5:03

Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Marling

2008-05-06

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1923

I started school in Marling. We soon had to leave the school building because the new teacher came and he probably lived there. We moved into my grandfather's house and there we had a big flat opposite the church on the town square. Then I started first grade, that was of course already under fascism, which officially began in 1922. The schools became Italian around 1924. In first grade we still had a teacher, Frau Mairginther, who spoke a lot of German and translated the words for us. I still remember her, I know that she liked me. She gave me an illustrated book in German. I attended second grade in Marling too. There we had a full-fledged Italian teacher. She didn't speak a word of German and we didn't speak a word of Italian. We did know a word here or there. The boys had no respect for her at all. They acted up and she couldn't assert herself, the teacher from Italy. There was no chance we'd learn anything. My mother took me out after one week and enrolled me in Meran with the 'Loreto Sisters'. The Loreto Sisters ran a private school. They were very afraid of being closed down by fascism. They did everything they were told by the government Of course the sisters had to run the school in Italian too. In any case there was discipline. It was an all-girl's class. We progressed well and were able to learn Italian. So I attended 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade at The Loreto Sisters. It would have continued like this: after five years there would have been three years of "avviamento" - a school for vocational training. I could never find a German word for avviamento. I don't know why but my mother would never have sent me to avviamento. Then I was registered in the lower grade of the istituto tecnico which was in Italian. She probably didn't pay any fees there. As a teacher's orphan I could have gone to the teacher's training school, but that was in Assisi; I wouldn't have had to pay in Assisi. But it was unimaginable for a ten year old girl to go down to Assisi for Italian teacher's training. What would I have done as an Italian teacher? It would have been impossible to teach German kids Italian. That was just the mentality. I would have had to teach in the Italian part of Italy or teach the German kids here in Italian and not speak a word of German. We all were against fascism, especially my family, due to my father's dying because of fascism. So that would have been impossible.