Early Photography in Albania
- Maximilian Lambertz -

Robert Elsie

Austrian scholar Maximilian Lambertz 1882-1963

Publications of Lambertz (Bibliography)

The Lambertz Photo Collection (1)
Southern Italy 1913 - 1914

Max Lambertz in Italy, 1913

On the eve of the First World War, Max Lambertz travelled to southern Italy to study the dialects of Albanian spoken there. This form of the Albanian language, known as Arberesh or Italo-Albanian, is spoken by some 20,000 individuals, mostly in small mountain villages in Calabria and Sicily. It is an archaic form of Albanian that differs substantially from the standard Albanian language spoken in the Balkans. During his trip to southern Italy, Lambertz took a number of pictures which are presented here. We have little information about them. We do know that Lambertz carried out his linguistic research in southern Italy in 1913, and primarily among the most northerly Arberesh communities in Italy, those in Abruzzi and Molise, a mountainous region along the Adriatic, south of Pescara. Among the major Arberesh villages of this region are: Badhesa (Italian: Villa Badessa) in the province of Pescara in Abruzzi, Këmarini (Italian: Campomarino), Munxhifuni (Italian: Montecilfone), Porkanuni (Italian: Portocannone) and Ruri (Italian: Ururi), all in the province of Campobasso in Molise.

The original glass slides of these photographs are preserved under the number Pk 4949 in the Photo Archives of the Austrian National Library in Vienna (Bildarchiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Wien), to whom we are grateful for permission to reproduce them here.