If you want to see Karl Berger, you first have to pass the traditional costumes - how fitting. The director of the Tyrolean Folk Art Museum sits on the second floor, tucked away at the end of the exhibition on traditional Tyrolean costumes: 48 hand-carved figures wear the stately festive costumes here, elaborately laced and proudly positioned. The Folk Art Museum has a long history of expertise when it comes to traditional costumes: as early as the end of the 19th century, there were concepts to help develop uniform traditional costumes for regions. From 1945 onwards, the museum supported clubs and bands wishing to perform in their own traditional costumes.
Does Karl Berger also like to wear traditional costume? "Not any more. I used to wear traditional costume, but now jeans are my "traditional costume"." So an everyday costume? "Tracht actually comes from wearing, so jeans would actually be a traditional costume too. But colloquially, that's not quite what you associate with the word."
It has been around 200 years since the word " Tracht" (traditional costume ) and its meaning developed. Before that, traditional costume was simply clothing - and it was primarily very class-orientated. "Clothing was a way of distinguishing people from one another. The aristocracy dressed very differently to the rural population." The dress codes were strict - there are examples of this in Tyrol from the 16th century: For example, it was regulated who was allowed to wear a feather or for whom the colour red was permitted. "Wearing red or a feather on your hat was something very elitist, for a farmer it was simply forbidden - in other words: it was a sign of a certain class," says Karl Berger.
Of course, Berger explains, people then tried to emulate them. "The nobility already wore suits with buttons, so the complicated lacing was replaced by buttons, materials were changed, black became modern. The costume became old-fashioned."
In the late 19th century, when hardly anyone in the countryside wore traditional costume, this view changed again: the Romantic period also brought rural life and nature back to the fore. Interest in traditional costume grew. For the elitist population, traditional costume was a way of overcoming class differences.
"It was bad for the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie when they realised that traditional costume was no longer worn in the countryside. They tried to promote traditional costume again with targeted campaigns." It was mainly in urban centres - Merano, Kufstein, Innsbruck - that the first associations for the preservation of traditional costume were formed. Berger explains: "The judge or the teacher were members. It was something elitist, there were no farmers involved. It then took a while for this idea to be communicated to the target audience, if you like, and for the rural population to want to wear traditional costume again - at a time when they were saying: What do they want with old-fashioned clothing?"
I would like to know where the wide variety of traditional Tyrolean costumes comes from: Is this a result of the dress codes or did the colourful sea of traditional costumes only develop when traditional costume became trendy again due to the middle classes?
"As well as: the ordinances were in contact with those responsible and Tyrol was only unified very late. The Tyrolean Oberland was a heartland very early on, while the Unterland belonged to Salzburg for a long time. This resulted in a certain lack of uniformity and diversity. Another factor - and here we are in the Andreas Hofer memorial year 1909 - was the endeavour to differentiate certain valleys." So it was important to create uniformity? "Exactly. In the 17th century, it was even more important that I could show my marital status with my traditional costume, for example with the white apron for unmarried women. It wasn't until the 19th century that social status became less important and the regional aspect took centre stage. You could show that with a traditional costume."
Speaking of regional: As a native of the Oberland, I always had the impression that the traditional costumes from the Unterland are much more elaborate than the simple dresses from the Oberland. Is that true?
Berger laughs: "Yes, that's true. There is a big difference between the historical costumes in the Oberland and the historical costumes in the Unterland. It simply has to do with the availability of financial resources. In other words, the farmer's wife in the lowlands was simply more lavishly dressed, for example with a stotzen hat, because she was simply the wife of the farm owner. And being a farm owner in the lowlands meant a large house and large fields. In the Oberland, it meant owning 1/3 of the house and ¼ of the meadow - it had a lot to do with inheritance rights and the division of property."
However, Berger, who lives in Flirsch am Arlberg himself, knows that traditional costumes have always evolved, been reduced and changed: "I'll take the Flirschers as an example: their first traditional costume for the band was a Biedermeier costume and they were obviously always told at the various meetings that it wasn't a Tyrolean costume. As a result, they had a different costume made that was very similar to the others in the valley. It has to be Tyrolean. Traditional costume is uniform and individuality, that doesn't have to be a contradiction."
Of course, Andreas Hofer also had a hand in Tyrol - or rather his lederhosen. In 1909, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the historic victory on Mount Isel, numerous music bands and rifle companies were founded and gradually dressed up. This is precisely why the historical men's costume is so strongly associated with marksmen and bands in Tyrol.
1909 also played an important role because it was the year in which traditional costume took on a new meaning: "Before then, traditional costume was clothing. With the year 1909, it was then the case in Tyrol - and similarly in other regions - that wearing traditional costume was a certain expression, a certain attitude. In Tyrol, of course, traditional costume became an expression of patriotism and closeness to nature in 1909. If you look at the photographs, you don't see any industrial buildings in the background, but Alpine motifs, a church and the like. And this mixture of meanings of late Romanticism is very clearly expressed here: wearing traditional costume is not just wearing clothes, it is an attitude; I would even say a political attitude. Who wears traditional costume today? It's interesting when you think about politicians and how consciously traditional costume is sometimes worn. Traditional costume is also a means of communication: I think it's much, much stronger in Tyrol than anywhere else."
