Alto Adige Option Agreement

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It has been suggested that ADO (Province of Bolzano-Bozen) be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

The Alto Adige Option Agreement (Italian: Opzioni in Alto Adige; German: Option in Südtirol) refers to the period between 1939 and 1943, when the native German speaking people in the province of Bolzano-Bozen were given the "option" of either emigrating to neighboring Nazi Germany or remaining in Italy and being forcefully integrated in to the mainstream Italian culture, losing their language and cultural heritage. Over 80% opted to move to Germany.

A flyer from the group of German speakers who remained (Andreas Hofer Bund)

The Alto Adige had been a part of Italy since the end of World War I and, after the rise of fascism in 1922, a policy of Italianization was implemented ruthlessly. All places, down to the tiniest hamlet, were given Italian names, and even family names were translated. The process intensified in the 1930s, when the government of Benito Mussolini encouraged thousands of southern Italians to relocate to the region.

On 21 October 1939, Adolf Hitler and Mussolini reached agreement on the assimilation of the ethnic German and Ladin speaking minorities in the province. The members of these two language communities had until 31 December 1939 to choose between remaining in Italy and losing all minority rights, or emigrating to the Nazi Germany, the so called "Option für Deutschland" (option for Germany). As early as the 1920s, Katakombenschulen ("Catacomb schools") were set up to secretly teach the remaining children the German language.

85%-90% of the population opted for emigration; they were called Optanten and banded together in the ADO, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Optanten für Deutschland. Those who chose to stay (called Dableiber) mainly banded together around local Catholic priests. Those who wanted to stay (Dableiber) were condemned as traitors and those who left (Optanten) were defamed as Nazis. The Option destroyed many families and the development of the economy of the province was set back for many years. The first families left their homeland in 1939, and until 1943 a total of around 75,000 South Tyroleans emigrated, of which 50,000 returned after the war.

The outbreak of World War II meant that the relocation of people and the complete Italianization of the area was never fully accomplished. When Italy switched sides in 1943 and the Wehrmacht marched into the province of Bolzano-Bozen while the Operation Zone of Alpine Foothills was established, the emigration officially halted.

The majority of the people who had emigrated returned to the area in 1945. Despite Austrian efforts, the province of Bolzano-Bozen remained part of Italy after World War II, and many chose to take up Italian citizenship after the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement. Those who returned had to register themselves and their children, and they had to prove, by means of a birth certificate, that they had the right to Italian citizenship.

According to the 2001 census, more than two-thirds (69.4%) of the population of the province of Bolzano-Bozen speak German as their first language and Italian as second language^{[citation needed]}; the second most used language is Italian (26.3%), followed by Ladin (4.3%).

[edit] See also

[edit] Literature

"Die Option", Hrsg. Reinhold Messner, Die 6 Autoren gehen der Frage nach: "1939 stimmten 86% der Südtiroler für das Aufgeben ihrer Heimat. Warum"? Serie Piper, ISBN 3-492-12133-0
Lit. und Flugblätter: 23. Juni 1939 - Gehen oder bleiben. Die Option in Südtirol. Rolf Steininger, Von der Monarchie bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg. Verlag Böhlau Wien-Köln-Weimar 1997.
Klaus Eisterer/Rolf Steininger (Hrsg.),Die Option.Südtirol zwischen Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus (Innsbrucker Forschungen zur Zeitgeschichte 5),Haymon Verlag,Innsbruck 1989.