Bolzano/Bozen
Province, situated less than sixty miles to the north; however,
for the ethnic German speaking "minority" in the province, this border
has never existed. Two thirds of the Italian citizens in the province
speak German as their mother tongue. It had once been part of the Roman
Empire. Then, in the Middle Ages, the province began to be Germanised;
gradually, the Italian presence was reduced, but the Italian population
was significant enough to ensure that significant ties to Italy were
maintained. Eventually the region became part of the Austrian Empire
until it was defeated after the 1866 Austro-Prussian War when the region
was awarded to
Italy. But by the end of the century, the Italian presence in
Bolzano/Bozen had fallen to only nine percent of the population. The
First World War "solution" to the imbalance between Italian and German
citizenry following the terrible loss of life was to establish the
border of Austria and Italy at the natural geographical divide, Brenner
Pass, and conclusively to annex the region into Italy, which was
confirmed in post-war treaties.
The Nazi occupation of the region remains a subject of intense scrutiny, not only for its historical significance but also for the ethical questions it raises. The region, with its unique blend of Italian and German cultures, found itself at the crossroads of Nazi ideologies and Italian Fascism during World War II. The occupation led to a series of events that had profound implications for the local population, as well as for the broader European theatre.
Brixen
Mass
protest against the forcible annexation of South Tyrol to Italy after
the Great War in the square in front of Brixen cathedral. At the
conclusion of the First World War, Tyrol was still
entirely in the hands of Austrian and Tyrolean defenders. The ceding of
South Tyrol to Italy embittered many Tyroleans on both sides of the
Brenner- Tyrol, a province that had been a part of Austria for over five
hundred years and was almost totally German-speaking, was split in two
with the southern part awarded to Italy as "spoils of war." The border
drawn at the Brenner Pass cut South Tyrol off from an Austria then too
weak to prevent the loss. What followed, in a first phase, was the
systematic subjection by the Italian Fascists of what had been a
regional majority in South Tyrol, but was now a minority within Italy.
After the separation of South from North Tyrol had become a
fait accompli, the citizens of the latter voted overwhelmingly
(98.5
percent) in a plebiscite in April 1921 to join Tyrol to postwar Germany.
Although the union of Tyrol to Germany did not occur in the 1920s, the
outcome of the plebiscite presaged the widely popular acceptance of Nazi
annexation of Austria in 1938. It also illustrates again the precarious
nature of the integration of Tyrol into the modern Austrian state. As
the Habsburg monarchy collapsed and new political boundaries were drawn,
regions such as Tyrol were not at all certain that they wanted to
belong to the new "Austria." In a second phase, Italians from the south
with a totally different mentality swamped the country in order to get
an Italian majority. 
In 1941 the territories of the suppressed municipality of Sant'Andrea in Monte (St. Andrä) were aggregated. From 1943 to 1945 the city was part of the Pre-Alps Operation Zone. Possibly Nazi control of Tyrol eventually strengthened Tyrolean resolve to remain a part of Austria. After the enthusiastic reception of Nazism in most of Tyrol, the territory was given special protective status because many important weapons and munitions plants were moved there. But the Nazis' failure to reunite South and North Tyrol and their growing hostility toward Catholic clerics eventually soured, resulting in a discernible anti-Nazi movement. As a result, 86 percent of all South Tyroleans agreed to leave South Tyrol and become citizens of "Greater Germany." Approximately 75,000 did actually leave. The effects of this decision can be traced from the highest levels of government down to the tiniest villages, and have not been forgotten to this day.
The general had few soldiers with him, but a ‘prisoner of honour’ Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin was able to put through a call to General Heinrich von Vietinghoff in Bolzano. When he informed the commander of the presence of the Prominenten, Vietinghoff despatched troops to protect them. They were not due before dawn, however, and Bader’s men were still eager for blood. The prisoners went to a hotel on the market square where Frau Heiss, manager of the Hotel Elefant in Brixen, regaled them with Kaiserschmarrn (An atomised sweet omelette filled with raisins and a favourite of the Emperor Franz Joseph – hence the name) – a great treat after the food they had eaten in their various concentration camps. Bader, however, had not given up: ‘Müller raus!’ (Come out, Müller!). Colonel von Bonin, however, had been allowed to go into captivity with his pistol. He drew it and aimed it at the ϟϟ man: ‘Ich zähle bis drei, bei zwei sind sie eine Leiche!’ (I’ll count to three. On two you are a dead man). Bader’s men took the hint.
Bolzano
The railway station during the 1930s and today, pretty much unchanged. After the
First World War, the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919)
rewarded Italy with County of Tyrol's territory south of the Brenner
Pass. As a result, Bozen-Gries station was transferred to the Italian
railway network and came under the management of the Ferrovie dello
Stato (FS). From 1927 to 1929 the station building was replaced by one
in the style of Italy's fascist regime. It was designed by the architect
Angiolo Mazzoni. The facade on the access road to the station was
reworked into two half-columns and flanked by two statues, which were
crafted by the Austrian artist Franz Ehrenhöfer, to represent
electricity and steam. Ehrenhöfer also created masks on the cornices for
the station complex, a fountain of St. Christopher and an allegory of
River Adige (River Etsch) above the entrance to the clock tower.
Mussolini
in front of the railway station during a visit to the town which played
a part in a fascist-manufactured myth. Hitler passing through the
station during his visit to Rome inspired a parody of the Horst-Wessel
song created in Bozen after his train drove past the South Tyroleans
waiting at the station with curtained windows closed and Hitler not
deigning to look out at them:
Die Fahne hoch, die Fenster fest verschlossen,so fährst Du durch das deutsche Südtirol.Du große Hoffnung aller deutschen Volksgenossen,Du, Adolf Hitler, fahre, fahre wohl!
(Flag up, windows tightly closed, you drive through German South Tyrol. You great hope of all German national comrades, you, Adolf Hitler, go, go well!)
This was the so-called March on Bolzano, which took place between October 1-2, 1922 , was an event organised by the National Fascist Party, directed against the German majority in South Tyrol, whose success resulted in the dismissal of Julius Perathoner, the last German-speaking burgomaster German of Bolzano elected before the fascist period. After the annexation of the South Tyrol, following the end of the First World War and the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye , the nationalist and fascist propaganda launched with increasing violence against the ethnic minorities, in particular Slavic and Germanic , considered the guilty of the so-called " mutilated victory ". Among the major proponents of an intransigent policy towards the Germanic minority in the Tyrol annexed to the Kingdom of Italy stood out the Trentino Ettore Tolomei. The first episode of violence against the then German majority of Bolzano was consummated on the blood Sunday in 1921, provoking dozens of injured and one dead, killed by fascist squads. According to the Fascists, the day had to take on an anti-Italian meaning, so they tried to prevent it and prepared a counter-demonstration, bringing the comrades of many provinces to Bolzano, under the command of Achille Starace. Julius Perathoner, mayor of Bolzano since 1895, was unprepared to fascists as a symbol of intransigent Germanisation and resistance against any form of Italianisation. Perathoner, who in his first speech as mayor in 1895 had still shown himself to be a supporter of a peaceful coexistence between the German and Italian Bolzanians, became one of the major spokesmen of the Tyrolean pangermanist sentiment and joined the Volksbund, which counted among its exponents the extremist Wilhelm Rohmeder.
On September 26, 1922, the Bolzano group of the National Fascist Party
sent an ultimatum to the municipal administration, asking for the
resignation of Mayor Perathoner and the making available to the school
Elisabethschule for education in Italian. At the end of September, the
start of the school year was scheduled. Perathoner, who had been
confirmed as mayor by Vittorio Emanuele III for a few months, refused,
arguing that it would not be conceivable to remove a school of 500
German students to give it to 100 Italian students, offering to compromise.
The Fascists, refusing any negotiation, occupied the Elisabethschule
school building at dawn of October 1, renaming it in "Regina Elena"
(since then the school has remained Italian, with the name "Dante Alighieri elementary school"). The next day they attacked the
Municipality of Bolzano, threatening to incinerate it if Perathoner had
not been removed The civil commissioner for the Venice Tridentine Luigi
Credaro invited the Government Facta to cede to fascist pressures and
on October 2 the Government declared Perathoner lapsed by the
mayor's office, on the grounds that he had not been notified of the
appointment confirmation. The appointment was however published at the
beginning of June 1922. Luigi Credaro was also subsequently dismissed,
through fascist pressure, on October 28, 1922. Throughout
the affair, the Italian police and the Carabinieri weapon did not
intervene to stop the fascist squads, thus showing the weakness of the
Italian democratic government. Just three weeks later the march on Rome
began , bringing Benito Mussolini to power. The march on Bolzano was
considered by Ettore Tolomei and by the Fascists, but also by some
contemporary historians, as a "general test" for the taking of power by
Mussolini. 
Standing
in front of Mussolini's Victory Monument and as it appeared in 1928
near its completion. The work of Marcello Piacentini, it includes
decorative features by the
most important Italian sculptors of the time. Mussolini
had wanted to dedicate the monument to Cesare Battisti but,
after the opposition of Battisti’s widow, it was dedicated “to the
victory of Italy”. The monument reflects and provides a link to local
historical events during the twenty years of Fascism – il ventennio –
and the Nazi occupation, within the context of national and
international events in the years between the two World Wars. Eventually
erected in 1928 to commemorate the Italian “martyrs” of the First World
War, but widely seen as a celebration of Italy’s annexation of South
Tyrol, the Victory Monument sits in one of Bolzano’s main squares.
Mussolini himself sketched the initial design, and he chose Piacentini,
one of his favourite architects, to construct it. At the time it was
built, the imposing arch stood as a symbol of Fascist might and Italy’s
dominion over the local German-speaking population. Designed as a
provocation, the Victory Monument—a celebration in stone of nationalism
and imperialism, war and fascism, and Mussolini himself— remains an
affront to South Tyrol’s German-speaking citizens even today. The
arch was one of Piacentini’s first projects in Bolzano. The architect
thanked Mussolini for entrusting him with the project and promised to
create a “truly Fascist monument” based on Mussolini’s original concept,
which had won praise among Italian nationalists at home and abroad.
Donations for the project flowed in, and the duce himself contributed a
significant sum of his money. The Victory Monument was completed by 1928
at a carefully chosen site strategically situated between two parts of
the rather small Austrian provincial town. More important perhaps, the
arch was built over an unfinished Austrian memorial to the fallen
soldier of the Kaiserjäger, an elite unit that had fought against the
Italians in the First World War. In other words, Mussolini’s arch
literally stood on the ruins of the Habsburg monarchy, symbolising Italy’s rule over South Tyrol and its claim on the new border in the
Brenner Valley. The architectural design of the monument—a Roman
triumphal arch—was intended to send a message. Widespread during the
Roman Empire (almost 2,000 years ago), triumphal arches enjoyed a
renaissance in Europe during the eighteenth century—Paris’s Arc de
Triomphe and Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate are two examples from the period.
During the Fascist era, however, they were uncommon in Italy, although
there were a number of them in the country’s African colonies.
At first, the Victory Monument could easily be mistaken for a
genuine Roman arch erected by an emperor to
mark the border of the Roman Empire at the Brenner Valley. The Bolzano arch measures 19
metres wide, 20.5 metres high, and eight metres deep. The mighty main beam
rests on fourteen columns that are in the form of fasces (fascio in
Italian)—bundles of elm or birch rods with an axe emerging from them—the
ancient Roman symbols of authority from which the Italian Fascist Party
drew its name. Along the rectangular stone blocks that form the north-
facing main façade is the sculpture “Vittoria Sagittaria,” a victory
goddess firing an arrow northward toward the Italian–Austrian border—a
symbolic warning to neighbours Austria and Germany not to interfere in
Italy’s plans to Italianise South Tyrol. The Latin inscription at the
top of the monument states: “Here at the border of the fatherland stands
a marker. From this point on, we educated the others with language,
law, and culture” (Hic Patriae Fine Siste Signa / Hinc Ceteros
Excolumnus Lingua Legibus Artibus). The stunningly arrogant message was clear: The
Fascists had brought civilisation to the backward Alpine “barbarians” of
South Tyrol, which had been part of the Roman Empire more than 1,500
years ago. The monument proclaims that the “fallen sons of the
fatherland”—Italian war heroes like the “martyrs” Cesare Battisti,
Damiano Chiesa and Fabio Filzi, immortalised in busts inside the
arch—had sacrificed themselves to conquer these “borderlands”.
Members
of the Wehrmacht and the Südtiroler Ordnungsdienst escorting Italian
soldiers in front of the monument on their way to deportation to Germany
on September 9, 1943. Between 1943 and 1944, the Südtiroler
Ordnungsdienst was a police-like auxiliary force in South Tyrol during
the time of the operation zone Alpine foothills. When in 1943 the
invasion of German troops in northern Italy became apparent after the
ceasefire of Cassibile, the group was formed in South Tyrol from circles
of the Working Group of Optanten for Germany, the later SOD. Only three
days after the German invasion, the SOD was officially recognised by
General Erwin Rommel as a "self-protection" force. Its members were
equipped with Italian bootlegged-supplies. They participated in the
disarmament and capture of the remaining Italian troops shown here. Some
of the SOD commandos were looking for scattered Italian soldiers, which
also resulted in indiscriminate murders. Members of the SOD were also
involved in the arrest of Jews remaining in Meran leading to more death.
Tasks of the SOD involved building protective infrastructure,
monitoring of blackouts, monitoring of the railway facilities, cleaning
up after bomb attacks et cet.. The SOD was initially a civilian
troop of volunteers and so from November 1943 it was possible for
conscripts to serve in the SOD instead of the Wehrmacht or ϟϟ. The number of its members increased from 6,000 at the end of September 1943 to roughly 17,000 by May 1944. The SOD was eventually transferred to the Landwacht on August 1, 1944.
Standing
under the monument where the exhibition "bZ '18–'45: one monument, one
city, two dictatorships",was first opened to the public in July 2014
after having remained closed to the public for decades. It stated
purpose is to illustrate the history of the Monument to Victory, erected
by the Fascist regime between 1926 and 1928. The exhibition also
covers the radical urban transformations for the construction of a new
“Italian” city of Bolzano and the establishment of a major industrial
zone, from the end of the 1920s. Both had the principal aim of
attracting large numbers of people from other parts of Italy. Finally,
the exhibition confronts the difficult relationship between the
different language groups, caused by the over- bearing legacy of
Fascism, within the evolving social and political framework of the
second half of the twentieth century to the present day. I'm standing
beside the remains of two eagles that had adorned the Drusus bridge
linking fascist Bolzano with the historic centre. Work on the bridge
began in March 1930 under the direction of chief engineer Eugenio Mozzi.
On the occasion of the 9th anniversary of the march on Rome in October
1931, the Drusus Bridge was opened to traffic. The bridge not only aimed
to connect the old Bolzano to the new and modern districts of the city,
but at the same time to indicate a Roman, and therefore Italian, past,
which did not exist in this form. To accommodate this "Italianness",
Miozzi chose as supporting elements a monumental construction method,
with large blocks of stone cut in porphyry and a continuous covering of
the same material. Its two central supporting columns had been raised
and, in their elongated shape, the foundations for monumental sculptures
have been laid. Above the lictors' fasces stood these Roman eagles created by Vittorio Morelli that towered over a globe, standing ominously eight metres above the roadway. The sculptures were removed only in the 1970s.
In the centre Mussolini remains on horseback, flanked by the motto "believe, obey, fight" and by the acronyms of fascist organisations. The narration on stone starts at the bottom left with the representation of the victory of the First World War (cannon with laurel wreath and soldiers returning home) and the post-war agitations (burning torch and burning houses). The foundation of the Fasci di Combattimento and the March on Rome of October 1922 are illustrated in the upper section of the survey. To the right of Mussolini's effigy is the history of the fascist regime: in the upper range are the colonial politics in Libya, next to it the one in Ethiopia and finally the intervention in the Spanish civil war. In the lower band is a series of allegorical figures: Justice, Art and Science, followed by Sport, Agriculture and the Family.
An equestrian 'il Duce', surrounded by inscriptions from the main Fascist organizations and four allegorical figures. Mussolini on horseback dominates the scene, raising his right arm in the Roman salute. The key elements that surround him are: four allegorical figures, the symbols of the Fascist university groups, the National Fascist Party, the National Afterwork Organisation, the Italian Youth of the Littorio, and the Voluntary Militia for National Security. The date of completion is shown using the Fascist calendar ANNO XX EF (the twentieth year of the Fascist era = 1942). Finally, there is il Duce's command: Believe, Obey, Fight.
In chronological order, starting from the bottom left:
The End of the Great War and the Return of the Soldier
A cannon bedecked with laurel leaves symbolises the Italian victory in the First World War, November 1918. The soldiers return to their homes and the first of these, an Alpine soldier, is met by his wife and two children.
The Revolutionary Fury of the Red Biennium (1919–1920)
Four aggressive-looking figures, immediately to the right, symbolize the violence perpetrated by subversives, in the years following the First World War. One of them holds a flaming torch, while buildings burn in the background.
The Fascist "Martyrs" of Bolshevik Violence This scene represents the victims of Bolshevik violence. To the left is the representation of someone who actually lived, mythologised by the regime and made into one of its first martyrs. This is the young Fascist Giovanni Berta, who was killed in Florence in February 1921 after being thrown in the River Arno and failing to cling to the bridge. On the right, are two imaginary figures of Fascists, who are bound and tormented with fire.
Second Section (above left):
23rd March, 1919: Mussolini establishes the Fasci di Combattimento
The inscription “W MUSSOLINI” (long live Mussolini) introduces the scene of il Duce founding the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, in Milan on 23rd March 1919. This is the forerunner of the National Fascist Party (PNF). In the centre is Mussolini carrying the founding charter, flanked by three followers swearing allegiance.
Fascist Squads battling against Bolshevik enemies.
The violence of the Fascist Squads is shown as sacrifice for the homeland. The wounded Fascist combatant in the centre recalls another work by Piffrader of the Deposition of Christ.
28th October, 1922: The Fascist March on Rome
The Fascist Youth with a drum marks time for the March on Rome: the prelude to Fascists taking power. In front of him, a formation of battle-hardened Fascists led by a standard bearer. In the background to the left are the Colosseum and the hills of Rome.
Third Section (top right):
The Roman Legionary and the Fascist Warrior
A Roman Legionary, in a martial stance, holds a shield and the Roman standard with the acronym of the Roman Republic SPQR (Senatus Populus Que Romanus, the Senate and the Roman People). Assuming this inheritance, to the side of the legionary, is the Fascist warrior. He has on one side the law with the sword, whilst on the other Lictor's Fasces: the symbol of Fascism.
The Fascist Imperial Conquest: Libya and Ethiopia
Libya conquered by Fascism is depicted as the figure wearing a long tunic. It is next to a representation of the Fileni Arch, an architectural work along the Litoranea Libica, the Libian coast road inaugurated by Mussolini in 1937. There are two militiamen killing two roaring lions. The first animal is the Lion of Judah, embodying Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia; the second is the British Lion, ludicrously depicted as impotently opposing the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. To close the scene there is an African figure, subjected to British colonial rule in the Mediterranean.
Italian Participation in the Spanish Civil War
The bearded man wearing an ammunition belt represents an Italian volunteer rushing to Spain to fight for Fascism. He holds his arm raised, to symbolise the fierce defence of Toledo's Alcázar fortress, shown in the background. Between July and September 1936, the nationalist forces barricaded themselves in, managing to resist the long Republican siege. They were subsequently liberated by troops sent to their rescue by Franco. Alcázar immediately became one of the legends of the Franco regime about the Spanish civil war. At the volunteer’s side, the waving triangular flags contain numerous symbols, which include that of Franco’s Spanish Falangists. Following, a veiled woman symbolises oppressed Spain, whilst a Spanish man in typical attire carries a basket of gifts.
Fourth Section (bottom right):
Arts, Science & Sports Education in Fascist Italy
This part opens the last series of scenes, all dedicated to the Fascist idyll, or to the peace and prosperity attributed to the advent of the regime. The three figures here represent: the arts, which is the youth with classical theatre masks; science, holding a roll of parchment; and sports education, the young gymnast with two divers behind.
The Fascist-assured Agricultural Wealth
Three women laden with grapes, fruit and grain symbolise the country's abundance and food self-sufficiency under the symbol of Fascism.
The Family and Reconstruction under the Sign of Pax Fascista
The family in peaceful Italy is shown through the man hanging up his rifle, while his wife holds a child as it gives fruit to his father. A distance away, a worker builds a new home.
Il Duce as Builder, or possibly the Artist with his Project, under the Sign of il Duce
To conclude the frieze there is a male figure. This may be Mussolini, as architect of the new Italy, although it is most likely the actual sculptor, Piffrader, with his project in hand. In the upper right is the inscription DVX and at the bottom, the signature of the artist: Giov. Piffrader, aged 52.
The courthouse itself measures approximately forty metres in width and about twelve metres high and today serves as the provincial court of Bolzano, the prosecutor and the Bar Association of Bolzano. In the middle of the façade a relief is set which depicts a sitting Justice. A special feature that betrays its fascist origins is that Justice does not wear a blindfold as a symbol of impartiality. To the left of Justitia stands a judge with the law book ("Lex") whilst to her right a soldier wields a large sword. At the very top of the roof in large chiselled letters, is "PRO ITALICO IMPERIO VIRTUTE IUSTITIA HIERARCHIA UNGUIBUS ET ROSTRIS" ("In bravery and justice for the rule in the Italian Empire with teeth and claws").
German
Tiger tank in front of the IV army command on September 9, 1943 on
today's Piazza 4 Novembre. Divided into two divergent wings, one of
which on via Cadorna and the other along Via Armando Diaz, this building
served as the offices and houses of the military. Following the Nazi
occupation in September 1943, the corps became the headquarters of the
Gestapo. In this building two Italian Resistance partisans, Manlio Longon and Giannantonio Manci were killed-
their memorial plaques are
located at the entrance door. Longon originally came from Padua and was
the administrative director of a large metal company in Bolzano whilst
head of the CLN in Bolzano, representing the Action Party (a coalition
of anti-fascist parties). In mid-December 1944 he was arrested at work
and killed on the last day of 1944 here in the Gestapo headquarters in
Bolzano. Count Giannantonio Manci was born on December 14, 1901 in
Trento and was an early member of the anti-fascist movement "Italia
Libera". In September 1943 he helped found the Trentino Resistance
Committee (CLN) and was appointed its leader. The Gestapo managed to spy
on the group. Manci was arrested with others in June 1944 and jumped to
his death from one of this building's windows to escape torture on July
6, 1944. 
In
front of the INFPS Building (Istituto Nazionale Fascista della
Previdenza Sociale or Fascist National Institute of Social Security),
built in the years 1933-35 by the Roman
architect Paolo Rossi de 'Paoli. Today the most important social security institution in Italy, in 1898 the Cassa Nazionale per le Assicurazioni Sociali (CNAS), the National Social Insurance Fund, was founded. At that time, only workers could voluntarily insure themselves against occupational disability and old age, with employers and the state also making a contribution. Both insurance policies became compulsory in 1919. In 1933 the name was changed to Istituto Nazionale Fascista per la Previdenza Sociale and social insurance was gradually expanded. The Mussolini Cabinet changed the National Fund into the Istituto nazionale fascista della previdenza sociale ('National Fascist Institute of Social Security') or INFPS. Its first president was Giuseppe Bottai who increasingly became more radical and a Germanophile. In 1938 he expressed support to racial laws against Italian Jews, and in 1940, he founded Primato, a magazine that supported the Aryan race's supremacy and interventionism in the war. Bottai thought that the "Fascist Revolution" was incomplete and that what was needed was a return to the original, "pure" fascism. That said, Bottai would end up voting for Mussolini's arrest, which had been proposed by Dino Grandi, on July 25, 1943 after Italy's defeat had become evident. In 1944, the Italian Social Republic condemned Bottai to death during the Verona trial, but Bottai hid in a Roman convent until actually enlisting in the French Foreign Legion in 1944, fighting in Provence during Operation Dragoon and then in the Western Allied invasion of Germany. In 1943 with the deposition of Mussolini the name “Fascista” was dropped through article 3 of the Royal Decree Law of August 2 n.704, the name becoming that of the National Institute of Social Security, although the institute continued to expand in the decades that followed. 
One can still see the inscription above the portal of the INPS building, with the fascist "F" in the middle, removed after 1945 but still visible.
Beside the building is a residential and
commercial building built in 1932-33 on behalf of the INA
(National Insurance
Institute).
Further
down on via Dante 1 shown below is one of the INCIS residential complexes built by
the "National Institute for the Houses of State Employees". This is one
of the first lots realised, between 1926 and 1928, based on a project by
the Roman architect Alberto Calza Bini. L'Istituto nazionale per le
case degli impiegati statali was a public body set up to build houses
and manage their assignment, at a reduced fee, to public employees.
INCIS was established by decree on October 25, 1924 to construct, and
purchase, buildings to be leased to civilian and military employees of
the State, with priority to employees with lower salaries. To build such
buildings, the Institute could avail itself of subsidised loans from
the Deposits and Loans Fund.
In
front of another highly symbolic site- the Bozen Museum. The Museum
Society was founded in 1882 by a group of the city's prominent citizens,
according to its charter, the museum was to engage in the cultivation
of local arts and crafts and the display of German and Tyrolean
traditions. The museum was financed by the city. In 1902, the City
Council decided to construct a new museum in what is now Museumstrasse.
Tolomei raised the first Italian flag here in 1918, and made the museum
the headquarters of his Commission for the Language and Culture of the
Oberetsch. He called for the Italianisation of the museum, which he
regarded as one of the strongholds of Germanness. In his opinion, its
purpose had been to give visitors from all over the world the impression
that the area had been German since time immemorial and would always
remain so. The objects exhibited were said to have been arranged
accordingly. Over the following years, though, the museum did succeed in
preserving a certain degree of autonomy. It was not until 1934 that the
Podestà decided to tear down the museum tower in order to avoid
spoiling the view of the Rosengarten massif, as the official
explanation put it. In fact, the actual objective had been to
'Italianise' the building's exterior and in so doing continue the
mediæval custom of victorious families razing the towers of those they
had vanquished.
On the night of June 4-5, 1933 persons unknown destroyed the Laurin Fountain in Bozen, a work by the sculptor Andrae Kompatscher dating from 1907 that depicts Dietrich of Bern's fight against the Dwarf King Laurin. The perpetrators were likely acting under the inspiration of the Italian Fascist government, destroyed the fountain as a symbol of German supremacy over Italy. When the fountain was finally rebuilt, conflict ignited over the fountain as a supposed symbol of the Germanic conquest of the original Ladin speaking inhabitants of the area. According to legend, Laurin held a princess prisoner in his rose garden. Dietrich destroys it, leading the dwarf Laurin to appear, demanding the left foot and right hand of whoever desecrated the site. Initially, Dietrich is losing, but eventually steals the dwarf's cloak of invisibility and strength-granting belt, wrestling him to the ground. Laurin, now defeated, pleads for mercy and the rose garden turned to stone, which explains the red colour that the massif of the same name assumes at sundown.
In the 1930s, more than ever, the legend expressed the intimate relationship of the people of Bolzano with their mountain landscape and became an allegory for their concept of their homeland. Laurin himself was endowed with a national meaning- Dietrich was said to stand for Germanness that vanquished the Italians.
The statue was eventually transferred to the City Museum in Bolzano and later to the War Museum Rovereto. It was not until 1993, after many years of efforts by the South Tyrolean Councellors of Agriculture Anton Zelger and Bruno Hosp, that it was returned to Bolzano and set up in 1996 in central Silvius Magnago Square in front of the South Tyrolean Parliament building and the Widmann Palace. After the redesign of the square in the summer of 2018, the Laurin fountain is now slightly offset in front of the entrance to the Palais Widmann. Due to its violent removal, the work of art originally set up for tourism purposes became a topic of conflict for the South Tyrolean society. The Italian Right is trying to achieve an ethnic-nationalist interpretation of the group of figures, in which the "Germanic" hero Dietrich von Bern conquers the "Romance" King Laurin, disqualifying the fountain in its political symbolism as a public monument. Conversely, the German-speaking right defended the fountain as an identity-creating monument.
From September 1943 to the end of the war, Bolzano occupied an
important political role, as it became the capital of the Zona di
Operations in the Prealps / Operationszone Alpenvorland (OZAV) . This
area was a territory consisting of the three provinces of Bolzano,
Trento and Belluno, established by the Nazi government. A similar
Operations Area was established in the eastern provinces, with Trieste
as its capital. The OZAV was governed by the Supreme Commander /
Gauleiter Franz Hofer. In Bolzano various police and security services
headquarters were created with jurisdiction over the whole Zone:
Sicherheitspolizei SIPO or Security Police; Sicherheitsdienst SD or
Security Service; Geheime Staatspolizei GESTAPO or State Secret Police;
Kriminalpolizei KRIPO or Criminal Police; Ordnungspolizei ORPO or Police
of order, the Militärkommandantur 1010 or Army Command (Wehrmacht ),
the Special Court for the Zone of Operations in the Prealps /
Sondergericht für die OZAV , which also issued death sentences for
civilian offenders for having harmed German interests.
During this period the German toponyms were
restored in the city, although official bilingualism remained in place. It is during
this phase that the various air-raid shelters were used, many of which
are carved into the rock. Today some of these have remained
practically intact, and increasingly hidden, like the one in via Fago
(refuge Hofer) which after the war hosted some displaced people from the
Polesine area; in 1966 they became the property of the State. It was only in 2013 that one of these shelters,
perhaps the largest in the province with an area of about 4500 m², was
reopened for public visits. Around the city was formed the
Bolzano South barrier, part of the Vallo Alpino in Alto Adige, which
was still under the nominal rule of the fascist regime . When Italy surrendered in September 1943, the whole of South Tyrol as
well as Belluno were de facto administered by the Nazis as Operational
Zone of the Alpine Foothills. After 1943, heavy fighting against Nazi
Germany and the Axis Powers took place in the Dolomites. Meanwhile, Bolzano was the site of the Nazis' Bolzano
Transit Camp, a concentration camp for persecuted Jews and political
prisoners. It came into operation in the summer of 1944 using old sheds
of the Italian military. In the approximately ten months of its
existence between 9,000 and 9,500 people passed through its walls. For
decades it was believed that the number of prisoners was higher, because
the highest number assigned in the camp was 11,115, and it was known
that many prisoners - starting with the approximately 400 Jews - were
not registered. In Bolzano the numbering did not start from 1, but from
approximately 2,979 , continuing from where it had arrived in Fossoli.
However Mike Bongiorno, an American PoW who would go on to become one of Italy's most beloved TV figures after the war, who was among the inmates, received the registration number 2264. 
The
deportees came mainly from central and northern Italy (about 20% were
arrested in Milan, 10% in the province of Belluno which, together with
Trento and Bolzano, had been annexed to Germany after September 8, 1943
with the creation of the zone of operation of the Pre-Alps). They were mainly political opponents,
but there were also Jewish deportees, South Tyrolean deserters from the
Wehrmacht or their families (Sippenhaft), gypsies (Roma and Sinti) and
Jehovah's Witnesses. A part of the deportees - around 3,500 people, men,
women and even several children - were transferred to Germany's
extermination camps; a part was instead used on site , as slave workers,
both in the laboratories inside the camp, and in the companies of the
nearby industrial area and at IMI, which had found refuge inside the
Virgolo tunnel to escape the Allied bombings, but also as apple pickers.
During the history of the camp, 23 Italians who were captured and
interned there were subsequently slaughtered in the Mignone barracks
massacre on September 12, 1944. In total, about 48 killings in the camp
are documented as certain, although up to 300 have been hypothesised.
As the allies advanced, the deportees were released in stages between
April 29 and May 3, 1945, when the concentration camp was definitively
abandoned. The ϟϟ took care to destroy all the documentation relating to the camp
before withdrawing. From the beginning both the internment of thousands
of Italian soldiers and the deportation of thousands of Italian
civilians for racial and political reasons were implemented; the
deportation of civilians lasted until the end of the war. This led them
to begin their resistance to Nazi fascism and their repression in
return. 
The
deportees, coming from the entire area of Operations in the Prealps and
in the regions of central-northern Italy, were marked with a serial
number and a different coloured triangle depending on the category: red
for deportees politicians, yellow for Jews, green for family hostages.
The exact number of the deportees in the Bolzano Lager is not known;
sources paper and testimonials indicate the number of 11,000
registrations. As from oral sources we know that not all the deportees
who came into this Lager was registered there, it is very probable that
the number of the deportees is greater. The commander of the Lager was
Lieutenant Karl Friedrich Titho whilst the deputy commander was Marshal ϟϟ Hans Haage.
After the war, independence movements gained popularity among the
German-Tyrolean population in Bolzano and South Tyrol. In the 1960s a
series of terrorist attacks and assassinations were carried out by the
South Tyrolean Liberation Committee – a German secessionist movement –
against Italian police and electric power structures (one notable
incident being the Night of Fire on June 12, 1961),
after which the United Nations intervened to enforce the start of
bilateral negotiations between Italy and Austria. After eleven years of
mediation and negotiation the two countries reached an agreement that
would guarantee self-government to the newly created Autonomous Province of South Tyrol.
According to this document, signed by the foreign ministers Mock (for
Austria) and De Michelis (for Italy), the perpetual acceptance of the
border between the two countries along the Brenner line was established
by Vienna. It was made intentionally ambiguous, so as to favour the
interpretation most pleasing to either side. It was finally in 1992 when
Austria aspired to enter the European Community and was aware that the
only impediment could come from Italy, (which had earlier exercised its
right of veto to the Austrian request in 1967 over the South Tyrolean
issue) that it decided it was not in its interest to point out its
conflicting opinion on the proper meaning of the "receipt" but would
kick the can down the road Theresa May-style. Nevertheless, today for
the Italians, the South Tyroleans remain allogeni
(foreigners) or valligiani dalle calze bianche (flatlanders in white
knee-socks).
The
purpose of our trips was to visit Ötzi, an astonishingly well-preserved
natural mummy of a man who lived between 3400 and 3100 BCE. found in
September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, hence the nickname, on the border
between Austria and Italy. He is Europe's oldest known natural human mummy, and has offered
an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic Europeans. The location of his
body aply illustrates the continuing tug-of-war over Tyrol as the Treaty
of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 1919 established the border between North
and South Tyrol as the watershed of the rivers Inn and Etsch. Near
Tisenjoch the (now withdrawn) glacier complicated establishing the
watershed at the time, and the border was established too far north.
Although Ötzi's find site drains to the Austrian side, surveys in
October 1991 showed that the body had been located 92.56 metres inside
Italian territory as delineated in 1919. The province of South Tyrol
therefore claimed property rights, but agreed to let Innsbruck
University finish its scientific examinations. Since 1998 his body and
belongings are displayed in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in
Bolzano.
The body has been extensively examined, measured, x-rayed, and dated.
Tissues and gut contents were examined microscopically, as was the
pollen found on his gear. At the time of his death, Otzi was a
30-to-45-year old man, approximately 5'3" tall. Prior to his discovery,
the only remnants we had of the apparel of those times were the
relatively fragmentary remains found in the lake dwellings in the
circum-alpine region; generally, these consisted of woven or knitted
plant fibers. Animal-derived materials (furs, etc.) had been absent
there. His clothing consists of a cap, a fur coat, a pair of trousers, a
leather loin cloth, and a pair of lined shoes. His equipment included
an unfinished bow stave, a quiver and arrow shafts, a copper hatchet, a
dagger with a silex flint blade, a retoucheur, a birch bark container, a
backpack, as well as various spare materials and bone tips. Many of the
artefacts preserved in the ice are unique. In the absence of organic
remains, it was not clear from previous finds how these objects were
made and how they worked. The virtual body of the mummy can be opened up
via a touch screen, and visitors can discover and study important
medical curiosities. Microscopes are also on hand to examine Ötzi’s bone
structure, which was used to determine his age. Research into Ötzi’s
origins indicates that his ancestors migrated from the Middle East
during the Neolithic period following the spread of farming and animal
rearing. Forensic science has determined that Ötzi was clearly of
Central European origin. His genome inherited from his mother’s side has
died out, but is most similar to the Ladin population in the South
Tyrolean Dolomites. On his father’s side, the Iceman belongs to a
genetic group that was previously widespread in Europe but is now rare
and only found in isolated communities such as on the islands of
Sardinia and Corsica. Another section is dedicated to ongoing research,
particularly the decoding of Ötzi’s genomic DNA, which is being analysed
by scientists at the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman at EURAC in
Bolzano. 
The
cause of death remained uncertain until a full decade after the
discovery of the body. It was initially believed that Ötzi died from
exposure during a winter storm or even the victim of a ritual sacrifice,
perhaps for being a chieftain. However in 2001 X-rays and a CT scan revealed that Ötzi had an arrowhead lodged in his left shoulder
when he died and a matching small tear on his coat. The discovery of
the arrowhead prompted researchers to theorise Ötzi died of blood loss
from the wound, which would probably have been fatal even if modern
medical techniques had been available. Further research found that the
arrow's shaft had been removed before death, and close examination of
the body found bruises and cuts to the hands, wrists and chest and
cerebral trauma indicative of a blow to the head. One of the cuts was to
the base of his thumb that reached down to the bone but had no time to
heal before his death. Currently, it is believed that Ötzi bled to death
after the arrow shattered the scapula and damaged nerves and blood
vessels before lodging near the lung. In fact, DNA analyses claim they
revealed traces of blood from at least four other people on his gear:
one from his knife, two from a single arrowhead, and a fourth from his
coat. Interpretations of these findings were that Ötzi killed two people
with the same arrow and was able to retrieve it on both occasions, and
the blood on his coat was from a wounded comrade he may have carried
over his back. Ötzi's posture in death (frozen body, face down, left arm
bent across the chest) could support a theory that before death
occurred and rigor mortis set in, the Iceman was turned onto his stomach
in the effort to remove the arrow shaft.
Albrecht Dürer travelled through Italy in 1494 and sketched Klausen during the trip.
This sketch was later incorporated in his engraving "Nemesis" (Das
große Glück). Given that Nemesis is not the goddess of happiness, but of
retribution, presumably Dürer was referring to a 1499 poem in Latin by
Angelo Poliziano from 1499, in which Fortuna -the Roman goddess of
victory or fortune, displayed as a winged figure on Roman coins- is
equated with Nemesis. The implied movement of Nemesis' drapery and the
clouds at her feet add to the charged energy of Dürer's depiction of the
goddess balanced precariously on the sphere of uncertain fortune. She
bears the cup of reward for the deserving and a bridle to restrain the
headstrong. In her figure, Dürer sought to reconcile the classical rules
for harmoniously balanced human proportions and the northern European
Gothic preference for height, protruding abdomens and high waists.As
Fortuna, the figure stands on a ball, as Nemesis she holds a trophy for
good deeds and bridles for the unruly. Underneath, the town of Klausen
in the Eisacktal spreads in mirror image. Striking is the fat body of
the woman, with strong thighs, swelling belly and pronounced double
chin. On the site where Dürer is to have sketched the town is the
Dürerstone, inscribed with the date 1504 which is incorrect as he would
have been at the location a decade earlier.
In the 1930s, these large national institutes financed the construction of several buildings in Bolzano, which have similar stylistic features, such as cornices or natural stone cladding.
The supporting structure of the Fascist model of the ‘Social State’ was represented by various state social security and assistance institutions, such as the ONMI—Opera Nazionale per la Maternità e l’Infanzia (National Organization for Motherhood and Childhood) constituted in 1925; the INFPS—Istituto Nazionale Fascista della Previdenza Sociale (Fascist National Institute of Social Security) constituted in 1933; the INFAIL—Istituto Nazionale Fascista per l’Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro (Fascist National Institute for Insurance against Industrial Accidents) constituted in 1933; the INAM—Istituto Nazionale per l’Assicurazione contro le Malattie (Disease Support Workers National Institute) constituted in 1943.
Fonio and Agnoletto (80) Surveillance, Repression and the Welfare Article State: Aspects of Continuity and Discontinuity
In
front of another highly symbolic site- the Bozen Museum. The Museum
Society was founded in 1882 by a group of the city's prominent citizens,
according to its charter, the museum was to engage in the cultivation
of local arts and crafts and the display of German and Tyrolean
traditions. The museum was financed by the city. In 1902, the City
Council decided to construct a new museum in what is now Museumstrasse.
Tolomei raised the first Italian flag here in 1918, and made the museum
the headquarters of his Commission for the Language and Culture of the
Oberetsch. He called for the Italianisation of the museum, which he
regarded as one of the strongholds of Germanness. In his opinion, its
purpose had been to give visitors from all over the world the impression
that the area had been German since time immemorial and would always
remain so. The objects exhibited were said to have been arranged
accordingly. Over the following years, though, the museum did succeed in
preserving a certain degree of autonomy. It was not until 1934 that the
Podestà decided to tear down the museum tower in order to avoid
spoiling the view of the Rosengarten massif, as the official
explanation put it. In fact, the actual objective had been to
'Italianise' the building's exterior and in so doing continue the
mediæval custom of victorious families razing the towers of those they
had vanquished.
On the night of June 4-5, 1933 persons unknown destroyed the Laurin Fountain in Bozen, a work by the sculptor Andrae Kompatscher dating from 1907 that depicts Dietrich of Bern's fight against the Dwarf King Laurin. The perpetrators were likely acting under the inspiration of the Italian Fascist government, destroyed the fountain as a symbol of German supremacy over Italy. When the fountain was finally rebuilt, conflict ignited over the fountain as a supposed symbol of the Germanic conquest of the original Ladin speaking inhabitants of the area. According to legend, Laurin held a princess prisoner in his rose garden. Dietrich destroys it, leading the dwarf Laurin to appear, demanding the left foot and right hand of whoever desecrated the site. Initially, Dietrich is losing, but eventually steals the dwarf's cloak of invisibility and strength-granting belt, wrestling him to the ground. Laurin, now defeated, pleads for mercy and the rose garden turned to stone, which explains the red colour that the massif of the same name assumes at sundown.
In the 1930s, more than ever, the legend expressed the intimate relationship of the people of Bolzano with their mountain landscape and became an allegory for their concept of their homeland. Laurin himself was endowed with a national meaning- Dietrich was said to stand for Germanness that vanquished the Italians.
The statue was eventually transferred to the City Museum in Bolzano and later to the War Museum Rovereto. It was not until 1993, after many years of efforts by the South Tyrolean Councellors of Agriculture Anton Zelger and Bruno Hosp, that it was returned to Bolzano and set up in 1996 in central Silvius Magnago Square in front of the South Tyrolean Parliament building and the Widmann Palace. After the redesign of the square in the summer of 2018, the Laurin fountain is now slightly offset in front of the entrance to the Palais Widmann. Due to its violent removal, the work of art originally set up for tourism purposes became a topic of conflict for the South Tyrolean society. The Italian Right is trying to achieve an ethnic-nationalist interpretation of the group of figures, in which the "Germanic" hero Dietrich von Bern conquers the "Romance" King Laurin, disqualifying the fountain in its political symbolism as a public monument. Conversely, the German-speaking right defended the fountain as an identity-creating monument.
From September 1943 to the end of the war, Bolzano occupied an
important political role, as it became the capital of the Zona di
Operations in the Prealps / Operationszone Alpenvorland (OZAV) . This
area was a territory consisting of the three provinces of Bolzano,
Trento and Belluno, established by the Nazi government. A similar
Operations Area was established in the eastern provinces, with Trieste
as its capital. The OZAV was governed by the Supreme Commander /
Gauleiter Franz Hofer. In Bolzano various police and security services
headquarters were created with jurisdiction over the whole Zone:
Sicherheitspolizei SIPO or Security Police; Sicherheitsdienst SD or
Security Service; Geheime Staatspolizei GESTAPO or State Secret Police;
Kriminalpolizei KRIPO or Criminal Police; Ordnungspolizei ORPO or Police
of order, the Militärkommandantur 1010 or Army Command (Wehrmacht ),
the Special Court for the Zone of Operations in the Prealps /
Sondergericht für die OZAV , which also issued death sentences for
civilian offenders for having harmed German interests.
A
concentration camp / Pol was installed at the edge of the city, one of
the Durchgangslager for political, racial and hostage civilian
deportees found dotted all over central-northern Italy.
The first signs of the Italian
defeat in the Second World War took place on September 2, 1943, when
Bolzano was bombed for the first time together with Trento, at the same
time as the Portela massacre. During this bombing, the inhabitants
sought shelter in their underground shelters and in the tunnels dug into
the rock in the mountains near the town. By this time the civilians had
long been stricken by hunger both from the narrowness of food rationing
cards and from the increasingly intense bombings on the cities.
The day after Wednesday, September
8, 1943 when Italy abruptly changed sides to ally itself with the
British and Americans, the German army now found itself both enemy and
occupant resulting in confusion, armed clashes, and the inevitable
deaths. On the night between September 8-9, armoured troops of the
Wehrmacht attacked the Carabinieri barracks, who could only defend
themselves with automatic weapons. Six
policemen were killed- Roberto Baldoni, Giuseppe Cerveri, Quinto Dri,
Giovanni Falchi, Stefano Lela and Arturo Savoi. During the Second
World War, Bolzano, together with the rest of Alto Adige and the
neighboring provinces of Trento and Belluno, was included in the
Operationszone Alpenvorland - Pre-Alps Operation Zone created by Hitler
(therefore de facto annexed to the Third Reich albeit belonging
to de jure to the Italian Social Republic) and became its capital, with
the establishment of the Bolzano transit camp and the deportation
of Jewish families.
During this period the German toponyms were
restored in the city, although official bilingualism remained in place. It is during
this phase that the various air-raid shelters were used, many of which
are carved into the rock. Today some of these have remained
practically intact, and increasingly hidden, like the one in via Fago
(refuge Hofer) which after the war hosted some displaced people from the
Polesine area; in 1966 they became the property of the State. It was only in 2013 that one of these shelters,
perhaps the largest in the province with an area of about 4500 m², was
reopened for public visits. Around the city was formed the
Bolzano South barrier, part of the Vallo Alpino in Alto Adige, which
was still under the nominal rule of the fascist regime . When Italy surrendered in September 1943, the whole of South Tyrol as
well as Belluno were de facto administered by the Nazis as Operational
Zone of the Alpine Foothills. After 1943, heavy fighting against Nazi
Germany and the Axis Powers took place in the Dolomites. Meanwhile, Bolzano was the site of the Nazis' Bolzano
Transit Camp, a concentration camp for persecuted Jews and political
prisoners. It came into operation in the summer of 1944 using old sheds
of the Italian military. In the approximately ten months of its
existence between 9,000 and 9,500 people passed through its walls. For
decades it was believed that the number of prisoners was higher, because
the highest number assigned in the camp was 11,115, and it was known
that many prisoners - starting with the approximately 400 Jews - were
not registered. In Bolzano the numbering did not start from 1, but from
approximately 2,979 , continuing from where it had arrived in Fossoli.
However Mike Bongiorno, an American PoW who would go on to become one of Italy's most beloved TV figures after the war, who was among the inmates, received the registration number 2264. The
deportees came mainly from central and northern Italy (about 20% were
arrested in Milan, 10% in the province of Belluno which, together with
Trento and Bolzano, had been annexed to Germany after September 8, 1943
with the creation of the zone of operation of the Pre-Alps). They were mainly political opponents,
but there were also Jewish deportees, South Tyrolean deserters from the
Wehrmacht or their families (Sippenhaft), gypsies (Roma and Sinti) and
Jehovah's Witnesses. A part of the deportees - around 3,500 people, men,
women and even several children - were transferred to Germany's
extermination camps; a part was instead used on site , as slave workers,
both in the laboratories inside the camp, and in the companies of the
nearby industrial area and at IMI, which had found refuge inside the
Virgolo tunnel to escape the Allied bombings, but also as apple pickers.
During the history of the camp, 23 Italians who were captured and
interned there were subsequently slaughtered in the Mignone barracks
massacre on September 12, 1944. In total, about 48 killings in the camp
are documented as certain, although up to 300 have been hypothesised.
As the allies advanced, the deportees were released in stages between
April 29 and May 3, 1945, when the concentration camp was definitively
abandoned. The ϟϟ took care to destroy all the documentation relating to the camp
before withdrawing. From the beginning both the internment of thousands
of Italian soldiers and the deportation of thousands of Italian
civilians for racial and political reasons were implemented; the
deportation of civilians lasted until the end of the war. This led them
to begin their resistance to Nazi fascism and their repression in
return. The
deportees, coming from the entire area of Operations in the Prealps and
in the regions of central-northern Italy, were marked with a serial
number and a different coloured triangle depending on the category: red
for deportees politicians, yellow for Jews, green for family hostages.
The exact number of the deportees in the Bolzano Lager is not known;
sources paper and testimonials indicate the number of 11,000
registrations. As from oral sources we know that not all the deportees
who came into this Lager was registered there, it is very probable that
the number of the deportees is greater. The commander of the Lager was
Lieutenant Karl Friedrich Titho whilst the deputy commander was Marshal ϟϟ Hans Haage. Bolzano
camp was the only one, in Italy, to have attached forced-labour camps
(Außenlager). Of these, the most important ones were in Merano, Schnals,
Sarntal, Moos in Passeier and Sterzing. In November 2000, the military
court of Verona sentenced Michael Seifert, a Ukrainian ϟϟ
known in the camp as "Misha", to life in prison for the atrocities he
committed against deportees, particularly those held in the jail block.
The relative recency of this trial is because the case had remained
hidden for decades and resurfaced with the discovery of the so-called
armadio della vergogna ("cabinet of shame") in 1994. Among the prisoners
that Seifert and his accomplice Otto Sein tortured was a young Mike
Bongiorno. Seifert, who had emigrated to Canada after the war, had to
face eighteen counts of murder and fifteen additional counts of
misconduct. He was tracked down in Vancouver, only days before the trial
was to begin, by a reporter working for the Vancouver Sun, who acted
upon information provided by the Associazione nazionale ex deportati
politici nei campi nazisti (ANED- the National Association of former
political deportees to Nazi internment camps). His story was
reconstructed by the Italian historians Giorgio Mezzalira and Carlo
Romeo in the book entitled Mischa, gaoler of the Bolzano lager. A
separate trial of the camp directors, Titho and Haage, had taken place
in 1999, with a different outcome: Titho was absolved for lack of evidence, while Haage was sentenced posthumously.
It
was here in Bolzano that Himmler's wife Margarete and daughter Gudrun
were captured by the Americans before being held in various internment
camps in Italy, France, and Germany. They were eventually brought to
Nuremberg to testify at the trials and were released in November 1946.
Gudrun emerged from the experience embittered by her alleged
mistreatment and remained devoted to her father's memory; until her
death in 2018 she consistently fought to defend her father's reputation
and became closely involved in Neo-Nazi groups that give support to
ex-members of the ϟϟ such as Stille Hilfe.
She married Wulf Dieter Burwitz, an official of the extremist NDP. In
fact, she would actually work for the West German spy agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) from 1961 to 1963.
After the war, independence movements gained popularity among the
German-Tyrolean population in Bolzano and South Tyrol. In the 1960s a
series of terrorist attacks and assassinations were carried out by the
South Tyrolean Liberation Committee – a German secessionist movement –
against Italian police and electric power structures (one notable
incident being the Night of Fire on June 12, 1961),
after which the United Nations intervened to enforce the start of
bilateral negotiations between Italy and Austria. After eleven years of
mediation and negotiation the two countries reached an agreement that
would guarantee self-government to the newly created Autonomous Province of South Tyrol.
According to this document, signed by the foreign ministers Mock (for
Austria) and De Michelis (for Italy), the perpetual acceptance of the
border between the two countries along the Brenner line was established
by Vienna. It was made intentionally ambiguous, so as to favour the
interpretation most pleasing to either side. It was finally in 1992 when
Austria aspired to enter the European Community and was aware that the
only impediment could come from Italy, (which had earlier exercised its
right of veto to the Austrian request in 1967 over the South Tyrolean
issue) that it decided it was not in its interest to point out its
conflicting opinion on the proper meaning of the "receipt" but would
kick the can down the road Theresa May-style. Nevertheless, today for
the Italians, the South Tyroleans remain allogeni
(foreigners) or valligiani dalle calze bianche (flatlanders in white
knee-socks). 
The central square of Bozen, the capital of South Tyrol, is Walther
Square, named after the great medieval German poet Walther von der
Vogelweide. His statue, shown during the fascist-era and 2019 (with my Grade 7 students from the Bavarian International School on the right during our 2013 school trip) dominates the square.
The
purpose of our trips was to visit Ötzi, an astonishingly well-preserved
natural mummy of a man who lived between 3400 and 3100 BCE. found in
September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, hence the nickname, on the border
between Austria and Italy. He is Europe's oldest known natural human mummy, and has offered
an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic Europeans. The location of his
body aply illustrates the continuing tug-of-war over Tyrol as the Treaty
of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 1919 established the border between North
and South Tyrol as the watershed of the rivers Inn and Etsch. Near
Tisenjoch the (now withdrawn) glacier complicated establishing the
watershed at the time, and the border was established too far north.
Although Ötzi's find site drains to the Austrian side, surveys in
October 1991 showed that the body had been located 92.56 metres inside
Italian territory as delineated in 1919. The province of South Tyrol
therefore claimed property rights, but agreed to let Innsbruck
University finish its scientific examinations. Since 1998 his body and
belongings are displayed in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in
Bolzano.
The body has been extensively examined, measured, x-rayed, and dated.
Tissues and gut contents were examined microscopically, as was the
pollen found on his gear. At the time of his death, Otzi was a
30-to-45-year old man, approximately 5'3" tall. Prior to his discovery,
the only remnants we had of the apparel of those times were the
relatively fragmentary remains found in the lake dwellings in the
circum-alpine region; generally, these consisted of woven or knitted
plant fibers. Animal-derived materials (furs, etc.) had been absent
there. His clothing consists of a cap, a fur coat, a pair of trousers, a
leather loin cloth, and a pair of lined shoes. His equipment included
an unfinished bow stave, a quiver and arrow shafts, a copper hatchet, a
dagger with a silex flint blade, a retoucheur, a birch bark container, a
backpack, as well as various spare materials and bone tips. Many of the
artefacts preserved in the ice are unique. In the absence of organic
remains, it was not clear from previous finds how these objects were
made and how they worked. The virtual body of the mummy can be opened up
via a touch screen, and visitors can discover and study important
medical curiosities. Microscopes are also on hand to examine Ötzi’s bone
structure, which was used to determine his age. Research into Ötzi’s
origins indicates that his ancestors migrated from the Middle East
during the Neolithic period following the spread of farming and animal
rearing. Forensic science has determined that Ötzi was clearly of
Central European origin. His genome inherited from his mother’s side has
died out, but is most similar to the Ladin population in the South
Tyrolean Dolomites. On his father’s side, the Iceman belongs to a
genetic group that was previously widespread in Europe but is now rare
and only found in isolated communities such as on the islands of
Sardinia and Corsica. Another section is dedicated to ongoing research,
particularly the decoding of Ötzi’s genomic DNA, which is being analysed
by scientists at the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman at EURAC in
Bolzano. 
The
cause of death remained uncertain until a full decade after the
discovery of the body. It was initially believed that Ötzi died from
exposure during a winter storm or even the victim of a ritual sacrifice,
perhaps for being a chieftain. However in 2001 X-rays and a CT scan revealed that Ötzi had an arrowhead lodged in his left shoulder
when he died and a matching small tear on his coat. The discovery of
the arrowhead prompted researchers to theorise Ötzi died of blood loss
from the wound, which would probably have been fatal even if modern
medical techniques had been available. Further research found that the
arrow's shaft had been removed before death, and close examination of
the body found bruises and cuts to the hands, wrists and chest and
cerebral trauma indicative of a blow to the head. One of the cuts was to
the base of his thumb that reached down to the bone but had no time to
heal before his death. Currently, it is believed that Ötzi bled to death
after the arrow shattered the scapula and damaged nerves and blood
vessels before lodging near the lung. In fact, DNA analyses claim they
revealed traces of blood from at least four other people on his gear:
one from his knife, two from a single arrowhead, and a fourth from his
coat. Interpretations of these findings were that Ötzi killed two people
with the same arrow and was able to retrieve it on both occasions, and
the blood on his coat was from a wounded comrade he may have carried
over his back. Ötzi's posture in death (frozen body, face down, left arm
bent across the chest) could support a theory that before death
occurred and rigor mortis set in, the Iceman was turned onto his stomach
in the effort to remove the arrow shaft.
Other
bodies from the past have been unearthed from the ice, demonstrating
even more the interaction of history and geography on the region's
legacy today. Dead bodies of two soldiers believed to have fallen in the
Battle of Presena during the so-called White War in 1918 had been found nearby at an altitude of 9,850 feet. According to New York World correspondent E. Alexander Powell writing in 1917,
“[o]n no front, not on the sun-scorched plains of Mesopotamia, nor in
the frozen Mazurian marshes, nor in the blood-soaked mud of Flanders,
does the fighting man lead so arduous an existence as up here on the
roof of the world." The discovery of the entangled bodies, uniform
fragments and military badges of the dead bodies
was the second incident after the cache of over 200 rusted grenades from
the Great War emerged from the Dolomites glacier in August, 2013. The
Alps have been also revealing soldiers’ straw overshoes made by the
Russians, diaries, a poem- ode to a louse- that says ‘my friend of long
days’ and even an unsent love letter addressed to someone named Maria.
Otzi was in good shape as he died at the edge of the glacier that froze
his body but did not crush it whilst the two soldiers discovered this
month had been fused together by the pressing force of the glacier. The
soldiers were both around only 17 or 18 years of age. One of them had a
single bullet hole in his skull with a piece of bullet shrapnel inside.
The other soldier had a personal belonging- a spoon tucked inside his
leg wrappings.
Chiusa
During the 1930s and today, the view on the left marred by the new motorway.
Albrecht Dürer travelled through Italy in 1494 and sketched Klausen during the trip.
This sketch was later incorporated in his engraving "Nemesis" (Das
große Glück). Given that Nemesis is not the goddess of happiness, but of
retribution, presumably Dürer was referring to a 1499 poem in Latin by
Angelo Poliziano from 1499, in which Fortuna -the Roman goddess of
victory or fortune, displayed as a winged figure on Roman coins- is
equated with Nemesis. The implied movement of Nemesis' drapery and the
clouds at her feet add to the charged energy of Dürer's depiction of the
goddess balanced precariously on the sphere of uncertain fortune. She
bears the cup of reward for the deserving and a bridle to restrain the
headstrong. In her figure, Dürer sought to reconcile the classical rules
for harmoniously balanced human proportions and the northern European
Gothic preference for height, protruding abdomens and high waists.As
Fortuna, the figure stands on a ball, as Nemesis she holds a trophy for
good deeds and bridles for the unruly. Underneath, the town of Klausen
in the Eisacktal spreads in mirror image. Striking is the fat body of
the woman, with strong thighs, swelling belly and pronounced double
chin. On the site where Dürer is to have sketched the town is the
Dürerstone, inscribed with the date 1504 which is incorrect as he would
have been at the location a decade earlier.