but identified with an Italy coming of age just as he himself did.
Trieste was a treasured Habsburg jewel, the empire’s most consequential port. So Franz Joseph’s visit to celebrate the city’s 500th anniversary under the Austrian crown was undertaken with no less heartfelt sincerity than the enthusiastic student had in packing a suitcase full of explosives in greeting.
Police intercepted this memorable gift and young Oberdan as well, and in short order he swung from the gallows — thousands of worldwide petitioners, Victor Hugo among them, notwithstanding — still urging cocksure verses of national redemption.
As a handsome young martyr who had chosen his Italian identity, Oberdan’s name and face became fare for boulevards, piazzas and monuments … doubly so for the boy’s dispatch contemporaneous with Italy’s cynical Triple Alliance pact with Austria-Hungary that sternly apprenticed the infant nation’s irredentist spirit to realpolitik under the sway of the man now reviled as the “Emperor of the Hangmen.” Nor would it appear a fate unworthy of his deed that he should personify in death all the impulsive romanticism his country had not strength enough to effect.
Oberdan is the subject of a rousing (and murderous — the refrain is “Morte a Franz, viva Oberdan!”) patriotic song dating from the 1880’s:
On this day..
- 1583: Edward Arden, Shakespearean kin - 2019
- 1769: Three Spitalfields weavers, well located - 2018
- 1717: Five at Tyburn - 2017
- 1531: John Tewkesbury, Thomas More's unwilling guest - 2016
- 1689: William Davis, the Golden Farmer - 2015
- Themed Set: The creation of a Newgate Calendar legend - 2015
- 1879: Swift Runner, wendigo - 2014
- 1806: Hepburn Graham, HMS St. George rapist - 2013
- 1704: John Smith, peruke-maker and highwayman for a week - 2012
- 1961: Robert McGladdery, the last execution in Northern Ireland - 2011
- 1946: A triple execution in Washington, DC - 2010
- 1974: Mun Segwang, errant assassin - 2009
- 1786: Hannah Ocuish, age 12 - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Assassins,Austria,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Famous,Habsburg Realm,Hanged,History,Italy,Martyrs,Murder,Occupation and Colonialism,Revolutionaries,Separatists,Treason
Tags: 1880s, 1882, december 20, franz joseph i, guglielmo oberdan, milva, nationalism, trieste, triple alliance, victor hugo
I have been researching my German/Italian family and have found info.leading me to believe that G.Oberdan is part of our clan but need more info. regarding his mother’s name and father’s name, can anyone help