German sympathies in Tyrol

German sympathies in Tyrol.

Recently, a quill whose shaft likely grew abroad and became more heavily feathered in these parts undertook to depict the state of present-day Tyrol with a few superficial strokes. “Seek — lost!” is the motto set above the picture as an admonition to those who wish to find Germany within our marches. In Innsbruck in the Neustadt, around the grand hotel “zum Oesterreichischen Hof,” on the Rennweg where the flag hoisted by Governor Brandis no longer waves from the balcony, the word “lost” seems to have resonated with particular clarity to the wanderer. How else could he, upon the sight of the last riflemen returning from border guard duty in Riva, have posed the anxious question: “Will they soon carry the green cross on the white armband northward?” The foreign pilgrim was likely experiencing the same chimera that made him look upon the Adige beside him through the valley — deliberate and yet perilous — as he journeyed from the Brenner to Bozen. “Along the Adige,” gratifying traces finally presented themselves to the patriotic explorer, as the “grape-harvesting” and no doubt wine-drinking peasants — because “master and servants redouble their zeal in drinking!” — told him with great patience: “the border must open,” and because the “Südtirolische Zeitung”
) had reportedly viewed the recently distributed commemorative medals of the defenders of the country as earnest money (Drangeld) for the prospect of selling produce to Germany. In this, and in the exclamation of a peasant in a Meran wine press, the correspondent senses indeed the substance of a party platform of the Greater Germans, “to whom, however, the door was not opened even upon knocking in Tyrol.” From “Old-Tyroleanism,” which “rejects every idea and fact that has not been fattened on historical alpine porridge (!),” do these phenomena stem; it mocked and rebuffed the Frankfurt Assembly and the Central Power, and even to this day has not regarded Austrian citizenship and its fundamental rights as valid for the land of Tyrol. — This party *remained orthodox, democratic against the gentlemen in the chancelleries, and staunchly imperial despite open discontent with the imperial concessions of March 1848! And yet all the “sober and honest” believe in the most sincere implementation of the constitution by the current ministry! “The liberals in the mountains” refuse thanks and assistance to their ostensible friends on the one hand, while on the other they are here “for the most part and in most respects” pro-government, outright ministerial.

In such fashion does the foreign wanderer classify and characterize the people of Tyrol! Apart from the “old dreamers” — which is what he believes those, along with himself, who still think of a united Germany are called — there is here in this country only a separatist and absolutist Old-Tyroleanism, and free-thinking men who are neither “pushy nor deceitful.” The “sober and honest” mentioned above thus appear to be merely the aforesaid “old dreamers,” to whom belong the explorer and those in whom “the surplus of wine and the shortage of grain keep alive a lingering need for a greater fatherland than the Charter of March 4 granted to the Tyroleans.” —

We cannot conceal from this unknown chronicler of our public affairs that his novel perspective, even if it provides only a meager contribution to the perfection of provincial statistics, has nevertheless caused great amusement everywhere; for this reason, to serve the useful promotion of mirth in these dreary times, we have presented here in abstract the quintessence of our wanderer's humor.

Alongside this, however, we take the liberty of recalling that the observer's wit failed to perceive how little the Tyroleans have possessed since ancient times of the fertile imagination of German ideologues and aesthetic philosophers; how they, by contrast, stood by Germany with steadfast loyalty alongside their princes as long as the Empire held together; yet how in Napoleon's time they followed the German Confederation of the Rhine just as little as they aligned themselves with the Left in the Paulskirche in 1848, or chased after the phantom of imperial unity this year with the rump parliament in Stuttgart.

If our people expect more benefit for Germany from the Austro-Prussian Interim than the “dreamers” are inclined to hope, if we place more weight on the prospective railway connection between Innsbruck and Rosenheim, and subsequently between Bozen and Verona, on the draft of a German imperial constitution in the new Münchner-Zeitung, and above all on the timely proposals of the Wiener-Zeitung toward initiating the Austro-German customs and trade union than on the Three Kings' Alliance and all the proposals of the Greater and Lesser Germans combined, the reason for this is least of all “the denial of conviction or the concealment of unprohibited wishes and hopes,” but rather what the whole world is accustomed to call sound judgment and proper tact. We are simply not used to seeing in Germany exemplary models of calm and selfless endeavors toward unity on a large scale. Until the uprising in 1848, the Tyrolean was treated at the borders of neighboring German lands as a foreigner, as was the case from our customs officers toward other Germans, and this has essentially remained the same ever since, with the exception of free passage for the Frankfurt deputies. But by common usage, one does not consider a friend and fellow countryman someone who sings with us but does not strive for us; a friendship is not deemed deep if it lasts only as long as the charm of novelty holds. — In the years 1703 and 1809, when neighboring Germany had become French, did the Tyroleans not prove themselves to be German? Do they show their sympathies for Germany's interest any less today because they side with Austria against Germany being swallowed up by Prussia?

The correspondent of the A. Z. sees among the Tyroleans a possibility of joining the German cause only in material terms. We would advise him, before publishing such novelties purely about us, to extend his journey of exploration a little further into the Austrian-German lands, then a bit into Saxony, Hanover, and elsewhere in the great fatherland. If he can bring back from there durable proofs of a pure longing of the heart for unity, free from the predominance of dynastic interests, hegemonic ambitions, tribal jealousy, and self-interest, and if he can prove to us that in Germany people stand mutually ready for the sacrifices demanded by the unity of the great fatherland with equal joy and without reservation, then he may cast solely upon us Tyroleans the stone of censure that he picked up from the nearest heap of gravel in his travel reveries. Until then, however, let him leave things as they were and still are among us.

Furthermore, if the A. Z. wishes to disseminate truthful information regarding the people and land of Tyrol, we would ask it not to accept with such credulity what an errant knight perceived during the half-lucid moments of his adventurous journey. Whoever brands the Tyroleans as un-German Austrians shoots just as far from the mark as whoever would mold them into Greater German enthusiasts. The Tyrolean people's sentiment was and is: With our German princely house to Germany's people and banner; not without the former do we wish to be united with the latter, but always standing ready to fight beneath the third!

*) According to the criterion of the correspondent of the A. Z. mentioned further below, our paper belongs among the “liberals in the mountains”; for according to the testimony in the Tiroler Wochenblatt No. 94 of October 6, 1849, it is edited by an “official” (which we had to learn from the T. Wochenblatt first), hence evidently “pro-government, outright ministerial.” A short while ago, the A. Z. observed that the Südtirolische Zeitung essentially pursues the same tendency as the Innsbrucker Zeitung; probably because the latter, so far as we know, is also edited by such an “official.”