South Tyrol. The Other Italy. Elizaveta Ebner
Of course, her alleged carnal excesses and cruelty towards her lovers might as well be fictional, but it is undoubted that her penchant for sensual pleasures by far surpassed the boundaries of natural propriety. John could not sufficiently satisfy this inclination. Even as he entered adolescence, Margaret remained childless.” The same Joseph Egger speaks of the political role played by Margaret in Tyrol. During her reign, while she was still married to her first husband, John Henry (1330—1340), she, judging from the historian’s writings, was far from independent politically: “She was deprived of any influence on management, and Bishop Nicholas of Trent ruled the country.” During her marriage to her second husband, Ludwig (1343—1361), as well as during a short period after his death and her own abdication of power (1361—1363), Margaret again failed to show herself to be a strong and independent ruler. Egger describes her as a “weak” (schwache) and “indecisive” (wankelmütige) woman, who, from his point of view, could not hold power and was forced to give it up. Margaret’s great desire to develop Tyrolean cities and trade, to promote the prosperity of the people, described by Feuchtwanger, is not confirmed by Joseph Egger. Indeed, such aspirations could really be observed at that time, but it was not the ruler of Tyrol who was engaged in making those visions a reality, but completely different people.
Neither the violent death of Margaret’s husband Louis, nor the similarly violent death of her son Meinhard, described in Feuchtwanger’s The Ugly Duchess, correspond to the historical truth. Both of them died natural deaths, and as to Ludwig, the Countess of Tyrol lived quite happily with him to the end of his life. The political fate of Margaret was different in reality as well: having ceded power to Rudolf IV Habsburg, the historical ruler of Tyrol left for Vienna, where she spent her last days honoured and protected by the Imperial court. According to Feuchtwanger, Margaret lived the rest of her life in modest conditions on a deserted island, in the company of a single maid.
It is obvious that the description of the ruler of Tyrol by Egger has very little in common with Feuchtwanger’s description, and as to what she really was like, it still remains to be found out. In general, historians point out that the information about that era is too scanty, but the information that we do have allows us to judge about the personality of Margaret Maultasch only to a certain extent.
At the beginning of The Ugly Duchess, Feuchtwanger writes: “It had been manifestly proved that in Tyrol only he could rule whom the Tyrolese themselves wanted to rule. With mountains and valleys and passes God had so disposed it that no foreign power could overrun it by violence.” At the end of his historical novel, describing Margaret’s decision to cede Tyrol to Habsburgs, the author leaves all the prompousness aside: “Schenna thought this proposal very advantageous. He had always preferred the gay, affable Austrians to the heavy, violent Bavarians.” That is how Tyrol lost its independence and became a part of the Austrian monarchy.
And what about Margaret? She, having left her lands, never came back to Tyrol either in the book or in real life.
Chapter Seven.
The “Bolzano Effect”
At first, they took away only the toilet. The explanation that it was only an innocent curtsey to the classic of modern art, the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, didn’t help a bit; the work was ruthlessly impounded by the city authorities following a complaint from National Alliance activists. The toilet was a work by the Roman artists Eleonora Chiari and Sara Goldschmied, working under the pseudonym Goldiechiari. When a person approached it, the plumbing fixture would play Italy’s national anthem along with the sounds of flushing. The case came to trial, and the court ruled that the toilet did not insult either the anthem or the state of Italy, and it was returned to its place.
Then, their “crucified frog” by the German artist Martin Kippenberger was glimpsed by a representative of the Roman Curia, who was pretty much bothered by the sight. As a result, Pope Benedict XVI personally spoke out against this scoffing green amphibian on the cross with an egg in one hand and a beer mug in the other. The Italian Minister of Culture Sandro Bondi called the frog “an unnecessary provocation”, while Franz Pahl, an official, went on a hunger strike as a sign of protest against the sculpture, and even ended up in hospital. Meanwhile, the artist Martin Kippenberger, who died in 1997, called his work Zuerst die Füsse (“Feet first”), and said it was a self-portrait of a person in a state of deep crisis.
Finally, the whole world heard the news about the installation Where Shall We Go Dancing Tonight? which the cleaners took for garbage. The work by the already mentioned Roman artists Eleonora Chiari and Sara Goldschmied was supposed to tell about the ideology of the consumer society, to ridicule the luxurious parties and scandals around the Italian politicians of the 1980s. Empty bottles scattered on the floor, cigarette butts, streamers, festive decorations, items of clothing and shoes – cleaners took all this for garbage from the celebration held the night before, sorted it into recycling bags and cleaned the room. Fortunately, the installation was recreated.
All of these stories took place at the Bolzano (Bozen) Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. It has been blacklisted, and it seems that all the international press has written about scandals associated with its exhibitions. However, even at the most difficult times, here, at the Museion, the staff have fought with word and action for the right of the art to be free, and all the unpleasant “incidents” were perceived philosophically, as a basis for discussing contemporary art.
Unfortunately, the construction of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano (Bozen) did not bring the so-called “Bilbao effect” to the region. Even now, artists from London or New York, who are invited from time to time to take part in the Museion exhibition programs, first have to figure out its exact geographical position. Nevertheless, the architectural design of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, created by the Berlin architects KSV Krüger Schuberth Vandreike, is very interesting in itself. The 25-metre-high parallelepiped is located on the border between the “old” and the “new” Bolzano, with one of its glass facades reflecting the life of the historical part of the city and another one – the rapid flow of the Talfer river and the modern city across the river. At sunset, these glass facades become an “exhibition tool” of multimedia art. Inside the multi-layered facades of the museum there are opaque glass panels, which during the daytime are used to control the lighting inside the Museion. Thus, in the afternoon, when the panels are “open”, you can see everything that happens in the building from the outside. Who knows, whether the representative of the Curia, going on his way past the museum, would have seen Kippenberger’s “crucified frog”, if the sculpture, hanging in the hall above the cashier’s desk, had not been visible from outside through the transparent walls?
The Museion was created not as a “container” with works of art, but as an international research laboratory in the field of contemporary art. In addition to the exhibition halls, the museum has venues for events and seminars, a library, a cafe, a shop and, moreover, a multipurpose indoor space on the ground floor, open to everybody. The latter was created by a guest designer from Merano (Meran), Martino Gamper, who has been living in London for many years. The Museion Passage was made free-to-enter for all kinds of events, both related and non-related to the work of the museum.
The wonderful initiative of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano (Bozen) – opening its covered passage with designer furniture for free public use – almost turned into another scandal. Migrants began to gather there. They charged their phones in the museum, used its restrooms and its high-speed free internet. Migrants filled the stone benches in front of the museum – the Wi-Fi signal was fine in the street. Soon the benches got decorated with inscriptions “Bolzano ai Bolzanini!!” (“Bolzano is for the residents of Bolzano”) and “Integrazione = Degrado!!” (“Integration equals degradation”).
Well, we forget that people never run from their countries, homes and families, if everything is all right. Tomorrow, you can find yourself in their place: