Background
Mario Stern was born on November 1, 1921, in Asiago, Italy. He is a son of Giovanni Battista Rigoni and Annetta Vescovi. He also had six brothers and a sister.
The Order of Merit of the Italian Republic that Mario Stern received in 2003.
Mario Stern at the Military School of Mountaineering in Aosta.
Mario Rigoni Stern in December 1968, at his home.
Mario Rigoni Stern in 1958.
Mario Stern with comrades in Russia in early 1942.
Mario Stern at the conferment of an honorary doctorate in 2007 from the University of Genoa.
The Italian War Merit Cross that Mario Stern received.
(Mario Rigoni Stern was barely twenty-one and already a ba...)
Mario Rigoni Stern was barely twenty-one and already a battle veteran at the time of the World War II disaster he describes in The Sergeant in the Snow.
https://www.amazon.com/Sergeant-Snow-Mario-Rigoni-Stern/dp/0810160552/?tag=2022091-20
1954
(Tonle Bintarn's story takes place in the mountains of the...)
Tonle Bintarn's story takes place in the mountains of the Veneto region, which once bordered the Austro-Hungarian Empire and where smuggling was a means of subsistence for the peasant population. Having run afoul of a patrol of revenue agents, Tonle must seek refuge beyond the frontier in Central Europe. But every winter he returns secretly to his home and family, until finally a pardon is granted. During the devastation of the First World War, the occupation and ultimate destruction of his village, and his own internment in an Austrian camp, it is Tonle's loyalty to his roots, and his stubborn devotion to his task as a shepherd, that persist and make him a quiet symbol of heroism and human endurance.
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Tonle-Mario-Rigoni-Stern/dp/081016034X/?tag=2022091-20
1998
Mario Stern was born on November 1, 1921, in Asiago, Italy. He is a son of Giovanni Battista Rigoni and Annetta Vescovi. He also had six brothers and a sister.
Mario Stern finished secondary school at age fifteen and at seventeen he volunteered in the Military School of Mountaineering in Aosta, where he earned the title of “skilled skier-climber.”
Mario Stern received an honorary degree from the University of Padua in 1998.
Mario Stern became a Corporal in February 1940 and was assigned to the 6th Alpini Regiment as an instructor of mountaineering and skiing. At the outbreak of the war, he took part as a dispatch runner. Wartime service sent Stern from France through Eastern Europe, and eventually, he ended up in Russia in the brutal winter of 1942. Back in Italy, after September 8, 1943, he was captured by the Germans. Stern ended up imprisoned in a camp until the end of the war. At that time he began to write Il sergente nella neve (The Sergeant in the Snow).
After his homecoming, Stern was hired as a “temporary clerk of third class” in the Land Registry. His book The Sergeant in the Snow was published in 1953. Stern continued to write and in 1962 his collection of stories Il bosco degli urogalli (The wood of the capercaillies) was published. Later he wrote such books as Quota Albania, Ritorno sul Don, Storia di Tönle, Amore di confine and others. Stern attended the meetings to which he was invited to talk about his books and his life. In 1999, Carlo Mazzacurati made a film about Stern named Ritratti: Mario Rigoni Stern. In the film Rigoni Stern recounts his life experience, the war, the concentration camp and the difficult homecoming. In his later years, he published other books of short stories. His last book Stagioni was published in 2006.
(Tonle Bintarn's story takes place in the mountains of the...)
1998(Mario Rigoni Stern was barely twenty-one and already a ba...)
1954Mario Rigoni Stern married Anna Rigoni Stern in 1946. The marriage produced three children.