Just as all life is dependent on physical local conditions and spiritual influences, the political position of Tyrol is also determined by its geographical location and the historical spirit that lives in the people. The beautiful mountainous country, which stretches quite far, is surrounded by Germany to the north-west and east, and only the smaller southern part stretches like a wedge into Romanesque Italy. The two largest and most beautiful valleys in the world, the Inn and Adige valleys, lead to the north-east and south, to Germany and Lombardy, thus indicating the country's natural outlet and main traffic route. The spirit of the Tyrolean people reveals itself perfectly in accordance with these spatial conditions; by far the larger part of the original German, immigrant tribe is still completely German, and only the smaller Romanised part of South Tyrol has adopted Italian life and customs. 

Just as the whole of Tyrol has been a German ancestral land for almost two thousand years, so the German consciousness, will and conscience form by far the predominant spiritual centre of the people, and if some South Tyroleans consider themselves Italians, they have forgotten history as much as they misjudge their own interests. Apart from the fact that the Longobards were a German tribe, the inhabitants who settled in the foothills of the mountains have constantly maintained the German character and exchange, and this population, which is more German than Roman, is not confined within the present borders of Tyrol, it extends far beyond them to the regions of Belluno and Vicenza, and in some areas of South Tyrol there were still German elementary schools not so long ago. 

From the earliest times of the migration of peoples, and especially in the Middle Ages during the long dispute between the German emperors and popes over the supremacy of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, Tyrol was not merely a military route between Germany and Italy, but even acquired a distinguished history with its own princes and its own constitution. 

But just as the German lands were only ever bound together by a loose bond, which even the magnanimous Emperor Maximilian was not able to tie more closely through his imperial constitution to a lasting unification of the separated members, so Tyrol also remained only in a negative connection with its neighbouring countries, but always German in attitude and in fact. Closely linked to the House of Austria in the last few centuries, the people, gifted with certain privileges in its quiet valleys, made themselves known in their fresh vitality with unwavering loyalty to the imperial house, challenged in particular by the French Revolution. However, since the Congress of Vienna after the wars of liberation united all the German states only by a nominal bond and represented them at secret meetings in Frankfurt, Tyrol also remained in an almost isolated state and its position was of no significance; it has never had any representation or closer contact with foreign countries anyway. The great importance of the position and profession of Tyrol will only be realised in the future, when the chains of the bond will be loosened, which instead of binding the peoples unfree, should unite them in a common family unity and free movement of life. The hour for such a better future has struck, and the present struggle of spirits is no other than the process of the divorce of a newly dawning future to a general legal freedom from the last coercive forms of the Middle Ages. Germany in particular is now engaged in a great process of organisation, which, in the centre of Europe and thus in the centre of the civilised world, has the high destiny not only to unite all its hitherto loosely connected or separated members into a vital body, of which Tyrol in particular will form an important link, but Germany's vocation is a much higher one, namely to unite the nations and peoples as a united, intellectual power into a general peace. Further discussion of these allusions will be provided in future articles.