Figure 1.--This CDV portrait pictures four Austrian children in Bozen/Bolzano, capital of the Aouth Tyrol. At the time the province was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The children who look to be about 2-8 years old wear identical suits and dresses. The two oldest boys wear cut-away jacket suits. Notice the white lomg stockings. The younger children wear identical dresses. We believe the child on the left wearing a dress is a boy, based on his hir cut. The CDV is undated, but we would guess was taken about 1870. The studio is J. B. Runggaldier, Bozen.

South Tirol has a fascinating history. It was historically an Alpine area connecting Italy to the south and Germny to the north. This is why the stoneage iceman, Ötzi, was discovered in the mountains nearby. He was apprently attempting to cross Alpine passes. The province and capital was fr many years part of austria and within the Holy Roman Empire. The location south of the Brenner Pass made the capital (Bozen/Bolzano) the scene of important trade fairs frquented by Austrian and Italian merchants.It was the scene of heavy World war I fighting after Italy joined the Allies (1915). After the War as past of the peace settlement, South Tirol with its mostly Austrian German speaking popultion was annexed by Italy and became the country's most northerly province. At the time very few Italians lived there. Italy's Austrian minority is mostly located in South Tirol. In the inter-War era Austrian German-speaking community resisted Mussolini's attempts at Italification. The people not only spoke German, but actually looked down on the Italians. Other territories Italy won as a result of the War were heavily populated with ethnic Italians. They were a stubborn people, staunchly Catholic and proud of their own ways. They would have welcomed Hitler's attempts to reunite ethnic Germns with the Reich after he seized Austria with the Anschlus. Mussolini and the Fascists worried that Hitler, in pursuing his ideology of all ethnic Germans under one Reich, would demand South Tyrol as he did other areas with German ethnic populations. This was one reason that Mussolini did not embrace Hitler when he first seized power (1933). The issue was finally settled before Hitler launched World War II (1939). They signed the Option Agreement under which Hitler renounced territorial claims over South Tyrol as part of Germany's Lebensraum (living space). Some ethnic German South-Tyroleans tryurned to the Reich. Those who chose to stay in South Tyrol were subjected by the Fascists to intensive Italianisation. They lost of their German names and national identity, German-language school, and the use of the German language in public. The province today is largely Italian, but with a German minority that has regained some degree of autonomy.

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Created: 1:02 PM 1/11/2016
Last updated: 1:03 PM 1/11/2016