The Fiume Crisis by Dominique Kirchner Reill

Author:Dominique Kirchner Reill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

It is not clear whether Biljanich was successful, but it is clear that the status of non-pertinents changed not just on the books but also on the ground. Before 1918, over 66 percent of the city did not hold Fiume pertinency, and having it or not made little difference except to the very rich, the political activists, and the very poor. After 1918, not holding Fiume pertinency was costly and perilous, and everyone knew it.

Fiume inhabitants responded quickly to this change. Already during the December 1918 census, residents were prosecuted for offering bribes to census officials to overlook missing papers required to apply for pertinency. On Christmas Eve 1918, 24-year-old Paula Peurača and her husband, Stanislao, headed to the local census office to request identity papers, which they wanted because Stanislao was pertinent to the Croatian town Karlovac, and neither spouse wanted to live there. According to Paula Peurača’s statement to the police a few weeks later, it was only when they were at the census office that someone made it clear to them that her husband “could not obtain the identity papers being that he did not possess the right for pertinency in Fiume.” In her testimony she insisted she had been assured that if you paid the policeman issuing identity cards ten crowns, the documents proving stable domicile required for pertinency could be “overlooked.” According to Paula Peurača, they were so eager to obtain Fiume documents that they even offered to pay twice the going rate as long as the “affair got handled promptly.”58 It is difficult to gauge the prevalence of such corruption. It was rampant in many of Fiume’s administrative offices, and Peurača’s nonchalant tone and frank testimony suggest that pertinency papers could readily be bought. With expulsions and ration card limitations beginning in January 1919, it is very likely that many Fiume residents were willing to pay a pretty penny to obtain the needed documents.

After the April 1919 announcement by the Italian National Council that Fiume pertinency would replace Hungarian citizenship as the qualifier for rights and benefits, a new flood of pertinency requests made their way into the city’s administrative offices. Their content and tone could not be more different from their pre-1918 equivalents. Before 1918, petitioners for pertinency documented their Fiume residency, financial and legal independence, criminal history, personal status, and citizenship. After 1918, pertinency requests either emphasized the absurdity of being pertinent to unknown, faraway lands or underscored Italian national attachments.

The first category of pertinency requests was typically filed in the months immediately following the April 1919 pertinency announcement. Some, like that made by 55-year-old Ignazio Levi on the part of himself and his wife, were relatively matter-of-fact. His petition read,

We the undersigned Ignazio of Isacco Levi, born in Trieste January 17, 1864, living in Fiume since 1882, and Olga Levi née Heinrich, born in Karlovac March 1, 1868, living in Fiume since 1883, both of the Israelite religion, hitherto Ottoman subjects, pertinent to Istanbul, request with insistence that we be accorded pertinency to the city of Fiume.

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