Burschenschaften, as a particular type of German-nationalist (völkisch) student fraternity,Footnote 1 have partaken in shaping Austrian politics in numerous ways since the nineteenth century. Acting as the standard-bearers of German nationalism in Austria after 1945 and being strongly represented in the ranks of the Freedomite Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs/FPÖ),Footnote 2 they have been able to maintain a degree of political relevance up until the present day—their intimate ideological, personal, and institutional entanglement with the National Socialist regime notwithstanding.Footnote 3 Nonetheless, their history has so far almost exclusively been written by fraternity members themselves, and mostly in an affirmative, if not apologetic fashion;Footnote 4 critical assessments for the post-1945 era in particular are limited to a small number of articles that, for the most part, are based on secondary literature rather than on primary sources.Footnote 5
This article addresses the involvement of German-nationalist student fraternities in the conflict over South Tirol (Italian: Alto Adige).Footnote 6 Regarded as an issue of utmost priority by the Austrian fraternities since the interwar period, the South Tirol question is particularly suited to explore and illustrate the very core of their ideology: a particularly rigid and anti-individualist brand of German ethnonationalism. I intend to show how and in which ways the Burschenschaften intervened in the conflict and to assess how their interventions influenced the course of events. On a more abstract level, this concrete case serves to point out the differences in purpose and function between a völkisch-instrumentalist perspective on ethnic and minority rights, on the one hand, and a more universalist-democratic approach to such fundamental rights, on the other hand. This distinction is meaningful in light of the efforts of the extreme Right in Austria (and elsewhere) to increase its acceptability in the twenty-first century by reframing its ethnonationalist agenda in terms of “human rights activism.”
Although it is not possible to give a comprehensive overview of the historical conflict over South Tirol here, it is vital to at least sketch its basic outline.Footnote 7 The disputed territory had been allocated to Italy after World War I, and this allocation had been confirmed again in 1946 in the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement between Italy and Austria. However, the Italian government handled the agreement's key provisions for autonomy and minority rights for the local German-speaking population in a dilatory fashion. Between 1956 and 1988, separatist circles committed numerous attacks in South Tirol and other parts of Italy, killing seventeen individuals and injuring many more.Footnote 8 In 1969, the Austrian and Italian national parliaments approved a so-called Package Agreement (Paketlösung) that had been prepared by the so-called Neunzehner-Kommission, effectively intended to implement and expand South Tirolean autonomy. Based on the provisions included in the Package, the Second Statute of Autonomy came into effect in 1973. The Austrian side acknowledged its implementation in a declaration on dispute settlement to the United Nations in 1992. For the purpose of this article, I focus on the 1950s and 1960s as the historical phase in which both the intensity of fraternity involvement and its impact on Austrian domestic and foreign policy reached their high point.
The South Tirol Conflict from a Völkisch Perspective
The South Tirol problem constituted a top priority in the German-nationalist fraternities' agenda in the Second Republic.Footnote 9 Written fraternity sources from Austria are nearly unanimous in their assessment of this issue, as well as in their definitions of the problem and in the solutions they propose. Their dominant interpretation of the conflict reflects what can be termed the primacy of the völkisch principle in their worldview. They view South Tirol as irrevocably “part of our fatherland” (Germany).Footnote 10 “[I]n order to keep German soil German,” the people living on that soil—perceived more as vessels of German-ness than as individuals—are called upon to cultivate their German identity and wherever possible to isolate themselves from any alien (volksfremd) influence.Footnote 11 Thus, for the region to “remain German,” it must be detached from the state of Italy. Consequently, these fraternities have persistently called for self-determination (Selbstbestimmung) instead of the expanded autonomy for which the Austrian federal government and, for the most part, the dominant sectors of the South Tirolean People's Party (Südtiroler Volkspartei/SVP) campaigned.Footnote 12 Given that, from a völkisch viewpoint, a hypothetical referendum among South Tiroleans could only result in the “correction” of the alleged historical mistake of 1919; they do not understand self-determination as equivalent to autonomous and open-ended decision making by the local population. Rather, the concept serves as a code for pursuing a radically separatist agenda. “The ultimate aim has to be the return of South Tyrol to Austria,” the Allgemeine Delegierten-Convent (ADC, since 1959: Deutsche Burschenschaft in Österreich/DBÖ), umbrella organization of the Austrian Burschenschaften, declared in 1956—disregarding arguments from within its own ranks that admitted that “[t]he South Tyroleans themselves favor autonomy.”Footnote 13 Despite the implementation of autonomy arrangements that are now internationally regarded as exemplary, Burschenschafter have upheld their demand for self-determination up to the present day.Footnote 14 As Günter Schweinberger of Austria's most notorious extreme rightist fraternity Olympia (Vienna) pointed out, the fraternities are inclined to reconciliation with “the Italian people”—but not before a revision of the “theft [that occurred]… through the Treaty of St. Germain.”Footnote 15
Lawful Fraternity Activism
When it comes to activism around the South Tirol issue, both apologetic and critical literature on Austrian fraternities tends to focus exclusively on acts of terrorism—heroized by some, deplored by others. However, German-nationalist fraternities and their members actually engaged in a range of lawful activities as well, including the adoption of resolutions at the annual meetings of the ADC/DBÖ and the communication of policy demands to government bodies.Footnote 16 The demands not only included calls for diplomatic initiatives, but also for activities intended to raise public awareness on the issue. One resolution from 1957, for example, called upon the Austrian Association of Municipalities to name more streets and squares after South Tirolean personalities, natural sites, and towns.Footnote 17 Occasionally, fraternity resolutions targeted the general public instead of decision makers, such as one from 1958 that called for boycotting Italy (south of Salorno, that is) as a holiday destination.Footnote 18 Fraternity students who held positions in student self-government institutions made use of this platform repeatedly to bring up motions that pertained to the South Tirol conflict.Footnote 19
The appeals to public institutions were complemented by awareness-raising and media relations activities, although many of their ideas were never actually put into practice. A 1961 plan to systematically supply international media with information resources on the South Tirol question remained unimplemented, as did the intention to induce Austrian media to conduct a concerted information campaign on the topic three years later.Footnote 20 What did materialize, however, were repeated large-scale flyer, sticker, and poster campaigns. In one instance, Schweinberger reports, fraternity students and members of other German-nationalist groups managed to plaster Vienna with 15,000 stickers in just one night in early June 1961.Footnote 21
Time after time, the fraternities also took their South Tirol agenda to the streets. As early as the 1955/56 academic year, the heavily fraternity-dominated Ring of Freedomite Students (RFS) obtained a decision from the Austrian national students' parliament to hold a South Tirol rally in every Austrian university town.Footnote 22 A similar manifestation took place on 13 October 1956 on the Rathausplatz in Vienna, reported on by the Burschenschaft Libertas as the first post-war “völkisch rally, undertaken by the freedomite population”—years before old and neo-Nazis flocked to the Ringstraße in the course of the infamous Schiller Celebrations of 1959.Footnote 23 Unimpressed by the fundamental increase in factual autonomy for South Tirol, the Work Group of Viennese Burschenschaften and Landsmannschaften (ARGE WBL) held a protest rally at the Italian embassy in Vienna as recently as in April 1987.Footnote 24 It was Innsbruck, however, that established itself as the main venue for large-scale fraternity protests against the Brenner border in recent years, being selected by fraternities and other German-nationalist associations to host thematically relevant meetings in 1984, 1994, 2000, and 2009.
In addition to the activities already mentioned, Austrian fraternities also provided financial assistance to a number of organizations and individuals that were, in one way or another, committed to or affected by the South Tirol question. On several occasions, the fraternities convened at the ADC-/DBÖ-Tag agreed collectively to dedicate certain—sometimes large—amounts of money to such purposes.Footnote 25 Individual Burschenschafter also managed to tap into funding sources outside the fraternity scene. As a counsellor to the Hermann Niermann Foundation, founded by an elderly German businessman in 1977/78, Norbert Burger (Olympia) was able to install several of his confidants, among them three members of Innsbruck's Brixia fraternity (Herwig Nachtmann, Erhard Hartung, and Rudolf Watschinger) on the foundation's board of trustees. Together, they would channel funds into their political endeavors for years, going beyond Niermann's death in 1985. Among these endeavors were the Heimatbund Südtirol and the mass delivery of right-wing propaganda materials to the Südtiroler Kulturinstitut, thereby subsidizing the far right Türmer publishing house. Various media outlets also engaged in speculations about possible money transfers to Burger's National-Democratic Party (Nationaldemokratische Partei/NDP, democratic in name only) and to the 1986 presidential campaign of Otto Scrinzi, another right-wing extremist and fraternity member (Verein Deutscher Studenten, Innsbruck).Footnote 26
Despite these extensive efforts, the lawful or at least nonviolent South Tirol activism of the Austrian fraternities had little to no political effect overall, as some of its protagonists would also admit.Footnote 27 There was, however, a different kind of fraternity activism that indeed produced serious and far-reaching consequences.
Involvement in Terrorist ActivitiesFootnote 28
Beyond their legal efforts, Austrian and, less frequently, German fraternity members also participated in violent operations against both property and people in South Tirol and other parts of Italy. This engagement went well beyond isolated individual cases. Nachtmann proudly highlights the “special contribution” of German-nationalist fraternities in general and the Burschenschaften in particular to the armed “struggle for freedom” (or, more precisely, the part thereof which was planned and orchestrated in Austria).Footnote 29 Hartung, too, observes a “disproportionately large share” of fraternity students among the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks, as well as in the ranks of their active supporters.Footnote 30 He reports that all seven defendants at the 1962 South Tirol trial in Rome, among them four Austrians, were Burschenschafter, as well as ten out of twenty-six defendants in Graz 1965 and Linz 1967; at the last trial of the 1960s in Italy, the dock was filled with as many as fourteen members of Brixia. In Munich, two Austrian fraternity students were sentenced to imprisonment in 1970.Footnote 31 With Hartung alone making mention of members of ten different Austrian fraternities and additional sources naming others, we can assume with certainty that members of at least half of all the Austrian Burschenschaften were actively involved in the South Tirol terrorism. An intense involvement, however, can be established for two fraternities only: Brixia (Innsbruck) and Olympia (Vienna).Footnote 32 Any attempt to assess the magnitude of fraternity involvement will certainly have to take into account that Hartung deliberately refrains from mentioning the names of the “many” fraternity members who had committed infringements under penal law, but were not held accountable for them. “Thank God,” he writes, the authorities had “by no means” become aware of everybody involved.Footnote 33 Because of this lack of awareness of contemporary officials, as well as for the sake of brevity, the role of fraternity students in and for the South Tirol terrorism will only be presented in a broad outline here.
A Chronology of EventsFootnote 34
Following several small-scale operations during the second half of the 1950s, logistically more elaborate terrorist campaigns in South Tirol began in 1961. These operations were planned and carried out under the label of Befreiungsausschuß Südtirol (BAS), an underground organization that is in fact dominated by South Tiroleans at this point. They reached an early climax with what in the German-language literature customarily (and in a romanticizing fashion) is referred to as Feuernacht (the night of fire): in a concerted effort, forty-one high wire masts in the Bolzano province were targeted with bombs on the night of 11 June 1961. Numerous fraternity students were among the executors.Footnote 35 One of the explosive charges killed a road worker near Salorno. Helmut Wintersberger, a young student at the time, recalls serving alongside Norbert Burger on that very night: “Upon having applied the charge, Burger planted himself in front of the mast and raised his hand in the Hitler salute.”Footnote 36 The Italian repressive agencies responded to the attacks by carrying out mass arrests. With the detention or flight of many South Tirolean participants, Austrians and Germans acquired an increasing influence among the militant “freedom fighters.” This was particularly true for the German-nationalist circles around Burger and “his students.”Footnote 37 As moderate North Tirolean protagonists start pulling back, “some dispersed South Tyroleans” and “the hard core made up of Burschenschafter and the extreme right” remained, according to Wintersberger.Footnote 38 At the same time, the face of terrorism was changing: while Giovanni Postal, the casualty from the Feuernacht, was killed without intent, the ensuing years were marked by deliberate attacks on bustling locations and trains, by booby traps and overt executions. Peterlini repudiates an overly schematic “distinction between ‘good’ South Tyroleans and the ‘evil’ Burger folks,” but maintains that Burger in fact did “co-shape the phase of escalation” and advocated “exacerbating the fight.”Footnote 39 As early as before his arrest in the summer of 1961, he had defended the view that sparing human lives was a luxury that could no longer be afforded.Footnote 40
This new policy became manifest in an operation on 9 September 1961, essentially carried out by Burger's fraternity disciples.Footnote 41 They had planned to detonate Molotov cocktails in public areas of six Italian cities. When the attacks in Rome and Trento failed, several fraternity students from Austria and Germany were taken into custody, among them Wintersberger and Rainer Mauritz (Alania, Vienna).Footnote 42 Subsequently, five members of Olympia (as per the Arbeiter-Zeitung) perpetrated random acts of terrorism under the command of nonfraternity member Georg Klotz, such as a raid on an Italian military base, using machine guns.Footnote 43 When three Olympia members—including two involved in terrorist activities—were caught in the act of publicly intonating the hymn of the National Socialist Deutsche Arbeitsfront in Vienna following a fraternity event in November 1961,Footnote 44 the Austrian authorities became active. The police searched houses and examined all student members of Olympia.Footnote 45 According to the investigators, they found proof that twelve members had “engaged in activities non-compliant with the statutes [of the Olympia association] and infringing on Austrian law.” The sheer number of individuals involved led the Bundespolizeidirektion Wien to “the conclusion that the association itself provided the organizational basis for these activities.”Footnote 46 Based on the argument that the association had gone beyond the confines of its statutes, referencing members' activities in South Tirol that were viewed as “dangerous to the [Austrian] state” and in light of a decision obligating members to make a financial contribution for detained comrades, Olympia was officially disbanded as of 1 December 1961.Footnote 47
The Constitutional Court, in 1963, confirmed the disbandment, basing its decision mainly upon the payment obligation incident.Footnote 48 At that time, Olympia had already secured its continued existence by reactivating Vandalia, a fraternity that had ceased operation a few years before.Footnote 49 Meanwhile, what Peterlini refers to as the “Burger group” continues to be active and “hits wherever it can.”Footnote 50 Epitomizing the Austrian policy toward the South Tirol terrorism and its perpetrators, Burger himself is treated cautiously, if not benevolently by the Austrian authorities—courts, prosecutors, law enforcement agencies, and political organs—for years. According to Peterlini, he managed to “transform [his office at the University of Innsbruck] into a base of the BAS,” to “beat the big drum for the BAS” in his capacity as a university teacher and to “recruit many Tyrolean students for the Feuernacht” free from obstruction.Footnote 51 His detainment in the summer of 1961 was short-lived: bail provided by the North Tirolean Landesregierung set him at liberty.Footnote 52 Serious evidence and repeated self-incrimination notwithstanding, Burger was allowed to pursue his terrorist activities unhindered—“under the eyes of the Staatspolizei, safeguarded rather than surveyed by them,” the Furche weekly noted in 1966.Footnote 53 At the same time, he also enjoyed material support from the Austrian state. Up until late 1966, he held on to his position as a university assistant. During his involvement in terrorist activities, he received two contract extensions. Even while on the run to avoid arrest, he continued to receive his salary. In a Parliamentary query, Otto Skritek, a Social Democrat, reported that Burger received ATS 300,000 from the public purse between 1962 and 1966.Footnote 54 A participant in all major terrorist operations until 1963 by his own account, Burger was acquitted by Austrian courts on three occasions.Footnote 55
In 1967, Hans Jörg Humer, member of Brixia, carried out at least two terrorist attacks.Footnote 56 That same year, four Italian soldiers died near the Veneto/East Tirol border, seemingly the victims of a booby trap set up at the saddle of the Porze mountain.Footnote 57 Four men—including Burger and Hartung—were found guilty in absentia by an Italian court in what the latest research rates as a case of wrongful conviction.Footnote 58 Unrelated to this incident, Burger finally received an eight-month sentence from an Austrian court on a charge of public endorsement of criminal acts—presumably to avoid compromising the ongoing negotiations with Italy or Austria's campaign for an association agreement with the European Economic Community.Footnote 59 Hartung was convicted in the Porzescharte case in 1968, but won his appeal three years later, after negotiations on the Package Agreement had successfully been completed.Footnote 60
The DBÖ's Stance
It has been mentioned earlier that a considerable number of fraternities were involved in terrorist activities on an individual basis. In order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of fraternity perspectives on these activities, reaching beyond the level of those actively executing the operations, it makes sense to take a look at how the issue was dealt with by the ADC and the DBÖ, respectively. In this regard, it is worthwhile to consider Burger's role and how he was able to exert leadership both as an official and as an underground activist. Between 1955 and 1961, he was elected into almost every prominent position that the umbrella organization of Austrian Burschenschaften had to offer.Footnote 61 During the same period, he concocted bombing plans as early as 1956, contemplated summoning “freedomite students equipped with machine guns for maneuvers” in June 1960 and had to be “whistled back” by fellow BAS members in order to prevent a premature offensive during that same year.Footnote 62 He used his official positions at the ADC/DBÖ to pursue his main agenda. Even when serving as a commissioner for higher education policy in 1956/57, he was in charge of the ADC's South Tirol policy.Footnote 63 He toured Germany, giving talks on the issue to fraternity audiences, possibly picking up new accomplices in the process.Footnote 64 In 1961, he was asked to serve in the DBÖ's governing body for another term, but he declined the nomination.Footnote 65 Rainer Mauritz was elected as an alternate, but he had to resign the office a few months later, following his detention in Italy and Olympia's disbandment. One wonders whether Burger wanted to avoid compromising the organization in the same way.Footnote 66 A couple of weeks after resigning from his DBÖ office, during the Feuernacht, his first bomb detonated.
On the basis of the sources available to me, it is not clear how much Austrian Burschenschafter knew about the illegal activities of individual DBÖ officeholders. There is, however, substantial evidence that the willingness to use violence to accomplish völkisch goals (including the willingness to accept civilian casualties) was at least tolerated, if not perceived as a proof of character, leadership, and exceptional devotedness to the common cause. The delegates at the DBÖ-Tag of 1964 elected two terrorism veterans—Mauritz and Nachtmann—to several high offices, including the position of a commissioner for South Tirol (Nachtmann).Footnote 67 It is not just personnel matters, however, that indicate a broad tolerance toward terrorist methods. At the 1957 ADC-Tag, the delegates of Olympia and Leder (Leoben) went on record saying that a “peaceful solution” to the South Tirol question “cannot be reckoned with anymore.”Footnote 68 One year later, Olympia raised “serious concerns” about the proposal to make a collective donation to the Bergisel-Bund, invoking that organization's display of “a certain restraint in practical matters.” Instead, the ADC finally decided to give money to Brixia, which it apparently perceived as a guarantee for an unrestrained application of funds.Footnote 69 Olympia and Brixia cooperated closely at other annual meetings as well. It is precisely these two fraternities most involved in terrorist operations that most prominently shaped the collective South Tirol policy of the Austrian Burschenschaften.
As their proposals hardly ever encountered objection from their fraternity peers, their demands got bolder by the year. In 1960, Brixia wanted to collect money “for South Tyrol” on the edges of the DBÖ-Tag in Graz; in addition, they requested a donation of ten schillings per member from all fraternities.Footnote 70 According to the motion tabled by the Tirolean fraternity, they earmarked the revenue for a new organization that one of its members, Herwig Büchele, had recently co-founded with “other Burschenschafter” in order to champion South Tirolean self-determination “by every means.”Footnote 71 The donation would be payable to the fraternity presiding over the DBÖ, at that time: Brixia itself, and administered by its Volkstumsreferent, who was also a Brixe.Footnote 72 The motion provided no explanation beyond referencing “the situation in South Tyrol,” nor did it contain information as to the intended usage of funds other than a cryptic statement of intent to “enforce the right to self-determination for South Tyrol.”Footnote 73 Apparently, past experience at the annual meetings had created the impression that arguments and details were unnecessary, and any objection appeared to be unimaginable. However, questions were in fact being asked, much to the dismay of Brixia's delegate, who termed it “outrageous if a Burschenschafter had even the slightest reservation to support the Volkstumskampf of the German Volksgruppe in South Tyrol with ATS 10.” Yet, a delegate from Suevia—another Innsbruck fraternity—insisted on demanding “detailed information on the application of funds,” because otherwise “these gentlemen … would be given a blank check.” Aside from Büchele, he explicitly mentioned Burger in that context. Although the minutes from the meeting do not feature the names of delegates, it is likely that Burger attended as Olympia's representative (who supported the Brixen throughout the debate).Footnote 74 Gothia (Vienna) tellingly expressed a concern that “donors might potentially be accused of a malfeasance.” Nonetheless, both Gothia's delegate and his Suevia counterpart felt compelled to express their confidence in Burger and Büchele.Footnote 75
In the end, a decision was adopted that invited fraternity members to make a voluntary contribution to Büchele's organization. It is unclear whether the unusual reluctance shown by some fraternities via the initiative was based on a concern or even a certainty that participation as proposed by Brixia would be tantamount to funding terrorism. Wintersberger, however, is convinced that “everyone in the DBÖ knew what Burger stood for.” He deems it “likely” that the call for donations was intended to finance violent operations and believed the DBÖ member fraternities were conscious of it. Burger's way of dealing with the South Tirol issue was “not called into question,” although not every individual fraternity member was “equally sympathetic to it, let alone personally involved.”Footnote 76
At the subsequent DBÖ-Tag 1961, Volkstumsreferent Heinz Hauffe reported that the campaign for voluntary donations had been “successful” and that “the names of … Dr. Burger and Dr. Büchele vouched for the proper use of the funds raised.”Footnote 77 One and a half months later, the Feuernacht operation took place. At this point, the fraternities did not go to great lengths to cover up their close ties to the militant South Tirol “activism”: the morning after the operation, they disseminated flyers “in which the freedom fighters justify their deeds” in all Austrian university towns.Footnote 78 The disbanding of Olympia eventually produced greater caution. In early 1962, the DBÖ's governing body declared to the German umbrella organization Deutsche Burschenschaft (DB) that “the collaboration of individual Burschenschafter in bomb attacks in connection with South Tyrol occurred without the knowledge and not under the umbrella of the individual Burschenschaft”Footnote 79—a claim that lacked plausibility with regard to Olympia and Brixia at the very least. Likewise, Peter Wrabetz, Jr., (Gothia, Vienna), a multi-officeholder in the ADC/DBÖ, denied collective responsibility for “some mavericks' radical views” in 1962. At no point, he claimed in the DB's periodical Burschenschaftliche Blätter, had “the Burschenschaft collectively advocated acts of violence, let alone planned them or provided the framework for organizing them.”Footnote 80 Even internally, Karl Alber of Germania (Innsbruck), in his capacity as the DBÖ's commissioner for South Tirol, characterized the acts of terrorism as “recent unfortunate incidents that did not avail anyone, but caused immeasurable harm to many” and that “were obviously staged by isolated individuals.”Footnote 81
Positions like these, however, did not go unchallenged. While Alber's performance as a commissioner drew heavy criticism, Wrabetz caused indignation by qualifying the attacks as “blunders of a handful of young folks.”Footnote 82 In the name of his fellow Olympia members “who are persecuted in connection with the South Tyrolean freedom fight,” Josef Zinkl repudiated the belittlement of their deeds as a mere expression of adolescent exuberance, pointing out their average age of—according to him—thirty-four and the involvement of “several veterans from World War II, including two officers.”Footnote 83 In response to Zinkl, Wrabetz provided clarification: although the “idealism” of people breaking the law for “national or ethical motives” deserves respect, he felt that the “active resistance fight” in South Tirol should not be borne by a registered corporate body, because this could jeopardize “the existence of a fraternity or of our fraternities in general.”Footnote 84 Wrabetz and Zinkl thus found themselves in fundamental agreement about framing South Tirol terrorism as resistance or freedom fighting, respectively. This view has remained dominant among German-nationalist fraternities and their members in Austria up to the present day. Accordingly, the protagonists are still being remembered and honored as “daredevils” whose example of uncompromising dedication to the pan-German cause young fraternity members are called upon to emulate.Footnote 85
Positively referencing acts of political violence usually requires providing a justification in modern societies. In the case of South Tirol, the respective rationales offered by the fraternities have changed little or not at all since the 1960s. One popular maneuver is to shift responsibility for one's own comrades' deeds onto the opposing side by framing terrorism as self-defense: “Those solely to blame for the blood and tears flowing today in the context of South Tyrol—no matter on which side—, are those who created and tolerate the injustice that is the Brenner border. Not the robbed and oppressed one who fights back is to blame, but the robber and all those who directly or indirectly support them.”Footnote 86
The second key legitimation strategy draws on the alleged effects rather than on the causes of the violence: only “under the pressure created by the attacks,” the apologists say, did Italy set up the Neunzehner-Kommission. Brushing aside decades of research, Schweinberger claims as an “unchallenged” fact that without the Feuernacht, “not even this insufficient autonomy arrangement” would have been established.Footnote 87 In the scholarly debate, however, a very different assessment predominates, according to which agreements benefitting the German-speaking South Tiroleans were reached despite the terrorism rather than because of it.Footnote 88 According to Gehler, the bombs “made it easier for Italy not to grant the Austrian and South Tyrolean demands and to protract the negotiations,” diverted international attention from Italian wrongdoing, offered Rome the opportunity for a role-change from culprit to accuser, and fortified the Italian side in its restrictive stance, creating the impression it would not yield to terrorists.Footnote 89
A third way popular among fraternity members to vindicate South Tirol terrorism consists in pointing out how third parties tolerated or even supported it. As a matter of fact, the option for violence was—at least initially—met with an astonishing amount of approval from the Austrian political elite, media, and general public.Footnote 90 This is reflected in the generous treatment Burger and others received from public authorities, as well as in the South Tirol trials held in Austria that mutated into demonstrations of political consonance between dock, bench, and jury box.Footnote 91 It is with corresponding self-confidence that Zinkl could note in 1964 that, “as experience shows, no jury can be found in Austria that would qualify the involvement in the South Tyrolean freedom struggle as a crime.”Footnote 92 Likewise, the signals political elites sent out to the terrorists could often be perceived as encouraging rather than disapproving.Footnote 93
Völkisch vs. Democratic Ethnopolitics
According to fraternity sources, fraternity students involved in South Tirol and in campaigns for German-speaking minorities in other parts of the world ultimately derive their legitimacy from the right to self-determination of a people.Footnote 94 They claim to champion such self-determination and to advocate the preservation of ethnic diversity (or, more precisely, an ethnonationalist or differentialist version of it) worldwide, not just in territories where, according to their perception, Germans live. In order to preserve such diversity, however, peoples are to be kept from mixing.
Contrary to what this seemingly universalist approach would suggest, fraternity ethnopolitics appear as eminently inconsistent on a concrete level. What the Austrian Burschenschaften fiercely opposed in one case, they supported in other cases. Although they rallied against the “systematic Italianization policy” in South Tirol and called on Rome to stop the “infiltration that is changing the völkisch character of South Tyrol,” they also campaigned for intensifying germanization policies in the bilingual Austrian province of Carinthia. Here, they demanded, for example, that “German expellees from Carniola and Lower Styria” (in other words, from Slovenia) be resettled there.Footnote 95 In terms of language policy, they complained that, contrary to the letter of the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement, bilingualism had been implemented in the Bolzano province on street signs only, but not in official proceedings. At the same time, they in no way supported, but rather campaigned against, the installment of bilingual street signs in Carinthia called for in the Austrian State Treaty of 1955.Footnote 96 They also termed bilingual, German/Slovenian school education as “dangerous to the state” and as an instrument designed to “ex officio slavified German and windisch children against their will” and “coerce them into the Slavic Kulturkreis.”Footnote 97
This juxtaposition is not meant to erase the numerous differences in terms of historical background and concrete conflict dynamics between the Carinthian and the South Tirolean cases. Rather, I would like to make the point that a democratic, fundamental-rights approach to alleged ethnic conflicts would entail principles that retain their validity regardless of local specificities. The double standards characteristic of fraternity ethnopolitics are symptoms of a worldview centered not on universalist principles, but on the prioritization of one particular ethnicity: the German one. From a völkisch perspective, the German side is always in the right as a matter of principle. The very idea of minority rights is affirmed only insofar as it may be useful to advance German interests. Gehler, too, notes this instrumentalist approach in his assessment of the German-nationalist South Tirol policy: “The Italian state oppression was fought primarily because it was ‘anti-German,’ not because it was anti-democratic, paralleling the helpless ‘anti-fascism’ of the interwar period. Minority rights, however, have democracy as a precondition and are hardly enforceable when separated from it.”Footnote 98
Not only did the fraternities' völkisch instead of universalist-democratic stance yield double standards, but also a Manichean, sometimes downright inverted perception of reality, in which, for example, the “German” majority population in Carinthia was considered a collective under threat and German-nationalist aggression against the Slovenian minority population was regarded as self-defense.Footnote 99
The primacy of the völkisch principle shaped the political thought and actions of the Austrian Burschenschaften to such an extent that it could—if only partially—even override their otherwise strong identification with Hitler's regime. Most German nationalists after 1945 had (and still are having) a hard time bringing their commitment to the preservation of South Tirol as a “German land”—occasionally operating alongside former anti-Nazi resistance fighters within the ranks of the BASFootnote 100—in line with their adoration for the regime that had accepted Italian territorial claims with the Hitler-Mussolini Agreement of 1939. Burger, for example, tried to reconcile the contradiction by speculating about National Socialist plans to reannex the region after the war. He also claimed that Hitler had acknowledged “his pact with Italy and the recognition of the Brenner border as the biggest political mistake during his entire reign.”Footnote 101 Against this backdrop, the involvement of right-wing extremists in the conflict over South Tirol can only to a limited extent be analyzed as a manifestation of neo-Nazi activism. Rather, its ideological basis can be described as ethnonationalism plus the acceptance of violence as a means to enforce the political goals dictated by the former.
Fraternity and Volksgruppe: Paternalistic Instrumentalization
The instrumentalist approach of German-nationalist fraternities to minority rights is mirrored by an equally instrumentalist relationship to the ethnic groups identified by them as in need of protection. The fraternities took little interest in South Tiroleans as actual individuals with actual interests—such as nondiscrimination in education and public administration or access to housing or to jobs in public service. Rather, the German-speaking people of the Bolzano province attracted fraternity interest as “our Volksgenossen south of the Brenner,” as carriers of German-nessFootnote 102 whose duty was not to lead a fulfilled life in accordance with their own criteria, but to maintain their collective cultural practices, their way of thinking and feeling, and the territory that they inhabited as genuinely “German” as possible.
The fact that the Austrian fraternities considered the social and economic interests of South Tiroleans to be relevant only insofar as they lined up with their own political agenda became apparent, for example, at the annual meeting (Burschentag) of the Deutsche Burschenschaft in 1975. In response to Italian plans to establish a university in Bolzano and to introduce German lectures at the nearby University of Trento, an Austrian fraternity pushed through a resolution rejecting this opportunity for German-speaking South Tiroleans to pursue higher education in their own capital city and native language. The rejection was based on the argument that the plans would jeopardize the role of the University of Innsbruck for “the cultural and intellectual unity of Tyrol” and would instead promote an “intellectual-cultural dependency” on Trento.Footnote 103 Another motion, put forward by Olympia, “most strictly” disapproved the plans because they did not provide for a “German university,” but for a bilingual one. This, the Olympen argued, would keep the South Tirolean youth from staying in touch with the German people and culture by studying in Austria or Germany, and possibly even entice them into taking Italian-language lectures.Footnote 104
The same logic at work here also applied to fraternity ethnopolitics in general. Accordingly, the responsible DBÖ official (Gernot Pippan, Carniola, Graz) justified providing material support to schools in the language frontier regions of Carinthia and Styria in 1962 not as a contribution to enhancing children's opportunities in life, but by pointing out that one day, these children would “remember the annual support and appreciate it.” This would considerably increase the likelihood “that, for example, the children of Slovenian-friendly parents would commit to the German Volkstum.”Footnote 105 When a German fraternity member, at a DB meeting in 1990, argued that it was more important for “the Germans beyond the Oder-Neisse line” to live “under liberal rule and good economic conditions” than to have the German-Polish border altered, he drew fierce criticism from the Austrian side. The “intention to surrender German state territory” was unacceptable, Hanns Göttl of Allemannia (Graz) declared, qualifying it as a “betrayal” of long-term fraternity demands.Footnote 106
These examples not only elucidate the above-mentioned indifference toward the tangible interests of the population for which the fraternities claimed to care, as well as their disinterest in a peaceful coexistence of ethnic groups, but they also serve to illustrate the paternalistic way in which the fraternities approached their “Volksgenossen [that are] yearning under the Italian yoke.”Footnote 107 Their self-perception as an intellectual and moral elite among the German people obviously made the Burschenschafter believe that they were in a better position to identify the problems on the ground (and the adequate solutions to them) than was the population actually affected by these problems. Thus, the DBÖ's commissioner for South Tirol in 1964/65, Wolfdieter Stühlinger (Suevia, Innsbruck), deemed it necessary to “give the South Tyroleans themselves an understanding of their problem,” because “a part of the German population does not even know about the effects of Italianization.” In order to enlighten these people about their very own concerns, Stühlinger proposed delivering information mailings to households in the Bolzano province twice a year.Footnote 108
As documented by this proposal, at least some fraternity members were well aware that their own interpretation of the situation in South Tirol did not necessarily match the perceptions of the local population, among which Catholic, pan-Tirolean notions predominated over pan-German ones and among which ethnic intermarriage was not uncommon as early as the 1960s. The radically ethnicizing interpretation of the conflict that the fraternities represented was therefore far from self-evident and had to be touted actively.Footnote 109 The structural discrimination that was in place in the Bolzano province seemed to have created favorable conditions for advancing the German-nationalist agenda, as Karl Claus (Alania, Vienna) explained in 1957: “The whole atmosphere in South Tyrol, in terms of ethnicity, is so receptive … that, with some skill and diplomacy and adequate demeanor, it should be easy to achieve major successes and win sympathies;” or, better yet: as easy as “nowhere else.”Footnote 110 At the same time, Claus was conscious of the risk that South Tiroleans might suspect the fraternities of pursuing their own agenda instead of merely offering support: “We have to demonstrate that our interest in South Tyrol is not an instrumental one, but that it [South Tirol] is a matter of the heart for us,” he warned.Footnote 111
This claim is not a case of mere mimicry. Because of personal experiences on the ground (stemming from study and pleasure trips, harvest assistance deployments and/or—in some cases—terrorist operations), the South Tirol issue acquired a genuine personal dimension for many fraternity members. Also, their self-image as the vanguard of the German people made it seem only natural that their own political aspirations be in perfect line with the supposed general interest of that people. Just as they had done since the outset of their movement in the nineteenth century, the Burschenschafter—as male academic elites—perceived that they would have to lead the way in order to enhance the common good. In doing so, for some of them, the end evidently seemed to justify the means.
Conclusions
While German-nationalist student fraternities and their members became involved in the conflict over South Tirol in various ways, they only made a real impact by engaging in terrorist activities, altering the conditions under which a resolution to the conflict had to be sought. The exact number of members who actively participated (and often played a key role) in violent operations in Italy is difficult to determine, but clearly goes beyond isolated cases. It also includes individuals from many fraternities, although two of them—Olympia and Brixia—were more decisively embroiled than the others, bordering on what qualifies as collective involvement. Members of these fraternities were also able essentially to shape the South Tirol policy of the umbrella organization of Austrian Burschenschaften. Even though the available source material does not provide sufficient underpinning for collectively assigning the fraternities of the ADC and the DBÖ, respectively, with sympathies for a German nationalism achieved by any means, it certainly does suggest that a sympathetic or at least tolerant stance has been dominant from 1960 up until the present day. Judging by the claims made in fraternity sources, opting for terrorist methods in order to advance German-nationalist goals indicated a consequent application of fraternity ideals rather than their perversion.
As can be shown by means of comparison to ethnopolitical positioning in the case of Carinthia, fraternity policies on South Tirol were not guided by a universalist principle of antidiscrimination and equal opportunity. Rather, their overarching goal was to secure a couple thousand square miles of land for the “German people” while treating the German-speaking population of that land as a bargaining chip. Based on an interpretation of the conflict as essentially and exclusively ethnic, and animated by their distinctively rigorous brand of nationalism, they contributed significantly to the radicalization of the militant resistance against Italy's South Tirol policy. Gradually crossing lines and shedding moral inhibitions, they played an important part in the violent escalation of the conflict—drawing international attention to the issue, but at the same time considerably exacerbating its resolution. They put a heavy strain on Austro-Italian relations, undermined the legitimacy and agency of moderate voices on both sides, and made it increasingly difficult for Rome to develop and demonstrate a readiness to compromise.
