Trentino Alto Adige

History

The region of the Trentino-South Tyrol was conquered by the Romans in 15 BC.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the region was divided among the various tribes who invaded northern Italy from Germany: the city of Tridentum became a Lombard duchy, Val Venosta passed to the Alamanni and the rest to the Bavarians.

After the creation of the Kingdom of Italy under Charlemagne, the Marquis of Verona got the territories south of Bolzano, while the Duchy of Bavaria the remainder.

From the eleventh century, the region was ruled by prince-bishops of Trent and Brixen, to which the Holy Roman Emperors gave large temporal powers. The remainder of the region was part of the County of Gorizia and Tyrol, which controlled the Pusteria: in 1363 his last governor, Margaret, Countess of Tyrol gave it to the House of Habsburg.

The regions north of Salorno were largely Germanized, thus, since the beginning of the Middle Ages.

The two Archbishops of Trento and Brixen were secularized by the Treaty of Luneville of 1803 and given to the Habsburgs.

Two years later, after the defeat of Austria at Austerlitz, with the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805, the region was given to Bavaria, ally of Napoleon.

Soon, against the new rulers, there was a brief, although massive, peasant rebellion, led by Andreas Hofer, a landlord from St. Leonhard.

With the Treaty of Paris of 1810 the region was divided between Austria and the Napoleonic kingdom of Italy and the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Austria gained control of the entire region.

During the period of French domination of the region's name was officially changed to Haut Adige (lit. "Upper Adige") in order to avoid any reference to the historic county of Tyrol.

During the First World War, control of the region was a major policy goal, giving rise to big battles over the Alps and Dolomites between Austrian and Italian Alpine troops.With the defeat of the first, in 1918, Italian troops occupied the region, whose annexation was confirmed by the Treaty of Saint-Germain, finally giving the region to 'Italy.

Under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, Alto Adige has been subjected to a forced process aimed at increasing the 'Italianization ": all references to the old Tyrol were banned and the region was called Tridentine Venice in an attempt to justify the Italian claims on the base of the region belonging to the Roman province X Regio Venetia et Histria.

Hitler and Mussolini in 1938 agreed that the German-speaking population was to be moved to the area ruled by Germany or dispersed around Italy, but the outbreak of World War II prevented them from fully carrying out the proposed deportation. Anyway, during the year the two dictators had available, thousands of people were deported in the Third Reich and, only at the end of the war, were able to return home with great difficulty.

In 1943, with the sign of the armistice between the Italian government and allied troops, the region was occupied by Germany, under the administration of Gauleiter Franz Hofer. The region was effectively annexed by the German Reich together with the province of Belluno, until the end of the war.

After the war, the region came back under the Italian control and Italy and Austria agreed to grant substantial autonomy to the region. Official languages of the region were at the same time, German and Italian and allowed instruction in German. Between 1947 and 1972 the region was called the Trentino-Alto Adige / Tiroler Etschland.

However, the implementation of the agreement was not acceptable to either the German-speaking population nor from the Government. The issue became the source of friction between the two countries, taken up by the UN in 1960. In 1961 an attempt to resolve the situation with new negotiations failed, due to a terrorist campaign by the German-speaking separatists.

The problem was solved in 1971 when a new Austro-Italian was signed. The Treaty provides that disputes in Bolzano are brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, that the province would receive greater autonomy in Italy, and that Austria would not interfere in the internal affairs of Bolzano.

The new agreement proved broadly to be satisfactory to the parties involved and the separatist tensions soon faded. The accession to the European Union in 1995 helped, then, to improve cross-border cooperation.