The Blow-Up Over Tyrol:
TORTORA, VINCENT R.
The Blow-up Over Tyrol Austria and Italy are in dispute once more over the tiny region in the Alps no bigger than the state of Delaware By Vincent R. Tortora The subtleties of interpretion...
...2. The Italians were establishing industry and housing in the cities to attract immigrants from Italy...
...The Blow-up Over Tyrol Austria and Italy are in dispute once more over the tiny region in the Alps no bigger than the state of Delaware By Vincent R. Tortora The subtleties of interpretion in the phrase "substantial and effective autonomous legislation and executive power" have given rise to a decidedly unsubtle blow-up on the roof of Central Europe...
...The framework for the application of these measures of autonomy will be in consultation with native German-speaking representatives...
...Despite Italy's late defection to the side of the Allies, it was rather summarily stripped of its African colonies and of territory along the French and Yugoslav borders, but, in the case of Alto-Adige, the Big Four, led by Russia, held that there should be no border changes...
...5. Mayors and other officials in the larger towns are Italians because the Italians tend to group in metropolitan areas...
...As a section of Italy, the regione is subject to Italian educational laws...
...Its capital, Bolzano (German: Bozen), is centrally located and has a population of about 75,000...
...Since Napoleanic times, when the little region of South Tyrol (2,000 square miles...
...During the Italian unification campaigns of the 19th century, the Austrians were ejected from all areas of Northern Italy except the Trentino, and hence the Trentino became the focus of irredentist passions...
...The entrance of Germany into the dispute on the side of Austria has strained relations between two pillars of NATO...
...These have nothing to do with "legislative and executive autonomy...
...The usually gemütlich Austrians and simpatici Italians, disputing briskly in the South Tyrol, a picturesque mountainous area about the size of Delaware, have loosed the genie of nationalism which idealistic supra-nationalists in Western Europe had long since thought bottled up...
...During the middle 1930s, Hitler showed little interest in the area...
...But, very frequently, young men of Austrian descent have preferred to stay in their Germanspeaking mountain areas than to venture into the strange city milieu where a number of their colleagues would be Italian...
...Several major industries, such as Montecatini Mining, Lancia Automotive, Edison Electric and Falck Steel, have been induced by the Government to enter the area, thus supplying many new job openings...
...At the conclusion of World War II the question of Italy's colonies and recently acquired territory came up for review at the Paris Conference...
...It should not be long before the industrial development and the economic standards of the regione will be comparable to that of Germany, to which the German-speaking population has looked enviously for the past few years...
...The regione has been the beneficiary of appropriations by the central Government which greatly exceed the taxes it has paid...
...The continuing appearance of painted swastikas and nationalistic slogans on public buildings in the disputed area dramatically attests to this fact...
...4. Schools in German-speaking areas were staffed, for the most part, by Italians, and it was the central Government in Rome which set up the curricula...
...The Trentino was almost 100 per cent Italian, Alto-Adige about 34 per cent...
...Finally, and most important, the exacerbated situation has given a "cause" to young extremists of the Right in both countries and piqued them into demonstrations and riots, beatings and bombings...
...Under the direction and stimulation of Ettore Tolmei, a native of the region, Italian colonists were encouraged to settle in Alto-Adige and other measures were taken to destroy its "ethnological vestiges...
...4. There are about 1.200 teachers of Austrian descent working in the regione...
...The declared purpose was to re-establish the historic Süd Tyrol as it had long existed under the Hapsburgs...
...The sentiment was based largely, though belatedly, on the statistical fact that, with the Italians representing two-thirds of the population, autonomy resided in the total population and not in the German-speaking population alone...
...By the same token, mayors and other officials in the remote areas are German-speaking...
...In addition, there have been very few Germanspeaking applicants for the police or civil service jobs due to the distrust of such functionaries engendered under fascism...
...It was then that Italian Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi and Austrian Foreign Minister Karl Gruber, meeting together under the aegis of the Big Four powers, signed an agreement defining the rights and privileges of the more than 200,000 German-speaking" Italian citizens in what the Austrians call the Süd Tyrol and the Italians AltoAdige, an area that had been ceded to Italy after World War I. The Gruber-de Gasperi agreement was later incorporated into the Italian Peace Treaty...
...Also, members of the Special Political Committee of the General Assembly, in comments behind the scenes, indicated distrust for the Austrian Government's sincerity because of its toleration of intense and undisguised irredentist campaigns for the "redemption" of the Süd Tyrol and its return to Austria...
...In such a climate, conditions are ripe for the rapid growth of Rightist group membership and influence...
...But, as a compromise gesture, Austrian Foreign Minister Gruber was brought together with Italian Prime Minister de Gasperi (a Trentino), to define the rights and privileges of the Germanspeaking citizens of Alto-Adige...
...But in 1939, when Hitler annexed Austria, Mussolini made the grand gesture of offering him the province...
...The Italians countered the list of grievances with: 1. The major portion of Italian colonization took place under Mussolini...
...During October, the UN General Assembly, after hearing out the bitter charges and counter-charges, voted to remand the dispute back to the two parties for bi-lateral discussions...
...Immediately prior to World War I, Austria, in a vain attempt to hold its southern ally in line, offered Italy virtually all the Trentino...
...6. Documents and court proceedings are in Italian for the same reason that the required second language in schools is Italian...
...Officially (in the note) and unofficially (in the press), the grievances were as follows: 1. The Italians were making every effort to saturate Bolzano and the surrounding area with colonists from Italy, thus trying to reduce the German-speaking population to an ineffectual minority...
...Moreover, it would be a poor school system in Italy that did not teach Italian at least as one of the required languages...
...the Austrians claim a concerted plot to ignore the agreement and to deprive the German-speaking minority of its languages, culture and economic and politicai rights...
...In 1953, concomitant with an outburst of Italian agitation for a plebiscite in the Trieste area, sentiment developed within the German-speaking population of the regione for a revaluation of the Gruber-de Gasperi agreement...
...Since 1919 it has been part of Italy, but Austria has continued to keep its eye on the many German-speaking residents there, and recently the area became the focus of attention once more as the United Nations debated its future...
...Now, after delivering body blows to European economic and political unity, and arousing the passions of nationalist elements throughout Italy and Austria, the dispute, thanks to the catalytic effects of the UN, bids fair to settle down to civil discussions between heads of state with the cool analytical heads of the World Court nodding knowingly on the horizon...
...In 1955, for example, an almost insignificant 400 Italians moved into the province...
...Essentially, the present dispute revolves around the interpretation of the word "autonomy...
...As a consequence of these programs, the economic standard of the regione has become the envy of other regions of Italy...
...Even other semiautonomous areas such as Sicily, Sardinia and the Val d'Aosta suffer by comparison...
...Directly south of Alto-Adige is the province of Trentino, whose capital is Trento...
...With the outbreak of war, however, the offer was not made good...
...What is more, a great deal of housing has been needed to replace the great damage done by 22 Allied air raids on Bolzano which destroyed 4,550 structures, severely damaged 7,672 and somewhat less severely damaged 19,530...
...The Austrian-Italian dispute had its present-day origins during the Paris peace talks in 1946...
...The objective of the Austrian Government in submitting the dispute to a highly charged UN debate instead of to the International Court of Justice at the Hague, as was suggested three years ago by Italy, becomes lost in the obfuscating mists of Austrian domestic politics...
...2. It has been altogether natural for industry to move into this mountainous area inasmuch as it supplies 10 per cent of Italy's hydroelectric power...
...In this agreement the phrases "substantial and effective autonomous legislature and executive power" were used...
...3. There was discrimination against German-speaking youth by personnel directors in both industry and civil service...
...The SVP states that the Paris Agreement, in actuality, represented an attempt to maintain the organic integrity of the German-speaking population as a group and to preserve for it a specific territory...
...The entire province has a population of about 350,000, of which close to two-thirds are farmers...
...The force of the Austrian presentations to the UN General Assembly was somewhat blunted by the fact that Gruber once remarked that the German-speaking population of Alto-Adige was the "best treated minority in Europe...
...Its architecture and general spirit are Germanic...
...He frequently declared that he was happy to maintain the status quo in Alto-Adige in exchange for Italian friendship...
...6. All official documents and court proceedings were required to be in Italian...
...Moreover, all students were required to learn Italian as a second language...
...5. The mayors of the larger cities and other officials tended to be Italians...
...Thus, in essence, the UN supported the plan for settlement proposed by Italy as early as 1957...
...3. Whatever job discrimination exists has been as much the fault of the German-speaking population as the Italian...
...The fact that Austrian troops, unlike the Italians, had fought against the Allies until the last days of the war undoubtedly motivated the Big Four to reject Austria's appeal for a plebiscite or for border changes...
...If no agreement came within a "reasonable period,' the issue was to be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the Hague...
...Though during much of its history this province has been annexed to and considered a part of the Süd Tyrol and been ruled over by Germany or by Austria, its architecture, language and spirit have retained a distinct Italian flavor...
...Here Vincent R. Tortora, a free-lance writer who has devoted much time and study to the controversy, examines the cases for both sides and indicates the effects the blow-up may have on European political relations...
...Thus, at Versailles, Italy, with the support of its Allies, claimed the area as a spoil of war, and also made a half-hearted claim to Bolzano province (Alto-Adige...
...In essence, these Austrian and Italian positions have formed the basis of the UN debate...
...The Italians maintain that they have lived up to the letter and spirit of the agreement...
...Indeed, in many cases Italian personnel directors play favorites...
...During the 1950s, many fewer Italians entered into Alto-Adige than Süd Tyroleans who were returning from Germany where they had opted to go under Hitler...
...The Austrian charges against Italy seemed in strange contrast to such a statement...
...During 1947 the Italian Government negotiated with leaders of German-speaking political parties in Alto-Adige for a statute which would merge the province with the Trentino to form one regione, the Trentino-Alto-Adige...
...Intensive recruitment drives are constantly being conducted, but many young Germanspeaking men and women have preferred to stay home where there are few Italians rather than enter Italian universities...
...Italy and Austria, it has been the center of controversy— sometimes acrimonious, sometimes mild...
...This was three years after the first demonstrations in Alto-Adige and in Austria...
...Despite the fact that the merger would have had the effect of giving Italians a two-thirds majority in the new regione, there seemed to be little opposition from the German-speaking element or from Austria...
...Of its 350,000 inhabitants, about 220,000 are ex-Austrians, 116,000 are Italians and 14,000 are Ladini (who speak a form of Romantsch similar to that spoken by Swiss Grisons...
...Increased industry brings as a natural consequence increased city housing...
...In October 1956, the Austrian Foreign Office sent its first note to the Italian Government setting forth the specific grievances of the German-speaking population...
...Italy has been on the march, industrially...
...The Italian Government further pointed out that as a semi-autonomus region, Trentino-Alto-Adige benefitted far more than other regions of Italy...
...From the 11th century to the 15th, it formed part of the lands of the Bishop of Trento and under Hapsburg rule, in 1462, it passed to Austria and was, in subsequent centuries, colonized by German-speaking farmers from the North...
...At this point, President Woodrow Wilson set aside the ninth of his 14 points (which held that borders should neatly encompass social and ethnic groups) and agreed that Italy be awarded the whole of the traditional Süd Tyrol in order to move its border to the top of the Alps rather than to the pre-Alps...
...The Südtirolervolkspartei (SVP), now the only political party in the semi-autonomous area, has since 1953 been arguing along lines that were all too familiar in Europe two decades ago...
...Railroad lines are being extended into the remotest of villages and a number of flood control and irrigation projects have either been built or will soon be built...
...Although the dispute involves a small land area and a comparatively few persons—on a continent where partitions and refugees are by now commonplace—its repercussions shake the foundation of Western European solidarity...
...After he took power in 1922, Mussolini moved with comparative ease toward the end of Italianizing AltoAdige...
...Alto-Adige extends from the Brenner Pass southward into Italy to Salerno (German: Salurn) on the Adige River...
...The Italians, in turn, maintained that they had lived up to the letter of the agreement which stated, in Article II: "The population of the above mentioned areas [Süd Tyrol] will be granted the exercise of autonomous regional legislation and enforcement...
...Over the objections of some Allied territorial experts, a number of Italian patriots and, of course, the Austrians, Italy was granted the province of Bolzano in addition to the province of the Trentino, but no clearly established definition of the rights and privileges of the new Italian citizens was written into the Treaty...
...The mileage of newly constructed roads, for example, is almost twice that of other regions of Italy...
...population approximately 350,000) was shuttled back and forth between...
...Moreover, any prospects for fuller economic cooperation between the Inner Six (of which Italy is a member) and the Outer Seven f of which Austria is a member) appear dim as long as the issue remains inflamed...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 1
