Things you don’t learn in high school…at least I didn’t: the northern part of Italy not only belonged to Austria until 1918, but it has remained German-speaking 90 years later.Italians call the northern part of their country Alto Adige (The High Adige River) but the German-speaking inhabitants, whose parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were Austrian, call it Südtirol, or South Tyrol.
The Austrian state of Tyrol (capital: Innsbruck) is one of Austria’s nine states. It makes sense that the state under it would be called South Something (South Dakota, South Carolina). But usually that South Something still belongs to the same country. Not any more.
Austria, which is the size of Maine, used to be HUGE. In fact, it was called Austria-Hungary and it encompassed what is today the Czech Republic, Slovakia, bits of Poland, Hungary (of course), bits of Rumania, Slovenia, and much of Croatia and Bosnia. You can find old maps on the Internet that have the German place names for cities that today are really only known by their “new” name (Bratislava was Pressburg, Belgrade was Weissenburg, Ljubljana was Laibach).
However, in Südtirol, German place names are still very much alive. In fact, the Italian names are shunned by the German speakers and only reluctantly included on traffic signs. Whereas Slovakian is the language of Bratislava, Serbo-Croatian the language of Belgrade, and Slovenian the language of Ljubljana, German is still the language of the entire northern region of Italy. For this reason, they know their cities and towns as Brixen, Bozen, Sterzing, and Lüsen and NOT Bressanone, Bolzano, Vipetino, and Luson.People from South Tyrol still have to learn Italian, if only to do well in school, although many schools in South Tyrol are primarily German. To hold any government job, people have to pass a civil service exam that is written in Italian. One man told me that they have the right to demand that the police speak to them in German if they ever get stopped. However, if you make pretend that you don’t understand anything they’re saying in Italian, you’re only asking for trouble!
Taking land away from countries as a punishment is something you don’t see any more. It’s actually kind of sadistic really. Why did people living in South Tyrol deserve being forced to change their nationality. It’s different than in WWII when much of what today is Poland was taken away from Germany. German-speakers from that region were all put on trains and transported to what we know today as Germany. Imagine you’re living in Maine and we go to war with Canada. We lose and as a result, Maine is ceded to Canada. Bordering Quebec, Maine now must become French-speaking? It wouldn’t happen.
In fact, there have existed since 1918 movements to make South Tyrol part of Austria again. In more recent times, though, because of the passage of time, separatists think less of becoming part of Austria and more about just being separate, similar to what exists in Quebec.
Random thought 1: like Austria, Südtirol has their own dialects. But interestingly enough, people here are more willing (and able?) than their Austrian counterparts to speak standard German to tourists.
Random thought 2: the fact that street and traffic signs, shop windows, posters, grocery flyers, government documents, etc. have to be presented in both German and Italian boggles my mind. There are other countries that have to do this, too, like Switzerland and Belgium. The cost must be enormous—I’m sure someone has calculated this. Maybe something for another blog.
