Sepp Kerschbaumer - Politics

Politics

Fascist Italy had begun a process of Italianization of South Tyrol, a predominantly German-speaking area gained by Italy after World War I. Under the South Tyrol Option Agreement (1939), Kerschbaumer chose to migrate to Nazi Germany. But he later realized that no assistance could be expected from Germany. After World War II he joined the South Tyrolean People's Party and dedicated himself to local politics. He became local chairman of the party and local council head of Frangart.

At the start of the 1950s, he became frustrated at what he felt was the too conciliatory attitude of the SVP. At a large demonstration on 17 November 1957, Kerschbaumer distributed an anonymous leaflet demanding "a free South Tyrol". From then on he began to found and build the South Tyrolean Liberation Committee (BAS), which was at first limited to distributing leaflets and symbolic actions, such as the display of the then forbidden flag of South Tyrol. On 12 June 1961, the BAS organized the destruction by explosives of 37 electricity pylons supplying power to the industrial zone of Bolzano, later known as the Night of Fire (Feuernacht).