A Land on the Threshold

Among the many commemorations of World War I, little was made of the 100th anniversary of the secret Treaty of London between Italy and the Western War Allies in April 1915, which sealed the fate of South Tyrol for the duration of the twentieth century by passing it from Austria to Italy. In May 2015, a symposium was held in the medieval Prösels Castle in the Italian Dolomites to mark this historical moment. Contributors set out to explore the political, social and cultural impact of South Tyrol's existence «on the threshold» during the twentieth century. Individually and collectively, the essays in this volume challenge the simplistic reading of South Tyrol as merely a geographic region torn between Germanic and Italian cultures; instead, they explore the dynamic effects of its geographical, political and cultural history since 1915. South Tyrol, as a modern regional state in Europe, faces many of the same problems as other European regions, be they individual states or sub-state regions. Most of the contributions in this volume are from academics and intellectuals within the Province of Bolzano/Bozen who negotiate and discuss these issues through their native languages: German, Italian and Ladin. By making their research accessible through English translations and abstracts, this volume seeks to bring their work on historical and contemporary developments in South Tyrol to a wider European and global audience.

Georg Grote, Associate Professor at University College Dublin, researches nationalism and regionalism in Europe. He has published widely on Irish and South Tyrolean history. He is currently, in cooperation with the EURAC in Bozen/Bolzano, establishing a collection of private archival sources on twentieth-century South Tyrolean everyday life in Prösels Castle. Hannes Obermair is an historian, Head of the Civic Archives of Bozen-Bolzano and Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck. His research areas include medieval history, historiography and fascism. Recently he participated in South Tyrol's historians' commission, which developed the contentious Monument to Victory in Bozen into a museum of contemporary history.

CONTENTS: Georg Grote/Hannes Obermair: Introduction: South Tyrol: Land on a Threshold. Really? - Rolf Steininger: 1918/1919. Die Teilung Tirols - Carlo Moos: Südtirol im St. Germain-Kontext - Nina F. Caprez: Economic Hurdles after the Great War: How the South Tyrol-based Swiss Monastery Muri-Gries Overcame an Existential Crisis - Sabine Mayr: The Annihilation of the Jewish Community of Meran - Markus Wurzer: Genesis of the South Tyrolean Iconic Figure Sepp Innerkofler: Actors, Narrative, Functions - Georg Grote: Challenging the Zero-Hour Concept: Letters across Borders - Eva Pfanzelter: The (Un)digested Memory of the South Tyrolean Resettlement in 1939 - Sarah Oberbichler: «Calcutta lies ... near the Rombrücke»: Migration Discourse in Alto Adige and Dolomiten and their Coverage of the Bozen «Immigrant Barracks Camps» of the Early 1990s - Julia Tapfer: Ankommen, verbinden, vernetzen: Vereine und Vereinigungen von Migrant_innen in Südtirol. Eine Gegenüberstellung der Donne Nissà, der Associazione Panalbanese Arbëria und der Rumänischen Gemeinde - Friederike Haupt: Beobachtungen aus musiksoziologischer Sicht - Bettina Schlorhaufer: Historicism and the Rise of Regionalism as «Style»: South Tyrol's Successful Special Path - Gareth Kennedy: Die Unbequeme Wissenschaft (The Uncomfortable Science) - Johanna Mitterhofer: Border Stories: Negotiating Life on the Austrian-Italian border - Paolo Bill Valente: Sulla soglia. Leggende meranesi, storie di confine - Marta Villa: Identità e riconoscimento attraverso i culti della fertilità e il paesaggio agricolo nel Tirolo del Sud. Il case study della popolazione giovane maschile di Stilfs in Vinschgau - Antonio Elorza: Alsace, South Tyrol, Basque Country (Euskadi): Denationalization and Identity - Lucio Giudiceandrea/Aldo Mazza: Living Together is an Art - Hans Karl Peterlini: Between Stigma and Self-Assertion: Difference and Belonging in the Contested Area of Migration and Ethnicity - Barbara Angerer: Living Apart Together in South Tyrol: Are Institutional Bilingualism and Translation Keeping Language Groups Apart? - Siegfried Baur: Grenzregion Südtirol. Schwierigkeiten und Möglichkeiten einer Erziehung zur Mehrsprachigkeit für ein vielsprachiges Europa - Chiara De Paoli: Redefining Categories: Construction, Reproduction and Transformation of Ethnic Identity in South Tyrol.