Description
The term 'cimbro' is the Italianisation of the word zimbarby which the Cimbri call their language. Despite the homonym, there is no relationship between the Cimbrian people of Luserna and the Roman peoples known as Cimbri, who descended into Italy from present-day Denmark and were defeated in 101 BC by the army of Consul G. Marius at Campi Raudi.
The origin of this linguistic island is actually to be found in the migrations of Bavarian settlers, who in the decade between 1053 and 1063 left the lands of the Benedictine Monastery of Benediktbeuern in Bavaria, today belonging to the Salesians, to escape famine, first settling in the future 13 Veronese municipalities in the Lessini Mountains (Azzarino, Badia Calavena, Bosco Chiesanuova, Camposilvano, Cerro, Erbezzo, Roveré Veronese, San Bartolomeo, San Mauro di Saline, Selva di Progno, Tavernole, Valdiporro, Velo Veronese), later expanding into the seven municipalities of Vicenza (Asiago, Lusiana-Conco, Enego, Roana, Rotzo, Gallio and Foza) and colonising the Folgaria and Lavarone Plateau in 1216, with the authorisation of the Prince-Bishop of Trento Friedrich von Wangen. In a subsequent wave of colonisation, some families went up to Luserna and settled there permanently. And finally, at the beginning of the 18th century, the moment of maximum expansion of the Cimbrian language, which reached a number of about 20,000 speakers, there was a migration of Cimbrian people from the Asiago Plateau to the Cansiglio Plain in the Belluno Pre-Alps.
Despite its rather wide historical range, the Cimbrian language has survived today only in Luserna, while it is virtually extinct in the other areas of the Plateau and in the provinces of Verona, Vicenza and Belluno.
Luserna reached its demographic peak in the early 1900s, counting over a thousand inhabitants; the following years were marked by a dramatic succession of events that heavily conditioned the life of the Cimbrian minority. The war of 1915-1918 saw the Highlands and Luserna as a border line and military front, and forced the villagers to evacuate to Bohemia. Towards the end of the 1930s, as happened to the South Tyrolean population, the Lusernese were granted an option, i.e. the renunciation of their property, in exchange for moving to Nazi Germany and acquiring German citizenship. In the post-war period, it was emigration for work and study that undermined the survival of the community, which today numbers just under three hundred inhabitants.
The bond that still today unites the inhabitants of Luserna with the Cimbrian people who emigrated to various places in Trentino and the historical Tyrol, the so-called 'oriundi', who periodically gather in the town of origin, is very strong.
To learn more about the Cimbrian minority
Statistical surveys on the Cimbrian linguistic minority
The last demographic census carried out in 2021 yielded positive data, with 1,111 Cimbri living in the Province of Trento.
