Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 115, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1920 — Vorarlberg In the Mountains [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Vorarlberg In the Mountains

TUCKED in between Bavaria, Switzerland and the Austrian Tyrol, in the midst of tjie mountains, lies the district Vorarlberg, which after the war tried to escape ft*dm the domination of Austria by voting in favor of joining Switzerland. Probably very few persons in the United States had ever before even heard of Vorarlberg, ■which usually has been mistakenly lumped In with the Tyrol. There is a perfectly welldefined boundary between Vorarlberg and the Austrian Tyrol—namely, the watershed between the Rhine and the Danube, says the New York Times. Travelers over the Arlberg pass may see this boundary duly marked with a monument. The name Vorarlberg means the “land beyond the Arlberg pass”—“beyond,” that is, from the point of view of a person looking westward over the pass from the Austrtan Tyrol. The springs of the Rhine in Switzerland are not far from the southern boundary of, Vorarlberg, across the mountain known as the Rhatikop. In this part of Switzerland is the farfamed Engadine, with its health resorts such as Davos-Platz, Chur, etc., very much better known to the world at large than the region to the north of it. In the north Vorarlberg reaches the beautiful lake of Constance; on the shores of that lake is Bregenz, the political capital of the land. Bregenz yields precedence, so far as size is concerned, to Dornbirn, up in the mountains behind the lake, but it is nevertheless the most important place in Vorarlberg. The other leading towns are the railway junction of Feldkirch, where the lines from Tyrol, Germany and Switzerland meet, and Bludenz. Dornbirn, has about 15,000 inhabitants, Bregenz about 10,000, Feldkirch and Bludenz in the vicinity of 5,000 each. Grabbed by the Hapsburgs. Previous to the break-up of the Aus-tro-Hungarian empire, Vorarlberg was administered by a “statthalter” residing at Innsbruck, capital of the Austrian Tyrol, but it also had a governor of Its ovfhand an assembly of 21 members. It used to send .four representatives to the reichsrat, or imperial parliament, at Vienna. The Hapsburgs began by adding Vorarlberg to their motley collection of territories back in the fourteenth century. Feldkirch was incorporated in their dominions in 1375, Bludenz and the picturesque Monnivoh valley in 1394, the Bregenz region in 1451 and 1523, Sonnenberg in 1455 and Hohenems in 1765. It was after the annexation of the latter to Austria that Empress Maria Theresa united all the districts of the region under the name Vorarlberg and placed a governor over them with his residence at Bregenz. In 1782 the region was made a part of the Tyrol, and in 1804, during the Napoleonic wars, it was annexed to Bavaria. It was not until 1814 that Vorarlberg was separated from Bavaria and restored, with the -exception of the district of Hoheneck, to the Austrian crown. In the following year the region received its present status. The area of Vorarlberg is 1.000 square miles, and it has something like 150,000 Inhabitants, practically all of whom speak German, the exception being those who still cling to that , strange dialect known as “Romansch” or “Romanic,” which the Roman settlers Imprinted upon the Inhabitants bf this region when it was known as Rhaetia. How Ite People Live. In the more mountainous sections of the little land the inhabitants are pastoral ; In the towns the spinning and weaving of cotton had risen before the war to-a flourishing condition, as had Various other lines of industry. Trade with the surrounding countries also grew rapidly In the years before the war; schools were improved, factories Kpnwng~ub m YHa~tbWns. roads and bridges were built, and railway connection established northward, westward, and eastward. From the leading Vortrlberg centers —Bregenz, Feldkirch, Bludenz—one may travel in a few

hours to L!ndan, the Bavarian port bn the Lake of Constance, and thence to Munich, eastward to Innsbruck and Vienna, westward into Switzerland and France. The Austro-Hungarian government also carried out extensive harbor improvements at Bregenz, thus enhancing the importance of the lake trade centering at that port. The Vorarlbergers are distinct from the inhabitants"of Bavaria, the nearest part of Germany. They claim descent from the Alemanni, who, after their defeat by Clovis, king of the Franks, in the seventh century, flowed back eastward and settled in the valleys of the ancient Rhaetla. Thanks to the mountains that ring them round and cut them off to a great extent from the rest of the world, the Vorarlb.ergers have presented a certain independence of attitude through the centuries, and have refused to be over awed by the noble lords who have sought to browbeat them. They are of an essentially practical nature, numbering in their midst more mechanics and builders than sculptors, poets and musicians. They are Industrious, frugal, even if given a bit to comfortable living, and talkative to a degree. They garnish their speech with many a witty remark, but are inclined, it is said, to become cantankerous and disputatious upon slight provocation. They are very patriotic and religious. Many of the people live in fine wooden houses of a pleasing style of architecture. The contrast between these domiciles and the poorer houses of the inhabitants of the Swiss sections Immediately west of Vorarlberg at once strikes the traveler’s eye. The natives still wear picturesque costumes in some parts of the region, though by no means to the extent that was common as recently as 25 or 30 years ago.

View of Feldkirch.