High in the Alps, Austrian Traditions Thrive on Italian Side of Border : Identity: More than 70 years ago, South Tyrol was a prize in the fallout of World War I. Its two ethnic groups have lived and prospered rather peacefully.

Young women in dirndls fill steins of foaming beer and bratwurst simmers on grills as an oompah band entertains the crowd.

It’s Kirchtag time, the annual church fair in this Alpine village, and the guttural sounds of German fill the air.

But then the bandmaster switches to Italian, welcoming “our Italian guests.”

Italian guests, in Italy?

More than 70 years after Austria’s South Tyrol region was handed over to Italy as a promised prize for entering World War I with the Allies, successive governments in Rome--first fascist, then democratic--have failed to shake the Tyrolean identity.

In fact, special laws protect the ethnic minority here in the province of Bolzano, generally known in Italian as the Alto Adige. The Italian government, atoning for a dark period under the fascists and shaken by terrorist bombs in the 1960s, has even given the German-speakers the upper hand.

And as ethnic tensions have exploded across Europe, the peaceful coexistence between the German-speakers and the Italian-speakers has been holding.

There has been no violence, only minor vandalism: the puncturing of tires of some cars driven by tourists and the blotting out of Italian names on road signs.

The winds of nationalism blowing across eastern Europe stir resurgent demands for either union with Austria or independence.

But the mainline Sudtiroler Volkspartei (the South Tyrol People’s Party) has rejected such calls, pressing instead for the Italian government to put into effect remaining agreed-upon concessions. The party traditionally gets 90% of the German-speaking vote.

In mid-September, supporters of reunification rallied on the Italian-Austrian border at Brenner Pass, the gateway to northern Europe.

But only a few thousand showed up under rainy skies, leading the German-language daily Dolomiten to comment that “the major success was that the rally went off without incident.”

Similarly, there was more show than substance in a rally in the provincial capital the day before by the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement Party, whose followers have opposed concessions granted German-speakers. It draws a large Italian protest vote in local elections.

The protest consisted mainly of waving Italy’s tricolor flag at the site of a World War I victory monument.

Hansjorg Kucera, a German-language journalist, says, “Most people, deep down, would like to be part of Austria. But they don’t really believe it will happen.”

This may help explain recent polls in the Italian press that have shown that most German-speakers--who number more than 280,000 compared to the 120,000 Italian-speakers--favor remaining in Italy.

They live and prosper in one of Europe’s leading summer and winter tourist areas, with the rights and privileges of the different ethnic groups protected under an Italian treaty with Austria.

It is officially bilingual. All signs and town names are in two languages (Valdaora in Italian, Olang in German, for example). Local newspapers in German and Italian are on sale and the Italian state radio and TV network RAI broadcasts in the two languages.

But the agreement goes further, putting into force what the Italians call proporzionale etnica, in effect a quota system. It divvies up public housing and jobs--from railroad workers to hospital doctors--on the basis of population. German-speakers, on the basis of numbers, hold the edge.

A third group, numbering 18,000, speak a Romance language known as Ladin. The Ladins, who mainly live in the lush Alpine centers, are also guaranteed a seat on the provincial government council.

“We would be crazy to want to change,” says Patrizia Erlacher, who speaks the three languages. Her family is in the hotel business, one of the major moneymakers for the German-speakers and Ladin.

Erlacher and others stressed that the province has benefited from the blend of two cultures and the laws that ensure that Tyrolean traditions can flourish.

Realistically, says restaurant owner Loris Morlang, “traditions bring money.”

The Italian-speakers have long held down railroad and other public jobs, but they are now feeling the squeeze under proporzionale, which went into force after a 1981 census.

Benito Mussolini, who served as dictator from 1922 until World War II, tried to suppress Tyrolean culture and traditions, going so far as to remove German names from gravestones.

He also sought to Italianize the area by luring tens of thousands from elsewhere in Italy with promises of jobs in new industries.

The Italian population, just 3% in 1910, had swelled to 34% by 1961, according to provincial government statistics. But it has since been in decline as the central government has made more and more concessions to the German-speakers.

Only a few, relatively minor issues are still to be settled. The most controversial involves formal agreement on the names of towns, with some local German-speaking politicians demanding that Italian names dating to fascist years be abolished.

Once the entire package of concessions is in force, Austria is to give its stamp of approval. The Italian government will then consider the issue closed.

“My conviction as president of the republic is that the state must maintain its word given to the German-language community of the Alto Adige,” Italian President Francesco Cossiga said during a visit to the area in early September. “And maintaining its word means completing the package.”