120 years ago, at the beginning of November 1904, violent clashes broke out around the opening of an Italian law faculty at the University of Innsbruck, culminating in a military operation. The sad result: one death, numerous injuries, demolished buildings and countless arrests.
These riots, which went down in history as the "Fatti di Innsbruck", led to the resignation of the Koerber government and permanently strained relations between the German- and Italian-speaking populations in Austria as well as between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Italy. For weeks, newspapers all over the world reported on this conflict and its consequences.
Just as events today spread like lightning via social media, the print media catapulted this regional event into the global public eye, as illustrated by the extensive collection of newspaper cuttings held in the Innsbruck City Archives. Their analysis is the focus of this volume.