Abstract
When it emerged (towards the end of October 1918) that the war would end in defeat of Austria-Hungary, the Ladin municipalities of Tyrol published an appeal to the German speaking inhabitants of South Tyrol, in which they demanded the right of self-determination: “[...] Like the other peoples of Austria, we, the oldest indigenous population of Tyrol, also demand the right of self-determination. We are not Italians, since ever we do not want to be counted among them and we in the future either want not to be Italians. An independent people, who determines his destiny himself! [...]”. Contrarily and in fact, the Ladins already had not been recognised as a fully-fledged nationality in Austrian time because their language was considered as a colloquial language (“Umgangssprache”) and not as a cultural language (“Kultursprache”). However, Austria did not treat Ladin as a dialect of a cultural language (specifically of Italian) and it was visibly willing to recognize the independence of the language. The Austrian context promoted some elements of the nation-building of the Ladins though they were interrupted by the First World War. The Ladin representatives wanted to build on this right after the end of the First World War however, the already democratic Italy (with a few exceptions), and a little later Fascism, saw the Ladins as Italians and treated them accordingly.
From the demands of the Ladin representatives after the First World War, a special vision of self-determination emerges: it does not demand the - in any case unrealistic - creation of a separate state, but the recognition as its own people and the right to remain united with German Tyrol.