From the sixteenth century until 1918, the Tyrol had the privilege of being defended by local troops made up of volunteers: the Schützen ; in the Austro-Hungarian empire they were called Kaiserschützen, that is emperor's Schützen.
In Trentine dialect they were called sìźeri or scìźeri, adaptation of the South Tyrolean pronunciation Schitzen.
In German the word Schütze means shooter: so it dealt with rifle soldiers (in Italian the word "bersagliere" had the same meaning.)
Indeed, in time of peace they played the target shooting: in the 18th century they used a short weapon with rifled barrel, the Stutzen, which for that time had an incredible precision.
It was these troops and these rifles in the Cembra Valley that decided the destiny of the Napoleonic battle of Segonzano, in 1796.
This combat, because of its big impact for the Tyrolean awareness, has been compared to the napoleonic defeat of Bergisel (Austria), in 1809, obtained by the Tyrolese patriots commanded by Andreas Hofer, so that sometimes Segonzano is called the Bergisel von Welschtirol (Bergisel of the Italian Tyrol, i.e. the Trentino).
In time of peace, beyond the target practice, the sizeri carried out the tasks that in our time are done by the civil protection and by the firemen.
Nowadays in Tyrol (also in the Austrian one, but especially in the South Tyrol) there are still people who consider themselves follower of the spirit of the Schützen (see for instance the site Südtiroler Schützenbund, in German); today, yet in a period when the European people are trying to unite, such a term is related to nationalistic claims of the German speaking Tyrolese people.
The last time the company of the Schützen had been involved in combat, was during the First World War. Already in 1914, a few tens of battalions of Schützen, armed with Mannlicher rifles, Werndl carbines or German Mauser pistols, were marshalled in defence of the Tyrolean territory; their actual entry in the war happened in May 1915, when the Kingdom of Italy attacked Austria on the Trentine border.
The picture below depicts a Cembran sizer: Giuseppe Vicenzi, called el Bepo Reʒin.
The photo has been taken in 1914, in Pergine Valsugana (near Trent), on the occasion of the call to arms of the Schützen for the Great War.
Giuseppe Vicenzi (Bepo Reʒin) Teaio (Segonzano [Trent]) 1879-1951
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Bepo survived the war, could come back to his family and live in the Cembra Valley for many more years.
I don't know the origin of the family nickname (Reʒin): maybe it derives from regina (queen).
Still concerning the nicknames, the inhabitants of Teaio are called Crecoli (or Crecoi), after a "regional" German word meaning rural hobnail clogs, made of wood and leather (the ones that in Cembran are called dàlmedre).
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