The middle part of Tyrol, partitioned in 1919, contained a large German-speaking majority.
In 1919, at the time of its annexation, the middle part of the County of Tyrol which is today called South Tyrol (in Italian Alto Adige) was inhabited by almost 90% German speakers.[1] Under the 1939 South Tyrol Option Agreement, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini determined the status of the German and Ladin (Rhaeto-Romanic) ethnic groups living in the region. They could emigrate to Germany, or stay in Italy and accept their complete Italianization. As a consequence of this, the society of South Tyrol was deeply riven. Those who wanted to stay, the so-called Dableiber, were condemned as traitors while those who left (Optanten) were defamed as Nazis. Because of the outbreak of World War II, this agreement was never fully implemented. Illegal Katakombenschulen ("Catacomb schools") were set up to teach children the German language.
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 1923, three years after South Tyrol had been formally annexed, Italian place names, almost entirely based on the Prontuario dei nomi locali dell'Alto Adige, were made official by means of a decree.[2] The German name "Tyrol" was banned, likewise its derivants and compound words such as "Tyrolean" and "South Tyrolean".[2] German newspapers, publishing houses, organized clubs and associations, including the South Tyrolean Alpine Club had to be renamed, with the decree said to have been strictly enforced by Italian carabinieri on the ground.[2] The basis for these actions was a manifesto published by Ettore Tolomei on 15 July 1923, called the Provvedimenti per l'Alto Adige ("Measures for the Alto Adige"), becoming the blueprint for the Italianization campaign.[3] Its 32 measures were:[4]
Association of Alto Adige and Trentino in a single province with the capital city of Trento.
Appointment of Italian municipal secretaries.
Revision of the (citizenship) options and closure of the Brenner border for all persons to whom the Italian citizenship was not granted.
Entry and residence difficulties for Germans and Austrians.
Prevention of German immigration.
Revision of the census of 1921.
Introduction of Italian as the official language.
Dismissal of German officials or transfer to the old provinces (i.e. pre-war Italian provinces).
Dissolution of the "Deutscher Verband" (German association).
Dissolution of Alpine associations not under command of the Italian Alpine Club, transfer of all Alpine refuges to the Italian Alpine Club.
Prohibition of the name "Südtirol" and "Deutsch-Südtirol”.
Closure of the newspaper published in Bozen "Der Tiroler".
Increasing of Carabinieri troops (in the province) under the exclusion of Germans.
Preferential treatment for land acquisition and immigration of Italians.
Non-interference by foreign powers in South Tyrolean affairs.
Elimination of German banks, establishment of an Italian mortgage Bank.
Establishment of border customs offices in Sterzing and Toblach.
Generous support of the Italian language and culture.
Establishment of Italian nursery and primary schools.
Establishment of Italian secondary schools.
Strict control of foreign university diplomas.
Expansion of the "Istituto di Storia per l'Alto Adige" (Institute for the history of Alto Adige).
Realignment of the territory of the Diocese of Brixen and strict control of clergy activity.
Using only Italian in trials and court.
State control of the Chamber of Commerce and the agricultural authorities (Corporazioni).
Extensive programs for new rail junctions to facilitate the Italianization of Alto Adige (rail projects Milan-Mals, Veltlin-Brenner, Agordo-Brixen).
Increase military garrisons in Alto Adige.
In October 1923, the "use of the Italian language became mandatory on all levels of federal, provincial and local government".[5] Regulations by the fascist authorities required that all kinds of signs and public notices had to be in Italian only, while maps, postcards and other graphic material had to show Italian place names.[5] In September 1925, Italian became the sole permissible language in courts of law, meaning that, from then on, cases could be heard only in Italian.[5] The fascist law regulations remained in effect after World War II, becoming a bone of contention for decades until they were eventually reconsidered in the 1990s.[5]
The German-language press, which was still published, was harassed by the authorities and subjected to censorship prior to publication.[6] In 1926 the fascist authorities began to publish their own German-language newspaper, the Alpenzeitung.[6] Other German-language papers were obliged to follow a strictly pro-regime editorial policy.[6]
The programme of Italianization was particularly forcefully applied in schools, aiming at the destruction of the German school system.[7] As of 1928, Italian had become the only language of instruction in 760 South Tyrolean classes, affecting over 360 schools and 30,000 pupils.[7] Likewise, German Kindergarten were required to use Italian, while substitutes were forced to shut down.[7] German teachers were systematically dismissed on the grounds of "insufficient didactics", or transferred to the south, from where Italian teachers were recruited instead.[7] Degrees from Austrian or German universities became valid only through an additional stay of one year at an Italian university.[7]
In religious affairs, a royal decree of November 1923 required religious instruction in Italian for all Italianized schools.[8] Fascist calls for the Italianization of German charitable organizations, religious orders and the complete abolition of German religious instruction to the Vatican were not entirely successful, not in the least due to the repeated interventions of the Bishop of Brixen and the setting up of informal Parish schools.[8] In state schools, though, Italian became mandatory for the last five classes, while the use of German was only allowed in teaching the Italian catechism in the first three years.[8]
The German-speaking population reacted by the establishment of Katakombenschulen ("catacomb schools"), clandestine home schools outside the Italianized standard educational system.[9] German schoolbooks were secretly smuggled across the border, often hidden in religious buildings before being distributed to the South Tyroleans pupils.[9] After initial difficulties, secret seminars for the instruction of teachers were organized throughout the province, usually under the protection of the Catholic church.[9] Fascist countermeasures ranged from searches and confiscations to imprisonments and deportations.[9] The balancing act between the instruction in Italian and German schools, where often the exact opposite was taught, especially in history and the social fields, is said to have left many Tyrolean pupils with a torn identity.[9] The newly composed Bozner Bergsteigerlied quickly became one of South Tyrol's unofficial hymns by celebrating an unbroken attachment of the South Tyroleans to their homeland. In the 21st century, just over 100 years after the Italian annexation of the region,[10] 64% of the population of South Tyrol speak German as their first and everyday language.
Post-war period
Poster saying "South Tyrol is not Italy!" on the background of an Austrian flag. The poster is located on the Austrian side of the Brennerpass border, not in South Tyrol.
After the end of the Second World War, reform processes tolerated the dual use of names on street signs, while the Italian names remain as the official ones, based on the 1940 law.
In the 1990s, a commission consisting of the Professors Josef Breu (Vienna, representing Austria in the Toponymy commission of the UN), Peter Glatthard (Berne) and Carlo Alberto Mastrelli (Florence, current "Archivio per l'Alto Adige") failed as Mastrelli insisted on the fascist decrees, while Breu and Glatthard promoted the UN-Guidelines.[11]
Ladin is a Romance language of the Rhaeto-Romance subgroup, mainly spoken in the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy in the provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino, and Belluno, by the Ladin people. It exhibits similarities to Romansh, spoken in Switzerland, as well as Friulian, spoken in north-east Italy.
South Tyrol is an autonomous province in northern Italy. An English translation of the official German and Italian names could be the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South Tyrol, reflecting the multilingualism and different naming conventions in the area. Together with the autonomous province of Trento, South Tyrol forms the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. The province is the northernmost of Italy, the second largest with an area of 7,400 square kilometres (2,857 sq mi), and has a total population of about 534,000 inhabitants as of 2021. Its capital and largest city is Bolzano.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol is an autonomous region of Italy, located in the northern part of the country. The region has a population of 1.1 million, of whom 62% speak Italian as their mother tongue, 30% speak South Tyrolean German and several foreign languages are spoken by immigrant communities. Since the 1970s, most legislative and administrative powers have been transferred to the two self-governing provinces that make up the region: the province of Trento, commonly known as Trentino, and the province of Bolzano, commonly known as South Tyrol. In South Tyrol, German remains the sizeable majority language.
Brixen is a town and commune in South Tyrol, northern Italy, located about 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of Bolzano.
The South Tyrol Option Agreement was an agreement in effect between 1939 and 1943, when the native German and Ladin-speaking people in South Tyrol and several other municipalities of northern Italy, which had belonged to Austria before WWI, were given the option of either emigrating to neighboring Nazi Germany or remaining in Fascist Italy, where the German minority was subjected to repressive Italianization efforts.
The Prontuario dei nomi locali dell'Alto Adige is a list of Italianized toponyms aimed at replacing the place names used by the German language community in South Tyrol which was published in 1916 by the Royal Italian Geographic Society. The list was called the Prontuario in short and later formed an important part of the Italianization campaign initiated by the fascist regime, as it became the basis for the official place names in the predominantly German-speaking Italian-annexed southern part of the County of Tyrol.
Katakombenschulen were clandestine schools established in Italian South Tyrol during the 1920s period of Fascist Italianization.
Modern-day South Tyrol, an autonomous Italian province created in 1948, was part of the Austro-Hungarian County of Tyrol until 1918. It was annexed by Italy following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I. It has been part of a cross-border joint entity, the Euroregion Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino, since 2001.
The (Princely) County of Tyrol was an estate of the Holy Roman Empire established about 1140. After 1253, it was ruled by the House of Gorizia and from 1363 by the House of Habsburg. In 1804, the County of Tyrol, unified with the secularised prince-bishoprics of Trent and Brixen, became a crown land of the Austrian Empire. From 1867, it was a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary.
Ettore Tolomei was an Italian nationalist and fascist. He was designated a Member of the Italian Senate in 1923, and ennobled as Conte della Vetta in 1937.
The Social Democratic Party of South Tyrol was a regionalist social-democratic and Christian-social party of German speakers in South Tyrol, Italy, that was active from 1972 to 1983.
The South Tyrolean Liberation Committee was an underground secessionist and terrorist organisation founded by Sepp Kerschbaumer and several combatants including Georg Klotz in the mid-1950s which aimed to achieve the right for self-determination for South Tyrol and the related secession from Italy via bomb attacks.
The Bozner Bergsteigerlied is one of the two unofficial hymns of the South Tyroleans, the other being the Andreas-Hofer-Lied. Its lyrics were composed in 1926 by Karl Felderer in Moos am Ritten to the melody of an old Tyrolean craftsmen's song.
Bolzano/Bozen railway station is the main station of Bolzano/Bozen, capital of the autonomous province of Alto Adige/Südtirol, in northeastern Italy.
Tyrol is a historical region in the Alps of Northern Italy and western Austria. The area was historically the core of the County of Tyrol, part of the Holy Roman Empire, Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, from its formation in the 12th century until 1919. In 1919, following World War I and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, it was divided into two modern administrative parts through the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye:
South Tyrol is an autonomous province located in northeast Italy producing wine. This Austro-Italian wine region is noted for the distinct Austrian influences on the wine industry, due to the region's long history under the rule of Austria-Hungary and Holy Roman Empires.
Polizeiregiment "Südtirol", later Bozen, and finally SS-Polizeiregiment "Bozen", was a military unit of the German Ordnungspolizei recruited in the largely ethnic-German Alto Adige region in north-east Italy in late 1943, during the de facto German annexation of the region. The ranks were ethnically German Italian draftees while officers and NCOs were Germans.
The South Tyrolean independence movement is a political movement in the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol that calls for the secession of the region from Italy and its reunification with the State of Tyrol, Austria. Concurrently, some groups favor the establishment of an interim Free State of South Tyrol as a sovereign nation while reintegration is organized.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Bolzano/Bozen in the Trentino-South Tyrol region of Italy.
Steininger, Rolf (2003). South Tyrol: a minority conflict of the twentieth century. New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A: Transaction Publishers. ISBN0-7658-0800-5.
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