The K.u.k Infanterieregiment Nr.97 today

Id est

the Cultural Association " General Peter Giraldi "

We present us as a new cultural reality in Trieste. We are the cultural association " General Peter Giraldi ". We are a group of guys that has grown in the Compagnia Trieste Fedelissima sharing the same noble mitteleuropean ideals. Having discovered among us the common passion for the history of the glorious K.u.k. Infanterieregiment Nr. 97 we have decided to move our first steps alone, because we have felt the necessity to constitute a cultural association that revaluates  the history and the honour of our fellow-citizens who fell for their Emperor and their Fatherland who where so horribly humiliated and mocked by the Italian anti-Austria propaganda of end war, the same propaganda that unfortunately can still be felt today.
 A characteristic of our association is that during the manifestations we wear the same Feldgrau Infantry uniforms that wore the Austro-Hungarian soldiers during the Great War. These uniforms have been made by expert tailors who, after a precise research, have reproduced  them with an extreme fidelity. The colour of the collar tabs is obviously the one of the 97^th Infantry Regiment, pink-red! (rosenrot)
 In addition to this we also carry as Association Insignia the Regimental Flag of the 97^th IR;

After giving the main reason for the constitution of our association we want now explain the reason for the choice of the name: “General Peter Giraldi”.
 Pietro Giraldi was the first defender of the honour and the value demonstrated from the men of the 97^th Regiment and was also its last Commander. He was born in Pirano and as Austrian of Italian mother tongue he enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army because he did not feel any incompatibility  between being an Austrian but having Italian mother tongue, and as he often said: “ We are Italian but Austrian subjects, why we do not have to be good subjects?”.
 In his heart Giraldi felt very much his Italianity and he didn’t care to became more German, even if all the life he had spoken in German; it was rather the Empire that was a little bit Italian, and it would have been more Italian if the other Italians of Austria finally decided themselves to be good subjects. He was definitively persuaded that the Empire was also Italian the day that at a lunch at Court of  the Emperor Franz Josef I, the Emperor spoke to him in Tuscany dialect, in presence of all the invited persons.
 Considering this noble and by now ancient thought as existing and still alive in our inner  feelings, we feel the moral obligation to make all the possible for bringing it ahead and even transmit it to all those people who in some way feel legacies or are sensitive to this piece of history which is common to all of us.

On the  14^th of December 2000, in occasion of the festivity of the Advent, we have held our first speech of presentation in front of all our friends and comrades of the " Kameradschaft FM Radezky " in Klagenfurt, with extreme happiness we stated that they received us with enormous enthusiasm and affection.

In the photos some moments of the event and the presentation of our flag:

Another thing that we make as members of our association is the historical re-enacting. This new way to remember and to honour the feats of our heroes of the past became popular in our country since a few years, but is becoming more and more popular as time goes by. There are many groups or associations that make historical re-enacting of the medieval era, of the Napoleonic era and many other periods, but groups or associations that re-enact the battles and the feats of the first World War are very few indeed. There are: The Sentries of the Lagazuoi from Conegliano (Treviso,), The Historical Group of the Sassari Regiment, the A.S.A from Rimini that remembers and re-enacts the feats of the famous Arditi  of the Italian Royal Army and then there are several groups that are in preparation as one from Cividale(Udine) that re-enacts the 8^th Alpini Regiment of the Italian Royal Army. In this new world of commemoration and re-enacting was born also our association as historical cultural association " General Peter Giraldi " which obviously remembers and re-enacts the soldiers of the K.u.k Infanterieregiment Nr.97! We put everything in our association. Heart and body and a lot of passion for the history and the uniformology and militaria of the Austro-Hungarian Army makes our association acknowledged on the field of the re-enacting. Thanks to this activity we came in contact with many other groups, national and international, similar to ours with which it’s most interesting to change opinions and experiences as we are all joined from the same ideals to remember through these manifestations our fallen relatives, their feats and their courage keeping us united in the respect of the friendship of the nations.