Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Innsbruck

2008-04-29

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1934

By the way, speaking of the events in July 1934 it might be interesting to mention: At the time I was on holiday in South Tyrol. As almost every year I was in St. Lorenzen near Bruneck in the Puster valley. We went cycling with our friends there. There were seven children in the family, six of them were boys of all ages. So there was a lot of ado. Three days before July 24th 1934, the day the National Socialists tried the coup d'état in Vienna, I was at the Campolongo pass in the Dolomites on July 22nd 1934. I saw a huge military column coming up from Arabba. The vanguard was a division of Bersaglieri preceded by officers in a car. We boys were lying in the grass. One soldier asked us: "Where are you from?" and so on. All of us spoke passable Italian and we answered: "We're from Austria." He said: "Yes, there's war in Austria. We're marching in." That seemed ridiculous. There was no war in Austria. Two days later, we heard about the coup d'état in Vienna. So it is interesting that the Italian army obviously was informed days beforehand. An entire Italian army corps marched into the Puster valley. Every single barn or shed was occupied by them. The officers lodged there and who knows what else. Suddenly there was an incredible military presence. When I was working as secretary to the chancellor decades later, I met General Liebitzky. He was the first general troop inspector of the new Austrian army. I told him what had happened in 1934. He said: "That's incredibly important for me." He had been military attaché colonel in Rome. Two days before the coup d'état in Vienna he had sent a telegram to the Ministry of War saying he had heard from the Italian army command that a coup was being planned. Vienna didn't react to this information at all. So he was very happy to say: "You're proof that I didn't imagine it, that there are facts which prove it." The events of 1934, also the conflict with the Schutzbund in February, didn't really play a role in Tyrol. I mean, it happened with less violence, no one was killed. Also the July coup which I experienced from South Tyrol, not directly from Innsbruck. Nothing much happened there either. Tyrol was mostly ? let's say ? Christian Socialist, patriotic to Austria. Except the cities Innsbruck and maybe Kufstein where lawyers and so on and also the university were more German Nationalist. But there were internal tensions there. It was quite interesting to see. In the valleys conservatism was surely the strongest political conviction.