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Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol

Autonomous region of Italy

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From the 9th century until 1806, the region was part of the Holy Roman Empire. After briefly being part of the newly-formed Kingdom of Bavaria and the short-lived Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, the region was part of the County of Tyrol within the Austrian Empire and its successor Austria-Hungary from 1815 until its 1919 transfer to Italy in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye at the end of World War I. Together with the Austrian state of Tyrol, it is part of the Euroregion of Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino.

History

The Romans conquered the region in 15 BC. After the end of the Western Roman Empire, it was divided between the invading Germanic tribes in the Lombard Duchy of Tridentum (today's Trentino), the Alamannic Vinschgau, and the Bavarians (who took the remaining part). After the creation of the Kingdom of Italy under Charlemagne, the Marquisate of Verona included the areas south of Bolzano, while the Duchy of Bavaria received the remaining part.

From the 11th century onwards, part of the region was governed by the prince-bishops of Trent and Brixen, to whom the Holy Roman Emperors had given extensive temporal powers over their bishoprics. Soon, they were overruled by the Counts of Tyrol and Counts of Görz, who also controlled the Puster Valley: in 1363 its last titular countess, Margarete of Tyrol, ceded the region to the House of Habsburg. The regions north of Salorno were largely Germanized in the early Middle Ages, and important German poets like Arbeo of Freising and Oswald von Wolkenstein were born and lived in the southern part of Tyrol.

The two bishoprics were secularized (mediatized) to the Habsburgs by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss in 1803 and incorporated into Tyrol. Two years later, following the Austrian defeat at Austerlitz, the region was given to Napoleon's ally Bavaria (Treaty of Pressburg, 1805). Under Bavarian rule the county was abolished and most of the modern region became part of the Eisack and Etsch Kreise ("circles"), with a small part within the Innkreis. The new rulers provoked a popular rebellion in 1809, led by Andreas Hofer, a landlord from St. Leonhard in Passeier; this rebellion was crushed the same year. At the resulting Treaty of Paris (28 February 1810), Bavaria ceded the southern part of Tyrol (Trentino and the city of Bolzano) to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. Under French control this mostly became the Haut Adige department (Italian: "Alto Adige"; German: "Hochetsch"), literally "High Adige", in order to avoid any reference to the former County of Tyrol. After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the region returned to Austria.

Under Austrian rule, the territory of today's province of South Tyrol was called südliches Tirol or Deutschsüdtirol, but was occasionally also referred to as Mitteltirol, i.e., Middle Tyrol, due to its geographic position, while Südtirol (Italian: Tirolo meridionale), i.e., South Tyrol, indicated mostly today's province of Trentino. Trentino was also called Welschtirol ("Romance Tyrol", Italian: Tirolo italiano) or Welschsüdtirol ("Romance South Tyrol", Italian: Tirolo meridionale italiano). Sometimes Südtirol also indicated the whole of the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region.

During the First World War, major battles were fought high in the Alps and Dolomites between Austro-Hungarian Kaiserjäger and Italian Alpini, for whom control of the region was a key strategic objective. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian war effort enabled Italian troops to occupy the region in 1918 and its annexation was confirmed in the post-war treaties, which awarded the region to Italy under the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain.

Under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy (ruled 1922–1943), the German population was subjected to an increased forced programme of Italianization: all references to old Tyrol were banned and the region was referred to as Venezia Tridentina between 1919 and 1947, in an attempt to justify the Italian claims to the area by historically linking the region to one of the Roman Regions of Italy (Regio X Venetia et Histria). Hitler and Mussolini agreed in 1938 that the German-speaking population would be transferred to German-ruled territory or dispersed around Italy, but the outbreak of the Second World War prevented them from fully carrying out the relocation. Nevertheless, thousands of people were relocated to Nazi Germany and only with great difficulty managed to return to their ancestral land after the end of the war.

In 1943, when the Italian government signed an armistice with the Allies, the region was occupied by Germany, which reorganised it as the Operation Zone of the Alpine Foothills and put it under the administration of Gauleiter Franz Hofer. The region was de facto annexed to the German Reich (with the addition of the province of Belluno) until the end of the war. This status ended along with the Nazi regime and Italian rule was restored in 1945.

Italy and Austria negotiated the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement in 1946, put into effect in 1947 when the new republican Italian constitution was promulgated, that the region would be granted considerable autonomy. This region was to be a combination of the two provinces (majority-Italian Trentino and the majority-German province, to be called Alto Adige rather than South Tyrol). In the region, German and Italian were both made official languages, and German-language education was permitted once more.

However, the implementation of the agreement was not seen as satisfactory by either the German-speaking population or the Austrian government. The issue became the cause of significant friction between the two countries and was taken up by the United Nations in 1960. A fresh round of negotiations took place in 1961 but proved unsuccessful, partly because of popular discontent and a campaign of terrorism and bombings by German-speaking autonomists and separatists led by the South Tyrolean Liberation Committee.

The issue began to be resolved in 1971, when a new Austro-Italian treaty was signed and ratified. It stipulated that disputes in South Tyrol would be submitted for settlement to the International Court of Justice in The Hague; that while staying in the two-province region, South Tyrol would receive greater autonomy within Italy (and apart from Trentino); and that Austria would not interfere in South Tyrol's internal affairs. The new agreement proved broadly satisfactory to the parties involved and the separatist tensions eased.

Thus, the official name of the province had transitioned from 1927/Fascist-era "Bozen", after the capital (Bolzano in Italian), to 1947/Post-WW2 "Alto Adige/Tiroler Etschland", after the river valley, to "Autonomous Province Bozen – South Tyrol" in 1972. Technically, the dispute between Italy and Austria was not solved until much later, with the UN declaring the dispute over only in 1992. Matters were helped further by Austria's accession to the European Union in 1995, which has helped to improve cross-border cooperation.

Moves toward further self-determination continue to grab headlines from time to time. In May 2006, former Italian president and then-senator-for-life Francesco Cossiga introduced a bill that would allow the region to hold a referendum, in which the local electorate could decide whether to stay within the Italian Republic, become fully independent or return to Austria. Other, less official, votes have been proposed since then, including a 2013 "vote" of the public by the political party, South Tyrol Freedom, asking if voters support "exercising the right of self-determination in order to freely decide the future of South Tyrol," without specifying if that meant reunification with Austria or striking out as an independent nation. With about 15% of the electorate responding, the result was about 92% in favor of leaving Italy (which its constitution forbids). In 2016, Italy held a referendum on constitutional changes in general, but the changes would have led to more centralization, not less, so separatists urged a "no" vote. At the same time, South Tyrol's moderates, who were in power, encouraged support, since "safeguards" allowing for future devolution also would have been part of the changes. In the end, the national referendum failed, but not because of South Tyrol, which voted 64% in favor.

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