Tra Südtirol e Alto Adige. Voci da un terra di confine

Margareth LANZINGER e Raffaella SARTI Between Südtirol and Alto Adige: voices form a borderland Today South-Tirol is the northernmost Italian province yet it once belonged to Austria and was annexed to Italy only in 1919, after World War I. During the Fascist era (1922-1943), the Italian government tried to transform South-Tirol into a “real” Italian region—although it was inhabited by a predominantly German-speaking population. To reach its aim, fascist authorities forbade the use of German in official contexts as well as the teaching of the German language. German teachers and employees were dismissed, toponymies were translated into Italian, and authorities encouraged a wide migration from other Italian provinces to this “new” region. In 1939 Mussolini and Hitler reached an agreement which imposed South-Tirolians to choose between German citizenship (which meant leaving their homeland and moving to the Third Reich), and Italian citizenship (which implied staying put in Italy but without any possibility of safeguarding their German culture and tradition). The majority chose the first option but only 75,000 people actually moved to Germany. After the end of the war, Italy promised to better respect the German-speaking population and to give the province wide autonomy. The rather slow development of this promised autonomy however created new tensions and conflicts. Part of the German-speaking population did not stop fighting for the self-determination of the South-Tirolians, and even committed terrorist acts, while part of the Italian portion of the population living in the province did not want to renounce their privileges. In 1972 however, a new “Autonomy Statute” was introduced which imposed the use of both languages in the public sphere and the sharing of a wide range of public resources to be decided according to the proportion of the ethnic groups in the province. This statute continues to assure important protection to the German population, but implies a rigid distinction between who is Italian and who is German. Some groups are continuing to fight for the development of a new culture common to both ethnic groups. The two authors of the article (a German historian and an Italian historian, both born in South-Tirol) analyze the complex relations between the two ethnic groups and their feelings of belonging evolving from their own autobiographical experience.