South Tyrol. The Other Italy

Chapter Six.

Margaret According to Feuchtwanger

Margaret of Tyrol, nicknamed Margarete Maultasch, could hardly imagine that she would get the not so very flattering title of “the ugliest woman in history”. The picture by the 16th century Flemish painter Quentin Massys invariably gathers crowds of visitors in the National Gallery of London. His portrait of the grotesque Ugly Duchess is often referred to as a portrait of Margaret of Tyrol, but that is not true. The caricature image created by Massys is a pseudoportrait having nothing in common with the historical figure. But what did the countess of Tyrol really look like?

This question is difficult to answer. The only portrait made during her lifetime and available today is scarce in details: one can only see the full-length figure of a slender woman, though her facial features are rather vague. Written comments by contemporaries of Margaret of Tyrol are contradictory: in some sources she is described as an ugly, wicked and dissolute woman, while in others she is called a very beautiful lady.

In the Spanish Hall of Ambras Castle in Innsbruck, among portraits of Tyrolean rulers, you can see a full-length picture of Margaret, portrayed against the background of nature. The Countess of Tyrol looks rather attractive in this picture of mid-16th century. This slender, tall woman with harmonious facial features and her eyes modestly cast down cannot be called ugly. Margaret appears as the same attractive woman in the album of engravings Tirolensium Principum Comitum of late 16th century. The author of the album, the Flemish painter and engraver Dominique Kustos, who served at the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, depicts Countess of Tyrol among 28 Counts of Tyrol, from Albert IV (1190—1253) to Rudolf II (1552—1612). In the engraving by Kustos, Margaret looks obviously similar to the portrait from the Ambras Castle Spanish Hall, though the countess’s lower lip seems intentionally exaggerated. Most likely, the artist wanted to emphasize the connection of the nickname Maultasch with one of the meanings of this word – “big-mouthed”. However, even with the disproportionally big lower lip, Margaret doesn’t look unattractive in Kustos’s engraving.

Actually, it is not only Maragaret’s appearance that is veiled in mystery, but also the origin of her nickname – Maultasch. This word can be translated in various ways, from “big-mouthed” and “mouthpocket” to “dumpling”, to “dissolute woman” and even “whore”. If the former three meanings could point to the unattractive appearance of the Countess of Tyrol, the latter two must characterise her behaviour. One version says that Margaret was first called wanton by the family of her first husband, John Henry, with whom, by her own admission, she never was in actual marital relationship. Their marriage was purely political in nature: at the age of 11, the Countess of Tyrol was married off to the 7-year-old son of the Czech king John of Luxembourg. Margaret and John Henry disliked each other at first sight, and as years passed, their attitude to each other turned from neutral to explicitly negatve. Having solicited the support of the Tyrolean nobility and secretely made an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig IV the Bavarian, the Countess expelled her husband from her lands. The emperor announced her marriage to John Henry void, which made it possible for her to marry the senior son of Ludwig the Bavarian – Ludwig V of the House of Wittelsbach, Margrave of Brandenburg in Meran.

The Countess of Tyrol and her new spouse, who got married illegally from the point of view of the church, were immediately excommunicated by Pope Clement VI, who was a political opponent of Ludwig of Bavaria. Tyrol was placed under interdict; church services and ceremonies were banned throughout its territory. The Catholic Church did not approve of Margaret’s actions, and did not hesitate to express its opinion about the Countess, including in the form of diatribes. It is easy to guess that the ruler of Tyrol was portrayed in them as vicious, depraved, and unpleasant both in her appearance and character.

The flow of unflattering epithets used by the church in relation to Margaret was strongly supported by the relatives of her former husband, John Henry. The latter, six years after the marriage of his ex-wife with Ludwig V Wittelsbach, nevertheless decided to marry again, for which he asked the Pope for permission to divorce, recognizing that their union with the Countess of Tyrol was not consummated, but rejecting in advance all the possible charges of impotence. The divorce was approved, and the excommunication of Margaret and Ludwig from the church continued to be in effect for another ten years; only after that, with the support of Albrecht II, who had already petitioned to Pope Innocent VI on behalf of the spouses, it was completely removed.

The identity of Margaret Maultasch, the Countess of Tyrol, remains shrouded in legends. It is impossible to call any information about her absolutely reliable. Therefore, any materials related to the life of the ruler of Tyrol have always aroused great interest. Needless to say, the historical novel of the German writer of Jewish origin Lion Feuchtwanger, The Ugly Duchess, first published in 1923, did not only attract the attention of several generations of readers to the story of the countess and of Tyrol at her time, but also made them believe in the reality of the image of the ugly but intelligent woman with an unfortunate fate whom the author described in his book. But was Feuchtwanger’s Margaret similar to her historical prototype? Was Tyrol at the time of her ruling the way the writer presented it? Can The Ugly Duschess be believed, and if so, to what extent?

In a historical novel, the historical truth is always combined with fiction, and the real historical figures coexist in the text with fictional persons. This is a difficult genre to write in, and it has always been chosen by very few writers. The Ugly Duchess was the first historical novel by Lion Feuchtwanger, but fortunately not the last one.

Any historical novel needs to be based on reliable historical sources. While working on The Ugly Duchess, Lion Feuchtwanger definitely used the three-volume work by Josef Egger Geschichte Tirols von ältesten Zeiten bis in die Neuzeit, published in Innsbruck in 1872. This is proved not only by the same order of the events described, but also by the fact that the writer borrowed some episodes from Egger’s story word-for-word.

The writer uses Margaret’s image to show the advent of a new age in Tyrol, the gradual transition from medieval way of living to early Renessaince. It is Margaret that Feuchtwanger credits with everything which is good and progressive in this mountain land. The author of The Ugly Duchess exaggerates the ugliness of his heroine’s appearance, endowing her with extraordinary intelligence instead, and showing her as a champion of progress and humanity. This is how Margaret is first presented in Feuchtwanger’s novel: “She looked older than her twelve years. Her thick-set body with its short limbs supported a massive misshapen head. The forehead, indeed, was clear and candid, the eyes quick and shrewd, penetrating and sagacious; but below the small flat nose an ape-like mouth thrust forward its enormous jaws and pendulous underlip. Her copper-coloured hair was coarse, wiry and dull, her skin patchy and of a dull greyish pallor.” A bit later in the book, the author says the following on the Tyrolean ruler: “God had deprived her of feminine charm so that she might sink all the woman in the ruler.” Feuchtwanger’ Margaret is a strong-willed person, who fought all her life against her own ugliness, the greed of her subjects, and takeover attempts of her neighbors; who fought for the happiness of her people, her Tyrol, and for her own happiness as a woman.

And now let us turn to the historical source – the three-volume work by Egger Geschichte Tirols von ältesten Zeiten bis in die Neuzeit, which the author of The Ugly Duchess resorted to when he was writing his book, and see what the historian says about Margaret Maultasch: “As time went by, Margaret more and more often expressed her dissatisfaction with her spouse, and the Tyrolean barons – with the domination of Luxembourg. Both the legends and the writings of historians portrayed Margaret as very unattractive, both physically and spiritually. While she was not totally ugly, she would, nevertheless, never get an award for beauty, for, according to trustworthy testimonies, she had a big, wide mouth disfiguring her face, which, as legend has it, earned her the nickname ‘Maultasch’. Neither could she be considered the ideal of a virtuous woman. 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: run away from bombs, hunger, poverty, an unfair political regime; carry your children in the arms mile after mile, not knowing what awaits them ahead; try to cross a sea, realizing that the chances of drowning and of reaching the coast are about equal; risk your life and the lives of your families for the sake of hope for the future. Put yourself in the shoes of these people. What do you know about them?

The reaction of the Museion’s administration was not immediate, but nevertheless the only correct one: they gave the migrants the opportunity to speak about themselves. The project was called “Where do you imagine yourself?” Within its framework, meetings were held, at which the migrants were told about the place in front of which they would spend hours on benches, separated from it, however, by an invisible barrier. The experimental project of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano helped these people to take the first steps to adaptation and became an opportunity to learn about their stories and life situations. And that was only the beginning. A few months later, migrants, young people from South Tyrol and other European regions were already working together on an art project at Museion. The barriers had been finally brought down. The migrants got an opportunity to become a part of the community, while the community got a chance to feel closer to the migrants.

This art project, like many others, was created through common efforts in the studio – the building located next to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. The house-studio was designed, along with the Museion and two bridges – for pedestrians and cyclists, by the Berlin KSV architects, as part of a single museum complex. The interior space of the building was occupied by the South Tyrolean designer Harry Thaler, whom the press usually calls “a London designer of South Tyrolean origin”. Interestingly, during his studies in the capital of Great Britain, Thaler, before setting up his own firm, worked at the office of Martino Gamper, the designer of the Museion Passage. The house-studio was designed as a temporary housing and a workshop for guest artists and curators invited to the Museion in Bolzano (Bozen).

The museum complex continues with two bridges spanning the Talfer river. Though made from the same materials as the museum itself, they were designed curvilinear in contrast to its strict forms. The bridges connect the historical centre of the city with the “new” Bolzano (Bozen), and you will have to cross them in order to look at the last part of the museum complex, located in the modern Don Bosco district.

There used to be a huge garden where Don Bosco district is now, but in 1940, under the Fascist regime, workers who came from various places in Italy to work in the nearby industrial area of Bolzano (Bozen) began to settle here. This project was part of the plan for the Italianization of South Tyrol – the result of the agreement between Hitler and Mussolini concerning the region. The period from 1943 through 1945 was for Don Bosco the time of Nazi occupation. A transit camp was established here, in which the Jews and the partisans of South Tyrol and other occupied territories were usually held before deportation to concentration camps in Germany. Today, you can follow the history of Don Bosco by looking at the few monuments of the past still found on its territory: remnants of the camp wall, sculptures dedicated to the victims of the inhuman regime, and one of the houses for Italian workers, now turned into a museum (casa semirurale, “a semi-rural house”).

People generally go to museums for knowledge and new impressions, but the administraton of Museion reckoned that the opposite is also possible. That is how a small glass pavilion – the Garutti Cube, or the Little Museion, as people call it – appeared in Don Bosco district. The artist Alberto Garutti studied the population of the district and came to the conclusion that its residents have practically no interest for arts. Garutti wanted to change this state of affairs, to establish a dialogue with the city, to become as close to the potential audience as possible, to step down from the creator’s “pedestal”, and to produce a piece of art that would possibly become a link between his work and the audience. As part of this project, it was decided to decentralize the system responsible for contemporary art in Bolzano (Bozen) by moving one work of art from the Museion collection to the outskirts of the city every three months or by creating “autonomous” exhibitions. The simple glass-and-concrete pavilion installed next to a playground became a mini-representation of the Museum of Modern Art. You cannot enter the transparent cubic sculpture – you can only look at its contents from the outside, but when you approach the pavilion, the lighting is turned on at any time of the day (or night). People passing by the Garutti Cube inevitably find themselves in the role of spectators, and over time it becomes an everyday object for them. The pavilion naturally generates around itself numerous meetings of local residents, of people interested in the exhibited works and in art in general. The architectural solution of the Little Museion was made as simple as possible on purpose – so that the concept of introducing modern art into different parts of the city could be continued in the future.