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  • The South Tyrol Question, 1866–2010: From National Rage to Regional State by Georg Grote
  • Jennifer L. Good
Georg Grote, The South Tyrol Question, 1866–2010: From National Rage to Regional State. Cultural Identity Studies 10. Bern: Peter Lang, 2012. 186 pp.

The monograph The South Tyrol Question, 1866–2010: From National Rage to Regional State by Georg Grote situates the South Tyrol region and its history as singularly complex yet exemplifying the contentious history of twentieth-century central Europe over the same period. As an historian interested in the identity formation and politics in regional and national spaces (Grote has also published on Ireland and Germany), the author is specifically drawn to the vast cultural differences represented in this geographically small mountainous area in the central Alps. His recent book I bin a Südtiroler: Kollektive Identität zwischen Nation und Region im 20. Jahrhundert and his chapters in Südtirolismen: Erinnerungskulturen, Gegenwartsreflexionen, Zukunftsvisionen, which he published with Barbara Siller, provide a rich tapestry of insights into the intrigues and justifications for the various manifestations of unity and disunity that existed before the ethnic minorities of South Tyrol emerged as a geographic and cultural autonomous region in the late twentieth century.

This largely chronological account of the national histories that overlap and hold recurrent sway over South Tyrol makes the case for a region “unique in its historical, social, linguistic and ethnic composition” while focusing on how ethnic minorities maintained and fought for their self-determination in the face of strong national forces of Italianization, Fascism, and the stresses of the Cold War (172). Grote does not limit his discussion to the ethnicities of the region but rather includes in his history the importance of natural rivers [End Page 138] and mountain ranges, the region’s natural resources and industry (especially power generation), international trade and trade routes as well as political pressures from its neighbors. Grote’s scholarly regard for the various facets of the communities in the region ensures a sophisticated history of South Tyrol over more than a century with particular focus on the period from the late twentieth century to the present, when the region has emerged with an economic and political dynamism that belies its small size.

Grote’s research and examination of South Tyrolean history is most compelling in his examination of the period from 1945 to the present. He vividly recounts the contorted negotiations that followed Germany’s capitulation in 1945 and the subsequent disputed border issues from 1919 as well as the end of this war. The Allies sought to use the region to placate both Italy and Austria, but beginning with the Gruber-DeGasperi agreement of 1946 it was clear that the treaties satisfied no one. The promise of “long-awaited autonomy [for the region] was a hollow construct” that awakened a strong unrest and eventually violence and terrorism during the late 1950s and early 1960s (85). The story of activist and resistance fighter Sepp Kerschbaumer became the tinder that ignited a larger conflict, with more militant groups seeking an end to what they viewed as the Italian occupation of South Tyrol. The eventual rejection of violence on all sides that resulted from the Milan trials of 1963 and 1964 are, for Grote, a profound paradigm shift for the region that “marked the change from the classic nationalist concept to a more modern regionalist one” (107). After the Italian court proceedings revealed the violence in the context of Italian mistreatment, the stated goal of a “reunification,” especially one achieved through force, was no longer viable. With this modification in how each group viewed each other, a diplomatic solution built on political dialogue held wide appeal. The Statute of Autonomy of 1972 and the subsequent discussions between Austria and Italy (as well as among the minorities of South Tyrol) have set in motion an enviable and flexible evolution that matches up well with the European Union’s developments of border regions in strengthening cross-border coordination and collaboration since the early 1990s (124–125).

The last two chapters of the book depart from a historical account of the South Tyrol question in order to position the region’s public...

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