The statement that this is now the beginning of the twentieth century in our Gottscheer historiography is actually only mandated by the calendar and not by a turning point or a sharp division. The transition between the two centuries was also smooth in Gottschee. The decisive changes had already occurred in the nineteenth century. The unstemmed emigration continued - fewer and fewer America-goers returned. The number of peddlers declines. Their peddling permits are now issued in two languages; German is still the primary one.
The city of Gottschee grows and continues to modernize. The energetic leadership of its mayor Alois Loy is evident everywhere. He lived from 1860 to 1923. He was one of the most significant personalities that Gottschee produced. One recognized his talent for communal politics and his character at an early age and saw in him a superior human being. Already at the age of twenty-one he was a member of the administrative committee of the city savings bank, and at the age of twenty-nine he was elected mayor. He was faithful to his city for thirty-three years, was never challenged by anyone, and only left when he was driven out by the new regime after 1918. The Gottscheer Zeitung of September 1962 dedicated the following memorial to him: "Under his guidance, the city was transformed from a village- and market-like town into a lovely little city. He guided and was active in everything. It was due to his efforts that the interests of Gottschee received adequate consideration when the railroad of Lower Carniola was constructed. Due to his vigorous initiative, the imposing elementary school, which still stands today, the city water and electric works, and the lower bridge were built.
Alois Loy, mayor of the city Gottschee
He especially deserves credit for the completion of the secondary school for which he was able to obtain an upper level, and he saw to it that the state took over the trade school for woodwork. The club "Studentenheim" (students' home) got a home because of him. As chairman of the committee for the construction of the church, he pushed the project to completion - it is still today an ornament of the city. For his achievements, Loy received the "Goldene Verdienstkreuz mit der Krone" (Golden Cross of Merit with the Crown) and the title of an imperial adviser." The radiance of his personality benefitted the entire "Ländchen".
Newspapers made their first appearance in the city of Gottschee at the beginning of the twentieth century: the "Gottscheer Nachrichten" (Gottscheer News), the "Gottscheer Bote" (Gottscheer Messenger) and "Der Landwirt" (The Farmer). All three papers appeared bi-weekly and were printed in the newly established printing concern of J. Pavlicek. They were primarily aimed at the farmers. In 1905 the "Gottscheer Bauernbund" (Farmer's Organization) was formed.
Lively discussions about questions concerning the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the political, cultural, and economic concerns of the Gottscheers themselves were the topics of the day. Subscriptions to newspapers of Graz and Vienna increased throughout Gottschee.
In 1907 the Gottscheers - for the first time organized as an independent election district - were allowed to elect a delegate to the Viennese "Reichsrat" (imperial diet). Two parties put up candidates, the "Liberalen" (liberals) - labeled as "die Roten" (the Reds) by their political opponents - and the "Christlich-Sozialen" (Christian-Socialists), labeled as "die Schwarzen" (the Blacks) by their opponents. The candidate for the liberals was Prince Karl of Auersperg, Duke of Gottschee (1859-1927).
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| Prince
Karl of
Auersperg, Duke of Gottschee (1859-1927). |
School inspector Josef Obergföll |
His opponent: school inspector Josef Obergföll, secondary school teacher in Gottschee. The campaign was conducted with a vehemence unknown till then and often led to fist fights. One of the most enthusiastic
campaign speakers was the student Peter Jonke from Obermösel, a liberal.
The Prince won the election. Due to his many connections in Vienna, which extended to the emperor and the ministers, he could, of course, do much more for the inhabitants of his election district than could his defeated opponent.
In 1910 the Gottscheers then received the receipt so to speak, for the nineteenth century - the result of the last and hence authentic census in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy: Only 17,350 people still proclaimed themselves as German-speaking inhabitants in the Gottscheer region (Grothe, page 80). The difference of 8,600 for the estimated population of 1875 (25,000-26,000) does not even represent the actual loss due to emigration; it is actually quite a bit higher. Since the middle 1870's, more than thirty-five generations had been born. The first seven of these were still born in full strength, since as a rule only single but eligible young people (and not married couples) emigrated. They only married once they were in the United States. The population figure of the "Ländchen" hence not only recorded their absence but also the absence of their descendants who were born "over there." At home, every generation became smaller and smaller. Nevertheless, there was still one increase in the birth rate, even though it was a modest one. Let us, as a precaution, place it between 1875 and 1910 with a count of about 3,500.
This figure overlaps the loss due to emigration and hence has to be added to the derived figure of 8,600. Thus, the actual population loss rises to 12,000 - 12,500. These are the plain figures, which also include those in the intellectual professions who had to find employment outside of the narrow confines of the homeland and whose number cannot be estimated. The need for teachers and clergy was limited, the city of Gottschee only offered professional opportunities to very few lawyers, doctors, and officials or entrepreneurs with a higher education. The rural areas did not need these professionals.
The natural population shift among the Gottscheer farmers had been painfully disturbed by the severe drain since the eighties. The small body of people had lost so much biological substance that it was not only no longer possible, but also no longer necessary, to continue to farm the land to the same full extent as had been the case a generation earlier. As a result, the pastures and the meadows lying in the higher regions were neglected, and this, in turn, brought about a decline in the number of cattle. The forest, however, immediately spread its lowly footmen, brushwood and shrubs, into the terrain left to it.
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| Archduke Franz Ferdinand with his wife Frau Sophie von Hohenberg shortly before the assassination. | Assassin Gavrilo Princip is being led away. | ||
Because of the fully developed school system and the exclusive use of High German in the churches, in government, in business, in newspapers and books, even in the most private spheres of the prayer book and prayers at meal times, the linguistic island of Gottschee had, at the beginning of the twentieth century, culturally become part of that region in Central Europe in which everything in writing was expressed in German. The Gottscheers, however, had retained their medieval Bavarian-Austrian dialect for their everyday use. Of course, another thought occupied the villages of the settlement region, the concern for Gottschee. It turned to fear when the successor to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated on June 28, 1914. With the instinct of a threatened creature, the Gottscheers sensed the coming disaster, the collapse of the Danube monarchy under the centrifugal force of the western-south Slavic nationalism. The little group of people in the calciferous region had, as happened half a millenium earlier, almost to the year, lost its protector .. .
Emperor Franz Josef I.
On November 21, 1916, "der alte Kaiser" (the old emperor) Franz Josef I, now in the eighty-sixth year of his life and sixty-eighth year of his reign, died. Already during his lifetime, he had been a legendary figure - also to, and especially for, the Gottscheers. Gottschee was a reality to the monarch, above all because of Prince Karl von Auersperg. The emperor had repeatedly responded to the Gottscheers' requests for aid by allocating money from his private funds.
In those dreary November days, all of Vienna buried not only the mortal remains of the old emperor, but also the political concept and the tradition of the House of Hapsburg. It was only a matter of time before the historically evolved state of various nationalities would collapse. His successor, Emperor Karl I of Hapsburg-Lorraine, could not ward off the coming catastrophe. Franz Ferdinand himself could not have stopped it. At the end of November and the beginning of December 1918, the Kingdom of Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia (SHS) was formed with King Peter I Karadjordjevic as head. Along with Lower Styria, the former imperial domain of Carniola was ceded to the new province of Slovenia. Their neighbors were Italy in the west, the Republic of Austria in the north, and the now smaller Hungary in the east.
King Petar I. Karadjordjevic
At first, the Gottscheers did not know what to do. They could not consider resistance as they had done at the time of Napoleon. Everything had changed suddenly. The soldiers, except for those in Russian prison camps, soon returned home. Only tentatively at first, they began to discuss how they should deal with the new situation. One day a fascinating plan surfaced. It can no longer be determined who first proposed the plan that Gottschee should become a small republic, much like Andorra, and become a protectorate of the United States. One hoped to get effective support from the America-Gottscheers for this suggestion. Perhaps they would be able to get a decree from President Wilson. Wilson, then the most powerful man in the world, had, with his Fourteen Points, instilled all
newly created minorities in Europe with hope for self-determination. A memorandum containing all essential information about the land and the people of Gottschee was prepared and a leaflet was published. A delegation was formed which was to speak at the Paris Peace Conference.
The plan failed as had the one in the sixteenth century, when the Gottscheers had decided to pay off the count of Blagay and govern themselves. The Gottscheer found all doors closed to them. The way for the elimination of Gottschee, however, was now clear.
It is not the aim of this book to examine by what historical avenues the Slovenian romantics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries arrived at the confrontation with the German elements as they are found in the writings of Dr. Pozar and set within the framework of their self-evaluation. The culmination was that the German was always and everywhere the oppressor who blocked the development of the Slovenian people. Moreover, one accused the Hapsburg monarchy of having Germanized Slovenes under political and economic pressure, and at times one even denied the historical facts by claiming that the Gottscheers are Germanized Slovenes. Already in the nineteenth century, the leading class of Slovenes had found it insufferable that they had to speak German if they wanted to make political, cultural, and social gains. Led by Panslavism, they finally transferred their antipathy towards anything that was German, to the German essence, to the entire German culture wherever it appeared.
If we now list the governmental measures that were taken to Slavenize the Gottscheers in the following pages, we do not do this to open up old wounds. The Gottscheers have politically resigned themselves to the loss of their old homeland. The suppressive measures after 1918 are also not enumerated to accuse history. They are, however, also part of the Gottscheer history and are expressed to make the stance of Gottscheers during the thirties comprehensible. After all, a flood of federal laws, legislation by the provincial government, measures by the
county office and by the security forces descended upon the defenseless Gottscheers along with corresponding threats of punishment.
By 1918 Dr. Anton Korosec had climbed to the position of Slovenian leader due to his political experience as a champion of the people and a parliamentarian. What an irony of fate: "Korosec" in German means "the Carinthian".
Still before the just founded state of Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia had fully settled down, a committee in Ljubljana called "Narodna vlada" (approximately equivalent in meaning to "national government") demanded that all German schools be closed and all school clubhouses in Gottschee be seized. This already revealed the main thrust against Gottschee. In contrast to their own experiences in their struggle to preserve their ethnic culture, the Slovenian leadership denied the Gottscheers political self-determination; indeed, it did not even grant them cultural self-governance. Their kind of "self-determination" took this form: they gave the Germans in Slovenia the choice to apply for Austrian citizenship. However, since only the intelligentsia was mobile enough to relocate and actually move to Austria, this enticement was aimed primarily at the Gottscheer teachers and officials. It was already apparent during 1919 that the "Ländchen" was to be made leaderless so that, as happened in the linguistic island of Zarz in Upper Carniola, it would disappear as a German enclave within two or three generations. In order not to be hindered in this undertaking by external international agreements, the SHS-State did sign the Accord of St. Germain with Austria, as well as that of Trianon with Hungary in 1919. In both treaties Yugoslavia had agreed to protect its minorities, but it had not included this guarantee in its constitution. The League of Nations, too, had guaranteed protection of minorities in Yugoslavia, but it was never observed.
Karl Renner, Chancellor of the Republic of Austria, Saint Germain, 1919.
Besides the German school system, all other elements that supported the Gottscheer culture were to be destroyed. Among them, High German as the administrative and business language, the dialect as the everyday language of the population and nor easily mistaken carrier of the Gottscheer traditions. In addition, the will to persevere in the ethnic struggle and the economic steadfastness had to be broken. German as the written language was easily eliminated from rural life. It was more difficult to eliminate the family-bound dialect, but here, too, one found a way. Dr. Viktor Michitsch from Göttenitz, an attorney now residing in Villach, put together the essential measures taken to de-ethnify the old linguistic island in his documentation, "Warum sind die Gottscheer umgesiedelt?" (Why did the Gottscheers resettle?)
The first decisive measure was the removal from office of the German provincial mayor on December 31, 1918. A few months later, district leader Otto Merk was relieved of his duties. Slovenian was instituted as a required subject in the elementary schools. The district superintendent Mathias Primosch was removed from office, a post that had existed since 1891. In the school year 1919/20 the total Slovenizing of the secondary school began. German was not even allowed as an elective. The student home that was affiliated with the secondary school was seized without compensation and given to a Slovenian club. The orphanage and the girls' elementary school were put under Slovenian administration and German instruction was forbidden. The trade school for woodworking was closed. The two German Kindergarten in the city had to close their doors. The Gottscheer teachers' organization was prohibited after having existed for forty-one years; its funds and correspondence were seized.
In conjunction with the repression of German instruction, the number of teachers was decimated. No fewer than thirty-three of the seventy-one German instructors who were teaching in 1918 were forced to leave Gottschee between 1919 and 1922 as a result of the questionable option to claim Austrian citizenship. There was no possibility for them to remain, not even outside of their profession. Among them were such intellectual leaders as the secondary school teacher Peter Jonke and his colleague Josef Obergföll, the important ethnic scholar Wilhelm
Tschinkel; district superintendent Mathias Primosch and other older teachers who could not speak Slovenian were given early retirement.
Josef Perz and Wilhelm Tschinkel
The farming population of the linguistic island was decimated in stages. After the extensive removal of the teachers, Slovenian was introduced as the language of instruction. At the same time, the "German departments" were invented. In 1926 only sixteen of them existed. There was no longer any cohesive German
instruction since certain subjects were only allowed to be taught in Slovenian and because there were hardly any teachers available who could have given the other instruction in German. - The next step was the so-called elementary school and the "National School." The latter encompassed grades five to eight. The students
of the German departments were also required to attend the "National School."
The next step: In order to further decrease the number of German students, the school administration introduced a "name analysis." Children whose family history revealed even one single grandparent of Slovenian-sounding or Slovenian name were enrolled in the Slovenian elementary school. The wishes of the parents were not considered. Dr. Michitsch gives a vivid example of this: Already in 1922 the school administration in Stockendorf set about to totally Slovenize the elementary school there. They maintained that twenty-two Slovenian but only ten German children of school-age would appear for the beginning of the school year. After checking this figure by questioning Gottscheer parents, it was shown that the school was attended by forty-six German and only six Slovenian children. Of the latter, three spoke Slovenian with both father and mother and three only with the mother.
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| Gottscheer teachers, 1905 | Gottscheer teachers, 1930 |
To the cursory observer, these cited chicaneries may seem to be a loose interpretation of good Slovenian intentions. In any case, certain factions will assert that the aim of this book is to stir things up again after half a century has transpired since the events took place. However, the author simply wishes to show the imbalance in the Slovenian undertaking. Again, one is forced to make a comparison with Carinthia. There the Slovenes demanded cultural autonomy and more for their people. The Gottscheers, however, were at the same time Slovenized at top speed. One made use of clever psychological tools: One forced a language between mother and child, the most intimate bond between individuals, a language that the mother did not understand, and simultaneously forced the child to learn and to use this language. The main function of the teacher, however, was not to teach the Gottscheer child reading, writing, and arithmetic, but to rid the child of all that is German, indeed even of thinking in the dialect. Ultimately the children were forbidden to speak the Gottscheer dialect on the way to school. The Slovenian educational policy was spread across the "Ländchen" like a dense net. There was
no escape. If one stayed in Gottschee, and that was the rule, one had to learn Slovenian. In 1924 the last opportunity to learn German was also as good as eliminated. By 1919-20 it had become customary that perhaps two to three dozen children, whose parents were teachers and/or from the middle-class, and who had been released from school after having completed some secondary-level work, continued or completed their education at high schools, teacher training institutes, trade academies, public high schools, and other trade schools in Austria, namely in Carinthia. In 1924 the parents of these students were officially notified that as of 1925, they could no longer count on receiving passports for their children to attend these schools.
The effects that this educational policy had on the Gottscheer youth was already evident - to its full extent - after a decade. Upon graduation, the boys and girls were, so to speak, knowledgeable in two-and-a-half languages. The dialect was their native and everyday language, they could barely read and write Slovenian, but had only a very inadequate command of German. They could not do anything with the Gottscheer dialect outside of the region; their German was so poor that, on the average, they could hardly write a letter. That left Slovenian if one wished to take up a profession outside of farming. These young people found themselves in a no man's land between the two nationalities. Since, however, German was nevertheless more natural to them and the economic conditions had worsened, they too opted for emigration, which had again commenced on a moderate scale in 1920. To be sure, one had no trouble getting a passport to emigrate.
Just as the young people found their way to the German culture and its language blocked, so too the provincial government in Ljubljana did everything to take away, or at least to make unpleasant for the adult Gottscheers, those club activities which strengthened the sense of community and in which High German was the official language. First, the farmers' association was dissolved and the two political parties of the "Ländchen" were stricken from the club register. Of the three newspapers named above, only the "Gottscheer Bote", founded in 1903, survived. It was allowed to continue and was renamed "Gottscheer Zeitung" in 1919. Of course, the school clubs in the various villages disappeared immediately after the new state was founded. The voluntary firehouses that had been combined into one district had to use the Slovenian terminology. In 1925 the previously prohibited singing society, a mixed chorus, was allowed to function again. But since it quickly developed into a cultural center, one again looked for reasons to ban it. They were found in a politically harmless trip that the singers undertook to Carinthia.
On June 5-6, 1926, seventeen members, women and men, visited the highly regarded ethnic scholar Wilhelm Tschinkel to extend to him greetings and good wishes from his homeland on his fiftieth birthday. The celebrant now lived in Rosegg. Upon their return, the singing group was denounced for high treason. The false reason: The singers supposedly had taken part in a national chorus festival while in Carinthia. One can only interpret this as nationalistic hysteria. However, no trial was held because a sensible judge in the court of jurisdiction in Rudolfswert (Novo mesto) rejected the case on grounds that it was invalid. But the local security force in the city of Gottschee preferred to make itself ridiculous rather than allow a German society for the protection of birds. One year after it was founded, it was forbidden under the pretense that the feeders that were set up outdoors bore the inscription "Vogelschutzverein" (bird protection society). The same authority also did not allow the German reading society. It was forbidden, its 2,500 books seized and destroyed.
For quite some time now, Slovenian was, of course, the official language of the government. Whoever did not know this language had to provide a translator at his own expense. After a brief transitional period, the purely German villages also had to have village signposts with only Slovenian inscriptions. The often arbitrarily translated village names of the Gottscheers could no longer be printed in German in the Gottscheer newspaper. The biweekly newspaper was, moreover, subject to strict censorship. Its galley sheets had to be submitted to the district
office before printing. At the outset, the editors simply took out the censored articles and left the spaces blank. Thus, the censorship was apparent to everyone. To avoid this, the editors were given instructions to have supplementary material available.
The clergy was replaced very quietly. The office in Ljubljana (formerly Laibach) permitted the still present Gottscheer priests to remain. It also did not transfer any priest into purely Slovenian regions, something the school authorities had done with some teachers. However, if a member of the Gottscheer clergy died or retired, a nationalistic Slovene in priestly robes took his place.
At the beginning, relatively little attention was paid to land ownership in the "Ländchen", even though the Slovenes owned very little of it. Herbert Otterstädt cites the following figures on page 37 of his pictorial book: "According to a very conscientious private ownership survey, 547 of the 840 square kilometers of the ethnic island were owned by Gottscheer wood farmers in 1940. Sixty-three square kilometers were Gottscheer communal property, 176 square kilometers expropriated German forest property, and merely fifty-three square kilometers, thus not even eight percent of the total area, belonged to small, Slovenian-owned farms."
German properties in Krain (Carniola), Herbert Otterstädt, nationalsozialistisches Südostdeutsches Institut Graz, 1940.
Still in the twenties, the individual Gottscheer farm was of little interest to the Slovenian authorities. They were, however, considerably disturbed that Prince Auersperg, who had been stripped of all titles when the state was founded, still owned 229 square kilometers of beautiful mixed forest and used it according to the latest methods of forestry. In 1921 they set about to seize these remains of the original Ortenburg domain by issuing a simple "agrarian ordinance." Ten years later, it became law and hence final. At this time, 176 square kilometers were taken from the Auersperg family. The confiscated forest lands however, were not given over to the Gottscheers, who as the ancient established inhabitants of the Gottscheer region surely could have laid claim to it. Instead, Slovenian villages outside of the linguistic island were given the right to its use. The Gottscheers in the Auerspergian forestry administration were discharged.
How little was done with the confiscated forest by the distant, newly empowered users and the government forest authority is demonstrated, among other examples, by the dilapidation of the largest Auerspergian sawmill and of the workers' quarters in the Hornwald. Whatever was left standing by the advancing primeval forest and the wind and the weather was blown up in 1938. Not even the fifty kilometers-long narrow-gauge railway was allowed to remain. It was scrapped in the same year.
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| Auerspergian sawmill, 1931 |
1943 | Merkantilna Banka / Merkantil Bank, 1925 | ||
One attempted to destroy agriculture in Gottschee as a whole by removing everything that could advance or stimulate it. Thus, immediately after the war, the branch of the "Agricultural Society of Carniola" which originated during the reign of Emperor Joseph II was forbidden, the farmers' organization was abolished, and twelve rural banks had the same fate. The city savings bank was financially ruined, and the depositors lost their money. This was done to force them to deal with the branch of the "Mercantile Bank" in Ljubljana. Its director decreed that
only Slovenian was to be spoken within its walls.
The businessmen and the tradesmen in the cities and in the rural regions, and also the farmers, did not rest until they again had their own financial institution. In 1926 the "Savings and Loan Bank," a company with unlimited liability, was established. The members elected its co-founder Alois Kresse, a respected merchant in the city of Gottschee, as its chairman. Kresse had extensive business experience and was known throughout the "Ländchen." He was chairman of the Gottscheer trade board from 1912 to 1925. As vice-mayor he was chairman of the municipal property administration from 1928 to 1930. After 1930 the inhabitants of the city were no longer allowed to send a representative to the city council. In 1945 Alois Kresse could not escape in time from Lower Styria, where he had made a new life for himself in Cilli. He and his wife were killed by the partisans.
All of these cultural and economic measures to eliminate the linguistic island of Gottschee had their intended effect in the early thirties—not on those born before 1914, but on those who were about seven to seventeen years of age in 1933. Slovenian words were mingled with the native dialect, Slovenian songs were heard here and there outside of school, the Gottscheer songs receded still further into the background. The foundation of an ethnic German self-awareness was no longer firmly rooted in these young people.
The interest of philologists in the linguistic island of Gottschee, however, had not changed. Around 1930, linguists, historians, folklore scholars, scholars of folksongs, as well as tourists enthralled with the landscape, came to Gottschee, individually and in groups. They came mostly from Austria, but more and more often also from the German Reich. In the isolated villages, the visitors for the most part still found the genuine Gottscheer peasant life of the turn of the century as it is described by Sepp König in his article: "Das Dorf in der Einschicht" ("The Isolated Village") (Gottscheer Zeitung, March 1973):
" Every village had its unique character based on its occupations. The people in this isolated region were able to do everything: they were basket weavers, shovel makers, coopers, and distillers of Schnaps; they could do carpentry as skillfully as they carried out their farmwork. Their skill reached beyond the modest homestead and was valued by neighbors in cases of barn accidents. They knew how to build a lime-kiln, and it was not uncommon that the women in these villages could provide aid in the case of illness."
To be sure, the visitors from the united German region also observed the economic collapse of the Gottscheers and their dejection. But they could not help them. Prof. Hugo Grothe, the orientalist and expert on ethnic groups from Leipzig, was among the guests from the German Reich. His repeated stays in the "Ländchen" led to the monograph, "Die deutsche Sprachinsel Gottschee in Slowenien" ("The German Linguistic Island of Gottschee in Slovenia"). This successful work was joyfully received, as more than thirty-five years had passed since the last representative work about Gottschee (Hauffen 1895) had appeared. He is said to have advised the Gottscheer leadership of the time to draw public attention to the existing ethnic oppression and the simply hopeless economic misery of the Gottscheers by celebrating the 600-year anniversary of the German colonization of their settlement region. This event was to strengthen their self-confidence and fill them with renewed vigor.
Grothe's idea was joyfully and immediately taken up. Under the chairmanship of the attorney Dr. Hans Arko, a festival committee was established in 1929 which set the date for the 600-year celebration for August 1-4, 1930. Dr. Arko, a multi-talented man, had assumed the role of spokesman for the Gottscheers during the twenties. Among other responsibilities, he was director of the men's and women's chorus and, as district leader, was in charge of the fire company. As of 1917, he maintained a law practice in the city.
Dr. Hans Arko, Gottscheer men's and women's chorus, 1928
The well organized and prepared 600-year celebration was the largest festival that the Gottscheers ever held on their own soil.
Since the founding of the kingdom of Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia, which now called itself "Yugoslavia", the Gottscheers had left no doubt about their loyalty to the state - dictated by reason - but also none about their inner ties to their people. In this spirit, the festival committee thus officially invited the king, at that time Alexander I, the federal government in Belgrade, the provincial government in Ljubljana, from now on called "Banschaftsverwaltung" (state administration), with the "Banus" (governor) at its head, as well as the Republic of Austria and the German Reich. The king sent a minister and high military officials as his representatives. The Banus appeared for the Banschaftsverwaltung in Ljubljana, the German Reich and the Republic of Austria were represented by the heads of their embassies to the Yugoslavian government. The German ambassador in Belgrade at the time was Ulrich von Hassel. The two top politicians of the German ethnic group as a whole in Yugoslavia - the delegate in the Skupstina, Dr. Stefan Kraft, and Senator Dr. Georg Graßl - as well as the president of the "Schwabisch-Deutschen Kulturbundes" (Swabian-German cultural organization) in Neusatz, Johann Keks, and the chief editor of the "Deutsche Volksblatt" (German People's Newspaper), likewise in Neusatz, and a native Gottscheer from Mitterdorf, Dr. Franz Perz, were present. Many Gottscheers in Austria and in the United States took this opportunity to visit their old homeland.
The first highpoint of the festivities was the high mass in the city parish church. Only a fraction of the huge crowd had room in the church. Deeply moved, the spiritual adviser, August Schauer (Nesseltal), demonstrated his oratory skills in a sermon in which the political, human, and historical elements were well-balanced. The high dignitaries were entertained at a banquet at which Ulrich von Hassel established the connection between the emblem for the city of Gottschee from the year 1471 and the present occasion with diplomatic skill and wit. The official service to commemorate the settlement of Gottschee 600 years earlier took place in a large tent that had been set up for this purpose on the avenue. On horseback, in vehicles, and on foot, the historical procession, itself now
becoming history, moved from one end of the city to the other past an astonished and blissfully happy crowd. It seemed as if every Gottscheer, except for the oldest and youngest, had come to acknowledge the 600-year history of the "Ländchen". A book containing articles about the past, the geography, and ethnic nature of Gottschee commemorated the event and was part of the exciting week.
600-year celebration for August 1-4, 1930
Newspapers, radio stations, and newsreels reported the festive days in Gottschee. However, the political success did not follow. The enthusiasm of the Gottscheers again subsided. Only all too swiftly, they were again confronted with the daily struggle for cultural and economic survival. It had not done the Gottscheers any good to put their loyalty to the state in the forefront. In 1931, for example, the minority school systems in Yugoslavia were
" re-structured." This restructuring was directed mainly against the German minority and declared that school divisions of thirty school children - in some exceptions, twenty-five - could be set up in those villages in which "citizens who spoke another native language" lived. The minister of education had the final say in the matter. It could easily be determined from where this shot was fired. At that time, the minister of the interior in the government of Dr. Milan Stojadinovic was Dr. Anton Korosec. As a member of the cabinet, he had no difficulty in persuading his colleague, the minister of education, to issue this proclamation. It struck the Gottscheers twice as hard. The "German divisions" were not limited by a minimum number. Despite a name analysis, it was still possible to get together thirty children for a German division in the larger villages. But due to emigration and name analysis the smaller school districts often were not able to get together even twenty-five children.
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| King Peter II. of Jugoslavia - | in Sokol (Slovene youth organisation) uniform und Minister President Dr. Stojadinovic, May 1937. |
Continuing economic hardship was added to the demoralizing and degrading ethnic suppression. The world-wide economic crisis of 1929/30 contributed to the hardship directly and indirectly. Not only did their already lower profits decline further, but the dollars also poured in more slowly. The forest took over open cultivated land. The number of cattle declined drastically. Even the greatly decreased milk production was no longer useable. The milk was fed to the pigs. Fruits remained unharvested. The lumber trade stopped. Only a few men still peddled. Small farm-owners and hut dwellers often did not attain the minimum standard of living.
The smallest German tribe, as the Gottscheers liked to call themselves, had lost its sense of balance. There was many a sign that seemed to indicate that the Gottscheer had begun to give up on himself. Richard Lackner from the city of Gottschee, a youngster at the time, has not forgotten the most bitter words of those days: "It doesn't pay to live here anymore!"
In his article "Ein Arzt erzählt ..." ("A doctor recounts ...") (Gottscheer Zeitung, August 1970), Dr. Josef Krauland still remembers well a conversation he had with a Gottscheer farmer about the emigration: "I was on my way back
from Ebental. My driver, an intelligent farmer, with whom one could talk about all sorts of things. Finally, the conversation turned to his family and his property. I asked him which of his children would one day take over the farm. He replied: None, all want to go to America and I don't want to stop them. When I objected that at least one of them should stay in the homeland, he said: I can't demand it of any one of them. You can see for yourself how hard one has to work here on a farm and one can't even make a living. If the children are hard-working in America and have a bit of luck, they'll get further in a few years than in a lifetime here."
The Gottscheer woman has forgotten how to sing and to invent stories. The school of life, in which she had been her children's instructor and in which the Gottscheer dialect had been the language of instruction, eluded her .. .
January 30, 1933, Berlin. Hitler is in power.
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| The start
of the dictatorship. Hitler and Göring on the eve of 30. January 1933 at the window of the Neue Reichskanzlei during the torchlight parade. |
Megalomania and obsorption.
The joint torchlight parade of the NSDAP and the "Stahlhelm" at the Brandenburg Gate, 30.01.1933. |
Like all German ethnic groups in southeastern Europe and in the mixed German-Slavic zone between the Baltic and the Black Sea, the Gottscheers too, looked to Berlin. Who will hold this against them, given the described living conditions?! They remained quiet but the Yugoslavian security forces regarded them with even greater suspicion than before. Not any less suspicious - the Slovenian authorities attentively recorded all events in the capital of the Reich (Berlin). Hitler's coming to power led perhaps to the following thought sequence: Hitler was from old Austria. His political development had shown him to be an extreme nationalist. The annexation of the Republic of Austria to the German Reich was one of his stated main objectives. For centuries, Carniola had been an imperial domain of the Hapsburgs. Could one be sure that he would not also include all of Slovenia in the Reich in the "Anschluß" (annexation)? Who could prevent a highly armed Germany from advancing beyond it into the Danube region - and/or - to the Adriatic? In both instances, Gottschee was the bridge support in these power politics. For these reasons alone, Gottschee now really had to be eliminated .. .
This ethnic island, however, wanted to continue to exist, relying on its own strength, only for itself, without any desire for power, without political ambitions. The national pride of the Slovenes did not allow this. To be sure, they did not consider that a kind of Italian political policy which was directed towards the east had already existed in the 6th century A.D., represented by the patriarchs of Aquileia and later by the Republic of Venice. In the meantime, the nationalists in Rome had been aware for some time that the province of Carniola had been a church province of the patriarch of Aquileia for many centuries and that he had held extensive imperial fiefs from 1077 to 1420.
Again, the little group of people in the calciferous region found itself, this time for good, between the millstones of "world politics". A modernized agriculture and forestry would have helped them to deal with the primeval forest. The water shortage could also have been alleviated by taking better care and making better use of the environment. Given the economic conditions, the farmers could perhaps have been persuaded to change their agricultural methods, to undertake land renewal. All of this would have made the "Ländchen" more attractive. But no remedy was to be found in Gottschee for the dictatorships in Berlin, Rome, and Ljubljana.
("Jahrhundertbuch der Gottscheer", Dr. Erich Petschauer, 1980)
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