Leader of the Tyrolean insurrection of 1809, born in Tyrol in 1767 and executed in Mantua in 1810, keeper of an inn “Am Sandhof”, after which he was named “der Sandwirt”. In the course of the 19th century he became a national cult figure, initially in all German lands (although the Vormärz progressives saw him largely as a dupe of cynical Realpolitik) and, after 1848, exclusively for Austrian Reichspatriotismus. Abandoned by the Austrian government during the insurrection, he was towards the very end of his life ennobled; his remains were solemnly reinterred in Innsbruck’s Hofkirche in 1834 and a statue in his honour raised in Vienna’s Feldherrenhalle in 1873. A multimedia memory figure celebrated in statues, songs, paintings, plays and films, his iconography (in traditional Tyrolean dress) exemplified the ideal link between the rural traditional population and the Austrian Empire; his links with Bozen/Bolzano also made him a symbolic icon for irredentist claims on South Tyrol / Alto Adige.