The First World War acted as a watershed between the old and the new world:a new type of war that brought about changes profound on a human, social and economic level. But above all, it drastically changed the geographical borders of Europe :four empires that dominated Europe until then collapsed, leaving behind a myriad of states. Thus it was that the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Germanic and Ottoman empires were completely wiped out, creating consequences that were easy to manage, to say the least.
And it is in this context that South Tyrol she found herself from Austrian to Italian:always territory of language and German culture , experienced this change of nationality as a catastrophe. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German supremacy that characterized the Tyrolean area for centuries, left room for the Italian traitor and enemy. The Treaty of Saint-Germain of 10 September 1919 decreed that Trentino and Alto Adige were to be delivered to Italy and established the border at the Brenner. While for Trentino this decision turned out to be a “ normalization ”Of the situation because it has always been inhabited by a population of Italian mother tongue and culture; for South Tyrol, which has always been German, it was a traumatic decision.
Mussolini worked on the official program relating to the management of the South Tyrolean minority with the help of the Trentino nationalist Ettore Tolomei who in 1923 dictated the procedures for Italianising South Tyrol through the Provisions for South Tyrol . Approved by the Grand Council of Fascism , allowed to denationalize the German and Ladin populations:the most significant steps concerned the progressive removal of public officials and teachers of German mother tongue, the prohibition of the use of the German language in public offices and schools, the Italianization of toponymy and onomastics, the banning of German parties and cultural associations and so on.
The school
The Gentile reform of 1923 led to the gradual cancellation of German-language schools and to homologate the schools of the new Italian territories with those of the rest of the country, and Italian was the only official teaching language allowed. The German schools were dissolved as the Austrian school system did not coincide with the Italian counterpart, thus making German teachers useless and superfluous:they were fired or transferred. In the school the process of fascism had to be carried out and to be integrated with the youth programs. This situation led to several mobilizations by the German population and the creation of clandestine German schools. The protagonists were the women who, at their own risk, organized forms of teaching the German language and better known as Katakomenschulen (school of the catacombs in Italian) expression created by the canon Michael Gamper , editor of the Volksbote newspaper, so he wrote on November 27, 1924.
The textbooks came secretly from Germany and Austria, brought by the students themselves and often members of the Nibelungen nationalistic association (later Volkischer Kampfring Sudtirols) and hidden in churches, sacristies and rectory. The Katakomenschulen were not the preserve of the Catholic world but also had a nationalistic orientation. This situation did not remain completely hidden from the fascists:on 25 November 1925 the Prefect Guadagnini stated
Printing
The repression was also felt in the German press. German newspapers and periodicals did their best to tell the events and inform the population:a punch in the stomach for the fascists who reacted, exacerbating the measures more and more. On January 8, 1925, the sub-prefect of Bolzano Vittorelli a fierce fight against the German press began, ordering the preventive censorship of the newspapers "Der Landsmann", "Bozner Nachrichten", "Meraner Zeitung" and the weekly “Der Volksbote” , accused of printing biased and anti-Italian reports.
On July 15, 1923, a new law was published according to which receiving a second warning could lead to the closure of the newspaper itself. Which happened for many newspapers, “ Der Landsmann "First of all on July 25, which was suspended for violation of the decrees on the names of places and finally suppressed on October 22.
The primary objective of these measures was to remove the German press from the South Tyrolean population, limiting the possibility of joining in the fight against the common enemy and limiting their resistance and relative opposition to the state as much as possible. The fascists did everything they could to shut down all the newspapers, succeeding in February 1926:the last publisher to shut down was Ellmenreich with the “ Meraner Zeitung ”With a compromise, that of being able to publish in German but under the supervision of the fascists. The new direction was given to the journalist Leo Negrelli , press officer of the Ministry of the Interior.
Toponymy and onomastic
The reference figure was Ettore Tolomei, director of the Institute of Studies for South Tyrol in Bolzano and later a member of the Senate and the one who devised
The directives of the government coincided with the ideas put forward by Ptolemy: national penetration and assimilation of the frontier land . The only language allowed was Italian: at school, in the press and in public administration . Not least in toponymy and ononymy: the first point to break down to denationalize a minority or a people is precisely to remove their mother tongue .
In 1923, Italian became an official and unique language in communications with and from the public administration, followed later in posters, signs, signs and so on through the Handbook of local names in South Tyrol. The letters written in German were never delivered.
In 1925, even in the courts, Italian was the only language allowed:apart from Bolzano which has always had the highest percentage of Italians, in the rest of South Tyrol very few knew Italian. Often the defendants had to pay for an interpreter out of their own pocket in order to avoid flawed or faulty testimony. The question of which language to speak in the courts remained open until the 1980s. It was only in the 1990s that German was accepted.
Bibliografia