Origin of the name

Micurà de Rü was born on 4th December 1789 in the hamlet of Rü in San Cassiano/San Ciascian as the fourth and youngest son of a farmer's family. He attended primary school in his home village and secondary school in Bressanone. After his final exam, he spent some time in various towns such as Innsbruck, Trento and Salzburg in order to study philosophy and theology. On 28th August 1814, he was ordained a Priest and afterwards he was a Curate in different Austrian parishes. Then he worked for several years as a Chaplain in the army and as a teacher in a boys' military boarding school in Milan. Later on, Micurà de Rü worked as a lecturer in Italian at the University of Innsbruck. After a long illness, he finally died on 29th March 1847 in Wilten near Innsbruck.

Not only did Micurà de Rü work as a Priest, he also took a keen interest in the Ladin Language which was his mother tongue. In 1833 he wrote the first Ladin grammar: "Versuch einer deütsch-ladinischen Sprachlehre" [An attempt at compiling German-Ladin Grammar]. The future vision of the author about the Ladin Language, is the most interesting part of his work. In fact, he is not so much concerned with preserving what we have inherited, but works towards building up a language that can satisfy modern requirements. His final aim was a unified written language for the Ladins People of the Dolomites. In order to honour this personality, the Institute for Ladin Culture, founded in San Martino in Badia in 1976, was named after him.