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The Reutte Museum Association commemorates the expulsion of the South Tyroleans with a museum apartment

2021-09-26T18:45:22.586Z


Reutte - With an action against forgetting, the museum association rebuilt an apartment under the motto “Memorial site: Museum apartment in the South Tyrolean settlement” and furnished it according to the standards of the 1940s. With this, the association wants to remind of the resettlement of around 75,000 Tyroleans. History should be conveyed to the younger generation in particular, emphasized museum chairman Ernst Hornstein at a ceremony.


Reutte - With an action against forgetting, the museum association rebuilt an apartment under the motto “Memorial site: Museum apartment in the South Tyrolean settlement” and furnished it according to the standards of the 1940s.

With this, the association wants to remind of the resettlement of around 75,000 Tyroleans.

History should be conveyed to the younger generation in particular, emphasized museum chairman Ernst Hornstein at a ceremony.

A South Tyrolean settlement in Reutte?

Yes there is - a fact that is less well known in the region.

And yet the settlement in the district capital is one of the few that still exists 80 years after it was built.

At that time, 138 families found a new roof over their heads in the 155 apartments in the 18 residential buildings.


But how did this “settlement”, as it is called today, come about and is located in the middle of the market town?

To do this, it is necessary to take a look at the beginning of the 20th century.

At that time, South Tyrol was part of Austria, the then Habsburg Empire, until the end of the First World War in 1918.

In 1919 South Tyrol was finally assigned to Italy in the Treaty of Saint Germain and the fascists there enforced a strict policy of Italianization settlement from 1923: They banned the German language, closed schools and settled Italians from the south.


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The kitchen unit with sink, electric stove and wood stove - the apartments were designed to be quite comfortable for the time.

In addition to the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and children's room, there was a cellar compartment.

© ed

The hope that Hitler would bring South Tyrol back to the Reich after the annexation of Austria in 1938 was disappointed. The fate of South Tyrol was sealed in a “Hitler-Mussolini Agreement”. The South Tyroleans were given the choice of either choosing German citizenship with the result or voting for Italian citizenship. If they refused the latter, all protection would be lost. 75,000 South Tyroleans chose the relocation option and living space had to be created for these “optants”.


As a result, the so-called South Tyrolean settlements emerged in 22 different places in Tyrol, including Reutte.

The one here is one of the few that still exists today.

Construction began in 1940 and the entire settlement comprised 18 residential buildings with 155 apartments.

138 families moved into the apartments, around half of which were not South Tyrolean resettlers but party members of the NSDAP, war invalids and displaced persons.

Today 53 percent of the settlement is under monument protection.

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-09-26

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