Rime Rismondo: the Zara newspaper and other holy mad things

Nerino Rismondo, commonly known by the name of Rime (Zara, 12 February 1910 - Ancona, 27 June 2003), was an Italian doctor, journalist and writer.

After the exile from Zara, from 1948 he settled down in Ancona where he became one of the main leaders of the local ANVGD committee. With the foundation of the Nostalgic Association of Zadar Friends (ANDAZ) and the Free Municipality of Zadar in Exile, he promoted initiatives for the protection of Zadar and Dalmatian identity such as the organization of National Gatherings and the foundation of the newspaper Zara which he directed for 45 years.

After studying at the Liceo Ginnasio Gabriele D'Annunzio in Zara, Rismondo obtained a degree in medicine from the University of Bologna in 1935. Once he had fulfilled his military obligations, he was hired as an official doctor at the Provincial Health Fund of the Province of Zara.

He married Giulia Marchi in 1939. He took part in the war as a medical officer: in 1941 he was a second lieutenant assigned to the Military Hospital of San Demetrio, then to the 291° Infantry Regiment, Zara Division.

Between 1943 and 1944 Zadar suffered 54 bombings which destroyed 85% of the city and which caused almost all of its inhabitants to abandon it.

Nerino Rismondo, who had returned to Zara after being wounded at the front, wandered for an unspecified period in the Dalmatian hinterland until he found shelter with his family in Mali Lošinj.

There, at the invitation of the authorities, being the only doctor left in the area, he directed the local hospital until the end of the conflict. In 1946 he fled to Trieste and in 1948 he moved to Ancona, where he found work as a doctor employed at the Municipal Hygiene Office.

His wife died in 1963 and a few years later, in 1967, he married Maria Perissi, who became his main collaborator in the Zara newspaper.

After completing his studies at the Dalmatian school in Venice he created the Hadrian Museum on "Zara".

In 1988, he gathered in Torre Pedrera where he received the Recognition of his Commitment. The title “Promoter of the Dalmatian Archive Museum” was awarded by the Guardion Grande Valley and he was named anonymous Confratello on June 9, 1996. The end of the journal took place in 1997. He died in 2003 because of an illness.

The ANDAZ

Rismondo, former animator of the local ANVGD club, founded the first Zadar nostalgic association together with Antonio “Tonin” Tamino. In the post-war period, which saw the birth of many associations and refugee circles, ANDAZ stood out for its ability to build a network of collaborators on a national and international level and for being able to reach, not only the restricted circle of militants of associations, but also a significant part of apolitical refugees or those who are strongly assimilated into Italian society.

The ANDAZ, which qualified itself as an "apolitical, but patriotic" Association, was born with the aim of "carrying out (...) events that can revive as much as possible the typical aspects of Zadar life as an instinctive expression of the feeling of living and deep nostalgia for one's hometown”

In September 1953, ANDAZ organized the first national gathering of exiles from Zara which gathered hundreds of Dalmatian exiles from all over Italy and abroad in Venice. The event, repeated annually, was able to gather around 2000 participants already from the second edition.

Compared to the ANVGD, which was mainly dedicated to assisting refugees, Rismondo claimed for ANDAZ the need for political action aimed at preserving the specific identity of the Dalmatian people so that the refugees were not completely assimilated, but remained "the Zaratini-Polosan-Rovinj-Fiumani-Piranesi, etc., as much as possible." In this perspective, in 1955, the idea of establishing the Free Municipality of Zadar in exile appeared for the first time.

"Zara is not a newspaper, it is a great collective letter: written by all the Zadar and Dalmatian refugees dispersed in their painful exile at home and abroad. It is the voice of their desperation, their nostalgia, their hope which he wants to keep them united and compact to survive his own tragedy"

The newspaper was born from a leaflet of greetings for Christmas 1952 sent to 400 addresses of Zadar exiles scattered across Italy, Canada and South America. In January 1953, a tipografic letter launched a proposal for a meeting in Venice, a request for collaboration for the collection of new addresses and the sending of 5 "lire" stamps for the start. The March’s number of 1935 already has the form of newspapers. The first number, which bears the name of the city of Zara in the masthead, consists of six pages, reaches 1500 subscribers and presents the broad mail address book that would have been the heart of a publication that wanted to have the spirit of a "large collective letter”.

From 1953 to 1966 the managing director of Zara was Antonio Tamino. Rismondo, who signed the articles with the name Rime, was the director for the next 31 years. From the October’s number to November 1962 until the end of 1966, it attached "Irredentismo adriatico", a political supplement of Zara, invented and followed personally by the director Tamino, was attached to the newspaper.

The Zara newspaper, free from party ideologies, but characterized by a strong identity and municipal origin, maintained a constant circulation of 2000 copies for all the years in which it was published and was widely circulated by refugees of all political beliefs.

The last number dates back to 1997, when Nerino Rismondo, at the age of 87, passed the baton from Ancona to Trieste and entrusted the new newspaper "Il Dalmata" with the mission of keeping Italian Dalmatians in the world united. An anthology in 4 volumes, edited by Aldo Andri, closed the publishing history of Zara. The last number was sent out on Sept. 23 1997 to 1055 subscribers: 981 copies for domestic and 74 for foreign countries.

In February 2022 all the newspaper’s numbers were fully digitized thanks to the contribution of the Marche Region for the year 2021, in accordance with the Regional Law No. 8 of 20 April 2012 "Activities of the Marche Region for the affirmation of the values of remembrance of the martyrdom and the Julian-Dalmatian-Istrian exodus".

The Free Municipality of Zadar in exile

Rismondo definitively gave the idea of reconstituting the Free Municipality of Zara in exile, with banner, mayor, municipal council, junta, assembly of citizens, in the summer of 1961, in a climate of strong political tension between the associations of Italian Dalmatians and particularly within the ANVGD.
In September 1963 the "Provisional Council of the Municipality of Zara", on the occasion of the 10th assembly of ANDAZ in Venice, proclaimed the official birth of the Free Municipality to welcome "all Italian citizens out of sentiment and love of country, born in Zara and in Dalmatia, and their children born everywhere, to recompose and re-found a municipal unit of a free municipality". Nerino Rismondo was appointed general secretary of the new association; Guido Calbiani was the first mayor elected.
In addition to organizing the political meeting, which proved to be the most successful event, the Free Municipality of Zadar engaged in cultural initiatives and activities that disseminated news about the history of Dalmatia and celebrated the heroes of the Dalmatian irredentist tradition. The idea gave the inspiration for the birth of the Free Municipality of Fiume in Exile, in Milan in 1966, and of the Free Municipality of Pula, in Genoa, in 1967.

The Archive Museum of Dalmatia

The day after the signing of the Treaty of Osimo, Rime proposed the creation of an "archive-museum" whose mission was to conserve and narrate, for the benefit of the generations born after the exodus, the history, civilization and identity of Italian Dalmatians who were in danger of disappearing.
The subscription to raise the necessary funds was launched by "ZARA" in 1977 and lasted 19 years. The initiative received the support of Tullio Vallery, Chancellor and, since 1992, Custode Grande of the Dalmatian School of Venice, who is working to allocate a part of the legacy of Countess Margherita Ivanovich, consisting of the family palace, to the cause of l 'Archive with garden, courtyard and other minor properties.
From 1978 to 1997, the Zara newspaper published 77 lists of subscribers which testify to the process of building from the bottom up of an initiative which ended with the establishment of the Dalmatian Archive Museum at the Dalmatian School of SS Giorgio and Trifone in Venice , in the restored Ivanovich Palace. Tullio Vallery was its first director.

Thought of Rime and controversies

“I was born... Austrian. But I have always remained Italian. I could have been born... French. If Napoleon had been more imperialist. But with all this I would always have remained Italian. I could have been born... Hungarian. If Hungary had kept the old power of previous centuries. But I would have remained the same Italian. I could have been born... Yugoslavian. If Yugoslavia, instead of being born... later, had been born before the fall of the Republic of Venice. And thereby? With this I would have remained Italian all the same.”

Rime's action focused on the protection and preservation of the citizen identity of Zadar, which was not necessarily linked to the city's belonging to the Italian Republic. "The Dalmatians - wrote Rime himself in 1966 - may have Turkish, Yugoslavian or Chinese citizenship, but the Dalmatians will always maintain an Italian 'ethnic' characteristic". He attributed the mass failure of the exiles to return to Zadar not to the destruction of the bombings nor to the de facto cession of the city to Yugoslavia, but to the fear, generated by Tito's communism that had its roots in the "worst Slavic chauvinism".

With regard to Nerino Rismondo's attachment to the Zadar identity, there has been talk of "mystical irredentism". Sergio Brcic to the question “Who really was Nerino Rismondo, “el Rime”? he defined him as "a sort of idealist-pragmatist who knew how to add a practical sense to the strength of the Ideal which animated him in facing with rare sensitivity the realities he was dealing with". Franco Luxardo recognized its importance especially during:

“the crossing of the desert” the first thirty years after the exodus, with our fathers busy starting a family or more simply leaving the “refugee camps”, the battles for the “damages of war” which should have helped parties and never arrived, Rime's intuition that it was essential to keep the community united, the official birth of our Municipality on that historic day in 1963 at Palazzo Ducale in Venice”

From the columns of Zara he supported what he called "the right-duty of the Italian Zaratini to return" to their city with often strong tones and clear-cut positions such as the 1970 campaign against Tito's trip to Italy, for which Rime was seen suspiciously and not regarded as a grateful man by the Yugoslavian embassy in Rome. Over the years, even the Yugoslavian authorities realized that his words from Rime were moved by essentially sentimental reasons and "he could not consider himself a new D'Annunzio, nor did he think of putting together a fleet of blowflies or batanas for a landing in force and so Rime began to return to Zara".

It has been said that Rime's initiatives, inspired by a parochial spirit, while useful for binding a people still attached to their roots, have not always helped the overall effectiveness of the cause of the Dalmatian exiles. In particular, the birth of the Free Municipalities was, in some ways, harmful for the ANVGD which saw the dissolution of some local committees, such as, for example, that of Ancona. A division that “has created suffering, misunderstanding, enmity. With time reconciliation came.”