German colonies in southern Tyrol and Upper Italy

Appendix.

History.

German colonies in southern Tyrol and Upper Italy. – 1/2

The German communities at the southern end of the Alps, the *Sette Comuni* in the Vicentine mountains and the *Tredeci Comuni in the Veronese mountains, have long been regarded as a striking and remarkable phenomenon, and several Italian writers, Scipione Maffei, Pezzo, Costa, etc., have sought in learned treatises to investigate where these Germans came from. Büsching* also addressed this question.

Directly adjacent to these Vicentine and Veronese communities are other German communities belonging to Italian Tyrol, those of Folgaria and Lavarone (Folgreit and Lafraun), and, with only slight interruption, others follow further north, partly in the judicial district of Civezzano on the mountains of Piné, although there the German language has almost entirely disappeared, partly and even more so in the judicial district of Pergine; in Valsugana too, especially at Roncegno, Germans have resided since ancient times. The aforementioned writers partly extended their inquiry to these Tyrolean communities as well. However, a Tyrolean scholar also tried his hand at this task, namely the legal scholar Simon Peter Bartolomei of Pergine, known for a thorough treatise on the coins of Trento, Merano, and Verona, who around the year 1760, at the request of the minister Count Karl von Firmian, wrote an as yet unpublished treatise: *De orientalium Tyrolensium, praecipue alpinorum Originibus*. He had the advantage over the mentioned Italian writers of being knowledgeable in the German language, and he took great pains to inform himself through direct intercourse and association with the people of these German communities. His treatise also contains a wealth of highly valuable notes.

All these scholars, including Bartolomei, see in these Germans descendants of the ancient Cimbri defeated by the Roman Marius, or at least of their allies, the Tigurini. They assume that remnants of these defeated barbarians fled into the mountains closest to the battlefield and were not pursued further by the Romans. This opinion, which in the Sette Comuni, according to Count v. Sternberg, is also popular belief, later fell into discredit, and in its place the hypothesis was adopted that these Germans were descendants of those Alamanni and Thuringians who were defeated near Cologne by the Frankish King Clovis in the year 496. People venture the conjecture that the defeated, to escape the yoke of the Franks, moved towards Italy and submitted to the Goth King Theodoric. All these treatises and modes of explanation, however, testify to much antiquarian learning and remain in fact arbitrary, ill-founded hypotheses. The language *) of these communities alone seems to prove that one cannot go so extraordinarily far back into antiquity. To Count v. Sternberg, the pronunciation of the inhabitants of the Sette Comuni seemed to correspond most closely to that of the Bavarian mountain dwellers from the area of Schliersee and Tegernsee, and it is not improbable to them that this small people is of Bavarian stock.

It is certain, however, that these Germans have been in their present seats for many centuries. A charter of freedoms from the Doge of Venice from the year 1417 confirms to the Sette Comuni their freedoms existing since time immemorial and even from the time when Vicenza still governed itself as a republic. Bartolomei adduces a document from the year 1166 from which it becomes clear that the mountains near Pergine were already inhabited by German communities at that time. The document is a kind of statute drawn up before Abbot Treutwig of the monastery of Wald (de Waldo) near Pergine for these very communities. But for that reason it is by no means necessary to go back to Marius or to King Clovis. We consider these Germans to be descendants of colonists who were probably relocated to this region between the tenth and twelfth centuries.

Bartolomei noted among the Germans of Italian Tyrol three, as it seemed to him, clearly distinct dialects, which already proves that they cannot be derived from a single German tribe, and makes it probable that they stem rather from colonists recruited in various regions of Germany. To elevate this almost to a certainty, one must not, as has happened hitherto, merely stop at the Germans surrounded by an Italian population. One should go where Italian Tyrol and the German communities situated within it end, going further north back from the mountains of Piné and Pergine to Anterivo or Altrui (Altaripa), to Trodena (Trodena), to Aldeno, Nova Ponente, etc., and one comes across German communities with strikingly different dialects again. However, to make the matter clearer, we wish to take the route in reverse, from north to south.

If one proceeds southwards from the Inn Valley over the Brenner, and observes the inhabitants of the land in the valley as well as in the mountains, their language, their mode of dress, and their customs, one cannot help, despite a multitude of different nuances, regarding them all as a people of the same stock, until, continuing ever southwards on the mountain on the left bank of the Eisack, one suddenly comes upon communities in whose case one feels forced to make an exception. The communities of Völs, Tiers, and Steineck still clearly belong to the large German Tyrolean stock. Directly bordering on these are the communities of Welschnofen (Nova Italiana), Eggenthal (Valle di S. Niccolò), and Deutschnofen (Nova Tedesca) with the small communities of Kollern, Kampenn, Seit, and Breitenberg lying on the slope of the mountain and belonging to the judicial district of Bozen; behind Deutschnofen follow the communities of Petersberg, Aldein, and Radein. (To be concluded)

*) In order to be able to examine the language still in use there today more closely and thoroughly, the editorial team deems it appropriate to present an example of it to its readers for examination, taken from the popular catechism printed in the seminary at Padua in 1813 under the title "Dar Kloane Catechismo vor dez Bélozeland, vortraghet in z´ Gaprechi von siben Perghen".

Pater noster. Unzar Vater vôn me Hümmelé sai gaeart eiir halgar namó: Kemme dar eur Hümmel, sai gatáant allez baz ar helt iart, bia in Hümmel, aso af d´earda: ghetütz heüte ünzar proat von altághe: un lacctütz naach ünzare schulle, bia bar láceuse naach biar den da saint schullik üz: haltotütz gahütet von tentaciún: un hevetütz de übel. Asó saiz.

Ave Maria. Ich grüzach, Maria, volla grazien, Gott dar Herre ist met eüch: séelik iart übar de baibar: séelik z´kint von eureme láibe Jesus: Halga Maria, Muter von Gotte me Herren, pittet vor üz süntar, hommest, un af an stunt von ünzarme tóade, Asó saiz.

Credo. Ich clobe in an einen Gott, Vater, da mak allez da hat gaschát in Hümmel un déarda; un in Jesu Christo sain anlóandar Sun ünzarn Herren, da ist gabéest concep´iart vor arbot von me halghen spiriten: gabüärtet von Maria Vergine: hat geláidet untar Pontio Pilato: ist gabéest ganághelt af z´ Kreüce, gestörbet, un begrabet; ist gant nidar in de hella: drai taghe darnáach ist auf gastánnet von tóaten: ist gant zu´ Hümmele: sitzet af de rechte von me Gott Vatere da mak allez: von da hat er zo kemman zu judicaran léntegehe un tóate. Ich clobe in den halghen spiriten, in de halghe lierche Cattolica, un haben toal von dar bool von Hóleghen, de vorghébenghe von sünten, z´ dorlénteghan von tóaten un an sillenttan léeban af d´ andar belt. Asó saiz.

Der Bote für Tirol – Issue of: 09.07.1821

Appendix.

History.

German colonies in southern Tyrol and Upper Italy. (Conclusion.) – 2/2

The inhabitants of all these communities are called in Bozen by a collective name, Reckelberger , and the range of mountains they inhabit, the Reckelberg; how this name, which does not occur in the mountains themselves, originated, is unknown to me. Obviously, the inhabitants of all these communities belong to the same stock; but they are so strikingly different from the main Tyrolean stock behind them in their costume and dialect that one must necessarily assign them another origin and regard them as a colony that immigrated from another German region. Their dialect occurs nowhere else in Tyrol, and it even has several advantages over the common Tyrolean dialect, being spoken best, as is assumed, in Deutschnofen. Thus, to cite just a few points, the ös or es (vos) common in Tyrol is replaced here by the genuine German ihr; thus the ā, which in the rest of Tyrol is often transformed into an open a, retains its true sound; wälsch, Wälder, not walsch, Walder, etc. That the population of these communities arose through a colony led there in a bygone century is also confirmed by a popular legend preserved among these people to our day. They say an emperor, whom I heard named now Henry, now Conrad, but more often by the latter name, sent their ancestors to this region as miners to dig for ores, and when the outcome did not meet expectations, presented these mountains to them for the use of the surface.

If one continues one's way in the mountains, always heading south, one reaches directly from Aldein the German community of Truden, and from there the likewise German community of Altrei, whose dialect is again strikingly different from that of the aforementioned communities and also from the main Tyrolean dialect. The nasal au (according to the Mau, for the moon, etc.) seems almost certainly to designate the Swabian region from which this colony came. Similar to this dialect, as far as I know, is only that of Tisens and Unsere Liebe Frau im Walde-St. Felix (Senale); the inhabitants of these places likewise appear to be a colony inserted between the main German-Tyrolean stock bordering between Meran and Lana and the Italians that follow.

It has occurred to no one so far to conduct such painstaking research into all these communities as into the German communities surrounded by Italians; for because they bordered on other German communities from the main Tyrolean stock at least on one side, they did not attract as much attention. It is clear, however, that as soon as origin is to be investigated, the inquiry must be extended to one set of these colonies as well as to the other. Down in the Etsch Valley, the German language continues as far as Altrei; but it finds its border there at Salurn. Up in the mountains, however, this is not so; there, proceeding south, one very soon comes to the German communities of the judicial districts of Pergine and Civezzano, about which Bartolomei wrote, and the German language continues from there in the mountains even further and almost uninterruptedly into the Seven and Thirteen Communities. — We have seen two clearly different dialects, those of Deutschnofen and Truden; Bartolomei likewise found three different dialects in the communities he examined, and that of the Sette Comuni seems again to be different from these. So many different dialects seem to provide clear proof that colonists from various parts of Germany were once distributed in these regions. Bartolomei also found traces of Low German or, as he says, Dutch, in the t in words that have s in High and Upper German. — Emperor Otto the Great extended Germany's borders beyond the southern foot of the Alps by creating the March of Verona. It might not be too bold a conjecture to assume that this colonization took place at that time and that, in order to give stability to the new border, efforts were made to populate the land with Germans. In any case, this hypothesis should deserve preference by far over those that go back to the time of the Romans or the Frankish migration. However, according to the Deutschnofen folk legend, mining, in which German industry is ancient, could also have been the occasion for these colonies.

It is, however, greatly to be wished that a well-informed German, who would nevertheless have to combine a thorough study of the German language with a good knowledge of the Italian language, undertake specific research in these communities themselves. Obviously, highly interesting information regarding history and especially language could be gained thereby. To be sure, Pezzo, and from him Büsching, Bartolomei, and Count v. Sternberg have supplied fairly long word lists; but all were recorded by Italians and also written in the Italian manner. One cannot, therefore, rely on them with certainty; moreover, such individual words do not give a sufficient notion of the language. — But one must also add the wish that such research be undertaken as soon as possible, since the German language of these communities in Italian Tyrol and Upper Italy is losing ground more and more from day to day. In earlier centuries, these communities had German clergymen as parish priests; but that has long ceased, and the people receive all religious and school instruction only in the Italian language, which they all understand and speak alongside their German. It is also said that some parish priests take special pains to supplant the German language more and more. Perhaps it is from this that these people, as Bartolomei already experienced and as is said to be the case today as well, display a certain mistrust when one wants to make them speak German in front of a stranger, and that they are extremely difficult to persuade to do so. The German language seems once to have been much more widely spread in southern Tyrol than now, e.g. in the Cembra Valley, through a large part of Valsugana, also in Primiero. Bartolomei already names communities where it ceased long ago, others where it ceased recently; here and there in a community he found only a couple of families who spoke German. Without doubt, this language has lost even more ground since then. Where it still exists, however, it is heavily mixed with Italian words and Italianisms, and the people are therefore, and, as Bartolomei says, also because they speak their German very quickly, somewhat difficult to understand. – But I conclude, with the further wish that these suggestions may not remain unutilized.