Research on "ITALIANS IN ALTO ADIGE"

In recent years there has been an Austrian campaign aimed at erase all that is Italian related in the alpine region of Italy, that is officially called "ALTO ADIGE" since the end of WW1.

This territory is called in German language: "Südtirol". And has suffered terrorism attacks from neonazi organizations linked to the Tyrolean (German)  speaking population of the area.

In order to balance the "falsifications" created in this campaign, I want to write this essay (divided in two sections) detailing the History of the Italians in this "Alto Adige", according to books and essays written in the last decades by serious Italian authors (like M.Vigna in his http://www.historiaregni.it/la-germanizzazione-forzata-dellalto-adige/?unapproved=5108&moderation-hash=0e0ca81d803b282b9cbf073c13a0dcdc ).

The "Vetta d'Italia" top mountain of Italy in Alto Adige, with the Italian flag when conquered in 1918 at the end of WW1

Section 1) HISTORY OF THE ITALIANS IN ALTO ADIGE UNTIL WW1

In 15 BC, the Romans under Drusus and Tiberius occupied the Alpine territory, going as far as the banks of the Danube. The northern part of Alto Adige was divided between the two provinces of Rezia (Raetia) and Norico (Noricum), while the southern part that included the Val d'Adige (Adige Valley) up to Merano was included in the "Regio X Venetia et Histria". The largest settlement known to date was Sebatum (actual San Lorenzo di Sebato), an important road junction.

Old map showing the Alto Adige area (inside "Rhaetia") during the Roman republic

The Roman period lasted for five centuries and left deep traces in the region that was completely Latinized. The indigenous peoples, such as Isarci, breuni, venosti, developed a neo-Latin dialect, in which the Rhaeto-Romanic substratum prevailed. Today the "Ladin" dialects are part of this linguistic group, as well as "Romansh" and "Friulian".

After the year AD 400, Christianity spread in late Roman times, increasingly influencing public and private life. The episcopal see of Sabiona, near today's Chiusa, played an important role in the Christianization of the territory.

With the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, the region was included in the Kingdom of Odoacer and later in the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths (493-553 AD). Immediately after the fall of the Ostrogothic kingdom, in 559 AD it was the turn of the Lombards, who annexed the region to their kingdom. Bolzano and part of Alto Adige (from Maia-Merano to Sabiona) became part of the longboard "Duchy of Trento", together with Trentino. The German Baiuvari (later called "Bavarians") and the Franks tried several times to penetrate into Alto Adige's Val Venosta and Val Pusteria, the latter favored by the Longobard allies, who continued to control the entire territory of the Duchy of Trento.

Map of northern Roman Italy showing the area of Bolzano (called in the Roman empire centuries: "Pons Drusi") inside the "Regio X Venetia et Histria".

At the beginning of the eighth century, the Meranese basin was also occupied by the Bavarians. However, the Germanization of South Tyrol was a very slow process, and saw the progressive retreat of the Rhaeto-Romance culture populations (the ancestors of the current Ladins), a phenomenon that lasted many centuries until our days.
In 774 AD Charlemagne defeated the Lombards in Pavia and conquered the Lombard kingdom of Italy. A few years later, in 788 AD, the Baiuvari were also conquered. The territory of Alto Adige therefore passed under the Carolingian Empire. The territory of today's Alto Adige after the fall of the Roman Empire was totally included in the region of Rhaeto-romance languages, which extended uninterruptedly from the current Swiss "Canton Grigioni" to Friuli/Venezia Giulia in northeastern Italy (see following map). In the following centuries these latinised Alpine populations (now called "Ladins"), fragmented and lacking in common political and social structures, remained subject to strong demographic, cultural and linguistic pressures by the circumalpine populations.
Indeed from the seventh century Germanic languages ​​slowly penetrated the region of actual Alto Adige, starting from the Val Pusteria and from the Meranese area to the other valleys. In the 12th-13th centuries, penetration was general, as evidenced by historical documents and existing microtoponomy, but Neo-Romanesque layers persisted in some areas, such as the upper Val Venosta still in the 17th century, and in the Ladin valleys east of Bolzano up to the present day. The prevalence of the German language did not exclude continuous contacts and presence of persons and small groups of Romance and Italian language. However in Alto Adige throughout all the Middle Ages the linguistic background remained mainly neolatin. Only in the late Middle Ages, and especially after Ottone I annexed the region to the Empire, did the German linguistic element begin to stand side by side with the Ladin one, and only in the modern age, from the 15th century onwards, began to predominate (but in the area of Bolzano & surroundings always the neolatins -Italians & Ladins- remained the majority, even if by a small percentage amount)
Until the eighteenth century this process of changing the language of the popular strata (the vast majority of the population) was a spontaneous cultural assimilation, unrelated to still non-existent implications of a nationalistic nature. Later, and especially in the nineteenth century, Germanization was imposed at the political level by the Hapsburg authorities of the Austrian empire. The result was that today in Alto Adige today Ladin linguistic minorities survive only in Val Gardena, in the "Dolomiti" territories around Marebbe (ancient "Marubium") and in Val Badia. Additionally we have to pinpoint that the other romance group in Alto Adige, the Italians, (initially coming mostly from Veneto & Lombardy and mixing/assimilating the autochthonous Ladins) are present since the Renaissance in the area of Bolzano, where now there it is a huge majority of Italian speaking inhabitants since WW1.

Map showing that Alto Adige & Bolzano are in the middle of the "Ladin Arch", that in the early medieval times stretched from central Switzerland to the Julian Alps

Furthermore, we have to pinpoint that the process of germanization & de-italianization in Alto Adige -since the early Middle Ages- is well documented in the Italian "Treccani" (the equivalent in Italian language of the British encyclopedia) , where it is possible to read that : ".....Centuries and centuries the Roman imprint lasted in Alto Adige. It still survives, in the east valleys of the Isarco, Ladin; it only died out late, much later than is commonly believed, in the valleys of Val d'Isarco, which is a step from Bolzano to the Brenner Pass and in the upper Venosta, where the suppression of the Ladin was caused by political measures taken in 1609 ( see H. Wieser, in Forschungen und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte Tirols, IV [1907]). And the conservation of the ancient Romanic population is now proven, in compact masses, well into the Middle Ages, and at some marginal point of the current Ladinia, still in the first two centuries of the modern age. Instead the germanization of a huge part of the Pusteria was very ancient and went back to the time of the struggles of Tassilone, duke of Bavaria, against the Slavs, to prevent their penetration through the Dobbiaco pass into the Rienza basin. The investigation of the names of the farmhouses in the Venosta-Bolzano-Chiusa section allows us to establish that in this territory the Germanization, in the middle of the century XIV, it was still little advanced in the districts of Silandro, Ortisei and Chiusa, while it was, already at this time, more accentuated in the wine-growing area between Bolzano and Merano. In the following century, the Ladin national conditions deteriorated throughout this area, except for the plateau of Castelrotto and the valleys of Tires, Èores and Gudón that flank the Ladin Gardena (see Carlo Battisti, "Prolegomeni studying German penetration nell'Alto Adige", in the Archive for Alto Adige/South Tyrol, XX, 285-300)……. ……….In May 1027, the two episcopal lordships of Trent and Bressanone were legally established, destined to last uninterruptedly for eight centuries until 1803, in a state of vassalage by the Empire, like the others of the kingdom of Italy (of which, however, the episcopal principality of Bressanone never took part)…. ...The border of the Tridentine principality now exceeded that of the Municipium Tridentinum, because it included in fact and by right the entire Val Venosta, which at the time was in possession of the counts of Appiano and Tyrol. At NE. it reached the mountain of Lusia, so that the course of the Avisio remains cut in Moéna: this demarcation, although devoid of a geographical reason, corresponded to that between the Ladin territory (Fassa) and Trentino (Fiemme). In 1091 the territory of the bishopric of Bressanone which, beyond the watershed, also included the two counties of the upper and middle valley of the Inn up to the Zill (that is, the old Roman border of Rezia), increased following the donation of Henry IV of the entire county of Pusteria, almost to the pass of Dobbiaco which remained the territory of the bishops of Freising. In this age, as in the preceding and the following two centuries, a Tyrolean political unit was therefore not admissible. This legal condition continued until the contemporary age. The feudal power of the Counts of Tarasp (Alta Venosta) formed in the middle of the two ecclesiastical principalities, originating from an ancient Milanese family and supplied with fiefs also in the bishopric of Chur; of the counts of Appiano (Appiano and Bolzano) invested in the bishopric of Bressanone in the county of the upper valley of the Inn, of the high Sarentina and of Moreto (Vipiteno) and subsequently, with marriages and alliances, masters of the counties of Mazia and of Ultimo; and the counts of Tyrol, originating from Leurburg (Bregenz). But these feudatarîs were not, by right, if not vassals of the two bishop princes...…. ...…..Between the Alto adige Counts, those of the Tyrol assumed with shrewd policy a lot of importance. Their feuds, already at the beginning of the XIII century, extended in the Cisalpine part to the entire course of the Adige, from the sources to the confluence of the Isarco. And when the Habsburgs (1364) took over the counts of Tyrol, they continued to be, by right, vassals of Trent and Bressanone, compared to their feudal possessions in the two bishoprics. The history of the unequal struggles between the bishops, ancient lords, and the bully Tyrolean counts and dukes of Austria, is therefore the most agitated that they could conceive, given the importance of this area which is the shortest and most convenient way from Germany to Italy. In the 1300s and 1400s, the Habsburgs began to enter the country. Between these and the Wittelsbach of Bavaria the struggle for dominance over the Tyrol (1327-1335) followed (1336-1342) with the Luxembourg, which ended with the confirmation of Charles IV (1364) of the donation of Margaret Maultasch. The opposition of the bishops of Trent and Brixen is of no importance; In 1462, the bishop of Trent George II was forced to cede the entire jurisdiction of Bolzano to Duke Sigismondo; two years earlier, he had agreed to acknowledge that, during the vacancy, the Count of Tyrol should be recognized as ruler of the County of Trento. With this granting of sovereign rights, the bishop prince of Trento in fact renounced the further struggle for his own independence. But at the same time, the wars over which the dominion of the Scaligeri, Carraresi, and Venetians took shape in the mountains made their repercussions in the country. The signs of S. Marco faced the Pusteria. Venice was then at the apogee of its power; the charm of its name operated, from valley to valley, over the entire Atesina region which, for every civil activity, depended on the glorious "Dominant Republic". When the republic reached its borders above Rovereto and d'Ampezzo, it evidently aimed at the lordship of Trento and Bolzano; but the tenacious Venetian effort was lost in the historic day of Calliano (9 August 1487). The route of the Sanseverino in front of Trento marked the end of the Venetian expansion in the Val d'Adige: since then the Habsburgs had a free hand, and took advantage of the anxieties of Venice to sit in the Alps..... …..And yet, however, the Genoese, Lombards, and Florentines frequented Alto Adige, where they had trades and exchanges. The Italian language was in current use. The mints of Merano and Bressanone minted coins which also belong to the Italian numismatic territory. Badia, Marebbe, Gardena, the valleys of the Dolomite territory, had municipal statutes, forests, rules, noble families, clergy, of visible Italian imprint. The lists of the priests of South Tyrol prove this. The statutes of Bolzano and Bressanone were inspired by the statutes of Trento, of a purely Italian type. The Val Venosta maintained its ancient relations with the county of Bormio in Valtellina, with the Ladin Monastery that leads to the Adige and the nearby Ladin Engadine. The Via Bormio-Monastero-Venosta-Resia-Inn had great importance from the pre-Roman period to the last centuries. The Val Pusteria maintained continuous commercial relations and contacts with Venice and the neighboring lands of San Marco: cattle and timber constituted the two main branches of local commerce, and Dobbiaco and Brunico developed, at the time of the splendor of Venice, to remarkable export centers. If in the upper Pusteria the Italian element had a notable increase especially between 1267 and 1500, at the time of the domination of the Carinthian branch of the counts of Gorizia. Even before, in the sec. XII, important hydraulic works were carried out by Italians. The memory of Italians residing in Dobbiaco and Brunico is still documented in the century. XVIII (see H. J. Bidermann, Die Nationalitäten in Tirol, Stuttgart 1886, p. 20). But even more intense were the contacts and commercial relations with Venice in the Ladin valleys that, through Livinallongo, led to the lands of the Serenissima. The great Brenner trade route continued to maintain its enormous value; and even here, even in the early centuries of the modern age, there was a huge number of Venetian merchants. Duke Sigismondo built the new "Via d'Italia" to replace the previous one which was no longer possible, in 1520 (today's carriage back to 1772). Italian settlements in the upper Isarco (Eisack in german), where the historian Hormann (Über den tirolischen Volkscharakter, in the Zeitschrift des deutschen und österr. Alpenvereins, XXX) also finds a mixed somatic type, were the reason probably for the existence in Vipiteno until the last centuries of a popular Latin school. The longer we descend along the Isarco, the greater the Italian cultural and commercial environment becomes. In Bressanone (as in Vipiteno and Bolzano) already in the last centuries of the Middle Ages a discreet nucleus of Italian merchants was traceable; during the Renaissance the bishop's curia attracted numerous Italians; the cathedral rulers, in the sec. XVI, in order to limit the infiltration of Latin elements among the clergy of the diocese, were forced to establish protective rules for his German character (see H. J. Bidermann, Die Nationalitäten in Tirol, p. 22). Also in Chiusa was established in 1208 Ciano Centomile, agent of Florentine merchants who also owned farms there. In Merano, from the sec. XIII onwards, there were numerous Italian workers at the mint and money changers, remembered in good numbers from 1296 to 1361. In Egna, where, throughout the fourteenth century, there were numerous trading houses ad consuetudinem domorum mercatus Tridenti. And in Salorno, Cortaccia and Tomeno, already in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, many landed possessions belonged to Trentini or to other Italians. The great emporium of Venetian and Tridentine trade was Bolzano. A City, which in 1267 Corradino di Svevia considered as belonging to Italy (Annales Placentini Gibellini, in Monum. Germ. Hist., Script., XVIII, Hannover 1863, p. 524: "... iam de Theotonice partibus in Ytaliam venimus et apud Bolzanum prope Veronam sumus ... see Regesta Imperii, V, 11, No. 4837) that -due to the continuous influx of Italian business people- still had a predominantly Italian character in the mid-fifteenth century. In 1488, the archduke Sigismund was forced to protect the German element in Bolzano with a privilege which excluded the Italians from the municipal council, which led, together with other similar sixteenth-century decrees, to a greater Germanization of Bolzano, without obtaining the intent on ever absorbing the notable Italian minority. All the conventional language of commerce was completely Italian, starting with the names of the offices and offices themselves owned of Italian merchants. The Counter-Reformation movement, headed by the bishops of Trent, formed a place in Bolzano to defend the Roman world and Catholicism. Near the end of the century XVIII, Bolzano could be considered more Italian than German. From Bolzano down to the timber area (Terlano-Egna) and, from here on, the raft navigation on the Adige, the transport by landand the cultivation of rice and silk, were in the XV-XVIII centuries almost exclusively an Italian monopoly. Agricultural immigration from the two side valleys of Fiemme and Non caused the formation of majorities or significant Italian minorities in the section around Bolzano and up to the Salorno "straits"... …..In the short time of the Napoleonic wars, the Alto Adige saw an ephemeral Austrian domination, a brief Bavarian domination and the "hoferian" revolt. The second and third coalition wars ended with the French occupation. The Peace of Presburgo (1805), which followed the secularization of the episcopal principalities of Trento and Bressanone two years later, partially annexed the region to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. The Napoleonic border reached the Chiusa in Val d'Isarco and the Val d'Adige almost to Merano; the high Atesian valleys had instead been left to Bavaria. The "Alto Adige department", after the episode of the Hoferian revolt, had a period of peace, order, prosperity and splendor. This union left deep traditions of national life and fruitful memories in the country. Indeed in a few years, in Bolzano and in the surrounding valleys, what was Italian in character was accentuated. After the battle of Leipzig (1813) and following a treaty with Bavaria (1814), Alto Adige still divided the fate of much of northern Italy. But having it and the Trentino ceased to constitute autonomous principalities, they fell into direct and absolute Austrian dominion. The evolution of economic life on this side of the Brenner had, however, accentuated the sentiment of the unity of the Trentino-Alto Adige region, which in 1861 the Bolzano-born Carlo de Zallinger, vice captain of the Tyrolean diet, could claim that "the two regions separated by the Brenner are entirely different in culture, development and everything else; that the interests of southern German Tyrol (Alto Adige) are identical to those of the Italian Tyrol (Trentino).... …….Only until the year 1866, Venice "Tridentina" (the area of actual Trentino-Alto Adige) remained politically united in some ways to the other areas of the Italian peninsula. Since then the work of Germanization has developed intensely, with the concordant work of the imperial government of Vienna, of the provincial government of Innsbruck and of the Pangermanist associations. They had a "free hand" in the Alto Adige region, these Germanic propaganda associations born and raised after the victories of the 1870s, which became increasingly bold due to the increase in German wealth. The condition of the Italians of Alto Adige, abandoned without any protection, neither civil nor religious, and without intellectual comfort, deteriorated. There was also a lack of self-awareness and trust in the solidarity of the Italian nation (that was recently united in the newborn Kingdom of Italy). But in 1906, with the founding of the "Archive for Alto Adige" ("Archivio per l'Alto Adige"), Italian studies were started on this vast region which, although belonging -without possible dispute- to geographical Italy, had remained, until then, almost completely excluded from research and studies related to the history and nature of the peninsula....."

Map showing the borders of the area around Bolzano, that was united in 1810 to the Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy because mostly Italian speaking. The orange line north of Gargazzone was the border with the german speaking Tyrol, while the green line south of Salorno was the one with the Italian speaking Trentino

Indeed the name "Alto Adige" was introduced in use by Ettore Tolomei, in 1906, and since then has commonly been used in Italy to designate the upper section of the Adige basin, upstream of the Straits of Salorno, up to the geographical limit of Italy in the Alps. However the first to create this name were the French during the Napoleon conquest of northern Italy in the late 1790s: The DEPARTMENT OF ALTO ADIGE (Italian and official Dipartimento dell'Alto Adige, French: département du Haut-Adige, translated into English Department of Upper Adige) was a northern department of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy.

The name had been used for a district of the Napoleonic "Cisalpine Republic". Its name, in typical Napoleonic fashion of naming departments after geographic features, derived from the river Adige (Etsch in german) which flowed through it.

The "Department of Alto Adige" (in green) of the Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy

Section 2) THE FORCED GERMANIZATION OF ALTO ADIGE SINCE THE RENAISSANCE UNTIL OUR DAYS

The beginning of the germanization of Alto Adige was when the Baiuvarians (actual Bavarians) invaded the region and were able to dominate it only after a strong defense by the romance population (the autochthonous "Ladins"), who were under the leadership of their Bishop Ingenuino of Sabiona near Chiusa (http://www.santiebeati.it/Detailed/39615.html).

The Baiuvarians were the first real Germans who did settlements in Alto Adige (after the Ostrogots and Longobards, who quickly went away from the just conquered Alpine regions in the decades when the Roman empire fell), but they were a not huge group of warriors with their families who only ruled the area and dominated the local population of Ladins (reduced to a kind of slavery & serfdom).

The situation did not change with the Franks of Charlemagne, who defeated the Baiuvarians in the IX century. So, until the 1000 AD the presence of Germans was very limited in Alto Adige (and concentrated in the northern areas of Val d'Isarco & Val Pusteria to the north of Chiusa).

The following is the translation in english language of the essay written by Marco Vigna about the germanization of the autochthonous neolatin population that has happened in all Alto Adige until our days, mainly since the early Renaissance years:

G E R M A N I Z A T I O N  OF  A L T O  A D I G E

AFTER THE 1000 AD
It was with the Ottonian dynasty that there was a first real impulse to Germanization in depth in the upper basin of the Adige, with a process that is however very slow and "spotty", which begins around the year 1000 AD.
A particularly serious event in this Germanization was the decision of Emperor Conrad II (1024-1033) to grant territorial powers to the bishops of Bressanone and Trento. This decision in fact broke the traditional, ancient administrative unit of north-eastern Italy, which rested on a cultural continuum dating back to prehistoric times or at least the Roman era. The expression "Triveneto" sometimes still used today in fact follows approximately this earlier cultural unit.
The nobility and clergy of the French Alps were the main driving forces of this Germanization, which was now no longer superficial and limited (in most cases) to the dominant class as it was in the past, but extended to all social classes. The German emperors by granting lands and fiefs to their faithful facilitated the transplantation of entire Germanic communities into the Alto Adige territory, which, however small, were "organic" and included soldiers, ecclesiastics, artisans, merchants, peasants.
The government of the region formally belonged to the episcopal principality of Trent, which existed until 1802 and was usually represented by Italian bishops and residents in an Italian city in the heart of an Italian region. However, in fact a gradual usurpation of his rights in Alto Adige had come about by the counts of the Tyrol starting from the XII century, whose Land however was, on a strictly legal level, existing only and exclusively to the north of the Brenner. In fact, the German count of the Tyrol remained for long centuries, on a formal level, a simple advocatus of the legitimate prince of the territory, or the bishop of Trent, although in fact most of the latter's prerogatives over Alto Adige were progressively usurped. THE XIV CENTURY (the "TRECENTO")
The fourteenth century was a crucial century in the Germanization of Alto Adige. Indeed Dante at the beginning of the century, also due to the influence of the definition of Italy in Roman administrative geography, established the boundaries of the Italian nation near Nice to the west, on the Carnaro to the east ("Yes, like Pola, near Carnaro, which Italy closes and its terms wet"), on the Brenner to the north ("On the top of Italy lies a beautiful lake, at the foot of the Alps which ends Lamagna over Tiralli, which is called Benaco"). Therefore, Germany began for the Poet to the north of "Tiralli", the village from which came the name "Tyrol" (the german word for Alto Adige) , which was therefore included in the Italian area.
The epidemic of the "Black Plague" which hit Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century (beginning in 1348) in a very harsh way led to the collapse of the population in Alto Adige, which was partly filled with the influx of German settlers from the northern regions of Germany (in which the disease had less rage).
In addition, in 1364 the Habsburgs replaced the Counts of Tyrol in the region rule, intensifying the Germanization process through their feudal lords and their ecclesiastics, who, owners of huge estates in Alto Adige, transplanted German colonists. Furthermore, the Habsburg domination facilitated the immigration of merchants from Germany into the small urban centers south of the Brenner (like Bressanone and Vipiteno).

THE XV CENTURY (the "QUATTROCENTO") AND MAXIMILIAN 1 OF HABSBURG
Maximilian I (1459-1519) established the seat of his court in Innsbruck, in the land of historic Tyrol (at least south of the Brenner there was at least formally the ecclesiastical principality of Trentino, which included all the current Trentino-Alto Adige). It was under his sovereignty that there was a transition from an Italian majority in Alto Adige to a German one.
This is what one of the most important scholars of the Alto Adige's history, Carlo Battisti (a writer of many and monumental studies on the region, on the Ladins, etc.), maintained. He indeed argued that only at the end of the fifteenth century the Germanic population became prevalent compared to the Italian one (Trentino people and Ladins) in the Adige valley. For him, the Alto Adige area and Bolzano itself remained in the mid-fifteenth century with a strong Italian presence. At the end of the reign of Maximilian I, the territories of Ora, Fiè, Tires, Laion and Val d’Ega appeared definitely Germanized, but they were still in the recent past (before Maximilian) a Ladin settlement.
The administrative measures and the juridical norms in force under this emperor contributed to the regression of the Italian element in the region. The territory of Ladinia was divided into a series of "Judgments", administrative units that followed the earlier communities: Judgment of Gudon; Judgment of Selva; Judgment of Ciastel; Judgment of Mareo-Badia; Judgment of Tor; Judgment of Fodom; Judgment of Fassa; Judgment of Fiemme; Judgment of Ampezzo. The official language used in the "judgments" was German, so that the toponymy was also reported in that language and, frequently, the onomastics itself was distorted and Germanized.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
After the period of Maximilian I, during which an intense Germanization had taken place and for the first time the Germanic group had exceeded numerically the romance-speaking one in Alto Adige, the latter resumed growing, almost balancing the German one. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Ladin was still spoken in the "judgment" of Castelrotto, in the Val di Fiemme, Val di Non, Val Pusteria, Neva Ladina, Zoldo, Agordo ..., while this language was as strong in Val Venosta as it is today in Val Gardena. In the 16th-17th centuries there still existed a territorial continuity between the Ladin areas of Alto Adige and the romance areas of Switzerland, especially through the upper Val Venosta and its links with the Swiss valleys of the Monastery and the Engadine, whose language was practically the same at the time. This contiguity was broken by imperial policies. The Habsburg empire, that is, the hereditary possessions of the house of Austria (distinct from the German Reich in the strict sense) was at the time, as it always remained, very differentiated and multi-ethnic within itself. One of the tools used to try to establish some cultural unity of Hapsburg's domains, which was not at all pre-existing, was a policy aimed at forced conversion to Catholicism. The Hapsburg possessions appeared before the Trent war years, which were very diversified, even religiously, and the Protestant presence was very strong even in the region from which it then disappeared completely. The same Austrian and Hungarian aristocracies appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century to a large extent adhering to the Reformation of the Protestants. It was in the interest of both the imperial government and the Austrian Catholic church to promote a progressive elimination of the Protestant elements.
This guideline, consistently and decisively practiced throughout the "iron age" of the religious wars, also involved the Ladins of all Tyrol. These were all Catholics, but they bordered directly and were difficult to distinguish at the time from the Swiss Romans, inhabitants of the valleys of the Monastery and of the Val Engadine, who had instead converted to Protestantism. The fear of an infiltration of the Reformation in Alto Adige, through the cultural continuity of the Rhaeto-romanic area led to a policy of Germanization of the imperial territories bordering the Swiss Confederation.

THE XVIII CENTURY ("SETTECENTO") AND MARIA TERESA OF HABSBURG
Entire Alto Adige valleys, still Ladin populated valleys, and most of the Val Venosta, which remained using the Romance language until the beginning of the eighteenth century, were Germanized by force during the Teresian reign. First, the authorities imposed a series of repressive measures, which required the exclusive use of German in a number of areas: in public meetings; in church sermons, in confessions and in general in pastoral activity, etc. Secondly, discriminatory measures were promoted against those who used Ladin in their domestic and family life, limiting their civil rights, such as the possibility of exercising certain professions or even contracting marriages. Thirdly, many characteristic customs of the Ladins were forbidden, always in order to make them lose their identity. Fourthly, the empress Maria Theresa personally issued a "secret decree", which imposed the Germanization of the Ladin surnames of Alto Adige, using the clergy to do this, usually imposed as only German-speaking to the population, and faithful to the empire (Carlo Battisti, "Language and dialects in the Trentino", published in Pro cultura, I, pp. 178-205; Idem, "On the High Atesian Germanization, in Critical Review, XXX, Naples, 1921, pp. 249-264). Even today there are very many Ladinian surnames Germanized in this way, through the addition of a final -er (as happened for Elemunt who became Elemunter, or Melaun, who became Melauner), or through their German translation (for example, making Costalungia a Kastlunger , Granruac a Großrubatscher etc.).
Most of the Val Venosta was thus Germanized under the rule of the "enlightened" sovereigns Maria Teresa and Giuseppe II, considered the most tolerant and open sovereigns of the house in Austria. The Ladins who had managed to resist this Germanizing pressure were gradually assimilated during the nineteenth century, so that very few Roman groups remained in Val Venosta at the beginning of the nineteenth century. An enthusiastic supporter of the Germanization of the Ladins and the Romans in the Teresian era was Mathias Lang, abbot of the convent of Santa Maria in the upper Val Venosta.
Similar Germanising behaviors were common to the government activity of Maria Teresa, who was responsible for initiatives similar to those described above, or even worse, in different parts of her empire, such as Bohemia, Croatia, Hungary and Romania. The empress also issued an edict in which she authorized the kidnapping of children who were children of gypsy families, in order to grow them in a German environment and thus make them of Austrian culture: the cases of this shameful behavior thus authorized were many thousands. Sadly they are "forgotten" by the historians of the "enlightened" Maria Theresa.....

THE "RISORGIMENTO" YEARS AND FRANCIS JOSEPH OF HABSBURG
The situation did not change, indeed it got worse, in the period between the Restoration and the First World War (1815-1918). Already the historian Giuseppe Frapporti in "The history and condition of Trentino in the ancient and the Middle Ages (Trento 1840)" highlighted the intrusive and overwhelming character and the forced Germanization of the inhabitants of the county of Trentino (which included until 1803 the entire current Trentino-Alto Adige), operated by the Austrian political authorities. He also emphasized the systematic distortion of toponymy and onomasticity and the continuity of this activity over the centuries.
Theoretically the Austrian constitution of 1867 foresaw cultural protections for the populations of the empire, including those different from the two dominant but clearly minority groups, the Austrians and the Magyars. In fact, there were privileged ethnic groups and other discriminated, more or less heavily. The Ladins, very few in number, very poor on average and totally marginalized on the political level, did not get any recognition.
They were instrumentally kept separate -by the Austrian authorities- from the Italians, despite their language being and belonging to the Italo-Romance linguistic group (not unlike, for example, from the Piedmontese, the Umbro or the Sicilian), with the precise intent to divide or even put the Ladins and the Trentini against each other.
The Ladin population did not have to suffer only from forced acculturation by the Austrian authorities, but also from the work of Pangermanist associations, very active throughout the Habsburg “Tyrol” and which aroused the concern and outrage of the Trentino People's Party (of the bishop of Trento and Alcide De Gasperi).
The Austrian school policy severely damaged the Ladin community. His language was not included in school teaching programs and the Habsburgs tried to remove from school what little Italian was taught. In fact, the schools of Ladinia saw German being used almost exclusively, with differences depending on the place (Val Badia, Val Gardena, Val di Fassa, etc.). However, many attempts were made to impose a complete scholastic Germanization. Simplifying for brevity, we can say that the schools taught mainly in German, that the Italian was taught for a few hours a week and was often optional, while the Ladino was not used at all. The situation worsened further during the First World War, when the military authorities took the pretext of the war to plan the full Germanization of the whole Trentino-Alto Adige and undertake it with brutality. The Ladins were also affected and all the schools of Val Badia, Val di Fassa and Val Gardena were Germanized. At the same time, the toponymy was also Germanized. Only the defeat of Austria in WW1 prevented the plan of total bermanization of Trentino and Alto Adige from being completed.

CONCLUSION
In the past the Rhaeto-Romanic linguistic group occupied an area that included (using the current geographical terminology) the Grisons, South Tyrol, Friuli, the eastern Alps, Austria. Today, instead, it includes only the very small Romansh-speaking community in the Grisons, the still smaller Ladin “island” on this side of the Alps, and the Friulians. It should be noted that the progressive disappearance of Rhaeto-Romance has taken place due to exterminations and forced assimilations carried out by Germanic linguistic groups and to a lesser extent Slavs. In fact, all of present-day Austria, the eastern Alps, and a large part of the central Swiss Alps were Rhaeto-Romanic before the arrival of these invaders; except for the very small Romansh community in Switzerland, the Rhaeto-Romans have become extinct. Alto Adige was also a full romance speaking area, while today the Ladins survive only in a very small area (Badia, Gardena, Fassa, Livinallongo, Ampezzano) and are reduced to a few tens of thousands of people. The only area in which the Rhaeto-Romantics did not experience significant reductions is, not by chance, that of Friuli, which although bordering on the Germanic and Slavic world has remained for the most part undamaged by the phenomena of Germanization and Slavicization which have engulfed most of the once a large region. It is significant that today among the approximately 770 thousand Rhaeto-Romanes existing 700 thousand live in Friuli, while the Ladins and the Romans are approximately 30 and 40 thousand respectively. This true genocide, cultural (but also partly physical, in the phase of the invasions of the early Middle Ages), saw the areas of Rhaeto-Romanic populations progressively eroded as from a tide.

Map of the Istituto geografico De Agostini showing the Alto Adige divided from the Trentino in the south by a green line. Additionally there are: 1) an orange line limiting the Bolzano area united to the Kingdom of Italy (1810-1814); 2) a yellow line limiting the ecclesiastical territory; 3) a violet line limiting to the north the areas that were originally populated by the romance people (ladins, and later Italians mostly from northern Italy). To the north of the violet line the population was mostly German speaking  since before the year 1000 AD (and the autochthonous Ladins were Germanized mainly by Bavarians settlers). It is noteworthy to pinpoint that north of the violet line the population has more than 20% of blonde hairs and south of this line the haplogroup "R1b-U152" (typical of the ancient Romans) is present in more than one third of the population (like in northern Italy).