South Tyrol. The Other Italy

After World War I, under the Treaty of Saint-Germain, South Tyrol was returned to Italy. The notorious forced Italianization of this territory which followed had its impact both on the square and on the monument to Walther von der Vogelweide. First, in 1925, Walther Square was simply renamed in honour of the Italian king Victor Emmanuel III, and then, in 1935, the Fascist government that came to power in the country got around to the statue of the Minnesang poet. The monument of Walther von der Vogelweide was moved to Peter Rosegger Park. Ettore Tolomei, who headed the process of the Italianization of South Tyrolean population, insisted on erecting in its place a monument to Drusus the Elder, the Roman commander who in the 15

century BC fought on the territory of Raetia against the bandits raiding Roman tribes and receiving support from the local tribes. Drusus the Elder then destroyed both the bandits and the local tribes. There’s no need to mention that Tyrol at that time had also been part of Raetia, and Tolomei was not simply referring to ancient history.

In the end, they did commission South Tyrolean sculptor Hans Piffrader to make a statue of Drusus the Elder, but, for unknown reasons, it was never made.

With the end of World War II, in 1945, the main square of Bolzano (Bozen) was renamed again, this time to Marienplatz. It bore this name until 1947, when it was changed to Waltherplatz, or Walther Square. The statue of the same name was moved to its place only in 1981.

Nowadays, the main square of the South Tyrolean capital is known as the “drawing room” of Bolzano (Bozen). At any time of the year, the cafes and bars around it are filled with locals and visitors to the region. It is home to the most famous Christmas market in Italy and the equally famous flower festival. Walther Square is then renamed (this time only jokingly) Waltz Square (Walzer Platz instead of Waltherplatz), and dancing parties are arranged here.

Cities, the main squares of which can boast a monument to a poet, are a rarity; however, the reasons for putting up such monuments are often far from poetic. The figures of Walther von der Vogelweide and Dante Alighieri symbolized the silent confrontation of two worlds speaking different languages within one country. Now, when they are once again part of the same, though completely different, country, neither the north nor the south recall the past of these two monuments. They understand that the future depends on respecting each other’s cultures.

Chapter Three.

Grüss Dich!

The landscape outside the car window is constantly changing, and the chances are good that I will make the word “beauty” the refrain of my narrative if I start describing everything that I see. Every now and then I can glimpse signs bearing the names of hotels and guest houses, most of which necessarily contain, modified in one way or another, the words Edelweiss, Alpin (“Alpine”), Weissen Rössl (“White Horse”) (to be quite fair, I must say that sometimes the horse is of some other colour), Panorama and Mondschein (“Moonlight”). In the same way as in the Soviet Union each city had its own Lenin Street, in South Tyrol you will always come across the good old rössl (“horse”).

If you have got lost, you can stop your car and ask the locals for directions – they will help you, but only after saying Grüss Gott or Grüss dich (“Hello” in the local dialect). After that, you can continue your way to see another signboard of a hotel bearing the name Post, which is also very popular in the region.

South Tyrol is The Other Italy.

Chapter Four.

We Are in Italy, Are We?

Vipiteno (Sterzing) is a fairy-tale South Tyrolean town in which you want to use a diminutive name for absolutely everything. It is so charming in late spring that I don’t even dare to think of it at Christmas season, when it must be covered with an even layer of soft fluffy snow, decorated with ornaments and strings of lights, permeated with the smells of fresh gingerbread, hot chocolate, roasted chestnuts and fruit punch. I can’t but think: what would it be like, to be born here? It would probably be great to wake up and run to the window to see the snow-capped peaks, the Zwölferturm tower – the symbol of the city – and the conventional boundary between its “new” and “old” parts, and to smell the perfect aroma of fresh buns coming up from the cosy family coffee shop – there would simply have to be one on the ground floor. This is my first visit to Vipiteno (Sterzing), though I’ve known about its existence for a long time.

The fact is that I love to start my day with a delicious breakfast, an integral part of which has always been yoghurt. While studying in Milan, I found out “by trial and error” in the literal sense of the word that the best product of all the variety presented in the stores is the one in minimalist packaging with a coat of arms and the inscription “Sterzing-Vipiteno.” Needless to say, I was in advance disposed more than favourably towards this South Tyrolean city, considering rightfully that only a good place and good people can produce such a high-quality, wholesome and tasty product.

Of course, in addition to yoghurt, which is produced by a company founded in the times when South Tyrol was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Vipiteno (Sterzing) you can and should pamper yourself with traditional speck, smoked sausages, all kinds of knodels and fragrant strudel with apple, apricot or cottage cheese. It would be a crime to just walk past hand-made chocolates laid out in the windows of pastry shops and the freshest Sacher cake with homemade whipped cream.

In this town you must go by your senses and be sure to enjoy not only the beauty around, but also the local cuisine. At the time I found myself in the town, my knowledge of German was poor; sitting down at a table in a restaurant and finding that the menu was only in German, I asked the waiter to bring it in Italian, adding with a smile: “We’re in Italy, are we?” The local citizens, who were watching the scene closely, literally collapsed with laughter.

But that was the same kind of good-natured laughter that parents laugh when their child says something silly.

Chapter Five.

Walter

From the interview with the architect Walter Angonese for Archi.ru (11.05.2016)

(The conversation is in Italian)

Me: It seems to me that all South Tyroleans love their motherland (patria)?

Walter Angonese: Motherland (patria) is not quite the right word. Italian doesn’t have the right equivalent for that, so I will use the German word Heimat. It is not the same as the Italian patria. The Italian word implies a nation, while Heimat is a place, a corner that you come from, where your roots are. The great German poet Kurt Tucholsky defined Heimat as the place where you feel that you are understood. It is Heimat that we, South Tyroleans, love.

Me: They call you an Austrian, German, Italian architect… Which of those do you think you are?

Walter Angonese: I am an architect who works here, in South Tyrol, a region which was largely shaped by its position at the crossroads of two cultures: the Alps and the Mediterranean. And this is a great wealth: we have the heritage of both Central Europe and the Mediterranean at our disposal. This is our capital. If we want, we can be inspired by both worlds, and there is a special beauty in this position. For example, take the way we live: we are quite rational, we work a lot – these qualities are characteristic of Central European, even North European mentality, but we also know how to enjoy life, we like tasty food, we like to have a good drink: we took the best of both cultures.

Me: It seems to me that all the advantages you have named were here already before the Italian influence.

Walter Angonese: Well, I believe that there is some difference between South Tyrol and North Tyrol; it’s about the ability to enjoy life, which we inherited from the Mediterranean culture. It is exactly 3 km from the place where I live to the linguistic barrier, beyond which everyone already speaks Italian. South Tyrol has beautiful landscape and rich history. I consider myself as an architect from South Tyrol, a person with an Italian passport, and a native speaker of German.

Chapter Six.

Margaret According to Feuchtwanger

    But this Margaret! The clumsy figure!
    “Carinthia!” said the Emperor.
    The underhung jaw!
    “Tyrol!” said the Emperor.
    The hanging cheeks! The slanting, prominent teeth!
    “Trient! Brixen!” said the Emperor.
    Lion Feuchtwanger,
    The Ugly Duchess, 1923

Margaret of Tyrol, nicknamed Margarete Maultasch, could hardly imagine that she would get the not so very flattering title of “the ugliest woman in history”. The picture by the 16

century Flemish painter Quentin Massys invariably gathers crowds of visitors in the National Gallery of London. His portrait of the grotesque Ugly Duchess is often referred to as a portrait of Margaret of Tyrol, but that is not true. The caricature image created by Massys is a pseudoportrait having nothing in common with the historical figure. But what did the countess of Tyrol really look like?

This question is difficult to answer. The only portrait made during her lifetime and available today is scarce in details: one can only see the full-length figure of a slender woman, though her facial features are rather vague. Written comments by contemporaries of Margaret of Tyrol are contradictory: in some sources she is described as an ugly, wicked and dissolute woman, while in others she is called a very beautiful lady.

In the Spanish Hall of Ambras Castle in Innsbruck, among portraits of Tyrolean rulers, you can see a full-length picture of Margaret, portrayed against the background of nature. The Countess of Tyrol looks rather attractive in this picture of mid-16

century. This slender, tall woman with harmonious facial features and her eyes modestly cast down cannot be called ugly. Margaret appears as the same attractive woman in the album of engravings Tirolensium Principum Comitum of late 16th century. The author of the album, the Flemish painter and engraver Dominique Kustos, who served at the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, depicts Countess of Tyrol among 28 Counts of Tyrol, from Albert IV (1190—1253) to Rudolf II (1552—1612). In the engraving by Kustos, Margaret looks obviously similar to the portrait from the Ambras Castle Spanish Hall, though the countess’s lower lip seems intentionally exaggerated. Most likely, the artist wanted to emphasize the connection of the nickname Maultasch with one of the meanings of this word – “big-mouthed”. However, even with the disproportionally big lower lip, Margaret doesn’t look unattractive in Kustos’s engraving.

Actually, it is not only Maragaret’s appearance that is veiled in mystery, but also the origin of her nickname – Maultasch. This word can be translated in various ways, from “big-mouthed” and “mouthpocket” to “dumpling”, to “dissolute woman” and even “whore”. If the former three meanings could point to the unattractive appearance of the Countess of Tyrol, the latter two must characterise her behaviour. One version says that Margaret was first called wanton by the family of her first husband, John Henry, with whom, by her own admission, she never was in actual marital relationship. Their marriage was purely political in nature: at the age of 11, the Countess of Tyrol was married off to the 7-year-old son of the Czech king John of Luxembourg. Margaret and John Henry disliked each other at first sight, and as years passed, their attitude to each other turned from neutral to explicitly negatve. Having solicited the support of the Tyrolean nobility and secretely made an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig IV the Bavarian, the Countess expelled her husband from her lands. The emperor announced her marriage to John Henry void, which made it possible for her to marry the senior son of Ludwig the Bavarian – Ludwig V of the House of Wittelsbach, Margrave of Brandenburg in Meran.

The Countess of Tyrol and her new spouse, who got married illegally from the point of view of the church, were immediately excommunicated by Pope Clement VI, who was a political opponent of Ludwig of Bavaria. Tyrol was placed under interdict; church services and ceremonies were banned throughout its territory. The Catholic Church did not approve of Margaret’s actions, and did not hesitate to express its opinion about the Countess, including in the form of diatribes. It is easy to guess that the ruler of Tyrol was portrayed in them as vicious, depraved, and unpleasant both in her appearance and character.

The flow of unflattering epithets used by the church in relation to Margaret was strongly supported by the relatives of her former husband, John Henry. The latter, six years after the marriage of his ex-wife with Ludwig V Wittelsbach, nevertheless decided to marry again, for which he asked the Pope for permission to divorce, recognizing that their union with the Countess of Tyrol was not consummated, but rejecting in advance all the possible charges of impotence. The divorce was approved, and the excommunication of Margaret and Ludwig from the church continued to be in effect for another ten years; only after that, with the support of Albrecht II, who had already petitioned to Pope Innocent VI on behalf of the spouses, it was completely removed.

The identity of Margaret Maultasch, the Countess of Tyrol, remains shrouded in legends. It is impossible to call any information about her absolutely reliable. Therefore, any materials related to the life of the ruler of Tyrol have always aroused great interest. Needless to say, the historical novel of the German writer of Jewish origin Lion Feuchtwanger, The Ugly Duchess, first published in 1923, did not only attract the attention of several generations of readers to the story of the countess and of Tyrol at her time, but also made them believe in the reality of the image of the ugly but intelligent woman with an unfortunate fate whom the author described in his book. But was Feuchtwanger’s Margaret similar to her historical prototype? Was Tyrol at the time of her ruling the way the writer presented it? Can The Ugly Duschess be believed, and if so, to what extent?

In a historical novel, the historical truth is always combined with fiction, and the real historical figures coexist in the text with fictional persons. This is a difficult genre to write in, and it has always been chosen by very few writers. The Ugly Duchess was the first historical novel by Lion Feuchtwanger, but fortunately not the last one.

Any historical novel needs to be based on reliable historical sources. While working on The Ugly Duchess, Lion Feuchtwanger definitely used the three-volume work by Josef Egger Geschichte Tirols von ältesten Zeiten bis in die Neuzeit, published in Innsbruck in 1872. This is proved not only by the same order of the events described, but also by the fact that the writer borrowed some episodes from Egger’s story word-for-word.

The writer uses Margaret’s image to show the advent of a new age in Tyrol, the gradual transition from medieval way of living to early Renessaince. It is Margaret that Feuchtwanger credits with everything which is good and progressive in this mountain land. The author of The Ugly Duchess exaggerates the ugliness of his heroine’s appearance, endowing her with extraordinary intelligence instead, and showing her as a champion of progress and humanity. This is how Margaret is first presented in Feuchtwanger’s novel: “She looked older than her twelve years. Her thick-set body with its short limbs supported a massive misshapen head. The forehead, indeed, was clear and candid, the eyes quick and shrewd, penetrating and sagacious; but below the small flat nose an ape-like mouth thrust forward its enormous jaws and pendulous underlip. Her copper-coloured hair was coarse, wiry and dull, her skin patchy and of a dull greyish pallor.” A bit later in the book, the author says the following on the Tyrolean ruler: “God had deprived her of feminine charm so that she might sink all the woman in the ruler.” Feuchtwanger’ Margaret is a strong-willed person, who fought all her life against her own ugliness, the greed of her subjects, and takeover attempts of her neighbors; who fought for the happiness of her people, her Tyrol, and for her own happiness as a woman.

And now let us turn to the historical source – the three-volume work by Egger Geschichte Tirols von ältesten Zeiten bis in die Neuzeit, which the author of The Ugly Duchess resorted to when he was writing his book, and see what the historian says about Margaret Maultasch: “As time went by, Margaret more and more often expressed her dissatisfaction with her spouse, and the Tyrolean barons – with the domination of Luxembourg. Both the legends and the writings of historians portrayed Margaret as very unattractive, both physically and spiritually. While she was not totally ugly, she would, nevertheless, never get an award for beauty, for, according to trustworthy testimonies, she had a big, wide mouth disfiguring her face, which, as legend has it, earned her the nickname ‘Maultasch’. Neither could she be considered the ideal of a virtuous woman. Of course, her alleged carnal excesses and cruelty towards her lovers might as well be fictional, but it is undoubted that her penchant for sensual pleasures by far surpassed the boundaries of natural propriety. John could not sufficiently satisfy this inclination. Even as he entered adolescence, Margaret remained childless.” The same Joseph Egger speaks of the political role played by Margaret in Tyrol. During her reign, while she was still married to her first husband, John Henry (1330—1340), she, judging from the historian’s writings, was far from independent politically: “She was deprived of any influence on management, and Bishop Nicholas of Trent ruled the country.” During her marriage to her second husband, Ludwig (1343—1361), as well as during a short period after his death and her own abdication of power (1361—1363), Margaret again failed to show herself to be a strong and independent ruler. Egger describes her as a “weak” (schwache) and “indecisive” (wankelmütige) woman, who, from his point of view, could not hold power and was forced to give it up. Margaret’s great desire to develop Tyrolean cities and trade, to promote the prosperity of the people, described by Feuchtwanger, is not confirmed by Joseph Egger. Indeed, such aspirations could really be observed at that time, but it was not the ruler of Tyrol who was engaged in making those visions a reality, but completely different people.

Neither the violent death of Margaret’s husband Louis, nor the similarly violent death of her son Meinhard, described in Feuchtwanger’s The Ugly Duchess, correspond to the historical truth. Both of them died natural deaths, and as to Ludwig, the Countess of Tyrol lived quite happily with him to the end of his life. The political fate of Margaret was different in reality as well: having ceded power to Rudolf IV Habsburg, the historical ruler of Tyrol left for Vienna, where she spent her last days honoured and protected by the Imperial court. According to Feuchtwanger, Margaret lived the rest of her life in modest conditions on a deserted island, in the company of a single maid.

It is obvious that the description of the ruler of Tyrol by Egger has very little in common with Feuchtwanger’s description, and as to what she really was like, it still remains to be found out. In general, historians point out that the information about that era is too scanty, but the information that we do have allows us to judge about the personality of Margaret Maultasch only to a certain extent.