introduction 13
depiction of venice during its final centuries as a place of “necrophile cli-
chés of decadence,” “the city of carnival... and of dissolute pleasures.”35
The most substantial and influential new history of venice in this period,
and the most noteworthy in the parade of foreign histories of the Repub-
lic, was the “robust” Geschichte von Venedig of the Austrian archivist and
historian Heinrich Kretschmayr. The first volume was published in 1905,
the second was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I and did not
appear until 1920, and the third not until 1933, following the destruction
of his notes in a 1927 fire. Attempts to publish an Italian translation were
equally star-crossed: both Kretschmayr and his Italian translator died in
1939, the project was put on hold during World War II, then completed in
the post-war years, but inexplicably never published.36
Kretschmayr’s treatment of venice is in many ways an outgrowth of
the 19th-century historiographical tradition. He surveys all of the major
figures and the key political, military and diplomatic events of venetian
history chronologically. However, he intersperses this with discussions
of religion, commerce, industry, administrative structure, and—some-
what unexpectedly—lengthy passages on literature and art. Throughout,
Kretschmayr carefully situates venice within a broader context of euro-
pean and Mediterranean developments. The volumes are deeply rooted in
archival research in venice, as well as in venetian documents in vienna,
which were only repatriated after World War I. He also thoughtfully
engages, and at times challenges, the flourishing scholarship on venice,
particularly in detailed surveys of both primary and secondary literature
that are appended to each volume. Kretschmayr’s Geschichte was widely
praised among scholars in Austria, Italy, and beyond as a “milestone,” a
“monumental” work of scholarship, and the definitive synthesis of vene-
tian history of its day.
In the same way that Kretschmayr’s work was caught up in the cata-
clysmic events of the first half of the 20th century, these also left their
mark on venetian historiography. Xavier Tabet has argued that the pro-
cess of “Italianizing venice and its past” begun during the Risorgimento,
was completed during World War I when much of venice’s former terra-
ferma state became the primary battleground of the Italian war effort, and
35 Xavier Tabet, “La ‘troisième venise’: un mythe italien de l’entre-deux-guerres,” Labo-
ratoire italien: politique et société 6 (2005), 138; Tabet, “Pierre Daru et la vision historique
et politique du passé vénitien,” pp. 41–43.
36 Mario de Biasi, “La ‘Storia di venezia’ del Kretschmayr e la sua traduzione in ital-
iano,” Archivio veneto 139 (1992), 99–110.