German colonies in southern Tyrol and Upper Italy

Appendix.

History.

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

The inhabitants of all these communities are called in Bozen by the collective name Reckelberger and the mountain range they inhabit the Reckelberg ; where 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 differ so strikingly from the main Tyrolean stock lying behind them in their traditional dress and dialect that one must necessarily assign them a different origin and regard them as a colony that immigrated from another German region. Their dialect does not occur anywhere else in Tyrol, and it even has several advantages over the common Tyrolean dialect; moreover, it is believed to be spoken best in Deutschnofen. Thus, to cite just a few examples, the pronoun ös or es (vos), which is general in Tyrol, is replaced by the proper German ihr; likewise, the ā, which in the rest of Tyrol is often changed into an open a, retains its true sound; wälsch, Wälder, not walsch, Walder. etc. That the population of these communities arose through a colony brought there in a past century is also confirmed by a folk legend that has survived among these people to this day. They say that an emperor, whom I heard called sometimes Henry, sometimes Conrad, but more often by the latter name, sent their ancestors to this area as miners to dig for ores, and since the success did not match expectations, granted them these mountains 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 (der Mau nach, for der Mond etc.) seems almost certainly to point to the Swabian region from which this colony came. Similar to this dialect, as far as I know, is only that of Tisens and Senal; the inhabitants of these places likewise appear to be a colony inserted between the main German-Tyrolean stock bordering near Meran and Lana and the Italians that follow.

No one has hitherto thought of carrying out such painstaking research into all these communities as into the German communities surrounded by Italians; namely, because they bordered at least on one side on other German communities of the main Tyrolean stock, they did not attract so much attention. But it is clear that as soon as their origin is to be investigated, the question must be extended to these colonies just as much as to the others. As far as Altrei, the German language continues down in the Etsch Valley as well; but there at Salurn it finds its boundary. High up in the mountains, however, it is not so; there, proceeding southwards, one very soon reaches the German communities of the judicial districts of Pergine and Civezzano, of 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 distinctly 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 different parts of Germany were once distributed in these regions. Bartolomei also found traces of Low German or, as he says, Dutch in the t of words that have s in High and Upper German. — Emperor Otto the Great extended Germany's borders beyond the southern foot of the Alps through the formation of the March of Verona. It might not be too bold a conjecture to assume that this colonization took place at that time, and that efforts were made to populate the land with Germans in order to give stability to the new border. In any case, this hypothesis deserves far greater preference 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-educated German, who would need to combine a thorough study of the German language with a good knowledge of Italian, undertake independent research in these communities themselves. Clearly, very interesting insights could be gained for history and especially for linguistics. To be sure, Pezzo, and following him Büsching, Bartolomei, and Count v. Sternberg, have supplied fairly long word lists; but all were collected by Italians and written in an Italian manner. One cannot therefore rely on them with certainty; moreover, such individual words do not give a sufficient concept of the language. - But one must also add the wish that such research be conducted as soon as possible, as the German language of these communities in Italian Tyrol and Upper Italy is losing ground from day to day. In earlier centuries, these communities had German clergymen as parish priests; but this custom has long ceased, and the people receive all religious and school instruction solely in the Italian language, which they all understand and speak alongside their German. It is also said that some parish priests make a special effort to suppress the German language more and more. Perhaps this is why these people, as Bartolomei experienced and as is said to be the case today as well, express a certain mistrust when someone tries to get them to speak German to a stranger, and why it is extremely difficult to induce them to do so. The German language seems once to have been much more widely spread in southern Tyrol than now, for example in the Cembra Valley, through a large part of Valsugana, and also in Primör. 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, the 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. – I conclude, however, with the further wish that these suggestions may not remain unused.