100 years ago, at the beginning of October 1922, leading exponents of national fascism led a violent expedition in Bolzano with the aim of removing the mayor, Julius Perathoner. He was one of the most important exponents of the Liberal Party in Tyrol and the last mayor of German ethnicity of the City of Bozen-Bolzano from 1895 to 1922. The march on Bozen-Bolzano was an extremely serious episode, which occurred only a few weeks before the march on Rome.

To mark the centenary of those events, the City of Bozen-Bolzano, in collaboration with the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, recently organised an international conference that, starting from the local case, reflected more generally on various aspects of Italian fascism. Among other things, the event showcased work of historical contextualisation carried out in Bolzano on various artefacts from the fascist era, as well as shedding light on the concentration camp that was operated in the city during the Nazi occupation.

Among the speakers were Wolfgang Schieder, Andrea Di Michele, Stefan Lechner, Filippo Focardi, John Foot, Lucia Ceci, Marta Verginella, Christoph Cornelissen, Anna Maria Vinci, Valeria Deplano, Mirco Carrattieri and Andrea Baravelli.

Further information and documentation can be found at: https://www.unibz.it/it/events/140761

Photo: Wolfgang Schieder’s keynote address, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.

Work in progress

An important collaboration between the City of Bozen-Bolzano and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano is underway, in order to design a monument dedicated to the Weiße Rose (White Rose), a student group in Munich that was active in the non-violent resistance movement in Nazi Germany, especially in distributing flyers against the war and the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. Many of the White Rose activists were sentenced to death or imprisonment. Hans and Sophie Scholl, as well as Christoph Probst, were executed by guillotine four days after their arrest, on 22 February 1943.

The project is directed by the Faculty of Design, and takes the form of a student workshop guided by the Italian artist Matilde Cassani. The results of the project will be presented in February 2023.

Photo: memorial dedicated to the “Geschwister Scholl” in Bozen-Bolzano.