rooftops of Bolzano
There was plenty to do in the South Tyrol besides look for Dolomites. Before we resumed our search for the elusive mountains, we took a trip to the city of Bolzano, the capital of the province, which is located about half an hour south of Bressanone/Brixen. It gave us a chance to learn about the region’s complex cultural and linguistic history. I had a lot of questions about living in a bilingual environment and I wondered how the Italian speakers and the German speakers had managed to coexist over the centuries. Today was the day I hoped to get some answers.
But first, I wanted to spend a little more time familiarizing myself with Bressanone/Brixen’s old town. When I got up and pushed the heavy felted wool drapes aside from the window in my hotel room, I was encouraged to see a bit of sun trying to assert itself over low hanging clouds. After my usual early breakfast, I walked out into the gray morning light to check out the market stands in the square near the hotel.
Just around the corner, I peeked into the bakery. The breads looked tempting but I had no use for a big loaf.
Before I knew it, it was time to join our group for the walk to the Bressanone/Brixen train station. By 9:30 in the morning, we had arrived at Bolzano’s Fascist era train station.
One of the first buildings we passed on our way to the old town was a municipal building with writing on the façade in the three official languages of the province: German, Italian, and Ladin. I was very curious about the third language spoken in the South Tyrol and I looked forward to learning more about it. I’ll tell you about it in my next post.
Many of the buildings in Bolzano’s old town, located east of the Talvera River, feature Austrian style architecture.
From the top floor of the State Museum, we looked across the river to the new town, which dates back to the Fascist era. You’ll notice the Victory Arch, which is reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. This monument bears an inscription which reads, in translation, “They came to bring culture to the barbarians.”
At the State Museum, we had an opportunity to meet with two residents of Bolzano, one of whom was an Italian speaker and the other a German speaker. During their informative presentation, we learned a lot about both the history of the region and about the challenges faced today by those who make Bolzano their home.
I found these two maps they shared very helpful. The first shows all of the different ethnic and language groups in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. The second shows the different parts of the historic Tyrol.
Although today a slight majority of Bolzano’s 110,000 residents are Italian speakers, that wasn’t the case in the past. As I noted in earlier posts about this trip, the South Tyrol, where Bolzano is located, was German-speaking territory from the 12th century until the end of World War 1.
During the presentation, I learned about the extent of the Italianization effort that the Fascist government undertook during the years between World War 1 and World War 2. According to one of the speakers, when this initiative began in 1922, it brought a shock to the population. Residents with German first and/or last names were ordered to change their names to Italian names. Furthermore, German speaking residents faced discrimination as large numbers of Italians were brought from poverty-stricken areas in southern Italy to work in the newly built factories the government built in the suburbs of Bolzano. The population of southern Italians in the city quickly doubled. German language schools were shut down and German speaking teachers were replaced.
In 1925, not satisfied with the pace of the Italianization, Mussolini forbid the use of the German language in public, even in court cases where the defendants could not speak Italian. In 1939, he forced German speakers to make a life-changing choice. He gave them three months to decide if they wanted to abandon their culture and remain in the country or to leave their ancestral homes. About 80% of the German speakers in the South Tyrol (about 75,000 people) opted to move to Nazi Germany or Austria, which Germany had already annexed, rather than remain behind as second-class citizens. This resulted in many families being split apart. When World War 2 ended with the defeat of the Nazis, some of these German-speakers who had moved away returned to the South Tyrol, only to be considered traitors since Italy had switched to the Allied side in 1943.
Much has changed in the South Tyrol since World War 2 ended. A 1946 agreement guaranteed minority rights, but this was only on paper. German speakers continued to face discrimination in the post-war years. This led a radical group of local German-speaking separatists and German extremists to commit a series of terrorist acts, starting in the mid-1950s and continuing through the 1960s. They primarily targeted public buildings and monuments and the infrastructure. In the Fire Night attack in 1961, they bombed a series of electric pylons to protest the treatment of German speakers in the province.
Their attacks turned increasingly violent, culminating in a 1967 attack that killed four Italian security officers. At this point, the Italian government realized they needed to grant greater autonomy to South Tyrol to deal with the situation. In 1972, an ethnic proportional system for Bolzano and the entire province was introduced. It was implemented through an official decree in 1976. Known as Proporz, it was designed to give proportional representation to speakers of the three official languages with respect to public sector jobs. All applicants would have to be bilingual in both German and Italian. In addition, government funding for welfare, culture, and housing would be apportioned among the three language groups according to the latest census, which is taken every 10 years. In order to make this system work, at age 18, every Italian citizen in the region is required to declare their alignment with one of the three language and cultural groups (German, Italian, or Ladin). Even if you’re a naturalized citizen from another country, you still have to choose one of the three official languages. Before the age of 18, a child’s parents fill out the language identification on the census. Also, it’s important to note that the proportionality system does not apply to the private sector and it does not count non-citizen immigrants.
Listening to our speakers talk about the experiences of their family members, I could appreciate how the scars of the past linger. For example, the German speaker told of how when she worked for an Italian bank in the past, she felt socially isolated by her Italian speaking colleagues.
Now, more than 100 years after the South Tyrol became part of Italy, the province is still dealing with the fallout to a certain extent. However, it seems that in recent years, Bolzano has made progress toward becoming a truly multilingual society. The Italian speaker told us that to graduate from a university in South Tyrol, students must demonstrate mastery of both German and Italian as well as English. More and more marriages are taking place between German speakers and Italian speakers. (It may help that members of both groups share a Catholic religious faith.) Each one of our speakers saw this trend as indicative of a more hopeful future. They also noted that the younger generation often uses English to bridge the linguistic divide.
In an earlier post (Lake Garda to Trento), I went over some information about the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region, which includes the province of South Tyrol. Here, I’d just like to add a few facts that apply specifically to the South Tyrol. It’s Italy’s largest province in terms of land area and it’s also quite sparsely populated. About half of its 540,000 people live in rural areas and mountain valleys. Of the province’s total population, the language breakdown is 70% German speakers, 27% Italian speakers, and about 4.5% are Ladin speakers. German speakers are concentrated in the countryside while Italian speakers are highly concentrated in the urban areas, especially in the city of Bolzano. As for Ladin speakers, they live mostly in the remote mountain valleys of Val Gardeina and Val Badia.
Our speakers spoke quite candidly and gave us a lot of information that I’m still digesting. It made me wonder if there are lessons to be learned from the experience of South Tyrol that can apply to areas of the world today where groups of people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds are struggling to coexist.
Once the presentation was over, we headed next door to the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology to meet an extremely old and famous resident of the South Tyrol. I’m talking about Ötzi, the “Iceman.” His body was found in 1991 by a couple of hikers in an old Alpine pass less than 100 meters inside the Italian border. After the discovery, much of the research on his mummified remains, his clothing, and his equipment was carried out in Austria. Carbon dating indicated that he lived about 5350 to 5100 years ago, during the Copper Age of the Neolithic period.
Researchers believe that after Ötzi was murdered, he died alone in the mountains. Following his death, snow and ice covered his body and he was eventually encased in ice, which preserved him. In the museum, Ötzi is kept in a special chamber that duplicates the cold, damp conditions where he was found in the glacier. The temperature is kept at -6 degrees Celsius and his body is sprayed regularly with sterile water so it doesn’t dry out. I’m sorry I can’t show you photos of Ötzi but no photography was allowed anywhere in the museum.
I was fascinated by the exhibits that accompanied Ötzi’s body. Since I have no photos to share, I’ll try to describe what I saw and learned. The Iceman was probably about 1.6 meters (5 foot, 3 inches) tall, which would be average height for a man during the Neolithic period. When he was alive, he most likely weighed between 50 and 60 kilos (110-132 pounds). He had brown eyes, medium long dark brown to black wavy hair, and teeth that showed clear signs of abrasion. He had tattoos consisting of blue and black lines in various places on his body. These were likely made by piercing the skin with a bone needle or a flint blade and then rubbing in charcoal.
In addition to Ötzi’s body, the museum displayed his clothing and the objects found with his body. He was wearing a bear skin cap and goat hide leggings as well as a loin cloth made of sheep leather. His coat was made of strips of sheep and goat hides. Ötzi was wearing shoes with soles of bear skin and leather uppers. The shoes were lined with fur for warmth.
Ötzi carried his possessions in a large backpack whose shaped frame was made out of wood from the hazel tree. Inside was a first aid kit containing a fungus called birch polypore, which is a type of natural antibiotic. He also carried a long wooden bow that measured 182 centimeters and a quiver containing four stag antler tips and 14 arrows, including two with flint arrowheads.
Among the objects found along with Ötzi’s body was a copper axe with a wooden shaft. It’s the only surviving fully intact axe from the Copper Age. With this discovery, researchers determined that the Copper Age in the Alpine region began 1000 years earlier than previously supposed. A flint dagger with a wooden handle was also find near Ötzi. According to researchers, such tools were very common during the time he lived.
The only place I could take a couple of photos was in the museum’s gift shop.
After spending a few hours indoors filling my head with information, I was eager to get out into the fresh air and explore the historic pedestrian streets of Bolzano. First, however, I stopped into a bakery/café for a quick sandwich.
Despite the intermittent rain, I enjoyed wandering on my own. I took a closer look at the one of the unusual buildings we’d passed earlier. The name on the façade, written in Italian and German, means house where wine is pressed. Today, it’s actually a popular restaurant and pizzeria.
Several vendors of local products had set up their stalls in the area and local residents seemed to be doing their shopping at lunchtime.
Along a beautiful arcaded street, I noticed many upscale shops. The shop windows displayed beautiful merchandise with prices to match.
I found my way to the Walther Platz, the city’s main square, named for a famous medieval German lyric poet. His monumental white marble statue stands in the center of the square. It was originally placed there in 1889 but was removed during the Fascist era. It wasn’t restored to its place until 1981.
Bolzano’s Assumption of Our Lady cathedral faces one side of the Walther Platz. The architecture is a blend of Germanic Gothic and Italian Romanesque. It contains beautiful 14th century frescoes.
Soon afterwards, I met up with other members of my group near the square at the Church of Saint Nicholas.
Once again, dark clouds had moved in and a threatening sky loomed over us as we walked back to the Bolzano train station. On the train ride back to the Bressanone/Brixen station, a steady rain beat against the windows. Unfortunately, I’d left my umbrella back at the hotel, hoping my hooded rain jacket would provide adequate protection. When we finally reached the hotel, our clothes were soaked but our spirits weren’t dampened.
We all dried out by the time we gathered for a group dinner at the Der Traubenwirt restaurant. I selected a traditional schnitzel as my main course.
The evening concluded with a walk through the historic center to see the annual Brixen Water Light show where constantly changing images are projected onto the sides of buildings to the accompaniment of music.
I went to bed that night hoping that the following day, when we returned to Dolomite country, would bring better weather.
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