Northwest Ruminations: Ann and I Witness the Persistence of Culture

Samuel Huntington, whose grim predictions of the Clash of Civilizations were pooh-poohed by progressives and neo-cons alike, based his world view on the persistence of cultures. He quoted Adda Bozeman's view that cultures involve "values, norms, institutions, and modes of thinking to which successive generations in a given society have attached primary importance." Huntington then believed ('91) that despite the apparent triumph of market capitalism and democratic ideals, the cultural patterns would persist, re-emerge and ultimately disrupt the post cold-war world. Culture will out.

Ann plays Maria Von Trapp (or is it Julie Andrews?)

Ann and I saw this firsthand the first two weeks of September which we spent in the far northeast corner of Italy, the province called Alto Adige – The Heights of the Adige River. But to the people who live there it is not Alto Adige -- it is SudTirol, The South Tyrol, and as much as Italy wishes it to be Italian, Alto Adige is Austrian, Germanic to the core. After a 100 years trying to "Italianize" it, Italy has given up. Culture will out.

In the 9thC, Tyrol was an independent Germanic principality, part of the Holy Roman Empire. Tyrol spanned the Alps, from Meran to Innsbruck. Its Prince split it into two duchies, between two sons, South Tyrol lying on the south slope of the Alps, North Tyrol to the north – connected by the Brenner Pass, the lowest pass through the Italian Alps. When his line died out in the 15thC, the two Tyrols passed to the Hapsburgs becoming provinces of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. And so they remained, except for a brief disruption by Napoleon, until WWI.

Italy entered the war in 1915, on the side of the Britain, France, and Russia, enticed by secret British and French promises to award Italy annexation of the Austrian Sudtirol. So, the Italians marched northward from the plains of the Veneto intent on driving back Austrian troops blocking the way to the Brenner Pass, the doorway to Austria. A vicious, lethal three year stand-off ensued. By Armistice in November of 1918, the lines stood pretty much where they always had been -- but 460,000 men had been killed, critically wounded or were missing in action. 460,000!

WWI Italian MASH unit in the bowels of
The Cinque Torres

Ann and I hiked about the battle ground on the peaks of the Dolomites, the Italians dug in around the Cinque Torri, five sheer towers of rock, and the Austrians dug in on the facing peak of Pasubio, against which the Italians threw useless frontal assaults, from which they took relentless artillery barrages, and under which Italian miners tunneled and blew off a third of the mountain peak. On Dec 13^th, 1916, White Friday, 10,000 combatants were killed, but killed in avalanches rather than by combat. Brutal, senseless slaughter and suffering.

As we know, in the end the Allies won the war, though not with much help from Italy except for tying up Austrian and German troops in the mountains. So Italy, by treaty in 1920, was awarded the Sudtirol which they promptly re-named Alto Adige.

In 1922, Mussolini set out to “Italianize” his new province, banning German being spoken in public and taught in schools, renaming towns and villages, confiscating properties of Austrian veterans and granting them to Italian veterans, appointing Italian mayors and municipal officers, and so on.

In 1938, when Mussolini joined the Axis powers, he and Hitler struck a deal whereby resistant German speakers would be forcibly resettled in Bavaria and in Tyrolean Austria, by then annexed by Germany. In 1945 and ‘46, almost all of those resettled returned to their Sudtirol. It should be noted that the Nazis and Wehrmacht were unwelcome in Sudtirol – these folks considered themselves Austrian, not German – and certainly not Italian.

Bozen's Luna Mondschein, as
German a hotel as one could imagine

So what did Ann and I find in Alto Adige, in 2018, after nearly 100 years of being Italian? We found Bozen, not Bolzano; Meran, not Merano; and Stern, not La Villa. We found newly-built German-style architecture, either Tyrolean or Bauhaus; German-style Catholic churches; neat, tidy, orderly,

Meran, not Merano

graffiti-free villages; German menus with beers more prevalent than wines – despite that many restaurants were owned and run by Italians.

A typical Sudtirol street

And what did we learn? That German is the mother tongue of 73% of the households in Alto Adige. That the manufacturing plants and large orchards and vinyards are German speaker-owned. That there is a subtle but strong class distinction with German speakers looking down on their Italian farm and service worker neighbors. That unemployment is 3+%, vs 6+% for the adjacent Veneto, which is truly Italian, and over 11% for Italy as a whole. That so strong was the separatist movement in the 1970’s that Rome, with Austrian pressure, granted Alto Adige (and Trentino -- their sister-province) considerable autonomy and, in 1991, struck a deal that 90% of their federal taxes would stay in the hands of the provincial governments and only 10% would be sent to Rome. Imagine how Jerry Brown would love that deal! Some Sudtirolese still want to be separate, not part of Austria, but an independent, Germanic state. The Schengen Agreement brought the long sought-for free passage between Austria and Italy, and there is an active movement to have issued double passports – Austrian and Italian.

. . . .

The persistence of culture, grandparent to grandchild, generation after generation. It won’t be lured away with enticing rewards and privilege, it won’t dwindle away, as with Mexican-Americans who have been resident in Texas and New Mexico for 400 years; it won’t be stamped out even with campaigns of genocide as with our own indigenous Americans who insist on being Navajo or Nez Perce or Cayuse today or as with Orthodox Jewry in Israel. The Chinese will return to their Emperor and Mandarins, though in a new guise; the Russians to their Czar, though with a new title; the Arabs and Afghans to their clan and tribal Chieftains. The Turks rejecting Ataturk and reverting to a new Sultan.

Culture will out. Huntington was right. Civilizations, which are cultures writ large, are clashing.

The mistake we make over and over is thinking one culture is superior to another, that ours is best, that we can force or entice other peoples to become like us. Let's create a capitalist, market democracy in Iraq; how bout imposing the rule of law on Afghanistan. Right -- those have worked out well haven't they?

Until we acknowledge and accept the persistence of culture, we will not make any progress on our shared, trans-cultural problems of global warming, migration, population control, militarization of space. Cultures persist; culture will out. Empathy, acceptance and respect are the necessary lubricants to moving forward together to address Earth's and Mankind's problems.