"We Raise Our Eyes and Feel as if She Rules the Sky": The Mother Albania Monument and the Visualization of National History

Raino Isto (author)

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Title	"We Raise Our Eyes and Feel as if She Rules the Sky"
Subtitle	The Mother Albania Monument and the Visualization of National History
Contributor	Raino Isto (author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0094.1.14
Landing page	https://punctumbooks.com/titles/lapidari-volume-1/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Copyright	Isto, Raino
Publisher	punctum books
Published on	2015-02-16
Long abstract	On the morning of May 5, 1972, Enver Hoxha and the party leadership, together with hundreds of citizens of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, gathered on a hill overlooking Tirana from the southeast, in the Cem-etery of the Martyrs of the Nation.1 This Martyrs’ Day celebration was the first to be held in the new martyrs’ cemetery, a complex that – in a more modest manifesta-tion – had previously occupied the hill of St. Procopius in Tirana’s Great Park [als–8]. Those assembled stood on an open platform before the centerpiece of the new cemetery complex, the imposing figure of the Mother Albania monument [als–12], which rose 22 meters over the crowds below (fig. 1).2 Reporting on the commemo-ration for the newspaper Zëri i Popullit, Agim Shehu de-scribed, in particular, those mothers who had come to honor the dead who had given their lives in the struggle against fascist occupation and in support of the Popular Revolution
Page range	pp. 73–80
Print length	8 pages
Language	English (Original)

On the morning of May 5, 1972, Enver Hoxha and the party leadership, together with hundreds of citizens of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, gathered on a hill overlooking Tirana from the southeast, in the Cem-etery of the Martyrs of the Nation.1 This Martyrs’ Day celebration was the first to be held in the new martyrs’ cemetery, a complex that – in a more modest manifesta-tion – had previously occupied the hill of St. Procopius in Tirana’s Great Park [als–8]. Those assembled stood on an open platform before the centerpiece of the new cemetery complex, the imposing figure of the Mother Albania monument [als–12], which rose 22 meters over the crowds below (fig. 1).2 Reporting on the commemo-ration for the newspaper Zëri i Popullit, Agim Shehu de-scribed, in particular, those mothers who had come to honor the dead who had given their lives in the struggle against fascist occupation and in support of the Popular Revolution