Ettore Tolomei

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Tolomei 1938

Ettore Tolomei (born August 16, 1865 in Rovereto (then Tyrol , now Trentino / Italy ), † May 25, 1952 in Rome ) was an Italian politician, senator, nationalist and fascist . In 1937 he was ennobled as Conte della Vetta . As an advocate of the Brenner border and the Italianization of South Tyrol , he was also referred to by the German side as the “grave digger of South Tyrol” and because of his place name translations as a “place name forger”. On the Italian side, however, he is often viewed as a patriot .

Life

Tolomei was born in 1865 to a family who immigrated to Trento . During his studies of geography and history as well as linguistics and literature in Florence and Rome, he became an advocate of the thesis that the state border should be drawn according to the watershed on the main Alpine ridge . In 1890 Tolomei became editor of the nationalist Italian magazine La Nazione Italiana . As early as 1901 he began intensively with his efforts to incorporate South Tyrol into the Italian kingdom. This included, above all, the translations of all geographical terms into Italian and, in many cases, due to the lack of historical names, also new Italian names in order to pretend an alleged Italianità of the entire area up to the main Alpine ridge.

In 1904 Tolomei climbed the Klockerkarkopf in the rear Ahrntal , from then on referred to himself - deliberately incorrectly - as the first ascent (in fact, the mountain was climbed by Fritz Koegel and the mountain guide Franz Hofer as early as 1895 ) and named the mountain Vetta d'Italia (“top of Italy”).

In 1906 he founded the Archivio per l'Alto Adige , based in Montan in the South Tyrolean lowlands . There he had bought the Thalerhof in the hamlet of Glen in 1905, which he quickly began to convert in the antique style.

After the outbreak of the First World War, Tolomei moved to Rome and worked as a volunteer in the Italian General Staff after Italy entered the war in 1915. In 1916 he was officially entrusted with the creation of the Prontuario dei nomi locali dell'Alto Adige , in which, among other things, all South Tyrolean places, mountains, rivers and bodies of water were given partially invented Italian names. Incidentally, these designations have been the only officially valid since 1923 until today.

In South Tyrol, the view is widespread to this day that the name Vetta d'Italia convinced US President Woodrow Wilson , who was not very familiar with the geography and history of Europe, of the legitimacy of the Brenner border during the negotiations on the peace treaty of St. Germain in 1919.

After the end of the war and after South Tyrol was granted Italy in the peace treaty of St. Germain in 1919, he began as head of the Commissariato Lingua e Cultura per l'Alto Adige with the first concrete measures to Italianize. The seizure of power by fascism in 1922 gave him extensive opportunities to " assimilate " the South Tyrolean population and the language islands of the Cimbri in Trentino ( Lusern , Fersental ), Veneto ( Sappada , seven municipalities , thirteen municipalities ) and Friuli ( Timau , Sauris ) enforce (including a ban on German schools, Italianization not only of geographical names, but also of first names and surnames).

From 1919 Tolomei was a member of the fascist party in the province of Bolzano . In July 1923 Tolomei presented a catalog of measures for the Italianization of South Tyrol approved by the Grand Council of Fascism in Bolzano's city ​​theater :

  1. Unification of the Alto Adige and the Trentino in a single province with the capital Trento.
  2. Appointment of Italian municipal secretaries.
  3. Revision of (citizenship) options and closure of the Brenner border for all persons who have not been granted Italian citizenship.
  4. Entry and residence difficulties for Germans and Austrians.
  5. Prevention of German immigration.
  6. Revision of the 1921 census.
  7. Introduction of Italian as the official language.
  8. Dismissal of the German civil servants or transfer to the old provinces.
  9. Dissolution of the "German Association".
  10. Dissolution of all Alpine clubs that were not subject to the Italian Alpine Club; Handover of the refuges to the Italian Alpine Club.
  11. Prohibition of the names "Südtirol" and "Deutsch-Südtirol".
  12. The daily newspaper “Der Tiroler” is discontinued in Bolzano.
  13. Italianization of German place names.
  14. Italianization of public signs.
  15. Italianization of street and route names.
  16. Italianization of the Germanized family names.
  17. Removal of the Walther monument from Waltherplatz in Bolzano .
  18. Reinforcement of the Carabinieri troops excluding German teams.
  19. Favoring land acquisition and immigration by Italians.
  20. Non-interference from abroad in South Tyrolean affairs.
  21. Elimination of German banks, establishment of an Italian land credit bank.
  22. Establishment of border customs offices in Sterzing and Toblach .
  23. Generous promotion of the Italian language and culture.
  24. Establishment of Italian kindergartens and elementary schools .
  25. Establishment of Italian secondary schools .
  26. Strict control of foreign university diplomas.
  27. Expansion of the Istituto di Storia per l'Alto Adige.
  28. Change of the territory of the diocese of Brixen and strict control of the activity of the clergy.
  29. Use of Italian in litigation and in court.
  30. State control of the Bozen Chamber of Commerce and the agricultural corporations (Corporazioni).
  31. Extensive programs for new railway nodes to facilitate the Italianization of the Alto Adige (railway projects Milan-Mals, Valtellina-Brenner, Agordo-Brixen).
  32. Increase in the number of troops in the Alto Adige.

After the failure of his measures to a large extent, Tolomei propagated the resettlement of the German-speaking population and the Cimbres to Germany . In 1939 there was finally a corresponding agreement between Hitler and Mussolini , the so-called option , in which he acted as the main initiator and organizer.

For his service to the nation, Tolomei was made a senator by the fascists and in 1938 by King Victor Emmanuel III. ennobled as Conte della Vetta ("Count of the Summit"). He received in 1920 the Komtursorden and 1931 the Großkomturorden of the Order of the Crown of Italy .

After German troops marched into Italy in 1943, Ettore Tolomei was arrested by the German Wehrmacht and interned in a camp in the Thuringian Forest . In 1945 he was liberated and handed over the management of the Archivio per l'Alto Adige to Carlo Battisti .

Ettore Tolomei's tomb in the Montan cemetery

He retained the title of senator he had received during the fascist era and in turn became an advisor to the Italian government.

According to his will, he wanted to be buried facing north "to see how the last South Tyrolean was chased over the Brenner". He died on May 25, 1952 and was honored with a state funeral on May 26, 1952 and buried in Montan . His grave was desecrated in 1957. In 1979 it was blown up by unknown perpetrators, and its embalmed body was thrown over the cemetery wall. According to information from the municipality of Montan, no maintenance or concession fee has been paid for his grave since the burial. This resulted in the demand that the grave should be abandoned in accordance with the cemetery regulations.

Trivia

On August 16, 2019, for the 154th birthday of Ettore Tolomei, the German-speaking place names in South Tyrol were pasted on hundreds of place-name signs. The South Tyrolean Schützenbund had thus drawn attention to the allegedly still present fascism. The action of the Schützenbund lasted around twelve hours. More than 600 place-name signs were covered with self-adhesive notices by the local rifle companies. The posters read "DNA - since 97J". The label should mean "German not officially for 97 years". The first decree that was supposed to replace the German and Ladin language names dates back to 1922.

Place signs protest of the South Tyrolean Schützenbund

Fonts (selection)

  • Ettore Tolomei: Memorie di vita. Garzanti, Milano 1948. (autobiography)

Movies

  • Franz J. Haller, Ludwig Walther Regele: Documentary Ettore Tolomei and Italian Nationalism in South Tyrol (76 min) German. TV version RAI-Sender Bozen (2004). 2009 version in Ladin language

literature

  • Ettore Conte Tolomei , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 08/1964 of February 10, 1964, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of the article freely available)
  • Gisela Framke: In the fight for South Tyrol. Ettore Tolomei (1865–1952) and the “Archivio per l'Alto Adige”. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1987, ISBN 3-484-82067-5 .
  • Sergio Benvenuti, Christoph von Hartungen (ed.): Ettore Tolomei (1865–1952). Un nazionalista di confine. The limits of nationalism. Museo Storico in Trento, Trento 1998.
  • Rolf Steininger : South Tyrol: a minority conflict of the twentieth century. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ 2003, ISBN 978-0-7658-0800-4 .
  • Andreas Raffeiner: Ettore Tolomei , in: Südtiroler Heimatbund (Ed.): Ettore Tolomei lives. Siebeneich 2016, pp. 13–141.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gisela Framke: In the struggle for South Tyrol. Ettore Tolomei (1865–1952) and the “Archivio per l'Alto Adige”. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1987, p. 91.
  2. ↑ Sabrina Michielli, Hannes Obermair (Red.): BZ '18 –'45: one monument, one city, two dictatorships. Accompanying volume for the documentation exhibition in the Bolzano Victory Monument. Folio, Vienna / Bozen 2016, ISBN 978-3-85256-713-6 , p. 52
  3. ↑ a b Deep South Tyrolean unease. In: derStandard.at. March 25, 2017. Retrieved December 6, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b stol.it Südtirol Online, Italy: Grave of Ettore Tolomei in Montan . November 18, 2018 ( stol.it [accessed November 8, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Martin Feichter: Tolomei's tomb in Montan soon to be history? In: unsertirol.com. November 16, 2015, accessed on November 8, 2018 (German).
  6. ↑ Place sign protest of the South Tyrolean riflemen. Österreichischer Rundfunk, 2019, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Tolomei, Ettore
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian nationalist and fascist
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Rovereto
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 1952
Place of death Rome