Fatti di Innsbruck
The Italian paraphrasing Fatti di Innsbruck (German The Events of Innsbruck ) describes the violent, nationalistically motivated clashes between German national and Italian students at the University of Innsbruck on the occasion of the opening of the Italian Law Faculty in 1904. The tumult is one of several key events in the years the worsening nationality conflicts in the multi-ethnic state Austria-Hungary . The riot killed anti-Italian demonstrators and led to the devastation and official closure of the Italian university facility.
Background: The dispute over an Italian university in Austria
In the multi-ethnic state of Austria-Hungary, there has been no Italian-language university education since the loss of Venice (with the University of Padua located there ) in 1866. On the part of the Italians of Austria, who were at home in the Kronland Tirol or in the Trentino as well as in the coastal region around Trieste , there were increasing demands for the establishment of a new Italian university. However , the establishment of an Italian university was rejected by conservative and German national circles in Vienna and Innsbruck . The driving motive was the fear that an Italian university would further promote anti-Austrian irredentism among the Italians of Austria.
The political debate about the establishment of the Italian university in Austria dragged on for several decades, with various options being discussed. The Italian maximum demand was originally aimed at the establishment of an independent university in Trieste (“Trieste o nulla!”, German Trieste or nothing! ), Which was later expanded to include the compromise locations of Trento and Rovereto . Official Austria, however, rejected all of these proposals. It was not until 1904 that a compromise solution, which was unsatisfactory for all parties, was reached, which provided for the establishment of an Italian law faculty within the German-speaking University of Innsbruck .
The establishment of the Italian Law Faculty in Innsbruck
On September 27, 1904, the Austrian Minister of Education ordered the establishment of a provisional law faculty in Italian at the University of Innsbruck. This was finally officially opened on November 3rd in the Wilten district of Innsbruck . Numerous Italian-speaking students who studied at other universities in Austria (in Vienna and Graz ) took part in the inauguration ceremony . Among them were the later top Italian politicians Cesare Battisti and Alcide Degasperi .
Following the opening, Italian students and professors decided to continue the celebrations in the Gasthaus Weißes Kreuz in downtown Innsbruck. There, as a result of verbal hostility between Italian and German-Austrian students, the Italian party community was finally physically fixed by an angry mob who besieged the restaurant. After the start of tangible clashes between the hostile groups (as a result of an unsuccessful police evacuation of the Italians), the situation could only be brought under control with the help of the Kaiserjäger summoned by the governor of Tyrol and Vorarlberg Erwin von Schwartzenau . The Ladin painter August Pezzey was stabbed to death with the bayonet by an emperor hunter on the side of the anti-Italian demonstrators .
The mood, heated by the tumult and the death of Pezzey, discharged into pogrom-like excesses against Italian shops and institutions in Innsbruck on November 4th and 5th , with the newly opened law faculty being stormed and devastated by an angry crowd. The riots finally subsided with the arrest of 138 representatives of the Italian student body - among them the Trentino representatives Cesare Battisti and Alcide Degasperi. The arrested were only released after several weeks of detention. In the meantime, the Italian courses at the University of Innbruck were suspended again on November 7th; on November 17th, the Italian Law Faculty was officially dissolved.
Consequences of events
The fatti di Innsbruck mark the increase in a latent disadvantage for Italians at the University of Innsbruck at the turn of the century to an institutionalized exclusion of Italian on the eve of the First World War. On the Italian side, the fatti di Innsbruck also contributed to further radicalization, which was expressed, among other things, in the turn of the originally internationalist-minded socialist Cesare Battisti to positions of irredentism .
The expansion of university structures, as discussed in the run-up to the fatti di Innsbruck , did not materialize until the second half of the 20th century under completely different political circumstances. In Italy the University of Trieste (1924) and the University of Trento (1962) were founded. An institute for Italian law was not established again at the University of Innsbruck until 1971, largely triggered by the political events surrounding the South Tyrolean question .
Literature (chronological)
- Claus Gatterer : Hereditary enmity between Italy and Austria , Europa-Verlag , Vienna-Frankfurt-Zurich 1972.
- Gerhard Oberkofler : Legal teaching in Italian at the University of Innsbruck (1864–1904) , Innsbruck 1975.
- Gerhard Oberkofler / Peter Goller : History of the University of Innsbruck (1669–1945) , Peter Lang Verlag , Frankfurt-Vienna et al. 1996.
- Irmgard Plattner: Fin de siècle in Tyrol. Provincial culture and provincial society at the turn of the century , StudienVerlag, Innsbruck / Vienna 1999.
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Michael Gehler / Günther Pallaver (eds.): Università e nazionalismi: Innsbruck 1904 e l'assalto alla Facoltà di giurisprudenza italiana , Trento 2010.
- Michael Gehler / Günther Pallaver (eds.): University and nationalism. Innsbruck 1904 and the storming of the Italian law faculty , Museo Storico del Trentino, Trento 2013.
Individual evidence
- ^ Claus Gatterer: Erbfeindschaft Italy-Austria , Europa-Verlag, Vienna et al. 1972.
- ^ Graziano Riccadonna: In lotta per l'università ... italiana Vita trentina from January 6, 2011
- ↑ Michael Gehler: The fatti di Innsbruck or the storming of the Italian law faculty on November 4, 1904. An event in the overall political context of the Habsburg monarchy , in: Michael Gehler / Günther Pallaver: University and Nationalism. Innsbruck 1904 and the storming of the Italian law faculty, Trient 2013, pp. 19–55.
- ^ Website of the Institute for Italian Law at the University of Innsbruck