History of South Tyrol

Austria-Hungary in 1914

After the Napoleonic Era, nationalism emerged as the dominant ideology in Europe. In Italy several intellectuals and groups began to push the idea of a unified nation-state (see Risorgimento). At the time, the struggle for Italian unification was largely waged against the Austrian Empire, which was the hegemonic power in Italy and the single most powerful adversary to unification. The Austrian Empire vigorously repressed the growing nationalist sentiment among Italian elites, most of all during 1848 revolution and the following years. Italy finally attained independence in 1861; Venetia was annexed in 1866, and Latium, including Rome, in 1870.

For many nationalist intellectuals and political leaders the process of unification of the Italian peninsula under a single national state was not complete however because several areas inhabited by Italian-speaking communities remained under what was seen as foreign rule. This situation gave rise to the idea that parts of Italy were still unredeemed, hence Italian irredentism became an important ideological component of the political life of the Kingdom of Italy: see Italia irredenta.

In 1882 Italy signed a defensive alliance with Austria-Hungary and Germany (see Triple Alliance). However, Italian public opinion remained unenthusiastic about the alignment with Austria-Hungary, still perceiving it as the historical enemy of Italy. In the years before World War I, many distinguished military analysts predicted that Italy would change sides.

Italy declared its neutrality at the beginning of World War I, because the Triple Alliance was a defensive one, requiring its members to come under attack to come into effect. Many Italians were still hostile to Austrian historical and continuing occupation of ethnically Italian areas. Austria-Hungary requested Italian neutrality, while the Triple Entente (Great Britain, France and Russia) demanded its intervention. Many people in Italy wanted the country to join the conflict on the side of the Triple Entente, with the aim of gaining the "unredeemed" territories.

Under the secret Treaty of London, signed in April 1915, Italy agreed to declare war against the Central Powers in exchange for (among other things) territorial gains in the Austrian crown lands of Tyrol, Küstenland and Dalmatia, homeland of large Italian minorities. War against the Austro-Hungarian Empire was declared on May 24, 1915.

In October 1917, the Italian army was defeated in the Battle of Caporetto, and was forced back to a defensive line along the Piave river. In June 1918, an Austro-Hungarian offensive against the Piave line was repulsed (see Battle of the Piave River). On October 24, 1918, Italy launched its final offensive against the Austro-Hungarian Army, which consequently collapsed[4] (see Battle of Vittorio Veneto). The armistice of Villa Giusti was signed on November 3. It came into force at 3.00 pm on November 4. In the following days the Italian Army completed the occupation of all Tirol (including Innsbruck), according to the armistice terms.

Kingdom of Italy in 1919

Under the secret Treaty of London (1915), Italy "shall obtain the Trentino, Cisalpine Tyrol with its geographical and natural frontier (the Brenner frontier)"[5] and after the ceasefire of Villa Giusti (November 3, 1918) Italian troops occupied uncontested the territory and as stipulated in the ceasefire agreement marched into North Tyrol and occupied Innsbruck and the Inn valley.[6]

During the negotiations between Austria and the victorious Entente powers in Saint-Germain a petition for help, signed by all the mayors of South Tyrol, was presented to US President Woodrow Wilson.[7] Wilson had announced his Fourteen Points to a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918 and the mayors reminded him of point 9:

"A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality."[8][9][10]

But when the Treaty of Saint-Germain was signed on September 10, 1919 Italy was given by Article 27, section 2 the ethnic German territories south of the Alpine watershed.

It has been claimed that Wilson later complained about the annexation:

"Already the president had, unfortunately, promised the Brenner Pass boundary to Orlando, which gave to Italy some 150,000 Tyrolese Germans-an action which he subsequently regarded as a big mistake and deeply regretted. It had been before he had made a careful study of the subject...."[11]

As Italy had not yet adopted the toponymy created by Ettore Tolomei, all the names of locations in the treaty, with the exception of the Adige river, were in German (the same monolingual German approach to local names as in the Treaty of London).

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye/Part II

At first the territory was governed by a military regime under General Guglielmo Pecori-Giraldi, directly subordinated to the Comando Supremo. One of the first orders was to seal the border between South Tyrol and Austria. People were not allowed to cross, and the postal service and the flow of goods were interrupted; censorship was introduced and officials not born in the area were dismissed. On November 11, 1919 General Pecori-Giraldi proclaimed in the name of King Victor Emmanuel III in Italian and German: "... Italy is willing, as sole united nation with full freedom of thought and expression, to allow nationals of other language the preservation of their own schools, private institutions and associations." On December 1, 1919 the King promised in a speech: "a careful maintenance of local institutions and self-administration"[6][12]

Italy formally annexed the territories on October 10, 1920. Administration passed from the military to the new Governatorato della Venezia Tridentina (Governorate of Venezia Tridentina) under Luigi Credaro. The term Venezia Tridentina had been proposed in 1863 by the Jewish linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli from Gorizia, who sought to include all of the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire claimed by Italy into a wider region called Venezia (the Julian March was accordingly named Venezia Giulia). The Governatorato included the present-day region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and the three Ladin communes of Cortina, Colle Santa Lucia and Livinallongo, today in the Province of Belluno. The northern part of Tyrol, comprising North Tyrol and East Tyrol, became what is today one of the nine federal states of Austria.[6][7]

On January 21, 1921 the Governatorato, while retaining military and police control, ceded administrative control to the new provincial council of the Provincia di Venezia Tridentina in Trento. On May 15, 1921 the people of the area participated for the first (and until April 18, 1948 the only) free and democratic elections (the people of Venezia Tridentina and Venezia Giulia did not participate in the general election of June 2, 1946). The result was a resounding victory for the Deutscher Verband (German Association), which won close to 90% of the votes and thus sent four deputies to Rome.[12]

Up to this time, the German-speaking population had not been subjected to violence and nor had the Italian authorities interfered with its cultural activities, traditions and schooling. This was about to change with the rise of fascism. The first hint of what was to come was experienced by the German population on Sunday April 24, 1921. The population of Bolzano-Bozen had organized a Trachtenumzug (a procession in traditional local costume) to celebrate the opening of the spring trade fair. The General Civil Commissioner of the province, Luigi Credaro, had been warned in advance by his colleagues from Mantua, Brescia, Verona and Vicenza of the intention of the fascists there to go to Bolzano-Bozen to disrupt the procession, but did not take any precautions. After arriving by train in Bolzano-Bozen the approximately 280 out-of-province fascists were joined by about 120 from Bolzano-Bozen, and proceeded to attack the procession with clubs, pistols and hand grenades. The teacher Franz Innerhofer from Marling was shot dead and around 50 people injured in the attack. After the attack the military intervened and escorted the fascists back to the station. Although Credaro, under orders from the Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti, had two suspects in Innerhofer's murder arrested, nobody was brought to justice for the attack, as Benito Mussolini had threatened to come to Bolzano-Bozen with 2,000 fascists to free the two suspects by force if they were not set free immediately. Mussolini made clear his policies regarding the people of South Tyrol:[6][7][12]

"If the Germans on both sides of the Brenner don't toe the line, then the fascists will teach them a thing or two about obedience. Alto Adige is Italian and bilingual, and no one would even dream of trying forcibly to Italianize these German immigrants. But neither may Germans imagine that they might push Italy back to Salorno and from there to the Lago di Garda. Perhaps the Germans believe that all Italians are like Credaro. If they do, they’re sorely mistaken. In Italy, there are hundreds of thousands of Fascists who would rather lay waste to Alto Adige than to permit the tricolore that flies above the Vetta d’Italia to be lowered. If the Germans have to be beaten and stomped to bring them to reason, then so be it, we’re ready. A lot of Italians have been trained in this business."[7][13]

Italianization

Main article: Italianization of South Tyrol

Street sign in Innsbruck, North Tyrol, commemorating the separation of South Tyrol, set up in 1923 in response to the prohibition of the original southern Tyrolean place names

In October 1922, the new Fascist government rescinded all the special dispensations that protected linguistic minorities.

The Italianization program had been started, and the Fascist regime charged Achille Starace and Ettore Tolomei (a nationalist from Rovereto) to drive it.

Tolomei's "program in 23 points" was adopted. Among other things it decreed:

• exclusive use of Italian in the public offices;
• closure of the majority of the German schools;
• incentives for immigrants from other Italian regions.

The first forms of opposition to the regime appeared in 1925: a priest, Michael Gamper, opened the first "Katakombenschulen", clandestine schools where teachers taught in German.[14]

In 1926 the ancient institution of communal autonomy was abolished. Throughout Italy the "podestà", appointed by the government, replaced the mayors and had to report to the "prefetti".

A large industrial zone in Bolzano opened in 1935. It was followed by the immigration of many workers and their families from other parts of Italy (mainly from Veneto).[15]

In this period of oppression, National Socialist propaganda became more and more successful among young South Tyroleans.[7]

In 1943, Mussolini was deposed and Italy surrendered to the Allies, who had invaded southern Italy via Sicily. German troops promptly invaded northern Italy, and South Tyrol became part of the Operation Zone of the Alpine Foothills, annexed to Greater Germany. Many German-speaking South Tyroleans, after years of linguistic oppression and discrimination by Fascist Italy, wanted revenge upon ethnic Italians living in the area (particularly in the larger cities) but were mostly prevented from doing so by the occupying Nazis, who still considered Mussolini head of the Italian Social Republic and wanted to preserve good relations with the Italian Fascists, still supporting Mussolini against the Allies. Although the Nazis were able to recruit South Tyrolean youth and to capture local Jews, they prevented anti-Italian feelings from getting out of hand. Mussolini, who wanted to set up his new pro-German Italian Social Republic in Bolzano, was still a Nazi ally.

The region largely escaped fighting, and its mountainous remoteness proved useful to the Nazis as a refuge for items looted from across Europe. When the US 88th Infantry Division occupied South Tyrol from May 2 to May 8, 1945, and after the total unconditional surrender of Germany on May 9, 1945, it found vast amounts of precious items and looted art treasures. Among the items reportedly found were railway wagons filled with gold bars, hundreds of thousands of metres of silk, the Italian crown jewels, King Victor Emmanuel's personal collection of rare coins, and scores of works of art looted from art galleries such as the Uffizi in Florence. It was feared that the Germans might use the region as a last-ditch stronghold to fight to the bitter end and from there direct Werwolf activities in Allied-controlled territories, but this did not occur due to the suicide of Hitler, the disintegration and chaos of the Nazi apparatus and the rapid Nazi German surrender thereafter.[17]

At the time of its annexation, South Tyrol was inhabited by a large German-speaking majority. According to the census of 1910, which listed four groups according to their spoken language, the area was inhabited by approximately 89% German speakers, 3.8% Ladin, 2.9% Italian, and 4.3% speakers of other languages of the Austrian Empire, altogether 251,000 people.[21] According to some sources, the census did not include some 9000 immigrants from Italy.[22] However, from the official provincial statistics of the "Autonomous Province of South Tyrol" it appears that Italian citizens were indeed registered in the census, although not necessarily as Italian speakers.[23]

In the following, the population is listed by language group, according to the censuses undertaken from 1880 to 2001. In absolute numbers:[23]

Language distribution in 1880

Language distribution in 2001

Language distribution in 2011

In percentages:[32]

Given the region's historical and cultural association with neighboring Austria, calls for the secession of South Tyrol and its reunification with Austria are notable in the local and national political climate. Polls conducted in 2013 noted that 46% of South Tyrol's population would favor secession from Italy.[33] Among the political parties that support South Tyrol's reunification into Austria are South Tyrolean Freedom, Die Freiheitlichen and Citizens' Union for South Tyrol.[34]

• Timeline of Bolzano

• Paula Sutter Fichtner (2009). "South Tyrol". Historical Dictionary of Austria. USA: Scarecrow Press. pp. 282+. ISBN 978-0-8108-6310-1.
• Georg Grote, Hannes Obermair (2017). A Land on the Threshold. South Tyrolean Transformations, 1915–2015. Oxford, Bern, New York: Peter Lang. pp. 417+. ISBN 978-3-0343-2240-9.
• Giovanni Bernardini, Günther Pallaver (eds.) (2017). Dialogue against Violence. The Question of Trentino-South Tyrol in the International Context. Bologna, Berlin: Il Mulino - Duncker & Humblot. pp. 256+. ISBN 978-88-15-27340-6.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)

Media related to History of South Tyrol at Wikimedia Commons

• "South Tyrol/Südtirol—History of Tyrol & the Dolomites". South Tyrol Information. 2009. Archived from the original on 2012-08-15. Retrieved 2009-02-21.
• Anthony Alcock, The South Tyrol Autonomy. County Londonderry/Bozen-Bolzano, May 2001. Retrieved on 2009-03-16.