Written by Marco Vigna
I. The Age-Old Italianity of South Tyrol. From Prehistory to the Fifth Century after Christ.
It is good to preface this by saying that the question of the population in South Tyrol after the fall of Rome is remarkably delicate and complex, as this region has experienced continuous substantial changes in its ethnic composition, which is difficult to reconstruct, especially in the High Middle Ages.
In any case, it is necessary to prefix some essential information on what should be considered as a "starting point". The oldest known human population of the region was that of the Raetians, a pre-Indo-European people closely related to the Ligurians, the Etruscans, in short the so-called "Mediterraneans", which constituted the oldest inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, even before the arrival of Indo-Europeans around the second millennium BC. The Raetians initially lived across all of north-eastern Italy and extended to the east, encompassing most of modern Austria. The Veneti replaced them in the lowlands of the current Veneto and Friuli, though mingling with them, while the Raetians continued to be the majority in the alpine lands and continued to live in the central and eastern Alps, both in the cisalpine and in the transalpine areas. The ethnic configuration of South Tyrol, and in general of the north-west of the peninsula on the eve of the affirmation of Rome, was therefore similar to that of the rest of Italy, with a substantial fusion between the ancient Mediterraneans (these were the Raetians), descendants of the groups of Homo sapiens sapiens who replaced the neanderthals in Italy, and more "recent" Indo-Europeans who, however, lived in the peninsula since the second millennium BC. Despite the undoubted differences, a growing cultural affinity brought them together, which made the different peoples of the peninsula very similar to each other: it is the condition which has been called "pan-Italianism".
On this common cultural basis they grafted the posterior unification policy, legally and linguistically Roman. The current South Tyrol was added, in the Augustan organization of Italy, to Region X "Venetia et Histria" (which included the current Triveneto from the Brenner Pass to Carnaro) and at the local level belonged to the "Districuts", having as its capital Tridentum (Trent). The region was therefore considered part of Italy already in the Augustan era and its inhabitants were "cives Romani", that is to say, their completed romanization was recognized.
By way of confirmation, Romansh, Ladin and Friulian, that is, the Rhaeto-Romance languages, are certainly local languages with their own specificity, but are habitually recognized by linguists as belonging to the linguistic group called "Italo-Romance", which includes almost all local languages existing in Italy, with the sole exception of the miniscule germanophone, slavophone, francophone and grecophone minority. In other words, Romansch, Ladin and Friulian are not only Neo-Latin (Romance) languages, but belong to the typically Italian romance strain, distinct from those beyond the Alps or in Eastern Europe. Rhaeto-Romance groups, that is, of romanized Raetians or rather of Romans of Raetic origin, existed, however, throughout the north-eastern Alps, where in fact they were the majority of the population, even in Austria.
II. The Genocide of Raetians in the Transalpine Lands.
As is well known, the Danube remained, approximately until the fall of Rome, the border between the Latin and Germanic worlds. The rupture of the limes of the Empire led to the irruption of Germanic peoples into what is now Austria already in the fifth century AD and then, from the sixth century onwards, of Slavic tribes into modern Slovenia and therefore into the eastern Alps. It is difficult to reconstruct with accuracy the ethnic changes, indeed it appears to this writer to be currently impossible. There exists no doubt, however, of what happened in broad terms: the latinophones were practically exterminated in what is now eastern Austria, in part by the Germans, in part by the Slavs. There was a higher survival in western Austria, where, on the other hand, it seems Roman refugees from the east took refuge, but this still did not prevent a germanization of the Austrian Alps, which was initiated at the beginning of the sixth century and was already completed in the Middle Ages.
The Rhaeto-Romance settlements on the eastern Alps had a longer life. Even in the Middle Ages, in the fourteenth century, there existed "Italian" communities of Rhaeto-Romance language on the upper and middle Isonzo, near Postumia (Postojna) and on Mount Nevoso, therefore in areas which centuries later appeared thoroughly slavicized. The compact Slovene population in most parts of the eastern Alps is therefore historically very recent and was accomplished only with the disappearance of the existing Italian and romance communities, many of which still survived in the middle of the fourteenth century.
The Latins of Noricum, of central Helvetia, of the eastern Alps, romanized peoples and descendants of the Raetians, were therefore killed or brutally assimilated. Some were saved by moving to the west, where they were conjoined to their fellow countrymen residing there. The fate of the Romans in these regions was therefore comparable, mutatis mutandis, to that of the inhabitants of Illyria, who were for the most part exterminated by the invading Slavs, while the survivors took refuge in Dalmatia.
III. The Phase of the Germanic Invasions in South Tyrol.
If the germanization of ancient Noricum (modern Austria) and the slavicization of the eastern Alps (upper and middle of the Isonzo Valley, Mount Nevoso, etc.) happened with relative rapidity and in a very violent manner (in eastern Austria the Latins were practically exterminated), the opposite occurred in the central Swiss Alps and in South Tyrol, which was a much longer and slower process. Certainly, throughout the Middle Ages the Latins remained the majority in the northern basin of the Adige and in the valleys.
The invasions of the Goths and Longobards did not significantly alter the population of the area, since both these peoples were very few in number compared to the Italians of the time (see, for example, the study of the great medievalist Stefano Gasparri, Prima delle nazioni). Moreover, the former disappeared from the peninsula after their defeat in the Gothic-Byzantine War, while the latter were gradually assimilated, leaving nothing but very few traces in the posterior of Italian culture: some names and surnames, some toponymns, some words in the Italian language, very rarely any folkloric heritage.
To see the start of the germanization of South Tyrol one must look to the Bavarii, the ancestors of the Bavarians. They invaded the region and managed to control it only after fierce resistance from the Latins, led by the bishop Saint Ingenuin of Saben (Ingenuino di Sabiona). That of the Bavarians is the first real German settlement in South Tyrol, but essentially consisted of a small group of military men who dominated and subjugated the local population. The situation did not change under the dominion of the Franks. Until about the year 1000 the Germanic presence in South Tyrol was then very scarce.
IV. After the Year One Thousand.
It is with the Ottonian dynasty, in fact, that the first real impulse of profound germanization began in the upper basin of the Adige. It was a very slow process, however, occurring only in scattered areas, and began approximately at the turn of the year 1000.
An event of particular gravity in terms of germanization was the decision of the Emperor Conrad II (1024-1033) to grant territorial powers to the bishops of Brixen and Trent. This decision in fact broke the traditional, ancient administrative unity of north-eastern Italy, which rested on a cultural continuum dating back to Prehistory, or at least to the Roman era. The term "Triveneto", at times still used today, in fact recalls this anterior cultural unity.
The nobility and clergy from beyond the Alps were the principle culprits of this germanization, which now was not only superficial and limited (in most cases) to the ruling class as it was in the past, but now extended to all social classes. The granting of lands and fiefs by the German emperors to their faithful subjects facilitated the transplantation of entire Germanic communities into South Tyrolean lands; no matter how small, they were "organic" and included military, clergy, artisans, merchants, peasants.
The government of the region formally belonged to the Bishopric of Trent, which existed until 1802 and was usually represented by Italian bishops and residents in an Italian city in the heart of an Italian region. However, what actually occurred was a gradual usurpation of their rights in South Tyrol at the hands of the Counts of Tyrol starting in the twelfth century, whose lands were, from a strictly legal point of view, solely and exclusively to the north of the Brenner. In fact, the German Count of Tyrol remained for many centuries, on a formal level, a simple advocatus of the legitimate prince of the territory, that is, the bishop of Trent, although in practice most of the prerogatives of the bishop of Trent in South Tyrol were progressively usurped.
V. The Fourteenth Century.
The fourteenth century is a crucial century in the germanization of South Tyrol. Even Dante at the beginning of the century, still under the influence of the definition of Italy according to Roman administrative geography, fixed the boundaries of the Italian nation at Nice in the west, at the Carnaro in the east ("Pola near the Carnaro, which encloses Italy and bathes her boundaries"), and at the Brenner in the north: "In the upper part of beautiful Italy there lies a lake, at the foot of the Alps, which forms the boundary of Germany above Tyrol, called Benaco." Germany began, therefore, according to the Poet, to the north of Tyrol, which was then included in the Italian area.
The epidemic of the "Black Death" which struck hard the whole of Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century (beginning in 1348) led to the collapse of the population in South Tyrol, which was filled in part by an influx of German settlers from regions in which the disease had a lesser impact.
Also in 1364 the rule of the Counts of Tyrol was replaced by the Habsburgs, intensifying the process of germanization through their feudal lords and their ecclesiastics, who, being owners of enormous estates in South Tyrolean land, transplanted German settlers. In addition, Habsburg rule facilitated the immigration of merchants from Germany to urban centers south of the Brenner.
VI. Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor.
Maximilian I (1459-1519) established the seat of his court in Innsbruck, in the land of the historical Tyrol (south of the Brenner, at least formally, there was the ecclesiastical principality of Trentino, which included all of the current Trentino-Alto Adige). It was under his sovereignty that a shift from an Italian majority in South Tyrol to a German majority occurred.
This is supported, among others, by Carlo Battisti, a scholar of high importance, author of several monumental studies on the region, on the Ladins, etc. He maintained, in fact, that only at the end of the fifteenth century did the Germanic population become more prevalent than the Italian (Trentine and Ladin) in the valley of the Adige. The lower Adige and Bolzano remained until the middle of the fifteenth century strongly Italian. At the end of the reign of Maximilian I the territories of Ora, Fiè, Tires, Laion and the Val d'Ega, which in the recent past still had a Ladin population, became definitely germanized.
The administrative measures and the legal norms in force under this emperor contributed to the regression of the Italian element in the region. The territory of the Ladins was divided into a series of "giudizi" or "judicates", administrative units which reflected the anterior community: Judicate of Gudon; Judicate of Selva; Judicate of Ciastel; Judicate of Mareo-Badia; Judicate of Tor; Judicate of Fodom; Judicate of Fassa; Judicate of Fiemme; Judicate of Ampezzo. The official language used in the "Judicates" was German, so that even the place names were reported in German and, frequently, name days themselves were distorted and germanized.
VII. The Counter-Reformation.
After the period of Maximilian I, during which there had been an intense germanization and for the first time the Germanic group outnumbered the Italian, the latter began to grow, nearly balancing the German population. At the beginning of the seventeenth century Ladin was still spoken in the "judgment" of Castelrotto, in Val di Fiemme, Val di Non, Val Pusteria, Neva Ladina, Zoldo, Agordo..., while the language was as strong in Val Venosta as it is today in Val Gardena. There still existed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a territorial continuity between the Ladin areas in South Tyrol and the romance areas of Switzerland, especially through the upper Val Venosta and its links with the Swiss valleys of Monastero and the Engadine, whose language was at the time practically the same. This contiguity was broken by the imperial policies. The Habsburg Empire, that is, the hereditary possessions of the house of Austria (as distinct from the German Reich in the proper sense) was then, as it always had been, very differentiated and multi-ethnic in its interior. One of the instruments to which they had recourse to try to establish some kind of cultural unity of its domains, which was gravely lacking, was a policy of forced conversion to Catholicism. The Habsburg possessions appeared prior to the Thirty Years' War to be very diverse even religiously, and the Protestant presence was quite strong in the region from which they later disappeared completely. The same Austrian and Hungarian aristocracies appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century largely adhering to the Protestant Reformation. It was in the interest of both the imperial government, and the Catholic Church in Austria to promote a gradual elimination of the Protestant elements.
This directive, practiced consistently and with decision by everyone in the "century of iron" of the wars of religion, also involved the Ladins of South Tyrol. They were all Catholics, however they directly bordered (and were difficult to distinguish at the time from Swiss Romansh) the valleys of the Monastero and the Engadina, which had converted to Protestantism. The fear of an infiltration of Protestantism into South Tyrol through the cultural continuity of the Rhaeto-Romance areas led to a policy of germanization in the imperial territories bordering the Swiss confederation.
VIII. Maria Theresa.
Entire valleys which were still Ladin, and the major part of the Val Venosta, which had spoken a neo-Latin language until the beginning of the eighteenth century, were germanized by force during the Theresian reign. First, the authorities imposed a series of repressive measures, which required the exclusive use of German in a number of fields: in public meetings, in church sermons, in confession and in general pastoral activity, etc. Second, discriminatory measures were promoted against those who spoke Ladin in their own home and family life, limiting their rights, such as the possibility of exercising certain professions or even of contracting marriages. Third, many customs characteristic of the Ladins were banned, again in order to make them lose their identity. Fourth, the Empress Maria Theresa in person issued a secret decree, which required the germanization of Ladin surnames in South Tyrol, using the clergy to carry out this work, who were loyal to the empire and imposed the German language. Even today there are many Ladin surnames germanized through the addition of an –er ending (as happened to Elemunt, which became Elemunter, or Melaun, which became Melauner), or by a translation into German (for example, changing Costalungia to Kastlunger, Granruac to Großrubatscher, etc.).
Most of Val Venosta was thus germanized under the government of the "enlightened" sovereigns Maria Theresa and Joseph II, who are regarded as the more open and tolerant sovereigns of the house of Austria. The Ladins who managed to resist such germanizing pressure were gradually assimilated during the nineteenth century, so that very few Romansh groups remained in Val Venosta at the beginning of the nineteenth century. An enthusiastic supporter of the germanization of the Ladins and the Romansh before the Theresian era was the abbot of Marienberg Abbey (Abbey of Monte Maria) in upper Val Venosta, Mathias Lang.
Similar germanizing behaviours were common to the activity of the government of Maria Theresa, who was responsible for initiatives similar to those described above, or even worse, in different parts of the empire, such as in Bohemia, Croatia, Hungary and Romania. The Empress also issued an edict in which she authorized the abduction of children born to Gypsy families, in order to enlarge the German sphere and render it Austrian in culture: the cases of authorized abductions were many thousands.
IX. Franz Joseph I of Austria.
The situation did not change, for the worse, in the period between the Restoration and the First World War (1815-1918). Already the historian Giuseppe Frapporti in Della storia e della condizione del Trentino nell’antico e nel medioevo (Trento, 1840) brought forth the evidence of the intrusive and overpowering character of the work of forced germanization of the inhabitants of the county of Trentino (which until 1803 included the entire modern Trentino-Alto Adige) carried out by the Austrian political authorities. He also emphasized the systematic distortion of the place names and name days and the continuity of this work over the centuries.
In theory, the Austrian constitution of 1867 provided cultural safeguards for the peoples of the empire, including those other than the two dominant groups, though clearly a minority, the Austrians and the Magyars. In fact, there existed privileged ethnicities and others discriminated against, more or less heavily. The Ladins, very few in number, very poor on average, and totally marginalized on the political level did not receive any recognition.
They were instrumentally kept separate from the Italians by the Austrian authorities, despite the fact that their language was and is part of the Italo-Romance linguistic group (no different, for example, from Piedmontese, Umbrian, or Sicilian), with the specific intent of dividing or even pitting against each other the Ladins and the Italians of Trentino.
The Ladin population not only had to suffer forced acculturation by the Austrian authorities, but also the work of pan-germanist associations, very active in all of Habsburg "Tyrol" and which aroused the concern and the outrage of the same Trentino Tyrolean People's Party of the bishop of Trent and of Alcide De Gasperi.
The Austrian scholastic policy severely damaged the Ladin community. Their language was not included in the school curriculum and the Austrians tried several times to remove from schools that little bit of Italian that was taught. The schools of the Ladins, in fact, almost exclusively used German, with differences depending on the location (Val Badia, Val Gardena, Val di Fassa, etc.). There were, however, recurring attempts to impose a complete germanization of the schools. Simplifying for the sake of brevity, we can say that the schools taught primarily in German, that Italian was taught only a few hours per week and was often optional, while Ladin was not used at all. The situation was aggravated further during the First World War, when the military authorities used the war as a pretext for implementing the germanization of Trentino-Alto Adige and undertaking it with brutality. Even the Ladins were affected and all schools of Val Badia, Val di Fassa and Val Gardena were germanized. Simultaneously they proceeded in the germanization of place names. Only the defeat of Austria in the First World War prevented the plan of total germanization of Trentino, although South Tyrol was brought to completion.
X. Conclusion.
The Rhaeto-Romance linguistic group occupied an area which in the past included (using current geographical terminology) the Grisons, South Tyrol, Friuli, the eastern Alps, and Austria. Today, however, it includes only the small Romansh-speaking community in the Grisons, the even smaller community of Ladins on this side of the Alps, and the Friulians. Note that the gradual disappearance of Raetians occurred due to extermination and forced assimilations performed by Germanics and, to a lesser extent, Slavs. In fact, all of current Austria, the eastern Alps, and a good part of the central Swiss Alps were linguistically Rhaeto-Romance before the arrival of these invaders; except for the small Romansh community in Switzerland, the Raetians beyond the Alps became extinct. Even South Tyrol was latinophone, while today the Ladins survive only in a very small area (Badia, Gardena, Fassa, Livinallongo, Ampezzano) and are reduced to a few tens of thousands of people. The only area in which the Rhaeto-Romance peoples have not experienced significant reductions is, not coincidentally, that of Friuli, which, although bordering with the Germanic and Slavic world, remained mostly unscathed by the phenomena of germanization and slavicization which swept through the majority of the area at one time. It is significant that today among the approximately 770,000 Rhaeto-Romance people in existence, 700,000 live in Friuli, while the Ladins and the Romansh are respectively about 30,000 and 40,000 units.
This true genocide, cultural but also in part physical in the phase of the invasions of the Middle Ages, saw the areas of Rhaeto-Romance population gradually eroded like a tide.
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