South Tyrol is a small region of about 500,000 people in the North of Italy. It is known today for its beautiful mountains and its acclaimed food specialties with Austrian and Italian influences. Against the background of the peaceful scenery, it is hard to imagine that only a few decades ago this border region saw terrorism. The reason for this violent past lay in its history and ethnic divisions, as explained in the volume Dialogo vince violenza, with contributions of eleven authors and edited by Giovanni Bernardini and Günther Pallaver.
After the end of World War I, the Austrian territories of South Tyrol and Trentino were annexed by Italy. For most of the Italian-speaking Trentini this was felt like a “national liberation.” The German-speaking South Tyroleans, by contrast, were integrated into the Italian state against their will and demanded in vain that their rights of auto-determination be respected. The Italian government and most of its political elites wanted the Brenner border for strategic and other reasons.
Andrea Di Michele describes the various approaches of Italy to deal with this German-speaking minority on its newly acquired frontier. However, when Mussolini's Fascists came to power in 1922, forced assimilation was on the agenda for all national minorities of the Kingdom, including the Tyroleans south of the Brenner. Italianizzazione was the word of the day—this included banning the German language from schools, changing names of towns and even families to “make them Italian.” Di Michele presents a very balanced and nuanced picture. He also rightfully points out that the liberal period between 1918 and 1922 remains understudied to this day, largely because it is often lumped together with the Fascist era following it.
With the rise of National Socialism, many South Tyroleans hoped for a “national liberation” by a powerful Germany. But Hitler had other plans. He preferred an alliance with his early role model, the “Duce,” over reclaiming this “German” land. The South Tyroleans were then forced to choose: either stay in Italy and give up their language and their cultural identity, or be resettled to Nazi Germany, therefore giving up their homeland. Almost 90 percent voted for German citizenship and emigration. This so-called Option of 1939 deeply divided the German-speaking community from within and had long-lasting consequences, as Eva Pfanzelter clearly illustrates.
But because of the war developments, these plans of ethnic cleansing through resettlement never fully materialized. At the end of World War II in 1945, many south Tyroleans wanted their home territory returned to Austria, while Italy was firmly holding on to it. From an Italian point of view, the Alto Adige issue was strongly influenced by the legacies of World War I, nationalism and Fascism. As Paolo Pombeni puts it: “South Tyrol was the only fruit left to Italy from the World War I: the symbolic significance of that should not be underestimated” (97).
The result was a compromise. In 1946 the Foreign Ministers of Austria and Italy came to an agreement on South Tyrol/Alto Adige. The agreement protected certain linguistic minority rights and recognized Austria as the de facto protecting power of the South Tyroleans. Rolf Steininger describes Austria's postwar position on the “South Tyrol problem” as well as the negotiations leading to the autonomy agreement. Maurizio Cau, however, focuses on the autonomy of the Trentino and the central role played in achieving it by Alcide De Gasperi. De Gasperi was a Trentino native and the Italian foreign minister and prime minister of the postwar Republic. Giovanni Bernardini looks at the South Tyrol autonomy and its changes since 1946. In hindsight the provisions of the 1946 Austrian-Italian agreement proved to be a bit prophetic, as Bernardini points out. Like the unification process of the European Union, “free movement of people and goods” was a core element of the treaty. The borders, therefore, feel much less divisive and more of a connecting point between Italy and Austria. In his footnotes, Bernardini provides many references on secondary literature on the topic in English, which provides English readers with further information on the subject.
The first postwar autonomy agreements put the Trentino and South Tyrol in one autonomous region, much to the disadvantage of the German speakers there. The tensions increased in the late 1950s and reached their peak in the mid-1960s, which saw terror acts against the Italian state and harsh counterterrorism measures from the Italian security forces. Austria saw the provisions of the 1946 agreement not fulfilled and brought the dispute before the United Nations, which resulted in two resolutions inviting Austria and Italy to start negotiations to resolve the conflict peacefully, as Miriam Rossi explains.
In his essay Peter Thaler reflects about the importance of South Tyrol for Austrian nation-state building after 1945. The South Tyrol question was close to the hearts of many Austrians, and all political parties could unite behind the common cause of the region's autonomy. Thaler also does a wonderful job in addressing issues of identity of a group, a nation, and an ethnicity as with the case of Austria, and the fluidity and changes of such “imagined communities.” What is missing in the volume is a similar critical discussion about the Italian side of the issues. Italian ethnonationalism should have been addressed in more detail by discussing and explaining crucial ideas, concepts, and terminology repeatedly used in the volume: Italianità (Italianness), razza italiana (Italian race), minoranza tedesca (German minority), and minoranza tedescofona (German-speaking minority).
Federico Scarano looks at the so-called Italian Commission of the 19, which was composed of regional and federal politicians to discuss possible solutions to the South Tyrolean problem. The commission worked in the background of a peak of bombing attacks and the international community watching. Günther Pallaver's chapter investigates these years of violence and how the violence eventually ended. He treats South Tyrol as a case study on how to resolve an ethnic conflict in a peaceful and diplomatic way. But how was that possible after violence and terrorism that spanned the period from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s? At least thirty-five people were killed, many more wounded, and at times South Tyrol looked like a besieged territory. Pallaver states that one key element for peace was the will of the political parties involved to come to a compromise acceptable to both sides, and the positive role played by the United Nations, which strengthened Austria's role as a negotiating partner. The volume concludes with remarks of the politician Giorgio Postal, who looks at trends in Italy and outlines possible future scenarios for the autonomy of the Trentino and South Tyrol as a whole.
The volume suffers from only few minor shortcomings like some overlaps in discussing certain historical events (e.g., the 1946 agreement), but this is difficult to avoid in an edited volume. The recent translation of the volume into English (Dialogue against Violence: The Question of the Trentino-South Tyrol in the International Context [Berlin, 2017]) is especially welcome. Given the rise of ethnic nationalism in Europe and beyond, Dialogo vince violenza appears to be particularly timely and important.
