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The emigration of Friulians to Germany and Austria
Matteo Ermacora
Between the 19th and 20th centuries Austria and Germany were the destinations par excellance for emigrants from Friuli. The processes of industrialization, the opening of the huge hydraulic and railway sites, the development of the big urban centres across the Alps deeply changed the “traditional” mobility of the modern age. The winter migrations of the peddlers (cramari) and the textile workers from Carnia were replaced by the new “seasons” of Friulian builder labourers who went firstly to nearby Austria (Carinthia, Styria and the Tyrol) and, from 1890, to Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, where they found work mainly in furnaces.
Friulian emigrants who headed for the German speaking countries of Central Europe increased rapidly to finally reach about 50,000-60,000 persons a year. When public works were finished, workers moved to the private building sector; the development of the big cities and the Austrian and German tourist resorts had been possible thanks to the contribution of capable Friulian entrepreneurs and to migratory flows which guaranteed a selection of professional workers, as well as the harmony and solidarity among team labourers. Up until the outbreak of the First World War, migration was a mass phenomenon with severe aftermaths on society and the collective imagination. The migratory system became an important “driving force” in the Friulian economy; the money sent back home allowed better standards of living and improvements in the houses, and contributed to the agricultural and industrial development of the province, reducing the depopulation of the mountain areas. Emigration to German lands was not without problems (sich as blacklegging, cheating, exploitation of women and children, alcoholism and difficulties in integrating in society), but it also had productive influences, just consider the increase in literacy and the professionalization of workers, the insight into Socialist ideas and the trade union movement among workers from the mountain regions. In parallel to this, between the 19th and 20th centuries, a process of secularization and of detachment from religious authority began among the seasonal migrants. The outbreak of the First World War brusquely interrupted the balances reached and forced 80,000 migrants to return home. This was the end of an era. After the war the Central Empires could no longer offer work to migrant Friulians, who were forced to head for France, Belgium and Romania or even for overseas countries, such as Argentina or the United States. After a brief flow during the mid 1920s, Friulan workers moved to the Third Reich between 1938 and 1943 due to migration organized by the Fascist regime to consolidate its alliance with Germany and ease unemployment. At the end of the Second World War, Austria was no longer an important destination for the migrants, while Federal Germany became a new magnet of attraction from the mid 1950s. After a first phase linked to government agreements which provided for the recruitment of builders, labourers, miners and agricultural workers, in the years of economic boom the mining industry and the mechanical-metallurgical industry of the South-West regions of Germany (Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg) needed thousands of builders, miners, artisans, factory workers, electricians and turners. The long term contracts limited the integration of the immigrant workers who considered their work as a temporary experience. In the mid 1970s the growing difficulty in the German economy, the earthquake in Friuli and the training of a regional work force, all determined the return to the homeland and the end to this type of migration.
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