Where Three Countries Meet: The Region of Nauders

Abstract

T RISTATE corners are rarely well visited; for they are usually situated in remote, unpopulous areas.' There are, naturally, exceptions; we think of the old Dreikaiserecke, where three European empires met, and of that point on the Oder River near Ratibor where Czechs, Germans, and Poles face one another. But in the latter case, as in that of the tristate junction near Aachen, the large agglomerations grew up after the establishment of the boundaries, as a result of the discovery of coal and the consequent rapid industrialization. The exact point where the Austrian, Swiss, and Italian boundaries met after the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919 is a triangulation point near the northern slope of the Piz Lad (Lat) a few hundred yards north of the divide between the drainage basins of the Inn and the Adige.2 The Swiss boundary remained unchanged, but the Austro-Italian frontier was moved from Lake Garda northward, an Italian triumph which had been foreshadowed in the Treaty of London (I915) but which violated the Wilsonian principle of self-determination. Ten years ago during my first sojourn in Nauders I was able to get an all-embracing view of this unique spot. I had climbed the northern arete of the Piz Lad with Sigi Lechner,3 guide, philosopher, and friend, and found the whole region spread in a magnificent panorama below us. The triangulation marker was now at our feet, proof that Austrian territory did not extend to the summit, whose little cair served merely to indicate the dividing line between Switzerland and Italy. The climb had given me an opportunity to become acquainted with the geological structure of this tristate mountain. The base of the Piz Lad, as well as of the Piz Ajiiz and the Muttler massif, on the other side of the Inn, consists of Grisonian schists (Biindnerschiefer) with intercalated serpentine that reaches almost to the altitude of the triangulation marker, the Gravelat (Gravalada). The bare lower slopes of the northern face are of