A Precautionary Tale by Philip Ackerman-Leist

Author:Philip Ackerman-Leist
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2017-10-13T13:53:35+00:00

About the only thing of less interest to Günther than making the traffic-­filled three-hour drive to and from Bozen was getting into politics. However, after conferring with Uli—someone else who had never envisioned registering as a member of a political party, much less running for mayor—he decided to do what any rugged mountain farmer can do: find a path straight to the top.

Günther put in a call to the office of the governor of the province, Luis Durnwalder, and asked for an appointment to discuss his predicament. A gutsy move, it was nonetheless in keeping with a long-standing tradition in the Tirol. Tirolean mountain farmers had long had a direct line to their political sovereigns.

Mountain farmers, the Bergbauern, had been the fierce defenders of Tirolean culture and independence even before the Hapsburgs first took control of the area in the late fourteenth century. By no means submissive peasants, the Bergbauern gained even more notoriety and appreciation among the Hapsburg elite when they took on Napoleon’s forces in the early 1800s. Given their allegiance and the imperial imperative of controlling the resources and passages of the Alps, the Tirolean mountain farmers earned a special relationship with the Hapsburg emperor, addressing him by the informal Du form for “you,” in lieu of the formal Sie greeting.

Wearing that mantle, Günther and other farmers in modern-day South Tirol are quite comfortable speaking to authority. In fact, as the primary landholders and the keepers of the region’s famous pastoral landscape, they often feel compelled to speak “truth” to power—although determining who holds the truth can also create problems of its own.

Günther and his fellow citizens would discover soon enough that truth and power can be awkward bedfellows in a democracy.

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