Contesting and Overcoming Controversial Memories and Landmarks? the Case of the Fascist Victory Monument in South Tyrol

Described as a model for the management of ethnic tensions, the Italian province of South Tyrol is home to not only German- and Ladin-speaking minorities, but also to some well-preserved monuments built during Mussolini’s rule. These fascist relics carry controversial meanings and their interpretation differs considerably between South Tyrol’s Italian and German speakers. After being closed to the public for decades, one such monument -- the Victory Monument in Bolzano/Bozen -- has been recently historicized and transformed in a museum on the meaning of the monument and the local history, in particular the times during the Fascist and Nazis dictatorships. With the reopening, the city of Bolzano/Bozen hopes that from an element of division it will become an instrument to bridge South Tyrol’s divergent memory cultures.

Landmarks like the Victory Monument embody memories and act as cues for articulating identities. Starting from the Monument’s narrative, the paper will investigate the role of spatial symbols in managing ethnic-relations and controversial memories. Drawing on interviews with museum’s curators, and content analysis of exhibition catalogues, the paper will address the following questions: To what extent has this cultural heritage infrastructure preserved traumatic past experiences and affects processes of identity construction, alleviating or exacerbating tensions between South Tyrol’s linguistic groups? To what extent has it been re-framed and has become a site of ethnic reconciliation? Finally, in view of the increasing foreign migrant population, do the narratives promoted by the museum include or ignore alternative memory cultures of the ‘new’ minorities stemming from migration?