Josef Eppich

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Josef Eppich around 1900

Josef Eppich (born February 20, 1874 in Malgern near Gottschee , † June 2, 1942 in Mitterdorf near Gottschee ) was a Catholic priest , publicist and politician . His commitment to the German-speaking ethnic group of the Gottscheers in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and his fight against the resettlement of his compatriots by the National Socialists in 1941 is particularly important .

Life

Gottschee high school: One of his students was Josef Eppich.
Mitterdorf church: Josef Eppich preached here.
There is no tombstone for Josef Eppich in the cemetery in Mitterdorf.

Josef Eppich, born in Malgern in 1874, lost his parents at an early age. As a child he worked as a shepherd. Since he was a good student at the village school, he was sent to the Gottschee secondary school. He later studied theology at the upper secondary school in Ljubljana . He was ordained a priest on July 22, 1897 and was employed as a chaplain, initially in Döberitsch , and in 1898 in the town of Gottschee . On September 13, 1902, he became pastor in Mitterdorf. Bishop Anton Bonaventura Jeglič appointed him a clerical council in 1907 .

Together with his former teacher at the Gottschee grammar school and later personal friend Josef Obergföll as well as the Gottscheer parish priest Dechant Ferdinand Erker , Eppich founded the Gottscheer local newspaper "Gottscheer Bote", the first edition of which appeared on January 4th, 1904.

After the founding of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes , the “Gottscheer Bote” was closed on June 6, 1919 by the new authorities. On August 1, 1919, however, a new paper was founded, the "Gottscheer Zeitung", whose publisher and owner Josef Eppich became and which from then on appeared monthly. After Obergföll's death on January 22, 1921, Eppich increasingly became a figure of integration among the Gottscheers.

Josef Eppich was the organizer of the Eucharistic Congress on August 16, 1925 in Gottschee and the initiator of the 600th anniversary of the Gottscheers from August 1 to 4, 1930, where he also appeared as a keynote speaker.

Eppich led the Gottscheer Peasant Party together with the lawyer Hans Arko and worked on the main committee of the "Political and Economic Association of Germans in Slovenia" founded in 1924 and banned in 1929. In 1927 Josef Eppich was elected to the area committee (Slovenian state parliament) in the area elections for the Gottscheer district and Hans Arko was his deputy. In his inaugural address on February 23, 1927, he emphasized that he was loyal to both the state of Yugoslavia and his own people, the Gottscheers. During this time he tried to maintain German-speaking classes and used his contacts to his fellow Catholic priest and member of the state parliament Karel Škulj from Reifnitz . As early as 1929, however, King Alexander I suspended the constitution and dissolved parliament and the regional state parliaments. Likewise, all parties that represented a nationality were banned. Eppich later worked, again with lawyer Arko, in the Swabian-German Cultural Association , which was re-approved in 1931 .

During this time, Josef Eppich established contacts with Carinthian Slovenes and, together with their spokesman Janez Starc , tried to make concessions to the minorities in Yugoslavia and Austria on the basis of reciprocity. On August 18, 1937, representatives of the Carinthian Slovenes and Gottscheers agreed on principles for the treatment of minorities in Carinthia and the Drau-Banovina. As a result, the Gottscheer Josef Eppich, Canon Ferdinand Erker and Hans Arko sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Milan Stojadinović on August 28, 1937 , in which they called on the government to stop the attacks on the minority in the cultural, economic and political areas and Gottscheer officials, in particular Teacher to hire. However, these efforts went largely unanswered.

Until January 10, 1939, Eppich was editor and owner of the "Gottscheer Zeitung". Then he bowed to the pressure of the National Socialist “ innovators ” of the Kulturbund and handed over the editing to the National Socialist Herbert Erker . In May 1939, the National Socialists took power in the Kulturbund.

After the Balkan campaign in April 1941, the Diocesan Bishop of Ljubljana released the priests from the oath of allegiance. However, together with other clergymen ( August Schauer , Ferdinand Erker, Josef Erker, Josef Gliebe , Josef Kraker , Josef Kreiner and Alois Perz), Eppich took a public position against the relocation planned by the National Socialists, embarrassing that of the National Socialist Gottscheer "ethnic group leadership" used the avoided word "resettlement". Heinrich Wittine was the only pastor to support the resettlement, while Alois Krisch made his attitude dependent on the behavior of his community. As a result, the National Socialists described Catholicism as a “universalist worldview” that must be exterminated.

Josef Eppich resisted the resettlement and stayed in his church in Mitterdorf. On June 2, 1942, he was violently killed in a skirmish between Italian soldiers and Slovenian partisans in Mitterdorf under unexplained circumstances.

Quotes

Josef Eppich's obituary was for his fellow priest August Schauer .

We will not let our last, whatever may come, be taken from us: our fatherly faith, our homeland and our mother tongue. He championed these words in the calendar of 1925 until his death, and it pained him deeply to observe that lately our people have been lacking in understanding here and there. From an obituary to the pastor in Nesseltal, August Schauer (January 17, 1872 - July 1, 1941), the editor of the “Gottscheer Calendar”.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frensing 1970, p. 11
  2. ↑ a b Frensing (1970), 19
  3. ↑ Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims: "The fate of the Germans in Yugoslavia, Volume V", p. 18
  4. ↑ Frensing (1970), p 86
  5. ↑ “Gottscheer Zeitung”, No. 27, Volume 38, July 3, 1941. Reprinted in Gottscheer Zeitung January 2005, p. 7 ( Memento from March 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 2.3 MB).
personal data
SURNAME Eppich, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Gottscheer priest and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Malgern at Gottschee
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1942
Place of death Mitterdorf near Gottschee