Slovenian Germans
As Sloweniendeutsche people in Slovenia referred to as ethnic German or Austrian view and whose native language usually German is. In the interwar period they made up several percent of the population of what was then the Drava Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , but since the expulsions at the end of World War II only a few hundred people have identified themselves as "Germans" or "Austrians" in censuses.
history
The Germans in Slovenia or within the closed Slovene-speaking area were made up of several groups that were socially and economically very different. Apart from the numerically only few nobles, these were the Zarzer , Gottscheer and residents of the Abstaller Feld , who went back to medieval peasant settlement , the bourgeois population of the cities of Krains and the , consisting of traders, craftsmen and, since the 19th century, industrialists and civil servants Styria and since the 19th century - especially in Marburg an der Drau - a German-speaking industrial proletariat.
Middle Ages and early modern times
Since the former Carantania came under the feudal sovereignty of the Bavarians and later became part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation , the German language played an important role as a means of communication for the upper classes. Despite immigration from German-speaking countries, Slovene remained the almost exclusive means of communication in Carniola , Lower Styria and Southern Carinthia outside the cities, and it prevailed over the immigrants' languages. Exceptions to this were the German language islands of Zarz and Gottschee, which had existed since the 12th and 13th centuries. The urban population, on the other hand, has preferred German since the late Middle Ages - to varying degrees in different regions - whereby a high degree of bilingualism in the cities and their surroundings can be assumed. The linguistic contrast between town and country is described, for example, for the town of Cilli by Hartmann Schedel in his Nuremberg Chronicle 1493: “The people in the Stetten are usually German . Vnd the pawrvuolck here half windy . Inside here is an old stettlet that is called cili. "
A number of literary works appeared in German in Carniola, of which the most historically significant is the “ Honor of the Duchy of Carniola ” ( Laibach and Nuremberg 1689) by Johann Weichard Valvasor (1641–1693).
19th century
Since the 19th century, the development of nationalism led to a polarization between “Germans” and “Slovenes”. In the cities in particular, German and Slovenian libraries, theaters and associations of all kinds coexisted. The Slovenian clergy played an important role in strengthening Slovenian, especially under the Marburg bishop Anton Martin Slomšek . The Slovenes achieved political supremacy in all cities of Carniola with the exception of Gottschee by the end of the 19th century. The cities of Lower Styria - especially Cilli, Pettau and Marburg an der Drau - remained economically and politically in German hands. This political picture was also reflected in the language situation: German was still dominant in the linguistic island of Gottschee and in the cities of Lower Styria and Southern Carinthia, while Slovene prevailed in public life elsewhere. In the former German language island of Zarz in Upper Carniola, only the elderly spoke German at the beginning of the 20th century.
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
With the establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , the Germans, who had previously had a prominent position in the cities of Styria and Gottschee, became a minority . A visible sign of this was the violent dissolution of a rally of around 10,000 people in Marburg for the connection of the city to German Austria on January 27, 1919 by troops of the Slovenian general Rudolf Maister , in which 13 people died and which was remembered as Marburg's Bloody Sunday German Slovenia received. Shortly afterwards, the German House in Cilli, in which German associations and companies were located, was expropriated and given to the now Slovenian city of Celje as Celjski dom.
In the years 1919 and 1920, around 2000 Laibachers and around 39,000 Lower Styrians left their homeland for German Austria. The Yugoslav population censuses for the territory of Slovenia (within the then Yugoslav borders) in 1921 showed a number of 41,514 people (3.9%) with German as their mother tongue, compared to only 28,999 (2.5%) in 1931. In addition to emigration, the fact that bilingual people who declared themselves “Germans” in Austria-Hungary now referred to themselves as “Slovenes” played a role.
The German language of instruction in schools was also very quickly replaced by Slovenian, so that there was no German school in Slovenia or the Drau-Banovina. The previously German-speaking grammar school in Gottschee also switched to the Slovenian language of instruction. Private schools were banned. Parallel classes with German as the language of instruction were allowed in Yugoslavia, but no children with Slavic surnames were allowed to take part. At least 40 registered registrations were required for a German-speaking class train. In Lower Styria there were eleven such German-language parallel classes at six elementary schools in 1935, and in 1938 there were thirty in all of Slovenia.
In 1924 the "Political and Economic Association of Germans in Slovenia" was founded, but in 1929 it was banned under the royal dictatorship like all ethnically oriented organizations in Yugoslavia. In 1931 the Swabian-German Cultural Association , which had its focus on the Danube Swabians of Serbia and Croatia, was also approved in Slovenia, but its activity was stopped again under Interior Minister Anton Korošec .
Many Slovenian Germans linked the rise of National Socialism in Germany and the " Anschluss of Austria " with the hope of being annexed to the German Empire. During the clashes in the Swabian-German Cultural Association, many Slovenian Germans took sides with the National Socialists.
Second World War
With the occupation of Yugoslavia in World War II in 1941, Slovenia was divided between Germany, Italy and Hungary. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini agreed to relocate all Germans from the now Italian province of Laibach . This particularly affected the Gottscheers and Germans in the city of Ljubljana.
The National Socialists pursued the goal of forcibly Germanizing the areas of Slovenia they controlled . For this purpose, they abducted around 30,000 Slovenes from the CdZ area of Lower Styria to Serbia, Croatia and Germany. In addition to Austrians and Germans from the "Altreich", ethnic Germans from Lower Styria were placed in the positions of expelled Slovenes.
In the so-called Rann triangle in the area of Gurkfeld ( Krško ) and Rann ( Brežice ) on the Sava, around 11,000 Gottscheers and ethnic Germans brought home from Bessarabia and South Tyrol were settled in farms of kidnapped Slovenes . The extent to which the Gottscheers were forced or voluntarily resettled is still the subject of discussions today.
Many Slovenian Germans took advantage of the privileges now offered to them, joined the NSDAP or the SS or participated in war crimes. On the other hand, Slovenian Germans also took part in the resistance against National Socialism , including the Cillier writer Alma Karlin . Some of the Germans who remained in the Gottschee joined the Slovenian partisans .
End of war
With the defeat of the German Wehrmacht, many Slovenian Germans fled towards Austria at the beginning of May. On May 5th and 7th, several hundred Gottscheers were brought to Austria by train from the "Rann triangle", but most of them were detained by the German authorities. The evacuation order did not come until May 8, the day of the German surrender , so that only part of the refugee routes could reach Austria. The OZNA set up a central internment camp for the Germans of Slovenia in Sterntal (Strnišče) near Ptuj . A large part of the remaining Slovenian Germans were held prisoner there and in the Tüchern ( Teharje ) camp , with several thousand people dying in the hopelessly overcrowded camps.
Through the AVNOJ resolutions , all movable and immovable property of the Germans was expropriated. The expulsion took place faster in Slovenia than in Serbia: by 1946 almost all German camp inmates had either died or deported to Austria.
Socialist Yugoslavia
As in all of Yugoslavia, the Germans in Slovenia had no minority rights. German organizations were banned. Neither were there any native-speaking German lessons in schools, but many students in Maribor and the surrounding area learned German as their first foreign language. Only very few people identified themselves as “Germans” or “Austrians” in censuses (1953: 1906 Germans and Austrians, 1961: 986, 1971: 700, 1981: 560, 1991: 745). These numbers include immigrant Germans who z. B. came to Yugoslavia as spouses of Slovenes. The Germans have been largely evenly distributed in Slovenia since the end of the war.
Todays situation
In the 2002 census, 1,628 people stated that German was the “colloquial language in the household (in the family) and their mother tongue”. However, only 499 people (0.03%) described themselves as “Germans” and 181 (0.01%) as “Austrians” (counts before the expulsions: 1918: 106,000; 1931: 49,000).
German organizations in Slovenia
After Slovenia's independence, organizations with a connection to the German minority were allowed in Slovenia for the first time since 1945.
1992 was constituted in Maribor attorney's Ludvik Dušan Kolnik chaired an "international organization" with the name of Liberty Bridge (Svobode must), aiming at the re-transfer of land to the people living in Slovenia descendants of dispossessed people German and in May 1992 in the European Federal Union of ethnic groups (FUEN). As early as 1989, the Gottscheers tried to organize themselves in an association in the Moschnitze sub-region. The organizational work was done by Hans Jaklitsch. However, the association was not formally registered until 1992. The first chairman was Hans Jaklitsch (1992 to the end of 1998). A lot of voluntary work was done under the direction of Hans Jaklitsch, such as the renovation of the cemeteries in Tschermoschnitz, Pöllandl and Rußbach. A new board for August Schauer at the church in Pöllandl was bought, meetings of the Gottscheers organized on the Gatschen, the club newspaper Bakh appeared three times a year, the club organized Christmas concerts of the Gottscheer songs in Pöllandl, a children's choir was founded. In 1998 the association bought a house in Krapflern with the support of the Carinthian provincial government and August Gril took over the association. The association mainly dealt with the renovation of the club house in Krapflern. More and more visitors came. The youth group, led by Maridi Tscherne, organized the lessons in the Gottscheer language , workshops for children, the radio broadcasts in the Gottscheer language; the choir had many appearances in Slovenia as well as in Carinthia (Maria Luggau, Eisenkappel, Klagenfurt). The chairman no longer wanted to support the growing youth work, which is why Ms. Tscherne resigned in November 2001, but continued her work until the end of February 2002. On the grounds that the association only supported the construction work and did not respond to her protest, she left the association in May 2002. The Altsiedlerverein was mainly dedicated to the expansion of the museum in Krapflern and later to the preservation of the traditional fruit varieties and endeavors to gain recognition for the German minority in Slovenia.
A second German association in Maribor, founded on December 1, 2000, is the cultural association of German-speaking women - bridges . The chairman of the association, Veronika Haring, estimates the number of people of German origin in Maribor and the surrounding area at several thousand. Among other things, the association organizes German-language lessons for children and adults of German origin on a private basis, while there are still no native-language German lessons at schools.
The Peter Kosler Association (named after Peter Kosler ), founded in 1994 in Ljubljana , now based in Kočevje , aims to preserve the German and Gottschee cultural heritage of the Gottschee region. For three years, with the support of BMEIA, he successfully organized lessons in German and the Gottscheer language at the primary schools in Štrekljevec, Semitsch, Töplitz, at the kindergartens Semitsch and Töplitz as well as the Gottscheer language in Novo mesto, Gottschee and Bistritz Tschernembl. Up to 196 people attended classes per week. Since then, the Gottscheer have no more lessons in their language, although the Gottscheer language is one of the most threatened languages according to UNESCO. Disagreements between the Peter Kosler Association and the Gottscheer Altsiedlerverein are considered an obstacle to promoting language teaching.
The Mošnice-Moschnitze facility was founded in March 2012 by younger Gottscheers with the aim of preserving and promoting the Gottscheer cultural heritage, especially the Gottscheer language. The facility was named after a sub-region of the former language island between Semič / Semitsch and Dolenjske Toplice / Töplitz. In 2013, the Moschnitze facility succeeded in building a multi-purpose room, which was named after August Schauer , a cultural journalist and pastor from Pöllandl in Nesseltal . In 2014, the Moschnitze facility published four books, two children's books in three languages (Slovenian, Gottscheer and German): ˝The mysterious guardian of the forest Wald and Sehnsucht und Persistent, as well as a Gottscheer cookbook and a book about furniture and architecture of the Gottscheer building in the Moschnitze. The members endeavor to further promote the Gottscheer language at least by founding a children's group on a voluntary basis, but they are convinced that this is not sufficient for a long-term language retention. The Moschnitze facility is a member of the umbrella association of Gottscheer organizations in Slovenia, based in Bistritz near Tschernembl / Črnomelj. The umbrella organization of the Gottscheer organizations is continuing its efforts to create the financial basis for teaching German and the Gottscheer language. The member organizations take the position that only the language, in this case the Gottscheer dialect, provides a basis for maintaining identity.
The Gottscheer Altsiedlerverein , which unlike the Peter Kosler association explicitly sees itself as an organization of the German minority, operates a cultural center in Občice ( Krapflern , Dolenjske Toplice municipality ). He estimates that there are still a few hundred Gottscheer descendants in Slovenia (1940: around 12,500). The cultural association of German-speaking women - bridges in Maribor and the Gottscheer Altsiedlerverein in Občice / Krapflern merged in 2004 to form an "Association of cultural associations of the German-speaking ethnic group in Slovenia". In a memorandum, the association calls for the Slovenian government to recognize the German minority.
In Ljubljana there is an association to promote the German mother tongue , which consists of a group of German-speaking parents and organizes mother-tongue German lessons on a private basis. This is also explicitly aimed at families who only live temporarily in Slovenia and whose children can thus “return to their home schools”.
In Apače / Abstall there is a cultural association called Abstaller Feld , which organizes German and Slovenian courses and aims to address ethnic Germans as well as Slovenes.
In 2011 another Slovenian-German organization was founded in Celje , the cultural association Cilli an der Sann .
Now part of the 2004 founded Association of cultural associations of the German minority in Slovenia (Zveza kulturnih društev nemškogovoreče etnične skupnosti v Sloveniji) at which calls for the recognition of the German minority, six clubs: the cultural association Cilli at Sann (Kulturno društvo Celje ob Savinji) , the Gottscheers Altsiedlerverein in donut learning ( društvo Kočevarjev staroselcev , DKS), the cultural association of German Women bridges (Kulturno društvo Nemsko govorečih žena Mostovi ) in Maribor, the cultural association Abstaller field (Kulturno društvo Apaško polje) , the freedom of association bridge Marburg (društvo Most Svobode Maribor) and the cultural association of German-speaking youth (KDJ, Društvo nemško govoreče mladine ) in Kočevje. There are four Gottscheer associations that joined forces in 2013 in the umbrella association of Gottscheer organizations (Zveza kočevarskih organizacij) based in Črnomelj : the Peter Kosler association (Društvo Peter Kosler) , the facility for the preservation of the Moschnitze cultural heritage (Zavod za ohranitev Kulturne dediščine) based in Altsag, the cultural association under the Gutenberg and the cultural association Nesseltal - facility for the preservation of the cultural heritage Nesseltal (Zavod za ohranitev kulturne dediščine Nesseltal Koprivnik) . In contrast to the association of cultural associations of the German-speaking ethnic group in Slovenia , the umbrella organization of Gottscheer organizations (Zveza kočevarskih organizacij) sees itself as a representative of Gottscheer Germans and does not necessarily demand recognition of the German minority. In contrast to the Altsiedlerverein, these associations work to preserve the Gottscheer dialect. In the press release on the occasion of the founding of the association, the umbrella association of Gottscheer organizations describes its financial stability and maintaining good neighbors as primary goals. Since no unconditional recognition is required, there has been friction between the two associations. A generational conflict and personal differences between the representatives of the member organizations of the umbrella association of Gottscheer organizations and August Gril (old settlers' association) also play a role here.
Recommendations from international organizations
In contrast to Croatia, Slovenia does not grant the German ethnic group any minority protection under the Copenhagen CSCE Conference of 1990 , so that the minority does not receive any special financial or other support. A law passed in August 2004, which provides for the strict use of the Slovene language in all business areas, makes things even more difficult.
In 2007, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recommended that the Slovenian authorities “work with the speakers to determine the areas in which German and Croatian are traditionally spoken in Slovenia” and to apply Part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages to German and Croatian . The cultural association of German-speaking women - bridges and the Gottscheer Altsiedlerverein mention native German-speakers in the communities Abstall / Apače , Cilli / Celje , Hohenmauthen / Muta , Lembach / Limbuš , Mahrenberg / Radlje , Marburg / Maribor , Maria Rast / Ruše , Pettau / Ptuj , Sankt Egidi / Šentilj , Sankt Leonhard / Lenart and Witschein / Svečina and in the Gottschee region in the villages of Pöllandl / Kočevske Poljane , Krapflern / Občice , Altsag / Stare žage , Kleinriegel / Mali Rigelj , Büchel / Hrib (municipality of Töplitz / Dolenjske Toplice ), Tschermoschnitz / Črmošnjice and Mitterdorf / Srednja vas (municipality of Semitsch / Semič ). The two associations propose the establishment of bilingual kindergartens in Marburg and Abstall as well as in Pöllandl or Krapflern, as well as the introduction of German as the first foreign language or second language at the two primary schools in Dolenjske Toplice and Semič.
An "independent committee of experts" criticized this in 2010 for the fact that Slovenia had not defined any areas with German or Croatian minority languages. The German language is largely absent from public life in Slovenia; Nor is there an educational model for German as a regional or minority language. The German language is not represented on radio and television and receives only limited financial support from the Slovenian authorities.
Rejection of the German language
The use of the German language in Slovenia also meets with rejection in some places in the private sector. For example, when a cultural center was opened in Apače / Abstall, both Slovene and German were used, whereupon local representatives of the community attacked members of the association as "enemies of the state".
There were similar reactions in Dolenjske Toplice , in whose municipality the Gottscheer cultural center is located. In the former Gottscheer village Plösch (Slovene. Pleš ) a chapel was renovated with funds from emigrated Gottscheers. A bilingual plaque thanking the donors in Slovene and German was torn down several times, and local politicians protested against the bilingual private labels. After repeated vandalism, the board finally remained in the museum rooms of the Gottscheer cultural center Občice / Krapflern. In the Gottscheer village of Tappelwerch (Slovene. Topli vrh , "Warmberg"), which is now abandoned , it was the Raiffeisenbank Bozen that paid for the renovation of a church tower. It was only after the South Tyrolean bankers threatened to demand the money back that the municipality of Semič , to which Topli Vrh belongs, was ready to put up the bilingual commemorative plaque on the renovated church tower.
The cultural association Cilli an der Sann was rejected by the Slovenian association authority in 2011 due to its German version of the name.
While official bodies translate the names of cities and sights into Italian, German names are avoided.
literature
- Stefan Karner : Slovenia and its "Germans". The German-speaking ethnic group as subject and object of politics 1939 to 1998. Bonn 2000, ISBN 3-88557-194-3 .
- Stefan Karner: The German-speaking ethnic group in Slovenia. Aspects of their development 1939-1997. Klagenfurt 1998, ISBN 3-85013-592-6 .
- Dušan Nećak (Urednik): "Nemci" na Slovenskem 1941-1955. Ljubljana 1998, ISBN 86-7207-104-2 .
- Dušan Nećak (editor): The "Germans" in Slovenia 1918-1955. Brief outline, Ljubljana 1998, ISBN 86-7207-105-0 .
- Anton Scherer : The Germans in Lower Styria, Upper Carniola and Gottschee. In: Ernst Hochberger, Anton Scherer, Friedrich Spiegel-Schmitt: The Germans between the Carpathian Mountains and Carniola. Study book series of the Ostdeutscher Kulturrat Foundation, Volume 4. Langen Müller, Munich 1994. pp. 111–156 (Part III).
- Nemška manjšina. In: Enciklopedija Slovenije, 7. zvezek (Marin-Nor). Ljubljana 1993, 356-357 str.
- Helmut Rumpler , Arnold Suppan (Hrsg.): History of the Germans in the area of today's Slovenia 1848-1941. Series of publications of the Österr. Ost- und Südosteuropa-Institut, Volume 13, Vienna / Munich 1988, ISBN 3-486-54691-0 .
Web links
- Peter Kosler Association
- Gottscheer Altsiedlerverein Slovenia
- Association of German-Speaking Women - Bridges
- Umbrella organization of the Gottscheer organizations
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mladina , February 23, 2004: Nemci, ki so bili partizani (Germans who were partisans)
- ↑ Zdravko Troha (2004), Kočevski Nemci - partizani (The Gottscheer Partisans (in Slovenian), Kočevje, Arhiv Slovenije). - Ljubljana: Slovensko kočevarsko društvo Peter Kosler. ISBN 961-91287-0-2
- ↑ 2002 census: Population in Slovenia by colloquial language in the household (in the family) and mother tongue. http://www.stat.si/Popis2002/si/rezultati/rezultati_red.asp?ter=SLO&st=60
- ↑ 2002 Census: Population in Slovenia by Ethnicity. http://www.stat.si/popis2002/si/rezultati/rezultati_red.asp?ter=SLO&st=7
- ↑ Kulturno društvo nemško govorečih žena - Mostovi. Archived copy ( Memento from July 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Mladina 44/2005. Http://www.mladina.si/tednik/200544/clanek/nar--manjsine-tomica_suljic/
- ↑ Samo Kristen (INV, Ljubljana), 2006: The Identity Management of German Cultural Associations in Slovenia, Slavonia and Vojvodina. http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/14_4/kristen16.htm
- ↑ Peter Kosler
- ↑ a b c Društvo Peter Kosler
- ^ Peter Kosler Verein in Ljubljana, on gottschee.de
- ↑ " Facility Moschnitze"
- ↑ umbrella organization of Gottscheer organizations
- ^ Association of Gottscheer Old Settlers in Slovenia (Občice / Krapflern). http://www.gottscheer.net/
- ^ Gregor Heberle: Political-geographical analysis of the former Gottscheer language island (diploma thesis, University of Ljubljana, in Slovenian). Archived copy ( Memento of March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Gottscheer Altsiedlerverein, archived copy ( memento of the original from October 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ German Embassy in Ljubljana: Promotion of the German mother tongue ( Memento from May 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Mentioned in a decision from the Slovenian Ministry of Culture ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) (alongside other German-speaking associations)
- ↑ a b Karl Anderwald / Vanessa Pichler: Against intolerance. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) The week, June 8, 2011.
- ^ Austrian Cultural Forum in Slovenia: The German-speaking ethnic group in Slovenia ( Memento from August 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Declaration on the occasion of the founding of the umbrella association of Gottscheer organizations (PDF)
- ↑ European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Council of Europe recommendations on the German language in Slovenia ( PDF ).
- ↑ a b Supplement to the memorandum of the association chairman Gril. http://www.gottscheer.net/beilage3.htm ( Memento from October 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Domen Caharijas: Kočevarji staroselci - Kultura po 700 letih na robu propada. Dnevnik from October 17, 2009 [Gottscheer old settlers - culture after 700 years on the verge of extinction, Slovenian]
- ↑ https://www.visitljubljana.com/it/visitatori/
- ↑ https://www.postojnska-jama.eu/it/
