Tyrolean nationalists cover 600 Italian road signs: "The German name has not been official for 97 years"

The South Tyrolean group protest on the unresolved question of toponymy. The South Tyrolean Schützen have covered the German name on six hundred road signs with the inscription "Dna-Seit 97J, Deutch nicht amtlich". Which, translated, means: "The German name has not been official for 97 years". Tthe heirs of the popular militias of the Tyrolean national hero Andreas Hofer - now legally recognized as a cultural association although they have a paramilitary organization - want to return to the long-standing question of toponymy in South Tyrol.

In the Autonomous Province bilingualism is protected by law because there are two different linguistic communities: the German one (almost three quarters of the population) and the Italian one (just under a quarter). But, although toponymy is everywhere in two languages, there is still no law formalizing the names in German. After the annexation of Alto Adige to Italy at the end of the First World War, fascism abolished the toponymy in German. After the Second World War, the German toponymy was restored, but without a law that officially recognized it.

The local government party, the Südtiroler Volkspartei, which represents the interests of the German linguistic group, approved in 2012 a provision that formalized the names in German, but decaying those in Italian. With the risk that famous toponyms, such as the "Vetta d'Italia", disappeared from the geography books. The law was challenged before the Constitutional Court and, at the end of a long tug-of-war, was abrogated by the Italian courts on 13 April this year.

The Schützen protest takes place on the birthday of Ettore Tolomei, author of the handbook of South Tyrolean toponymes and considered among the most significant exponents of Italian irredentism, born August 16, 1865 and died in May 1952.

"We are on a swing, which is in motion, but does not move forward", says the new commander of the South Tyrolean Schützen (which as mentioned was organized in battalions and regiments) Jürgen Wirth Anderlan. "In this open wound of our history - he continues - tourism associations and companies throw salt using the work of Tolomei and his pseudo Italian inventions".