South Tyrol in the context of "Bezirk"

German (Deutsch, pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It is also an official language of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol, as well as a recognized national language in Namibia. There are also notable German-speaking communities in other parts of Europe, including: Poland (Upper Silesia), the Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Denmark (North Schleswig), Slovakia (Krahule), Romania, Hungary (Sopron), and France (Alsace). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in the Americas.

German is one of the major languages of the world, with nearly 80 million native speakers and over 130 million total speakers as of 2024. It is the most spoken native language within the European Union. German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language, after English, both as a first and as a second language. German is also widely taught as a foreign language, especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French) and in the United States (where it is the third most commonly learned second language in K-12 education and among the most studied foreign languages in higher education after Spanish and French). Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language globally. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites. The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in the world being published in German.

A frazione (pl.: frazioni, cognate with English fraction) is a type of subdivision of a comune ('municipality') in Italy, often a small village or hamlet outside the main town. Most frazioni were created during the Fascist era (1922–1943) as a way to consolidate territorial subdivisions in the country.

In the autonomous region of the Aosta Valley, a frazione is officially called hameau in French. In South Tyrol, a frazione is called Fraktion in German and frazion in Ladin.

Bavarian (Boarisch or Bairisch; German: Bayrisch [ˈbaɪʁɪʃ] ), alternately Austro-Bavarian, is a group of Upper German varieties spoken in the south-east of the German language area, including the German state of Bavaria, most of Austria, and South Tyrol in Italy. Prior to 1945, Bavarian was also prevalent in parts of the southern Sudetenland and western Hungary. Bavarian is spoken by approximately 12 million people in an area of around 125,000 square kilometres (48,000 sq mi), making it the largest of all German dialects. In 2008, 45 percent of Bavarians claimed to use only dialect in everyday communication.

Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (Italian: Trentino-Alto Adige [trenˈtiːno ˈalto ˈaːdidʒe]; Austrian German: Trentino-Südtirol; Ladin: Trentin-Südtirol), often known in English as Trentino-South Tyrol or by its shorter Italian name Trentino-Alto Adige, is an autonomous region of Italy, located in the northern part of the country. The region has a population of nearly 1.1 million, of whom 62% speak Italian as their mother tongue (in areas where the local languages are transition dialects between Eastern Lombard and Venetian), 30% speak German (around 93% of whom are fluent in the local South Tyrolean dialect of Bavarian), and the remaining are minority speakers of Ladin, Mòcheno or Cimbrian and immigrant communities speaking several foreign languages. Since the 1970s, most legislative and administrative powers have been transferred to the two self-governing provinces that make up the region: the province of Trento, commonly known as Trentino, and the province of Bolzano, commonly known as South Tyrol (Italian: Alto Adige; German: Südtirol). In South Tyrol, German remains the sizeable majority language.

From the 9th century until 1801, the region was part of the Holy Roman Empire. After being part of the short-lived Napoleonic Republic of Italy and Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, the region was part of the Austrian Empire and its successor Austria-Hungary from 1815 until its 1919 transfer to Italy in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye at the end of World War I. Together with the Austrian state of Tyrol, it is part of the Euroregion of Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino.

Tyrol (/tɪˈroʊl, taɪˈroʊl, ˈtaɪroʊl/ tih-ROHL, ty-ROHL, TY-rohl; German: Tirol [tiˈroːl] ; Italian: Tirolo [tiˈrɔːlo]) is an Austrian state. It consists of two non-contiguous parts, North Tyrol and East Tyrol, separated by the Austrian state of Salzburg and the Italian province of South Tyrol, which was part of Tyrol until 1919. It is a constituent part of the present-day Euroregion Tyrol–South Tyrol–Trentino (together with South Tyrol and Trentino in Italy). The capital of Tyrol is Innsbruck.

Tyrol is dominated by high mountain ranges, including the Ötztal Alps, the Zillertal Alps, and the Kitzbühel Alps, with the Grossglockner and other major Alpine peaks nearby. The region is traversed by important rivers such as the Inn and the Isel, and is noted for its valleys, glaciers, and alpine passes. Its strategic location has historically made Tyrol a key transit region between northern and southern Europe, with the Brenner Pass serving as one of the most important north–south routes across the Alps since Roman times.

The Drava or Drave (German: Drau, pronounced [ˈdʁaʊ] ; Slovene: Drava [ˈdɾàːʋa]; Croatian: Drava [drǎːʋa]; Hungarian: Dráva [ˈdraːvɒ]; Italian: Drava [ˈdraːva]), historically known as the Dravis or Dravus, is a river in southern Central Europe. With a length of 710km (441 miles), or 724km (450 miles), if the length of its Sextner Bach source is added, it is the fifth or sixth longest tributary of the Danube, after the Tisza, Sava, Prut, Mureș and likely Siret. The Drava drains an area of about 40,154 square kilometers (15,504 sq. mi.). Its mean annual discharge is seasonally 500m³ (650 cu. yd.) per second) to 670m³ (880 cu. yd.) per second. Its source is near the market town of Innichen, in the Puster Valley of South Tyrol, Italy. The river flows eastwards through East Tyrol and Carinthia in Austria into the Styria region of Slovenia. It then turns southeast, passing through northern Croatia and, after merging with its main tributary the Mur, forms most of the border between Croatia and Hungary, before it joins the Danube near Osijek, in Croatia.

The Adige is the second-longest river in Italy, after the Po. It rises near the Reschen Pass in the Vinschgau in the province of South Tyrol, near the Italian border with Austria and Switzerland, and flows 410 kilometres (250 mi) through most of northeastern Italy to the Adriatic Sea.

The name of the river is of unknown origin. Nineteenth-century theories, such as a derivation from the Proto-Celtic *yt-ese 'the water', and alleged to be cognate with the River Tees in England (anciently Athesis, Teesa), have never been accepted by Celtic onomasts and are now completely obsolete.

Victor Emmanuel III (Italian: Vittorio Emanuele Ferdinando Maria Gennaro di Savoia; 11 November 1869 – 28 December 1947) was King of Italy from 29 July 1900 until his abdication on 9 May 1946. A member of the House of Savoy, he also reigned as Emperor of Ethiopia from 1936 to 1941 and King of the Albanians from 1939 to 1943, following the Italian invasions of Ethiopia and Albania. During his reign of nearly 46 years, which began after the assassination of his father Umberto I, the Kingdom of Italy became involved in two world wars. His reign also encompassed the birth, rise, and fall of the Fascist regime.

The first fourteen years of Victor Emmanuel's reign were dominated by prime minister Giovanni Giolitti, who focused on industrialization and passed several democratic reforms, such as the introduction of universal male suffrage. In foreign policy, Giolitti's Italy distanced itself from the fellow members of the Triple Alliance (the German Empire and Austria-Hungary) and colonized Libya following the Italo-Turkish War. Giolitti was succeeded by Antonio Salandra, Paolo Boselli, and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. The First World War brought about Italian victory over the Habsburg Empire and the annexation of the Italian-speaking provinces of Trento and Trieste, completing the national unity of Italy, and the southern part of German-speaking Tyrol (South Tyrol). For this reason, Victor Emmanuel was labelled the "King of Victory". However, a part of Italian nationalists protested against the partial violation of the 1915 Treaty of London and what they defined as a "mutilated victory", demanding the annexation of Croatian-speaking territories in Dalmatia and temporarily occupying the town of Fiume without royal assent.

The Kingdom of Italy (Italian: Regno d'Italia; French: Royaume d'Italie) was a kingdom in Northern Italy (formerly the Italian Republic) that was a client state of Napoleon's French Empire. It was fully influenced by revolutionary France and ended with Napoleon's defeat and fall. Its government was assumed by Napoleon as King of Italy and the viceroyalty delegated to his stepson Eugène de Beauharnais. It covered some of Piedmont and the modern regions of Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trentino, South Tyrol, and Marche. Napoleon I also ruled the rest of northern and central Italy in the form of Nice, Aosta, Piedmont, Liguria, Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, but directly as part of the French Empire (as departments), rather than as part of a vassal state.

At its peak, the kingdom covered 84,000 square kilometers and had a population of 6.5 million.

Italian irredentism (Italian: irredentismo italiano [irredenˈtizmo itaˈljaːno]) was a political movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Kingdom of Italy. It originated to promote the annexation of majority Italian-speaking territories which were still retained by the Austrian Empire after three wars of independence (1848-1849, 1859 and 1866); specifically, Trento and Trieste were designated as the main "irredent lands". Both provinces were ultimately annexed as a result of World War I, considered in Italian discourse to be the "fourth war of independence": the conclusion of the conflict on November 4, 1918, is still commemorated in Italy as National Unity Day. Thereafter, Italian irredentism waned in importance; however, Italian nationalists and fascists would use irredentist arguments to justify the Italianization of other territories Italy annexed in World War I (such as South Tyrol and the Slavic parts of Istria) and claim many other lands beyond Trento and Trieste. Those latter policies and claims have been abandoned by the Italian Republic.