|
19th
Century,
Jahrhundertbuch der Gottscheer, Dr. Erich Petschauer, 1980.
At the beginning of this era, it seemed as if the "Ländchen" would
continue
to flourish, with its cultural uniqueness and the character of its people
remaining
untouched. One hundred years later, however, Gottschee, in all its facets
as we
see them at the turn of the century, will no longer exist. To be sure,
the Gottscheers
will still inhabit it, but the bolts with which the Gottscheers guarded
their
traditions will have been forced open by cultural changes, by advances
of civilization
and technology, by roads that connect it with the province of Carniola
and, hence,
the extensive dissolution of its geographic isolation, and, not least,
by the doubleedged nationalism.
Let us attempt roughly to outline the course and transformation of this
century
which in fundamentally changing the entire world also changed the Gottscheer
people. First, we notice a unique psychological process in the "Ländchen":
Its
inhabitants, particularly the Gottscheer women, gradually and quite unintentionally
and unawares, lose the balance between the new creation and imitation of
their
own ethnic culture and the increasing cultural influences of the community
at
large. This had always been the case to some degree, but now it also affected
the
social realm. The very slow penetration of the urban civilization through
the outer
membrane of the traditions rooted in nature brings about a secret internal
aversion,
almost a disdain for the rural. That which comes from without begins to
seem
nicer, more noble, and "better." And by the way, not only in
Gottschee.
For fourteen or fifteen generations, the Gottscheer woman had successfully
balanced the implied cultural creative center while standing on the threshold
of
her home. In a few decades, she lost much of the joy and ability to be,
as a young
girl, the inheritor and, as a mature woman and grandmother, the bequeather
of
her inherited culture. To be sure, it will become evident that she cannot
be blamed
nor held guilty for this, just as she is not responsible for the almost
escape-like
emigration of Gottscheers to the United States of America in the eighties.
The nineteenth century was still quite "masculine" at the beginning.
Napoleon
conquered vast regions of Europe; the "Ländchen" was also
conquered by his troops
and made a part of the newly formed province of Illyria. In 1809 the
Gottscheers resisted and vehemently protested the inhumanly high taxes.
Since they
found no
compassion, they bludgeoned the city commandant to death in their justified
anger. They were so angry that they did not even grant the French officer
a
cemetery burial but threw his corpse into one of the suction holes below
Obermösel.
They were more than harshly punished with the shooting of several hostages
and
the officially-sanctioned plundering of the city by the Soldateska for
three days. Fortunately, this French period was only an episode.
The "Romantic period," however, was boundless and changed the
world. This
movement, which was at first purely intellectual, was essentially the conception
of the German poet and cultural innovator, Johann Gottfried Herder
(1744—1803).
What later became of it is written elsewhere. Among the European
nations, it
gave rise to a stormy enthusiasm for one's own cultural achievements
and values.
This enthusiasm, however, smashed, and still today destroys, entire cultures
and
nations in the political arena through over-estimation of the self and
through the
misuse of power. New differences were exposed, old ones deepened. Part
of this
was, above all, the inherited inclination towards suspicion between the
Germans
and the Slavs: During the first half of the nineteenth century, it took
shape in
two quarreling movements, in "Pangermanism" and in "Panslavinism." The
distant
political objective for both was the formation of a large state in which,
on the
one hand, all Germans and, on the other hand, all Slavs were to be united.
The
Slavs in the west and south, moreover, endeavored to separate themselves
completely,
intellectually and culturally, from the Germanic. They were convinced
that they
could achieve this goal only by completely destroying the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy. Whoever views the fate of the Gottscheers other than in this
situation
of increasing gravity is mistaken.
In the broadest sense, it was the Romantic movement that brought about
the
discovery of the linguistic island of Gottschee by three groups in
the nineteenth
century:
1. by the Gottscheers themselves
2. by the linguists and folklore scholars of the Austrian Alps, and
3. by the political and cultural leadership of the Slovenian people.
Discovered by itself: Up to and into the Romantic period, the still unfinished
and evolving Gottscheer selfawareness was politically inactive. Around
the beginning
of the nineteenth century, however, it also entered a "Storm and
Stress phase" and began to evaluate itself and precisely
define itself with regard to the German
people. This development began with the urban dwellers and resulted in
the
endeavor to prove also that one is German. In keeping with the times,
this was
achieved by founding private schools in which German was the language
of instruction.
They were also called "Notschulen" (emergency schools). The
founders found
teachers among idealists who had been former officials or long-time soldiers,
as
well as among people who had educated themselves and had a natural talent
for
teaching.
The first elementary school in Gottschee was already recorded in 1690.
One
hundred twenty-eight years were to pass until the first private district
school was
opened in 1818 in Altlag. Mitterdorf followed in 1819 and, in 1820, Obermösel
joined in. In 1822 - surprisingly early - Tschermoschnitz joined
in, still before
Nesseltal and Rieg, which followed in 1829. But the attentive reader
would have
been amazed if the establishment of the Gottscheer school system had
not begun
in these settlement centers. Stockendorf and Unterdeutschau began instruction
in
1836 and 1839, respectively. Four other private schools were set up in
the fifties:
in 1852 in Pöllandl, in 1854 in Göttenitz and in Unterlag, and in 1856
the
peasants' efforts also succeeded in Morobitz. Then the founding fervor
ceased for
a while. There was a lack of teachers.
School attendance was, of course, still voluntary, although not free.
The
parents of the pupils had to pay for the teacher's salary and school
supplies. The
number of students was limited above all by the long distances that children
had to travel to school. There was a gradual increase. For all practical
purposes, only
boys attended in rural regions.
All this was drastically changed when school attendance became compulsory
with the passing of the "Imperial Elementary School Law" in
1869. The Gottscheer
private schools were recognized. The duchy thus suddenly had fifteen
public
elementary schools which were supported by the state but no teachers
who met
the certification requirements of the new law. Since the first-graders
used the
Gottscheer dialect as the mother tongue and could barely speak High
German,
the teachers, if possible, were to be native Gottscheers and to have
had teacher
training. The respected city dwellers were very concerned about the
educational progress in Gottschee. They had already discussed the announced
compulsory
education law for years and found no other solution than that the young
Gottscheer
teachers had to be trained outside of the homeland. They also discussed
the situation
with the Viennese German scholar. Professor K. J. Schröer, who finally
suggested
a partial solution. Understandably, one could not establish a teacher
training
school with a preparatory school in Gottschee, but one could conceivably
found
a "Untergymnasium" (lower secondary school) with four grades.
Professor Schröer
had been in the linguistic island in 1867 and 1869 to do linguistic
research. His
most important conversational partner had been the pharmacist Robert
Braune,
a man with advanced humanistic training and leadership quality. Braune
saw to
it that the plan of the Viennese scholar was enthusiastically supported
and the
latter gave it the necessary initial support in the Ministry of Education.
On October
28, 1872, the lower secondary school and the first class were ceremoniously
opened
amid festivities. To be sure, the school had to be housed in a private
home at
first. Benedikt Knapp, teacher at the Upper Secondary School in Laibach,
was
named director.
Seventeen students were enrolled in the first class; nine of them came
from
the city, whose inhabitants supported needy "students" from
elsewhere by giving
them free lunches and lodging. In 1873 the citizenry even founded a "support
fund." Besides Benedikt Knapp (1872-1894), the Gottscheer
secondary school
had two other directors in its 46-year history: Peter Wolsegger (1894-1908)
and
Dr. Franz Riedl (1908-1918). In 1907 the school was expanded to an
Upper
Secondary School due to the efforts of Alois Loy, mayor at that time,
and with
the political support of Prince Karl of Auersperg (1859-1927).
The eighties were of decisive significance, particularly for the Lower
Secondary
School. In 1880 the "German School Organization" was established
in Vienna.
A year later, it was active as a founder of schools in Gottschee. Within
a short
time, twenty-four district groups existed, the first one in the city
of Gottschee.
The members elected Robert Braune as presiding officer and Peter Wolsegger
as
recording secretary. Furthermore, in 1881, talented applicants to the
secondary
school were selected on a new basis:
The wholesale merchant Johann Stampfl from the district of Morobitz,
who
lived in Prague at the time, set up the "Johann Stampfl Scholarship
Fund" in the
sum of 100,000 (one hundred thousand!) guilders. From the interest,
22 scholarships
of 50, 13 of 100, and 8 scholarships of 200 guilders, were given annually
to
needy and talented Gottscheer boys. Johann Stampfl, the big-hearted
donor, born
in 1805, died after an unusually successful life as a merchant, in
1890 in Prague.
After the founding of the "German School Organization," the
Gottscheer
elementary school system grew rapidly. Nine one-class elementary schools
alone
arose in the period from 1881 to 1888. A comparison figure: from 1856
to 1881
only one single school was established, the one in Stalzern (1874).
From these
relatively numerous foundings in the eighties, one cannot only conclude
that the
Gottscheers were busily at work, but one can also see the effects of
the lower
secondary school: From year to year, the number of young teachers grows;
the old
school masters can be relieved; appointments can be made to newly founded
schools. These were set up in the following villages or school districts:
Warmberg 1881, Maierle and Langenthon 1882, Masern and Schäflein 1883,
Hohenegg 1884, Lichtenbach 1885, as well as Steinwand and Unterskrill
in 1888.
This, however, did not meet all the needs for educational facilities
in the linguistic
island. That was only accomplished with the following foundings:
Lienfeld 1892, Altbacher 1898, Verdreng and Reichenau 1905, Reuter
1908,
Stalldorf 1909, and Suchen (in the High Valley) 1910. Thus, there were
a total
of thirty-three elementary schools in the linguistic island of Gottschee
in 1910,
or in 1918 at the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Those
schools in
the old settlement centers had, in the meantime, been enlarged by one
class. The
school in the city was expanded to five classes. The school that was
founded in
1932 in Tiefenbach was not a German-founded school but was, of course,
attended
by German children.
Thus, it had taken ninety years until the school system in the Gottscheer
region had become so extensive that every child could enjoy a German
education
without too much difficulty. We cannot, however, stop with the organizational
aspect of the educational development. It ran parallel to similar processes
in the
entire Danube monarchy just as the Imperial Elementary School Law of
1869 had
mandated. In our linguistic island, however, a cultural and social
transformation
that reached into the depths of the people's soul accompanied this
gratification of
the thirst for education: the young girl's entrance into the world
of German culture
at large and the Gottscheer woman's relinquishing of inherited social
ties as the
one-sided and dutiful peasant woman, wife, and mother.
As we heard, the Gottscheers had met the requirements for compulsory
education
with the fifteen private schools that were founded between 1818 and
1856. Most
of the girls who were otherwise ready for school had to watch as boys
of the same
age were given preference. Occupying the school bench, being equally
entitled
and obliged to study, competing with the boys - all of this was
a profound event
for the village girls who had suddenly become pupils. It was a factor
not only in
their still very limited child's world, but they now also had access
to the mysterious
world of the German reader, and every schoolday was totally given to
being
German. German was the only language of instruction. From year to year,
they
understood more of the Sunday sermon of the priest. We probably cannot
quite
accurately conceive how proud a perhaps ten-year-old girl may have
been as she
sat next to her perhaps thirty-five-year-old mother and read from her
first prayer
book. She was only up to the Sanctus when the priest was already celebrating
the
Consecration, but she was reading. The mother, silently moving her
lips in prayer,
let the rosary pass through her fingers and only now and then glanced
almost
shyly at her child and the book.
The school gained supremacy over Gottscheer legends and tales, songs
and
stories - not over the dialect, not over the children's games.
The colorful world
of the German legends and tales opened up and soon outshone the native
tales."
Little Red Riding Hood," "Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs," "The
Brave Little
Taylor," "The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats," and
many other children's fairy
tales replaced the legends about witches and devils. Great heroic figures,
such as
Arminius, Emperor Redbeard in the Untersberg, Emperor Maximilian in
the
Martinswand, and later the tales of knights in the school library - all
of this was
enormously exciting and one could read it again and again. The Gottscheer
legends,
fairy tales, and stories were not written down anywhere, and neither
were the
folksongs. In school they only sang the High German children's songs: "Kommt
ein Vogel geflogen," "Ein Männlein steht im Walde," or "Sah
ein Knab ein
Röslein stehn".. .
And the mothers of these first ten to fifteen schoolgirl classes? They
had in
no way easily followed in the footsteps of their grandmother.
The nineteenth
century also had other progressive things to offer besides school.
Already long
before girls were allowed to go to elementary school, the "Zeitgeist" (spirit
of the
time) had come to the older girls and young women of the linguistic
island. The
mediator between it and the rural world of the woman was the city of
Gottschee. There this "modern life" first became evident.
The increasing success in their lives
and a liberal handling of the economy allowed more and more of its
citizens to
expand the role of the city as the center of Gottschee. Their self-assurance
grew.
To be sure, they did not become excessively rich, but their higher
standard of
living did allow them to build appropriate businesses and homes. At
first, only
individual builders, middle-class women, and girls set the example
for the new
lifestyle. They were imitated - "fashion came to Gottschee." The
men read newspapers
from Graz and Vienna.
The girls and young women in the rural areas, namely in the old settlement
centers, were quite aware of the changes in their "Stadtle." As
everywhere and at
all times, they too sought and found their models. How they carried
themselves
and dressed was worthy of imitation, soon even mandatory, if one did
not wish
to be considered backward. The rough linen of the native dress gave
way to more
delicate cloth and stylish designs. To be sure, this did not take place
with the
speed in which fashions change in our time and the old women held fast
to their
inherited native dress. Hats a la mode were, of course, worn only by
the middleclass women of the city, but even there one could see still
in the twentieth century
the simpler women wearing the kerchief tied under the chin. It too
had become
more delicate. Even earlier than the women, the men had given up their
native
garb.
The relative prosperity, not to be confused with a grand lifestyle,
and the
attitudinal change towards the culture among the youth during the second
half
of the nineteenth century, created a greater gap between the generations
than had
been the case previously. In other words, the balance between the readiness
to
accept the new and the inclination towards the traditional declined
from decade
to decade. To be sure, the dialect remained the unequivocal means of
communication
among the rural population. In the urban middle class, a mixture of
the Gottscheer
and Viennese dialect gradually gained supremacy.
At this very point in the general discussion about the economic progress
in
the "Ländchen," let us consider the establishment
and temporary flourishing of
an industry that was typical for Gottschee. A peddler from Lichtenbach
had earned
a good income in Bohemia for several years. He had observed the loden
weavers
and concluded that one could earn even more at home in this line of
work. In
1843 he had several looms and weavers brought from there to Lichtenbach.
The
undertaking was successful beyond all expectations. Its success soon
became general
knowledge and it found imitators, and hence competitors. Other enterprising
peasant-manufacturers were similarly successful in the neighboring
villages of
Kummerdorf and Altfriesach, and even as far away as Reichenau and Nesseltal,
Hohenegg and Obermösel. The group in Lichtenbach alone employed up
to eighty
weavers and assistants at the height of the boom.
The sheep wool was at first imported only from Carinthia. Increasing
demands
forced the Gottscheer loden weavers to turn also to Hungarian and Albanian
suppliers. The wool of the Albanian mountain sheep yielded a Gottscheer
loden
that was particularly high in quality and very much in demand. The
manufacturers
usually sold the loden themselves and mainly in Croatian markets. The
goods
were, however, not transported in "Kraxn" (basket containers
carried on the
back) - as was the case with the peddlers into the nineteenth-century - but
in
horse-drawn wagons.
Excessive competition among the Gottscheers themselves and the industrialization
of the manufacture of loden (automatic loom) in other countries crowded
out the
Gottscheer loden from the markets towards the end of the nineteenth
century. Its
production had become too expensive. Even in Lichtenbach, no loom was
any
longer in use at the beginning of the twentieth century. Most of the
weavers had
left the "Ländchen." Nevertheless, Lichtenbach was
humming. In 1885 the village
had received a one-class elementary school and thus had become a school
district
village.
The attempt to set up a glass industry was of only slight economic
significance for the people. The Ranzinger brothers, who came from
Vienna, set up
a glass-works near Masern in the Hinterland in 1835. They called it "Karlshütten." The
fuel, wood, was available in abundance, but the raw material, gravel,
had to be
brought in from Croatia. Because the products were so fragile, they
had to be
transported by mules or horses, which was very awkward as well as expensive.
In
1856 the owners of the glass-works moved the unprofitable concern to
the city
of Gottschee and set it up at the lignite site. But success eluded
the Ranzinger
family also in its new surroundings. It closed the business in 1888.
The just mentioned lignite deposit near the city was not systematically
mined
until 1892. In that year, it was acquired by the "Trifailer Bergwerks-Gesellschaft" (the
Trifailer Mining Company) and it undertook the more extensive open-cast
working. It was not by accident that the purchase was made in 1892.
The buyer,
a woman, knew that the opening of a branch line from Laibach to Gottschee
was
planned. Not incorrectly, she assumed that the profits would be much
higher
with the much more favorable means of transportation. Since the Gottscheer
farmers and their second and third sons showed only little interest
in mining, the
company fetched miners from Carniola and Croatia. In order to keep
them there,
the "Trifailer" built modest company housing for them. At
times, up to 500 workers were employed. This relatively large number
of inhabitants who spoke
Slovenian and Croatian considerably changed the ethnic ratio in the
city of Gottschee.
Kohlenbergwerke Gottschee
Not only the "Trifailer" had included the railroad in their
calculations. Prince
Karl of Auersperg had also done so. He had already been involved in the
planning
and construction of the branch line Laibach-Gottschee, and he also succeeded
in
getting a track from the Großlupp (Grosuplje) station to Rudolfswerth
(Novo
mesto) and Straza. This side track would allow the Prince of Auersperg
to transport
lumber easily from the grand-scale lumber industry planned for the "Hornwald" in
the Auerspergian district.
Duke Karl had thought not only of himself in the building of this railroad.
He and Mayor Alois Loy in the city of Gottschee had the personal support
of
Emperor Franz Joseph I. The monarch knew of the close ties between the
House
of Hapsburg and the ancient noble family of Auersperg. The Auerspergers
had
given the monarchy innumerable politicians, military men, and diplomats.
These
ties were so close that, for example, young Prince Karl of Auersperg
was chosen
to be the play companion of the unfortunate Crown Prince Rudolf of Hapsburg.
Despite his young age. Prince Karl was determined that this railroad
would link
the Gottscheers to the rail network of Carniola and the Austrian Alpine
provinces.
To be sure, the branch line was not the first "moving" connection
of the
"Ländchen" to the big world. Already in 1856, the organizationally
skilled Gottscheer
citizen Anton Hauff had established a weekly pony postal service to Laibach.
A
few years later, it was expanded to an express postal service that ran
six times a
week. Anton Hauff became the first postmaster in Gottschee.
Even the peddling trade was transformed under the pressure of those forces
of the nineteenth century that changed everything. The postal connection
to
Laibach had already considerably shortened for the peddlers the irksome
travelling
time to the peddling district. They also no longer travelled with fully
laden "Kraxn" from village to village but had moved to the
small- and medium-sized cities.
There the peddler went to the taverns and raffled off tropical
fruits, sweets,
and all sons of delicacies in a small lottery. He carried his goods with
him in a "Bauchladen" (a tray suspended from straps slung around
the neck). Thus, he
could now pitch a camp and fill the basket several times in an evening.
However,
he was no longer allowed to sell his wares. If the guest wanted to try
his luck
with the Gottscheer, the latter would extend to him a linen or leather
satchel
containing ninety wood-carved numbers. Depending on how much he wanted
to
win, the guest would put down a sum and pick three numbers from the bag
that
had been vigorously shaken. It had already been agreed upon earlier which
game
was to count: "Three under a hundred" or "Three-five-seven." That
meant: If
the total of the digits of the numbers that had been picked was under
a hundred,
the player had won; if the number was above a hundred, the Gottscheer
collected
the money that had been staked. The other game: If there was a three,
a five,
and a seven among the numbers that were picked, luck was on the side
of the
guest. Besides this new form of traveling peddling based on the
old privilege,
chestnut roasting also established itself as a winter occupation in the
large cities
during the nineteenth century. Exactly when this transformation of the
peddling
trade actually occurred can, of course, no longer be determined. But
it is without
a doubt connected to another development which had already started at
the end of the eighteenth century. Particularly talented peddlers had
gradually taken up
the trade with tropical fruits.
From the large cities of the monarchy,
they ultimately
controlled for quite some time during the nineteenth century almost
the entire
importation of tropical fruits in Central Europe.
This new type of peddling by the Gottscheer peasants could also be
more
easily controlled by themselves and protected from imitation. This
explains why
there was no renewal of the ancient peddling privilege of 1492 between
the years
1841 and 1914.
Had this changeover to a different product occurred because no one
any longer
created wood-carvings or made linen? Wood carving was not completely
abandoned,
but its practitioners could not compete with the cheaper and apparently
also more
practical industrial production. Thus, it is a sign of ingenuity that
the Gottscheer
peddler now offered his customers treats at a time when they could
otherwise not
find them, particularly not along with an entertaining game of chance
that the
customers could enjoy every evening. On the other hand, one clever
person in the
city of Gottschee saw to it that the wood carving talent of his countrymen
did
not remain dormant. The lumber trading company Loy was established,
and it
encouraged the creation of wood carvings that were in tune with the
needs and
the taste of the time. Wood carving developed to such an extent that
a trade
school for woodwork was established in 1882. Here, too, Johann Stampfel
was
its sponsor. The Loy Company steadily expanded its assortment and contributed
to exhibitions. Ultimately, its offerings went far beyond household
items and,
according to an advertisement in the "Deutsche Kalender von Krain"
(German Almanac
of Carniola), included everything from the walking cane to small furniture.
In farming, however, where progress would have been most necessary,
hardly
anything changed. To be sure, the so-called "Servitutsrechte" (Compulsory
Service
Rights) of 1847 granted the peasants continued co-user rights to the
Auerspergian
forests, the lumber trade became more profitable, the iron plow dug
deeper into
the humus than the hoe or the wooden plow, the more prosperous farmers
bought
soil aeration equipment, hand-driven threshing machines appeared toward
the end
of the century, communities introduced the grain refiner into Gottschee,
and more
and more fertilizer was used in the twentieth century. But three-field
crop rotation
and the splitting of the meager crumbs of farmland into ever smaller
plots did
not change. In addition, every farmer planted what he needed to sustain
his
household and his livestock. More time was lost here than elsewhere
in the planting
and harvesting because a farmer's fields were spread far apart and
the draught-animals moved slowly. Even in the twentieth century,
oxen and cows were still
commonly used as draught-animals in smaller, out-of-the-way villages.
In the
larger villages that were closer to the city horses were already used.
The soil,
especially the meadows, were depleted, not only because of the high
lime content,
but also because of insufficient fertilization.
On the other hand, already at the beginning of the century, there was
an
increase in the birth rate in the "Ländchen" due
to the romantic impulses from
without, the broadening of the nutritional base through corn and potatoes
that
had already existed for decades, as well as to the belief that a better
future was
at hand. The increase in births, however, also meant unexpected increase
in farm
laborers but, of course, also more consumers. More grain had to be
planted and more livestock raised. To be sure, the farmers began
to make adjustments, but
by the seventies the still arable land was just about depleted,
that is, the "Ländchen" was bursting with
inhabitants. The dictates of the two existential laws about the
lack of space and the meager yield of the soil were in full effect.
Two statistics
will clarify the situation of the linguistic island at this time
when the overpopulated
"Ländchen" threatened to explode like a kettle from the internal
pressure. On
page 46 of his book, Professor Grothe notes a census of the Gottscheers
from the
year 1745. He does not quote the source. Apparently, it was undertaken
by the
then existing five parishes and totalled 9,000 "entrusted souls." We
are somewhat
suspicious of this figure because it seems to be too low. If it
were accurate, the
number of inhabitants as counted in 1574 would not have changed.
But that is
highly unlikely since the Turks had last attacked 150 years earlier
and the economy
of the linguistic island had already been recovering for over one
hundred years
under the Auerspergs. But even if one raises Grothe's count of 9,000
by a third
to 12,000 souls, the figures of the Viennese statistician C. Czoernig -
with about
22,000 for 1852 and 25,000 to 26,000 around 1875 - are still
astonishing enough
(cited from Maria Hornung, "Mundartkunde Osttiros", page 145).
Precisely expressed: This rapid population growth of the Gottscheers
shows
that the group in this chalk-soil region no longer developed biologically
in isolation
despite its insular location but - again, without being fully
aware of it - underwent
the general European population explosion of the nineteenth century.
And still
more:
When the lure of the sparsely populated North American continent
again
seized the German people for a second time in this century, it also
attracted
thousands upon thousands of young people from Gottschee. Apparently
fortunate
for the individual emigrant but ultimately fatal for the Gottscheers
as a whole,
it opened the wide flood gates that permitted the population surplus
to escape.
But the flow would not stop. In the first half of the year 1914,
the district office
in Gottschee issued about 700 passports to the United States.
Traveling and earning money in foreign lands was nothing new for
the Gottscheers. But it had always been something the men did. This
time it was different.
This time the "Zeitgeist" (spirit of the time) had planned ahead - the
inner field had
been prepared for the great restlessness that now also took hold
of the young
women and girls. They began to follow the husband, the brother, the
fiance, or
the secret lover to a land that proclaimed itself the land of unlimited
opportunities.
And what had Gottschee to offer?
Did the Gottscheer woman really only follow her man, or was it also
the
bleak job prospect at home or the hope of thus being better able
to assist the
relative that led her to leave for this country? Was it a sense of
adventure that
brought forth this decision to emigrate, a decision which took much
courage?
Perhaps she, too, had the eternal need to roam, the Gottscheer wanderlust?
A
good and ready income beckoned to her, and at the same time a freer
and better
life - was it that? Indeed, one must assume that all sober
and practical considerations,
family and friendship ties, and a profoundly human curiosity about
the mysterious
unfamiliar were factors if one wants to comprehend fully the attitude
of a young
Gottscheer woman of that time.
The "Lantle" nevertheless did not leave them even once
they had reached
American soil after a horrendous ocean crossing on the emigration
ship. On the
one hand, the young Gottscheer woman had escaped the confines, but,
on the
other hand, she sought and found support and comfort among her fellow
countrymen
in the vast, unfamiliar, and threatening world. She sought not only
protection,
but also the warmth of the "Hoimischn," the familiar. Not
a few of the immigrants
needed much consolation and encouragement to be able to bear the
homesickness. Here we encounter a noteworthy psychological phenomenon.
As if obeying
a
natural law, she resisted looking for work in rural regions - not
only because "he," the fellow countryman or
a certain countryman, did not leave the city, but because
it had been instilled in her through the centuries that working the
soil did not
reward even the greatest effort.
One circumstance was particularly useful to the Gottscheer woman,
as well
as to her countryman, in this adjustment to the totally different
existence.
The peasants in Gottschee had been forced to improvise daily from
childhood.
That is why they quickly found their way in the country whose "way
of life" today
still exemplifies improvisation that has become systematized.
The majority of the first group of Gottscheer immigrants, however,
did not
stay in crowded New York but moved on to Cleveland, Ohio, where they
found
work rather quickly. There were already so many of them in the eighties
- and
the influx continued - that social problems arose. To deal
with them, several
courageous men founded the first Gottscheer aid society in the United
States and
called it "Erster Österreichischer Unterstützungsverein" ("The
First Austrian Benefits
Society"). The external circumstances that led to its founding
are still partly
known. The "Gottscheer Gedenkbuch" describes them on page 48: "The
first idea for
founding a benefit society arose at the beginning of June 1889 when
several
Gottscheers met at the wedding of Mr. Josef Perz from Malgern. As
a result of
this private discussion, fourteen courageous Gottscheers founded
the "Erster
Österreichischer Unterstützungsverein" already on
July 7 of the same year. Mr. Josef
Kump of Schalkendorf had the pleasure of being elected the first
president of this
first Gottscheer organization in America. Monthly dues were set at
50 cents."
The population loss of the Gottscheer people during the eighties
and nineties
up to the first World War could not be recouped. Not only was the
number of
immediate emigrants a factor, but these were the most productive,
daring, and
energetic ones. To be sure, until 1914, there were some young couples
who,
driven by homesickness, returned to the old homeland and began there
a new or
continued the work begun by their parents and in-laws with the dollars
they had
saved. This return was like a trickle in comparison to the wide river
that flowed
in the opposite direction. Above all, the children and grandchildren
of the emigrants
were lost to Gottschee.
The mass emigration produced another psychological reaction. As soon
as
they were in a position to do so, the emigrants sent money home.
Every dollar
that came into the "Ländchen" gave genuine aid, but,
at the same time, it was
an intensive advertisement for America. How much effort would it
have cost the
recipient to be able to save the equivalent value of a dollar in
more than four
Austro-Hungarian florins?!
After the turn of the century, the farmhouse ruins multiplied - at
first in the outlying villages. The former owners or their heirs
lived in America. No one
halted the decline.
And irreversible damage was done to the Gottscheer traditions by
the emigration
of the youth shaped by the cultural heritage of thirty generations.
Among them,
some girls and women counted double: the lead singers in the village
singing
society, in the parish church choirs; the storytellers at the communal
evening
work sessions; in general, the young female and male personalities
who were the
leaders. This is not to say that these young Gottscheers are to be
held morally
responsible for the gap which now no longer could be closed. Just
as earlier
the native dress had disappeared as the customary garb worn to church,
so now
the Gottscheer hymns disappeared from the church services.
Thus, all that embodied Gottschee was threatened from two sides:
by the
incessant decline in population and by the gradual decline in the
energy that
shapes and passes on traditions.
Could the linguistic island still be saved?
Hardly any of the characteristic Gottscheer cultural heritage had
been recorded
by the middle of the nineteenth century. To be sure, the younger
generation of
heirs of this cultural heritage could now read and write, but their
numbers had
already declined before the big wave of emigration. Only old women
and men
still knew the folksongs, the stories, and the unaltered dialect.
But how was an
old farmer's wife, who couldn't read or write, to record a folksong
or a legend,
a proverb or anything of the sort?
Discovered by the Linguists and Folklorists of the
Austrian Alps
What did the scholars consider to be endangered? What did they want
to
know from the Gottscheer? More and different things than what seemed
important
to the Gottscheers. Ever since the linguistic island of Gottschee
had sporadically
become of interest to geographers and to scholars of ethnic groups,
their research
began and ended with the question concerning the origin of the ancestors
of this
unique people. The Gottscheers themselves could not answer the question,
since
they no longer had any connections to the origin of the first Gottscheers.
Therefore,
they could not counter with something historically concrete the theories
about
their origin that were presented with scientific trimmings. Only
now, half a
millenium after the settling of Gottschee, can one seriously consider
the research
methodologies and their results. And still another hundred years
had to pass before
the Gottscheers finally learned where their ancestors originated.
But let us stay
in the nineteenth century and look over the shoulders of the scholars
as they
prepared the way for the end result.
The first tentative attempts to determine the origin by way of the
dialect
occurred in the early part of the second half of the nineteenth century.
In 1861
Theodor Elze, a Protestant minister in Laibach at that time, published
his work
"Gottschee und die Gottscheer". His interest in the linguistic island
had been sparked
by his personal encounters with Gottscheers. They now came more often
to the
capital of Carniola, since a postal service connected Gottschee and
Laibach. About
their dialect Elze wrote: "The Gottscheer dialect is an extremely
valuable and still untapped source for the study of the German language.
Not only could
it significantly
enrich the study of German dialects, but it could yield many not
insignificant
clues to the understanding of our old German language." (Quoted
from Grothe
p. 129.)
Dr. K. J. Schröer, a professor from Vienna with whom we are already
acquainted,
dipped even further into the dialect for traces of its origins. Still
a bit unsure,
but with a clear vision, he aimed at the more confined region of
origin: "The
Gottscheers are on the whole Marcomanni. The dialect is characteristic
of the
Bavarian-Austrian Lech-dialects, but with an old addition from Swabia
and Franconia.
The latter element differentiates it in many word forms and certain
sounds from
its otherwise closely related dialect of the Zimbri and the Carinthians." (Quoted
from Grothe, p. 129.)
The result of Schröer's rather short stay in Gottschee was a treatise
about the
dialect - a work which now has only historical value. We are
also indebted to
him for a register of the villages of the "Ländchen."
Schröer's
intellectual heir was Professor Adolf Hauffen, who was born in
Laibach and taught in Prague. He published the now classic monograph
"Die
Sprachinsel Gottschee" in Graz in 1895. Hauffen no longer has any
doubts that the
ancestors of the Gottscheers came from the Bavarian-Austrian dialect
region, even
though this term was not yet in vogue at his time. He found in the
Gottscheer
dialect the most essential characteristics of the Bavarian vocabulary
and word
formation, inflection and vocalization. Hauffen does not admit any
considerable
influence of Alemannian-Swabian dialect forms.
We find his other
views about
the origin of the Gottscheers in Grothe, on the bottom of page 129,
where the
scholar from Leipzig writes: "The influence and influx of the
Bavarian-Austrian
kind from neighboring Carinthia and Styria was clearly very strong
in Gottschee.
Sixty percent of the vocabulary of the Gottscheer dialect probably
is of this origin.
It is, however, peculiar that several characteristics of the Bavarian
dialect - such
as the dual forms "ös" and "enk," as well
as the slurring of the e in the prefixes
of words - are not found in the Gottscheer dialect despite
the considerable Bavarian-Austrian vocabulary. The Gottscheer clearly
says 'gamochet,' 'Geschwister,' 'pahent,'
not 'gmacht,' 'Gschwister' and 'phent.' " (Quoted from Grothe,
pp. 129-130.)
Up to Hauffen, only non-Gottscheers published the results of their
research
on the "Ländchen" and their views. The first Gottscheer
who contributed a clearly
scholarly work about the dialect of his homeland was Hauffen's pupil,
Dr. Hans
Tschinkel from Lichtenbach, secondary school principal in Prague.
He wrote "Die
Grammatik der Gottscheer Mundart", which was published in Halle in
1908. It was
to be followed by a dictionary of the Gottscheer dialect, but the
stresses and
strains of the First World War and his unceasing scholarly efforts,
which also
included the Gottscheer folksong, had consumed his energies too soon.
Tschinkel
died much too soon in 1926 and left behind a unique harvest: more
than a thousand
folksongs from Gottschee. They were to be published as the first
volume of a
series about the folksong in the Austro-Hungarian empire. The collapse
of the
Danube monarchy in 1918 destroyed this plan as well. In addition,
Hans Tschinkel
left behind numerous preparatory notes for the dialect dictionary.
None of those
who knew of it ever dared to hope that it would be published. Nevertheless,
half
a century after his death, the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna
published the second volume of the "Wörterbuch der Gottscheer Mundart"
by Dr. Walter Tschinkel
from Morobitz, the nephew of the scholar. Walter Tschinkel had received
his
pedagogical training at the teachers' college in Klagenfurt and,
as a young teacher,
he studied German philology in order to produce a scholarly linguistic
work.
Again it seemed as if another war and the poor health of Dr. Tschinkel
were to
make all the efforts to bring about the most significant scholarly
work about the
linguistic island of Gottschee for naught. He was, however, able
to complete the
first volume by 1974 and only the last proofs still remained to be
done for the
second volume published in 1976. He died when he was not yet 70,
in October
1975, in St. Georgen am Längsee, where he had worked for many years.
His
death was deeply mourned by the last generation of Gottscheers. His
personal
friends, among whom was also the author of the "Jahrhundertbuch",
rejoiced with
him when he was awarded the Theodor-Körner-Prize in Vienna a few
months
before his death. His fellow countrymen honored him with the "Gottscheer
Ehrenring" (honorary ring) and the township of St.
Georgen posthumously made him an
honorary citizen.
With his "Wörterbuch der Gottscheer Mundart", Dr.
Walter Tschinkel provided an invaluable service to German philology,
namely to the
Bavarian-Austrian
dialect
geography. Early on he made contact with the "Bairisch-österreichischen
Wörterbuchkanzlei" in Vienna and the bureau soon recognized
the significance of his
work. Walter Tschinkel's work appeared as Volume VII of the
series: "Studien
zur österreichisch-bairischen Dialektkunde", and thus continued
the tradition of the "imperial," as of 1867 royal and imperial,
Academy of Sciences, in supporting
those doing research on Gottschee. K. J. Schröer was the first,
Walter Tschinkel - so the Gottscheers hope - will
not be the last to be so supported.
Besides receiving support for the idea and for the publication by
the Academy
of Sciences in Vienna, the dictionary of the Gottscheer dialect also
received other
support in the Republic of Austria and in the Federal Republic of
Germany which
made the publication of the two-volume work at all possible. Tschinkel
expresses
his thanks to the participating departments and organizations on
page VI of his
first volume as follows:
My sincere thanks to the Federal Minister of Education for a six-month
leave of absence to conduct research in 1968 and to the Office of
the Carinthian
State Government for a four-month leave in 1970. My heartfelt thanks
also
to the Delegate to the National Council, Dr. O. Scrinzi, to the
Chairman of
the Gottscheer Landsmannschaft, Dr. V. Michitsch, and to OSR. Dir.
H.
Petschauer as the compatriot caretaker of the Gottscheer dictionary,
who applied
for and brought about the two leaves.
My work received its greatest recognition on March 10, 1972 when
the
Austrian Academy of Sciences accepted my manuscript "Wörterbuch der
Gottscheer
Mundart" for publication as volume 7 in the series "Studien zur österreichisch
bairischen Dialektkunde". I also value the place that it was assigned:
it is going
to be next to the "Pladner Wörterbuch" of Maria Hornung. The Gottscheer
and
Pladner dialects, once neighboring dialects from the Tirolean-Carinthian
region,
have again been united after a separation of almost 700 years.
I am very grateful to all those offices and people who have contributed
financially to make the publication of the Gottscheer dictionary
possible. First,
to the Austrian Academy of Sciences and to the Fund for the Support
of
Scientific Research. Then, to the Ministry of the Interior of the
Federal Republic in Bonn, to the Ministry of the Interior of the
Provincial
Government
of Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart, the Departments of Culture of
the Provincial
Governments in Klagenfurt, Graz, and Innsbruck, the cities of Sindelfingen
and Klagenfurt, and to the Carinthian Loan Association. Finally,
to the
Carinthian Landsmannschaft and their chairmen in Ulm, Klagenfurt,
Wien,
Graz, and Linz. And not last to the Gottscheer Relief Associations
in New
York and Toronto .. .
It was certainly very advantageous for the breadth and enrichment
in detail
of the scholarly material that Tschinkel brought the Gottscheer dialect
as a native
language into the field of study of modern Austro-Bavarian dialect
geography.
This circumstance could be especially appreciated by two leading
experts in this
area, namely, the Viennese professors Dr. Eberhard Kranzmayer and
Dr. Maria
Hornung. They, in turn, carefully conducted Walter Tschinkel's life's
work, as a
signpost and for comparison, to its place in Austrian scholarship.
During the years prior to the publication of the "Wörterbuch der
Gottscheer Mundart", a constant exchange of ideas - above
all, between Walter Tschinkel and
Maria Hornung - took place. On numerous study trips, they examined
the sections
of the region that Prof. Kranzmayer had generally labeled as the "Tirolean-Carinthian
border region" where the Gottscheers originated. They often
succeeded in pin-pointing the villages from which they emigrated
by comparing the unusual peasant
expressions. Professor Hornung says the following about the general
conformity
between the East Tyrolean and Gottscheer dialect in her book "Mundartkunde
Osttirols", on page 147:
After excluding those word groups which are not useful for a word
comparison
of the Gottscheer dialect with those of the Tyrolean-Carinthian border
regions,
we get the following dialect geography: To a considerable degree
the Gottscheer
peculiarities can be associated with those of the Puster and Lesach
valleys.
Because of its dialect and questions about its origins, the "high
valley of
Suchen," the western border area of the Gottscheer region, deserves
special attention.
It has its own settlement history. There are reasons for the assumption
that this
history already commenced with the first settlement phase. Little,
however, supports
the theory that the high valley was settled from the Hinterland,
perhaps from
Göttenitz, because the Rieg-Göttenitz forest made it very inaccessible.
In contrast,
it was easily reached from Altenmarkt, Laas, Zirknitz, Idria. Surely
those who
planned the settlement for the count of Ortenburg were aware of this
fact before
the colonizing began. The castle of Laas and its properties were
an old fief of the
patriarch of Aquileia. Besides these, the just now briefly circumscribed
region
showed several linguistically insular influences occurring with a
German population.
The origin of these small settlements already occupied Principal
Josef Obergföll,
whom we will meet again in the twentieth century. Grothe makes reference
to
these notations and states, "... the inhabitants of the
high valley of Suchen,
according to an old record, came from Idria and Wochein, that is,
from the
colonies that were planted there by the bishopric of Freising."
At
first, Grothe regrets that Obergföll does not cite
his source, but we are
not absolutely dependent on it today because we are able to add
an historical
component to the remarks by Obergföll concerning the origin of the
people of
Suchen, a component which until now has never been discussed: The
castle of
Laas and its properties were - an exception! - argued
over for years by Aquileia
and Ortenburg. We can today no longer know all the details of this
situation,
but we do know that the counts maintained that the castle belonged
to them
whereas the patriarch rejected this claim. In any case, the Ortenburgers
occupied
Laas for some time until Patriarch Pagano II lost his patience in
1327 and declared
it to be a "free fief." This, however, forced the Ortenburgers
to withdraw if they
did not wish to be accused of "felony" and hence lose all
the fiefs they had received
from the patriarch. Nevertheless, the unruly Count Hermann III in
1335 once
more attempted to take possession of Castle Laas by force. Patriarch
Bertrand (see
Villach Conference of 1336), who already ruled at that time, took
vigorous action,
drove Hermann away, and gave the castle in fief to the Hapsburgers
Otto and
Albrecht, who had just been appointed princes in Carinthia.
Conclusion: The counts of Ortenburg held Castle Laas for some time,
since
they found settlers for the colonization of the Suchen basin in its
domain and in
the regions of Altenmarkt, Idria, and so forth. Thus, they saved
themselves much
effort, time, and money, particularly since voluntary settlers were
no longer
abundantly available in their own fiefs in Lower Carniola.
Given these quite plausible assumptions, the question concerning
the differences
between the native language of Suchen and the other Gottscheer dialect
answers
itself. For a long time, one had been inclined to assume that these
differences "developed" and grew in the isolation of the high valley of Suchen.
Now, however,
there is hardly any doubt that the population there had always spoken
that way
from its beginnings to the resettlement (in 1941). On the other hand,
the ancestors
of the population of Suchen also came, as we saw, from the dispersed
colonial
region of the Freising monastery Innichen in the Puster valley, but
apparently
not directly from the region of origin of the first Gottscheers.
We have leaped
ahead in time a bit in order to preserve agreement concerning the
origin as
evidenced by the dialect. With regard to the high valley of Suchen,
we were
chiefly able to do this with the aid of an historical notion. Admittedly,
the actual
linguistic proof is still outstanding. Thus, it certainly would be
an enticing topic
for a beginning dialect geographer of the Viennese School to find
linguistic evidence
to support this historical thesis as long as there are still original
Sucheners around.
We now must still answer the question about which specific aspects
of the
Gottscheer cultural heritage, besides the pure spoken language, the
scholars found
to be endangered in the nineteenth century. These were the song-like
and narrative
contents bound to the dialect which were evidence of the imagination
and poetry
of the people: the folksong, the fables and fairy tales, the myths
and legends,
adult and children's games, amusing and serious tales, customs and
superstitions,
partly of pagan origin.
The scholars and the Gottscheers themselves were still convinced
in the second
half of the nineteenth century that much of the unrevealed ethnic
treasure of the
Gottscheer people was already permanently lost. It could be that
songs and tales
were given up because they no longer appealed to the people. But
when Schröer
and, above all, Hauffen went on their journeys of discovery, they
found an inexhaustible fund in the old people. It was Hauffen who
first included the Gottscheer
folksong in the still new German folksong taxonomy. Included in his
characterization
of it on page 130 of his work is the following: "Much still
waits to be discovered.
But the modern folksong treasury of other German regions does not
give this
impression of the archaic and unique. None so deviates in form from
the others,
only a few offer so much that is new in their details as does the
Gottscheer song
treasury." Hauffen then makes a comparison between the
folksong creation of
the people of Transylvania and the Gottscheers: "In both linguistic
islands the
folksongs are sung completely in the dialect. The folksong in isolated
regions is
generally as a rule dialectal, in both the ballad is preferred, in
both the songs
give a more archaic impression than corresponding German parallels
due to the
mostly three-part verse form and to their conception and representation."
Hauffen also does not deny a certain influence from
the different nationality that surrounded them. At first reading,
the non-Gottscheer
Hauffen
finds the
Gottscheer folksong unusual, indeed strange, and he finds the text,
also without
the melody, at first incomprehensible. This was largely due to the
improvisational
recording of the songs by their collectors, the most eager of whom
were the young
teachers. Among them were names such as Wilhelm Tschinkel, the father
of Dr.
Walter Tschinkel, Josef Perz, Mathias Petschauer, and others. Their
names can
be found in Hauffen's work. The folksong scholar from Prague thus
found it much
more difficult than his pupil and co-worker Hans Tschinkel to decipher
the musical
accoutrements of the Gottscheer folksongs and to delve into their
innermost core.
But even the notations of Hans Tschinkel could not clearly transmit
to anyone
the unique sound colorations of the vowels, the melody of the dialect
in general,
so that a highly musical German who was unfamiliar with the region
could have
sung a Gottscheer folksong from the sheet, so to speak. Only modern
technological
devices give the personally or professionally interested non-Gottscheer
access to
the true sound of the songs of the "Ländchen."
A majority of the Gottscheer folksongs most likely did not originate
outside of the general German development in this field. Already Hauffen
said that the Germans of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were particularly
fond of singing and traveling. If we now consider that thousands of Gottscheer
peddlers traveled about in these two centuries in the Austro-Bavarian
dialect region, in Bohemia with its overwhelming musical talents, and
also in the German-speaking enclaves of Carniola, then we cannot dismiss
their returning with an enormous number of stimuli to be passed on to
the people at home. In his travels, the peddler certainly did not live
in isolation from the populace. He preferred to spend his evenings where
it was most entertaining - in the hostels and inns, or with hospitable
farmers.
The "Jahrhundertbuch" would
not only be poorly planned but also absolutely one-sided and historically
inaccurate if it overlooked the function
of the church,
and the faith and piety that the church kept alive in the inhabitants
of the "Ländchen." The care that the faithful were
given by the church organization and
the religious participation of the faithful were from the outset
of the colonization
decisive factors for the continued existence of this fateful community
in the calciferous
region. Unconditional faith and a chain of customs clearly arranged
according to
the church calendar provided a superimposing spiritual strength which
met their
needs. The perseverance of the church in its traditions and the inclination
of the
Gottscheers to live according to the old ways were united in a psychologically
extremely effective whole. In addition, for centuries the priest
had been the only,
always present authority figure for the peasant population, an authority
that also
influenced worldly affairs. And this authority spoke the Gottscheer
dialect, or at
least understood German. The counts of Ortenburg had already established
a Latin
school in their Carniolian fiefs at Reifnitz to educate upcoming
generations of
priests. When the bishopric of Laibach was founded in 1461, the training
of
priests was moved to Laibach. As far as can be determined, the bishopric
of Laibach
recognized the ethnic uniqueness of the linguistic island of Gottschee
and assigned
to it priests from the "Ländchen" itself, priests
who spoke German. Not many
were needed. Around 1745, there were only five parishes that had
to be looked
after.
Along with the increase in population, the number of parishes with
exclusively
Gottscheer inhabitants rose to eleven during the nineteenth century:
Göttenitz,
Rieg, Morobitz, Gottschee-City, Mitterdorf, Altlag, Obermösel, Nesseltal,
Stockendorf, Tschermoschnitz, and Pöllandl. Parishes in the border
regions with linguistically mixed population were principally administered
by Slovenian priests.
Quite peculiarly, however, the Suchener high valley had as far as
one could
remember also always only had Slovenian priests. In the church hierarchy,
the
parishes in Gottschee were under the jurisdiction of a vicarage which
had its seat
in the city.
Not coincidentally, the Gottscheers brought forth the strongest priest-personalities
in the second half of the nineteenth century. In most cases, they
were
still active in the twentieth century. The highest church office
of any Gottscheer
priest was held by Josef Erker, who was prebendary and canon in Laibach
from
1898 to his retirement. He was born in Mitterdorf in 1851 and died
in 1924 in
the city of Gottschee, where he established the "Waisenhaus" (orphanage)
with
a great deal of idealism and perseverance. The orphanage housed a
three-class
elementary school for girls under the supervision of Catholic teaching
nuns. This
institution had about the same significance for the female youth
of the "Ländchen" as the "Untergymnasium" (lower
secondary school) had for the boys. While still a cathedral chaplain,
Josef
Erker, along with his brother-in-law Franz Jonke, founded the "Waisenhaus-Verein" (orphanage
club), which under his vigorous leadership
collected approximately 90,000 florins for the public facility. His brother Ferdinand
Erker, who was born in 1866 in Mitterdorf and died on October 13, 1939, in Gottschee,
was the last German deacon in Gottschee and honorary canon in Laibach.
![](../../../Gottschee/Bilder/Ansichtskarten/51t.jpg)
Mädchenerziehungsanstalt "Marienheim" in Gottschee
Another priest by the name of Josef Erker from Mitterdorf (1873-1939)
was
for years assigned to the parish of Obermösel, whose history he published
in
numerous installments in the "Gottscheer Zeitung". In Mitterdorf itself,
the spiritual
adviser Josef Eppich - who was born in 1874 in Malgern and
who died under
tragic circumstances in 1942 - was the respected caretaker
of the parishioners. He
was the Gottscheer priest who publicly, that is, politically, was
the most active
exponent for his homeland under the most difficult circumstances.
He was owner
and publisher of the Gottscheer Zeitung as of 1919 and was elected
to the Slovenian
parliament in 1927. However, all he could do there for the continued
existence
of the Gottscheer school system, something which was very dear to
him, was to
utter imploring words.
The spiritual adviser August Schauer, born in 1872 in Pöllandl, was
known
as an outstanding preacher and publisher of the "Gottscheer Kalender"
(almanac). He
died in 1941 in Nesseltal, where he had headed the parish for decades
and had
shaped the community with the force of his dominating personality.
The spiritual adviser Alois Krisch was unusually close to his people.
He was
born in 1893 in Rieg and died in 1966 in Brandenberg, Tyrol. He spent
his final
years as priest at home in Altlag. We will hear more about him in
connection
with the resettlement, and likewise also about the Reverend Heinrich
Wittine,
who was born in 1891 in Lichtenbach and died in 1977 in Graz. Outside
of the
actual area of dispersion, we find two Gottscheer religious in important
positions:
Julius Josef Gliebe, born in 1891 in Langenton, was active for sixty-five
years as
priest at the Church of St. Mary of the Assumption in California,
where he died
in 1974. The Reverend Anton Fink, born November 27, 1915 in Altlag,
has,
since 1955, been General Procurator of the missionary congregation
of the Brothers
of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Rome (Vatican).
Another religious ("Gesellschaft des Göttlichen Wortes"),
Father Mathias
Schager, born in 1935 in Maierle, lives in Vienna. Upon completing
his theological
studies in Vienna, Bonn, and Munich, he was active as a spiritual
adviser of
children and youth in Vienna, where he then assumed the duties of
a parish priest.
Josef Seitz, born in 1932 in Malgern, is parish priest in Niklasdorf
near Leoben.
Before we leave the nineteenth century, an extraordinary Gottscheer
deserves
honorary mention. We are speaking of the "old teacher" Josef
Erker, who was
born in 1824 in Mitterdorf and died in 1906 in Gottschee. He was
taken into
the public school service after the restructuring of the Austrian
school system by
the imperial elementary school law of 1869. He was equally successful
as an
educator and as a human being. Many talented students of the large
school district
of Mitterdorf passed through his care. They in turn - building
on his pedagogical
achievements and the lower secondary school in Gottschee - attained
much that
was above the average in their own lives. Among these were his two
sons, Canon
Josef and Deacon Ferdinand Erker.
If the number of churches in a region are to be the yardstick for
the piety of
the people living there, then the Gottscheers were surely very pious.
There were
about one hundred parish and affiliated churches, as well as church-like
chapels,
in the settlement regions belonging directly to them (the Auerspergian
forest can
be excluded here). And none of these churches was without a bell.
After World
War I, the American-Gottscheers just about competed with each other,
according to their village origins, in replacing the bells that
had been melted down for
military use between 1914 and 1918.
Discovered through the political and cultural
leadership of the Slovenes
In the introduction to the description of the nineteenth century,
we stated
that the Gottscheer region would still be occupied by Gottscheers
one hundred
years later but that it would be totally changed. This transformation,
however,
did not occur unnoticed and unobserved by the linguistically different
surroundings.
Slovenian nationalism had continued to intensify in the first half
of the nineteenth
century and defined itself in its resistance to the German element
in Carniola.
This was less true of the immediate Gottscheer-Slovenian neighborhoods
on the
fringes of the linguistic island. There one understood each other
and communicated
with one another as always - above all in business matters.
The increasing political
pressure on the Gottscheers came rather from the steadily growing,
panslavically-
oriented civil service system. In their view, the map of the Slovenian
region,
which was not identical with Carniola, showed a few blemishes which
had to be
removed: the German urban middle-class element in the provincial
capital of
Laibach as well as in the cities in Lower Styria, Marburg an der
Drau, Cilli, and
Pettau. Most of all, however, they were bothered by the two rural
linguistic islands
of Zarz in Upper Carniola and Gottschee in Lower Carniola. In the
course of the
century, Zarz was systematically destroyed, which was relatively
easy to do, since
it was - in contrast to Gottschee - a small, unclosed
settlement region.
One period of bitter hostility against the German element in Carniola
reached
its climax in the forties, more precisely in 1848. The Germans in
Carniola were
at this time in a state of expectant political unrest, since a kingdom
was supposedly
about to be established under the influence of the Austrian empire.
All hopes were
pinned on the National Assembly in Frankfurt am Main, which was finally
to do
away with the many small German states. Carniola, too, (that is,
not only the
German-speaking but also the Slovenian population) was to elect delegates.
Seen
from the perspective of that time, it is understandable that the
Gottscheers, too,
expected that a united Germany would solve all their problems. It
is no surprise
that they, too, liked to hear the voice of the independence poet
Anastasius Grün.
It cannot be assumed that the Gottscheers knew from the outset who
was behind
this pseudonym, namely, Count Anton Alexander von Auersperg, who
was born
in 1830 in Laibach and died in 1876 in Graz. He was of the Count-Auerspergian
line in Carniola and thus was not directly connected to Gottschee.
Thus, it is also
questionable if Gottschee was of particular concern to him. His estate
was located
in Thurn am Hart in central Carniola. The poet, who thought
in terms of a
united Germany, nevertheless thought of Carniola as his homeland,
without having
an inner aversion towards the Slovenes. He even believed that they
would only
be able to develop themselves fully within the framework of a larger
German state.
But that was precisely what the national, extremely agitated Slovenian
leadership
rejected. They also rejected the view of the poet Anastasius Grün
that the German
oak and the Slovenian linden tree could grow side by side.
In February of 1848 the poet Count Auersperg addressed Carniolians
with
the burning appeal: "To my Slovenian brothers!" and urged
them to elect delegates
to the parliament in Frankfurt.
They themselves were faced with an
alternative
that was still imposed upon them from Vienna by their active and
agitating
leadership: to fight for their membership in a Slavic power state.
The leadership
that was united in the organization "Slovenija" demanded
that it reject this election
and confirm its open resistance on official records. It came to a
vote. The Gottscheers
cast their vote for a delegate whom they did not know and to whom
they had
neither political nor personal ties, since he was not a Gottscheer.
The fate of the National Assembly in Frankfurt is well known. It
collapsed
without having reached its objectives. The Germans in Carniola were
severely
depressed; the Slovenes triumphed and celebrated the failure in Frankfurt
as their
own victory. With renewed vigor they endeavored to make their ideals
a reality.
In the linguistic island, the provincial government deliberately
interfered for the
first time in 1854 at the middle administrative level, the district
office: the
Moschnitze became part of the purely Slovenian district of Rudolfswert
(Novo
mesto) and Stockendorf, and the wine-growing region of Maierle was
allocated to
the likewise purely Slovenian district of Tschernembl (Crnomelj).
The aim - to
destroy the rooted inner unity of the Gottscheer people - failed.
How the current Slovenian generation that has been shaped by Yugoslavian
socialism views this juxtaposition of Slovenian-German is shown in
the book:
"Anastasius Grün in Slovenci" (Anastasius Grün and the Slovenes).
It appeared in
1970 in Marburg an der Drau and was written by Dr. Breda Pozar. This
very
polemic work is obviously a dissertation. The reader unfamiliar with
Slovenian is
given a German "summary" of the content. The author uninhibitedly
applies the
Slovenian yardstick to the symbolic figure of Anastasius Grün. Reduced
to the
simplest equation it is: Slovenian = good, German = evil. Thus, one
finds the
following characterization of the evil German on page 270: "Grün's
political and
social attitude towards the Slovenes was that of the German aristocrats
and landlords.
He basically was against any equality of the Slovenes with the Germans.
He was
convinced that the Germans deserved to be the leaders of the culturally
and
economically backward Slovenes. He did not want to recognize the
existential
concerns of his people and never understood the revolutionary struggle
of his
Slovenian subjects. Thus, his literary sentiments, his enthusiastic
love of freedom
and sacrifice for humanity were affectation."
However, the minute that Anastasius Grün concerns himself with
the Slovenian
people he becomes the "good" German. On page 270 is written: "Even
though
Grün as a true German always supported the interests of the Germans
and landlords
in his political efforts after 1848, he was kindly disposed towards
the Slovenian
literary endeavors throughout his entire life." To better
understand this sentence,
it should be added that Anastasius Grün was a close friend of the
greatest Slovenian
poet, France Preseren, who at that time also still wrote in German.
On page 271,
the author then acknowledges the following about the German independence
poet:" Grün concerned himself with Slovenian literature
by translating Slovenian folksongs
into German. His printed collection appeared in 1850. It is to his
credit that he
thus introduced Slovenian poetry into German literature."
The
political result for the Gottscheers in the nineteenth century:
Around the
middle of this period, they lost the greatest hope they had had up
to then. The Slovenian authorities in the meantime contested their
existence in Lower Carniola.
Nevertheless, at the turn of the century, they still felt protected
in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. As for the rest, the Gottscheers
had to a large extent now
joined the age of modern civilization and technology. It will soon
be evident what
they had traded for it.
And this was their economic base at the turn of the century: The
tilled land
amounted to about 70,000 hectares. It was owned by a little more
than 8,000
people. 8.6 percent was farmland, 20.6 percent fields, 34.4 percent
pastures,
34.7 percent forest, and 1.7 percent other (from Dr. Podlipnig, Cultural
Supplement
of the "Gottscheer Zeitung", No. 46, 1973).
("Jahrhundertbuch der Gottscheer", Dr. Erich Petschauer)
www.gottschee.de
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