Janjevci
The Janjevci ( German Janjever , Albanian Janjevët ) are a regional Croatian minority in Kosovo . They get their name from the town of Janjeva / Janjevo near Pristina , where most of the Janjevci who remained in Kosovo still live today.
They are descended from traders and miners from Dubrovnik and Bosnia and Herzegovina who settled in Kosovo during the 14th century . They have preserved their Catholic faith and their Croatian identity for centuries.
The first written mention comes from Pope Benedict XI. from 1303, Janjevo is mentioned as the center of the Catholic parish of St. Nicholas.
From 1998 onwards most of them emigrated, mainly to Croatia , because of the unrest in Kosovo . Before 1991 there were around 8,000 Janjevci in Kosovo, of which around 4,500 were in Janjevo itself; in 1998 there were 1,800. Today there are around 350 in Janjevo itself.
The inhabitants of the pilgrimage site Letnica left the place already in 1992. They were mostly settled in Kistanje and in western Slavonia, the area of Croatia from which the Serbian population fled after the end of the Croatian war.
literature
- Ger Duijzings: Egyptians in Kosovo and Macedonia. In: Eggert Hardten, André Stanisavljević, Dimitrios Tsakiris (eds.): The Balkans in Europe. Lang, Frankfurt / M. 1996, ISBN 3-631-30384-X , pp. 103-121.
- Entry: The Exodus of Letnica - Croatian Refugees from Kosovo in Western Slavonia. A Chronicle. In: Renata Jambrešić Kirin, Maja Povrzanović (eds.): War, Exile, Everyday Life - Cultural Perspectives. Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb 1996, ISBN 953-6020-07-6 , pp. 147-170.
Web links
- Report from the University of Zadar. (PDF; English).
- Report on the 700th anniversary of Janjevo. (Croatian).
- The exodus from Kosovo. (English).
Individual evidence
- ^ Noel Malcolm: Kosovo. A short history . Pan Books, London 1998, ISBN 0-333-66612-7 , p. 350.