The Gottscheer Diaspora
Verfasst: Mi Dez 18, 2024 5:10 pm
The Gottscheer Diaspora. December 2024
In 1947, already some 22,000 Gottscheers lived in the United States and about 100 of them in Canada. (Erich Petschauer in “Das Jahrhundertbuch”, the Centuries Book). These were the Gottscheer who had immigrated around the turn of the 20th Century and had become loyal US and Canadian citizens. After 1918, some returned to Gottschee on a sentimental visit but this ended at the beginning of WW2 in 1939. From that time forward little, if any, news arrived from Gottschee. Least of all that 11,747 abandoned their homeland in 1941/42 for a place in the Third Reich occupied Slovenia from which they were expelled after the end of WW2 in 1945.
The following describes the fate of now homeless in Europe, how their American relatives came to their rescue, how these relatives helped them to immigrate into the New World. It also describes the doings of those who chose or were forced to remain in Europe and how their lingering ideology effected the new immigrants and those who arrived in America before WW2. I also describes how thus lingering ideology ultimately contributed to the demise of a more than 600 year old German Ethnic Minority.
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For years after 1945, the exiled Gottscheer, together with other ethnic Germans languished in various refugee camps in Austria and West Germany. Some found employment with farmers or in industries short of labor since many menfolk had not yet returned from POW captivity. Many were, however, forced to stay in camps where they were assisted by various refugee relief organizations including the Red Cross. Permanent residency in either Austria (where most of the camps were) or Germany was not likely since both countries were overwhelmed with refugees that kept arriving from eastern countries now under Communism. Estimates show that at that time there were more than 11 million refugees, mostly expelled ethnic Germans who lived in the in transition camps of Austria and Germany. About 11,000 of them were Gottscheer.
The news, arriving from Europe that all were now homeless and barely surviving in refugee camps, was great shock to the Gottscheer in America. Few knew how this came to be, nor the reasons why.
After postal service was re-established after the war, help for the exiled arrived from America where most of the homeless had a least one relative. Contacts were made and letters were answered with assurances that help was on its way. It came in the form of cash, packages of clothing, canned or dried food and CARE packages. Adding to that was the promise that all will be done to make it possible for them to come to America or Canada soon.
Social Clubs that had been formed in past years both in the USA and Canada, joined to form an umbrella organization called “Gottscheer Hilfswerk” (Gottscheer Helpworks). Initially the Hilfswerk included ten separate social club organizations. To obtain official recognition, it was registered as a legal organization on April 15, 1946. Its objective was to coordinate and enlarge the various individual efforts on behalf of their compatriots abroad and find a way to obtain permission for them to immigrate to the US or Canada.
-- (For reference, the annual quota system, established by President Franklin Roosevelt in March 1938 was still in effect in 1946. It combined the German and Austrian quotas, making 27,370 Visas available each year for people born in these two countries, each of them considered to be "German." Half of this number was allocated to ethnic Germans and 10,400 of them were allowed to immigrate in the next two years.
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The 1946 quota system was replaced by the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. It is preserved in the Archives of the Truman Library and is summarized as follows:
“On June 25, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. In its most basic sense, the Act would assist in the resettlement of thousands of European refugees (through granting Visas) who had been displaced from their home countries due to World War 2. While the Act offered hope to refugees, it simultaneously placed strict limits on the number of people who could enter the U.S. by deeming any person to be -- ineligible -- for an American visa who had entered a refugee camp after December 22, 1945.”
It did not affect those who entered a WW2 refugee camp before December 22, 1945. Among them were 2,000 Gottscheers, including this author who arrived in NY on May 20, 1950. It did, however, affected the Gottscheer who had applied for an Immigration Visa and were turned down as a result the Act of 1948.
In 1950, Truman succeeded in persuading Congress to enact an amended version of the 1948 legislation. The amendment permitted the entrance of another 200,000 refugees over the course of the following two years, just as the original version had, but it removed the cutoff date of December 1945 which previously blocked the entrance of thousands of Jewish refugees. (Including the Gottscheer).
The way forward now was to lobby the US Government to include the Gottscheer in the increased immigration quota of 1950 which allowed the 200,000 European refugees to immigrate. The lobbying effort to include the exiled Gottscheer in this quota was successful and the 1950 amendment allowed all of the Gottscheer refugees, who had been rejected under the 1948 Act, to re-apply for an Immigration Visa to the US. 8,000 of them were allowed to immigrate to the US in early 1950’s. Canada had already accepted three-thousands of them prior to 1950 by Canada.
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To obtain an Immigration Visa the US Government required, in addition to a personal questionnaire, two sponsors and an interview with a consular official. The questionnaire also required specifics about political orientation and the reasons for becoming a refugee.
The definition for a refugee after the war was formalized in the ‘Refugee Relief Act of 1951’. (See Google). It defined a Refugee either as an “escapee”, or an “expellee" out of Eastern Europe. This definition placed the Gottscheers applying for a Visa in a quandary since they were forced to choose either “escapee” or “expellee” in their immigration application. Those who made it across the border before May 8, 1945 could rightfully claim that they were “escapees”, while those who did not make it across the border by that date and were kept in Communist holding/screening camps until they were expelled into Austria after the war, were defined as “expellees”.
Most Gottscheers chose “escapee”, (fleeing Communism). So did most of those who were expelled after the war. Admitting to having been expelled would have caused the interviewing American official to ask “Why were you expelled?” In such a case the safe answer was “we were expelled from our homes because we were anti-Communist”, a reply that might have satisfied a then sympathetic Immigration official.
Such an answer was, however, risky since it was not exactly the truth. The fact was the applicant had left his original Gottschee home voluntarily in 1941 when he became a citizen of the Third Reich and swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler. He left his homeland to move to a place from which Slovenes was expelled in 1941 and sent to slave-labor camps by the SS. At the end of the war, he was expelled as a citizen of the Third Reich for being part of the occupier of Yugoslavia. Had this come to light during the interview, his application would likely have been rejected.
However, at that time the interviewers did not probe too deeply. As a result, most of the exiled Gottscheer applicants received the desired Visa and allowed to immigrate to the US.
As a result, most of the now homeless Gottscheer immigrated to North America. According to “650 Jahre Gottschee Festbuch, 1980”, about 8,000 came to the US after 1952. Approximately 3,000 had already gone to Canada. (It had less strict immigration requirements than the US). The rest remained in Austria and Germany.
As a result, the total number of Gottscheer immigrants living in North America after 1952 increased from 22,100 to about 33,100. (30,000 in the US and 3,100 in Canada).
However, some of those Gottschee expelled from Slovenia/Yugoslavia decided to stay in either Austria or Germany for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they had existing family ties there. Most, however, were burdened by their recent political background, revelation of which made obtaining a Visa an impossibility. Included in this group were former members of either the SS, the Nazi party leaders and/or their followers. Examples are Erich Petschauer, his Brother Hermann, Richard Lackner, Ludwig Kren and Wilhelm Lampeter to list only a few. (Erich Petschauer was tried at the Nuremberg Court for his SS role in South Tirol and found guilty of being a “Mitläufer” (active participants) which for years thereafter complicated his private life). He and many others were denied employment in Government and private institutions in both Austria and West-Germany for years. SS Major Wilhelm Lampeter, once the leader of the Gottscheer, avoided Nuremberg prosecution by escaping to Communist East Germany.
Some did slip through the immigrant screening process and got their Visa but were later found out and spent years in US jails or were expelled from the Country.
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The 22,000 Gottscheer already living in North America prior to WW2, were all loyal Citizen of their new Country. They fought the Nazis in Europe and many died on various fronts.
The Gottscheer immigrants who made it to America after WW2, however tried to hide their recent past partly for fear of consequences. Even from their sponsors, relatives and descendants.
Nevertheless, the new immigrants were all helped by relatives who had arrived before WW2 and who now found them lodgings and jobs. They quickly integrated into the social structures established by the prior arrivals. Together, old and new, now some 33,100 strong, mingled in clubs, picnics and social functions where they practiced their ancient dialect and re-established lost family connections. All the while trying to forget and move on.
They tried to hide a past that would have revealed them as having been persuaded/coerced by their own fanatical youthful leadership in the service of Adolf Hitler. Persuaded to become ideologically committed to the Nazi regime and its leader Hitler to whom they swore allegiance in 1941/42. A regime that became a mortal enemy to the country that now took them in as homeless and whose Citizenship they were now seeking.
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The new arrivals, however, differed from the prior immigrants in significant ways.
The pre-WW2 immigrants had arrived in the new world from an isolated environment and primitive background, many of them with only four years of elementary education or even less, having limited skills and little exposure to a larger world. All had become content with a stable existence, a desire to integrate and become respected and loyal citizen of their new homeland.
The new arrivals, however, came to America with a different past. They had been subjected to years of change that exposed them to a larger and more sophisticated world. They had survived the post 1918 “Culture War” that forced them into a minority status as ethnic-Germans in the new Slavic state of Yugoslavia. This unwelcome status conditioned them to accept the politics of the Third Reich, brought to the Enclave in the 1930’s. A politics that made them swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler and made them abandon their homeland in the winter of 1941/42. The unfavorable end of the war in 1945 made them homeless and brought them years of misery in refugee camps. These events, however, exposed them to changes which enabled them to acquire new skills and wisdom that now served them well in their new advanced countries.
These, approximately 11,000 recent immigrants, now representing about 1/3 of all Gottscheer living in the US and Canada, were willingly and unconditionally accepted by the prior arrivals. Yes, they had made a mistake in giving up their ancestral land after falling for the lure of Nazi ideology. But after Centuries of being loyal to their ‘Germaneness’ and now fully indoctrinated in the politics of Adolf Hitler, the new immigrants were forced to switch their allegiance to the new homeland virtually overnight. But now it is time to move on. “After all, we are all relatives, friends and members of the same tribe”. Stick together, “Tsonondrhautn” was the keyword. They quickly integrated into the established existing social structure of clubs and cultural groups where they tried to hold on to their lost culture, speak their obsolete Germanic dialect while trying to adjust and forget. And many of the new arrivals soon became leaders of Gottschee-Americans Associations.
And the Gottscheer Zeitung, re-started in Austria in 1955 in German, helped the newcomers by reporting on past and current social events in both Europe and America, providing essays on historical figures, printing recollections of noteworthy Gottscheer personalities, and other topics of interest. However, the GZ categorically claimed that “politics are only very rarely written about in its columns”. (Erich Petschauer „Das Jahrhundertbuch“, pg. 173). This soon turned out to be a Myth-serving lie.
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The Exiled in Europe.
The following is the sequence of when and where the Gottscheer in Europe re-assembled after 1945 and in 1960 united in a world-wide umbrella organization called the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gottscheer Landsmannschaften” or AG for short. This is described in Erich Petschauer’s “Das Jahrhundertbuch, Gottschee and its People through the Centuries” published in 1977 in German. (The English version was printed in 1984. It was sponsored by the Gottscheer Relief Association, Inc., in NY).
Most members in these European associations were the recently displaced Gottscheer who, mostly for obvious political reasons, would not or could not obtain a Visa to either the US nor Canada. Or perhaps they did not wish to go there because they remembered Lampeter’s lecture at the Camp Meeting on July 21, 1941.
-- “America is the sand where German blood oozes away. Thirty million Germans moved there and in the second or third generation they are no longer German. They all became Americans. Of the 30 million, only 4 million are still aware of their Germaneness. A strange world views rule in this land. The Jew has the power in his hand. It is the Dollar hunger that lured the German being to America and thusly became his ruin. The majority of German immigrants never obtained ownership of the Dollar and had to spend a miserable life in some gray hole wishing they could return. But of this, the relatives back home do not hear. Any emigration through which German blood is lost must be stopped. Today the flow of German blood is in the opposite direction; no longer out from the German nation, but returning home to the Great German Reich.” --
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In Carinthia, Austria, the exiled Gottscheer assembled under the “Hilfsverein der Gottscheer and Deutsch-Krainer”. At a meeting in Klagenfurt, Austria on November 9, 1952, a slate of 9 officials was elected. Walter Samide was its Chairman. It was renamed later that year to the “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft in Klagenfurt”, headed by Dr. Viktor Michitsch as Chairman.
At a meeting in Klagenfurt on January 1954 was formed the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Landsmannschaften in Österreich“. Again, its governing body of nine was chaired by Walter Samide. The main objective of the Association was to bring under one Austrian umbrella the loosely connected groups of Gottscheer now living in Vienna, Graz and Klagenfurt and thereby coordinate efforts in claiming Austrian Government restitution for lost properties due the 1941/42 resettlement.
(Note: Those Gottscheer who had Austrian citizenship prior to 1938 were reimbursed by the Republic of Austria in 1955 for loss of their properties in Gottschee due to the resettlement by the Third Reich).
At the meeting on January 1954 it was also decided to re-start the “Gottscheer Zeitung, last published in Gottschee City on December, 1941. Dr. Victor Michitsch became the Publisher and Chief Editor. The first issue, printed in Klagenfurt appeared in June 1955.
Gottscheer associations in Graz and Vienna, in existence prior to 1941, became the central meeting points for the Gottscheer living in those two cities after WW2.
The “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft Graz” was founded in June 1957. The Austrian Dr. Helmuth Karnitschnik was elected as honorary Chairman, assisted by a group of post war Gottscheer emigres. He was succeeded by Josef Petsche in 1963. Already in 1961, this Landsmannschaft had 1,300 members.
The “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft Wien” emerged in 1951 from a group named “Gottscheer in Wien”. The group had ceased assembling during WW2 and was forbidden to function again until 1951 due to its known former sympathies to Hitler’s Reich. The prohibition was lifted on May 5, 1951. At that point the Austrian Gertrude Locker was elected Chairperson of the Landsmannschaft. She was succeeded by the Gottscheer Franz Kraus in 1953.
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The “Landsmannschaft der Deutschen Umsiedler aus Gottschee” was formed in Aldegun, Germany on August 17, 1952. Its leader became Sepp Frank, born in Tschermoschnitz. At the first official meeting of the association in Cologne in 1956, 400 of the exiled Gottscheer in Germany took part.
At a meeting in Munich on May 17, 1959, the “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft in Deutschland” became the successor to the “Landsmannschaft der Deutschen Umsiedler aus Gottschee”. Richard Lackner was elected Chairman. Its statues had been developed by Viktor Michitsch of Klagenfurt and were unanimously agreed to. One objective was to bring under its umbrella the three groups in West Germany under which the exiled Gottscheer could assemble. Its primary objective was to obtain compensation from the ‘Bundesrepublik’ for the loss of properties due to the “re-settlement”.
-- (Note: The responsibility for Gottscheer loss of the immobile property due to the resettlement in 1941/42 was acknowledged by the West-German Republic. Reimbursement was authorized via the Reparations law “RepG” passed on July 13, 1973. The reimbursements excluded those who were reimbursed by Austria after 1955). --
Richard Lackner was the most active member in the “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft in Deutschland”. Lackner, born in 1919, had been made, at age 19, the leader of the Gottscheer “Hitler Youth” from 1938 to 1941. During that time he had also been Staff Leader of the “Volks-Gruppen-Leitung” (VGA), serving SS Major Wilhelm Lampeter who, at age 25, had been promoted to this position personally by Heinrich Himmler. Lackner was also Lampeter’s intimate friend. In 1942, after having been relieved of all his resettlement connected functions due to insubordination, Lackner joined the SS in which he served until the end of the war. After that he was an American POW for SS Officers for nearly two years.
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The “Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gottscheer Landsmannschaften”, (Working Group of Gottscheer Association), AG for short, was formed in Ulm, West Germany on August 14, 1960. Its objective was to become the umbrella organization uniting Gottscheer Associations world-wide to promote interchange and cooperation between various Gottscheer organizations. Its headquarters was to be in Klagenfurt, Austria and the Klagenfurt based attorney Dr. Viktor Michitsch, already Chairman of the Landsmannschaft in Klagenfurt, was elected its Chair.
Initial members of AG were the Gottscheer Landsmannschaften in Germany and the Gottscheer Landsmannschaften in Austria. (Klagenfurt, Vienna and Graz).
The Exiled in North America.
In 1960, the now enlarged Gottscheer community in North America also joined the AG. At that time the North American groups consisted of the “Gottscheer Relief Association, Inc.” in NY and the “Gottscheer Relief Association” in Toronto,
The “Gottscheer Relief Association, Inc.” was incorporated in NY on April 15, 1946,. Its objective was to create a central North-American organization to collect and channel assistance to the homeless Gottscheer in refugee camps of Europe. Under its umbrella assembled initially 10 existing Clubs. Its first President was Adolf Schauer, born in 1901 in Gottschee and had immigrated to NY in 1920. (Jahrhundertbuch, 1984). The Relief Association was initially known as the Gottscheer Hilfwerk.
In 1956 Karl Stalzer was elected President of the Relief Association. Born in Newark in 1905 he returned to Gottschee with his parents but returned to the US in 1923 at age 18. Under Stalzer’s presidency, the Relief Association joined the AG in 1960,
Stalzer was replaced in 1966 by Ernst Eppich who was born on April 10, 1920 in Unterdeutschau, Gottschee. (In 1941 he was 21 years old, part of Lampeter’s militia and a participant at the weeklong leadership training camp of July, 1941). He immigrated to the US in 1952 at age 32.
As President of the Relief Association, Eppich became the primary conduit to the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft” in Klagenfurt. As such, he represented the Gottscheer of North America at the annual Gottscheer Culture Week in Klagenfurt, Austria. Eppich remained president of the Relief Association until 1977. Of note is the fact that at the time of Ernst Eppich’s election as President of the Association in 1966: “… the entire board of trustees [of the Association] was composed of recent immigrants” , i.e., those who immigrated after 1950. (See the “Jahrhundertbuch” pg. 152).
In Canada, the “Verein der Gottscheer in Toronto” was founded in 1955. Its first President was Rudolf Muchitsch, born in Gottschee in 1898 and had immigrated to Canada in 1926. According to the “Jahrhundertbuch”, there were about 100 Gottscheer in Canada in 1945. This number was enlarged by about 3,000 after WW2. In 1965, the President became Norbert Lackner who was born in Hohenegg in 1924 and came to Canada in 1952, (In 1941 Norbert was 17 years old, and a member of the Gottscheer Hitler Youth, led by his namesake Richard Lackner).
Later-on, three other Gottscheer Association became members of the AG. Two of these were located in Slovenia. Its members were those Gottscheer who did not resettle in 1941/42 and remained on their lands. After Slovenia became an independent Republic in June 1991 and freed from Communist isolation imposed by the Tito government, both organization were extensively lobbied to join the AG. They joined shortly after Slovenia’s independence.
The two groups were the “Gottscheer Altsiedler Verein” and the” Gottscheer Verein Peter Kosler”. Total membership being less than 100. Their objective was to renew contact with fellow Gottscheers abroad and obtain financial assistance needed to function as a group. They did this being unaware that the AG organization was now run by the very fanatics who tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade them to leave their properties and re-settle barely 50 years ago. When, after a few years, the constant political interference of the AG became overwhelming, both associations resigned their membership. The Altsiedler Verein resigned on February 8, 2005. The Peter Kosler Verein on April 23, 2005.
The primary reason for the resignation was the political interference of the AG in the affairs of the new Slovene State to the detriment of the two Associations. This interference peaked when the Victor Michitsch, persuaded Jörg Haider, Governor of Carinthia, to submit a Petition to the Austrian Parliament of which Haider was a Member. The Petition requested that Austria block Slovenia entry to the European Union unless the EU grants Minority Status to the 100 or so Gottscheer Slovenes. The request was denied.
The third Association that joined the AG was the GHGA, (Gottscheer Heritage and Genealogy Association), based in Louisville, Colorado. It became a member in 2001. Like the Slovene associations, it claimed to have been unaware of the political orientation of the AG leadership composed mostly of Lampeter’s followers. After being made aware of this, it insisted that it joined the AG for purely culture related reasons. However, very shortly after joining, members of its leadership group, like those of the Relief Association, travelled to Klagenfurt to take part in the annual polity meetings of the AG. Nearly half of the GHGA membership resigned after this was made public. Nevertheless, it did not, like its counterparts in Slovenia, resign from the AG.
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The only organization that did not become a member of the AG was the Gottscheer “Gedenkstätte” (Memorial) based in Graz, Austria. (No connection to the “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft in Graz”, already a member of the AG).
The "Gedenkstätte" organization was founded in 1960 by those exiled Gottscheer who would not accept the renewed attempt by the former leading members of the VGL and their likeminded associates embedded in the AG, to obtain control of the exiled in the Diaspora. The main drivers of this attempt were the top leaders of the AG, i.e., Richard Lackner, Viktor Michitsch and Ludwig Kren, now the Editor of the “new” Gottscheer Zeitung.
The resistance came from the ranks of those Gottscheer who tried to withdraw their Option to resettle in January of 1942. Its leadership consisted mostly of merchants and civil administrators that formerly had been the bourgeoisie of the Gottschee City and realized that they had been betrayed by the very same individuals now in control of the AG.
The Gedenkstätte Chairmen was Alois Krauland, the former Director of the Savings Bank in Gottschee City. He represented the Gottscheer who, in 1941, were not willing to resettle without defined assurances regarding their economic and financial future. Given the disheartening reports from those who had already arrived in the “Reich”, the group had lost trust not only in the VGL under the 25 year old Wilhelm Lampeter but also in the SS Resettling Authority itself.
-- [Note: A letter received by the SS authority in Berlin, dated Jan. 2, 1941 stated “the Gottschee City people are resisting resettlement and are prepared to withdraw their agreement if their resettlement is not postponed until March”. The letter, drafted by Dr. Hans Arko, explained their position in six specific points. (Hans Hermann Frensing, “Die Umsiedlung der Gottscheer Deutschen”, pg. 126.)
This request to Berlin presented a serious challenge to the SS Resettling Authority in accomplishing its mission of “Ingathering” in the allotted time. As a consequence, the Authority was forced to intervene and relieve the VGL of its Hitler given responsibility for the resettlement. The scapegoat for this revolt was found to be Lampeter, which lead to his dismissal as the leader of the Gottscheer in 1942).
To solidify its independence from the AG, (now dominated by the very same individuals that made the re-settlement possible), the Gedenkstätte organization decided to fortify its position and build a Memorial Chapel in Maria-Trost near Graz, Austria. Its objective was to establish a central location fort Gottscheer archives and a place where the exiled could visit and gather anytime to commemorate the lost homeland and honor their ancestors. The chapel would include a documentation facility to store important books and various memorabilia for use by future generations. As such, this central facility would preserve the heritage of the Gottscheer as a centuries old ethnic German minority.
They believed that this was not likely in the facilities of a castle in Kastrowitz near Klagenfurt, Carinthia, rented by the AG for its annual “Gottscheer Culture Week”. The castle had been expanded and converted to house the College of Agriculture of Carinthia and the AG was given permission to hold its annual meetings in its lecture hall for one week during summer vacations. The nearby castle church and its surrounding grounds became the religious focal point for the visitors to the annual “Culture Week” founded by former SS Officer Hermann Petschauer (the brother of Erik). In August of 1966 the first meeting was attended by 60 former Gottscheers living mostly in Europe.
To the dismay of the AG, most of the funds for building the :Gedenkstätte” Memorial Chapel came from the pre WW 2 generation of immigrants in North America. The fund drive was highly successful and the completed chapel was dedicated in 1964 to great acclaim from its membership, now including the majority of all Gottscheers world-wide.
Already in 1963, the Chapel started to publish a German language Journal it called the “Gedenkstätte”. It appeared every two months and was edited by Fritz Högler, the former editor (1955-1962) of the GZ. Its editorial content was apolitical but otherwise similar to the GZ printed in Klagenfurt. Both journals, however, hid the political orientation of the young Gottscheer fanatics when they were in control of the population in Gottschee.
The decision of the Gedenkstätte to go its own way caused a Schism between the two associations. Two-thirds (2/3) of the Diaspora Gottscheer became members and gave it the financial support that formerly flowed to the AG. - ‘The Gedenkstätte was giving the exiled what the politicized AG could not’ - a Memorial to their heritage .
[The animosity peaked in 1994 after former SS Officer Lampeter re-immerged from behind the Iron Curtin and was made an “Honorary Member” and “Cultural Advisor” of the AG. (GZ. Jan. 95). Lampeter proposed a merger of the two association. The leader of an attempted takeover coup became Ludwig Kren, now the editor of the Gottscheer Zeitung, published in Klagenfurt.
Since Kren was also a member of the Gedenkstätte Association, he used his insider position in an illegal takeover in 1997. It is described in detail the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of the Gedenkstätte journal. The attempt failed since a legal basis for such a takeover did not exist.
One recognizes in the methods of the AG the tactics of a failed and rejected ideology. This is possible only under the Myth of “Victimhood” used, un-successfully, by the AG to hang on to the Gottscheer of the Diaspora.
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The loss of allegiance, the loss of financial support now flowing to the Gedenkstätte and the appearance of an alternative to the Gottscheer Zeitung was a severe setback to the AG that until 1963 monopolized the control of the Gottscheer in the Diaspora.
This control was further challenged by the appearance in 1970 of “Die Umsiedlung der Gottscheer Deutschen. Das Ende einer sudostdeutschen Volksgruppe”, (The Resettlement of the Gottschee Germans. The End of a southeast German ethnic Group). It was written by Dr. Hans Herrmann Frensing, a Professor and Director of the Widukind Gymnasium in Spenge, Germany.
The Frensing book was the first of its kind that successfully challenged and refuted the Myth of Victimhood, propagated by the AG and its “Zeitung” since 1955. The book was based on the Dissertation for his PhD Thesis at the Freie Universität in Berlin. It was sponsored by the Süddeutsche Historische Kommission and published in German in 1970 by Verlag R. Oldenburg, Mūnchen.
The family of Wilhelm Lampeter tried to prevent the publication of Frensing’s book without success. And after publication, the AG tried to limit distribution by buying up all available copies. (This author obtained one from the Gedenkstätte which had an extra copy. It became an important reference to his 2012 autobiographical history of the Gottscheer people “The Bells Ring No More”. See Google).
In 1995, this author obtained permission from both Frensing and the Süddeutsche Historische Kommission to translate and publish Frensing’s book into English. The AG, mainly via Richard Lackner, devoted extraordinary efforts to prevent this. An English version would definitively destroy its attempt to hide from the exiled Gottscheer the responsibility of the then leadership for the loss of the Homeland.
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The Gottscheer Diaspora is disappearing. Most of the WW2 generation and its leaders have died. Their living offspring are aware of their history and heritage, but know only a version as told them by their elders. Some still understand the dialect but do not speak it. Some still assemble annually for social functions. All are integrated into the larger society in which they are securing their future and making a name for themselves in business and academia.
Some, like their pre-WW2 ancestors, visit the former homeland and are warmly received by the Slovenes and the offspring of those who resisted its abandonment in 1941/42. If asked “Why did you leave your beautiful land”, they avoid an answer. Most likely because they are unaware or are embarrassed to admit that their ancestors were betrayed twice by their own leaders. The first time in 1941/42 when they were coerced to give up the homeland. The second time when these same leaders, Wilhelm Lampeter, Richard Lackner, Ludwig Kren, Viktor Michitsch and others tried to convince them to accept their self-serving Myth about its loss.
Their sentimental journey usually includes a visit of the “Gedenkstätte” in Graz, Austria. It is the only monument to the, over six Centuries old, Gottscheer heritage. For that, its creators can be proud.
John Tschinkel, Dec. 10, 2024
In 1947, already some 22,000 Gottscheers lived in the United States and about 100 of them in Canada. (Erich Petschauer in “Das Jahrhundertbuch”, the Centuries Book). These were the Gottscheer who had immigrated around the turn of the 20th Century and had become loyal US and Canadian citizens. After 1918, some returned to Gottschee on a sentimental visit but this ended at the beginning of WW2 in 1939. From that time forward little, if any, news arrived from Gottschee. Least of all that 11,747 abandoned their homeland in 1941/42 for a place in the Third Reich occupied Slovenia from which they were expelled after the end of WW2 in 1945.
The following describes the fate of now homeless in Europe, how their American relatives came to their rescue, how these relatives helped them to immigrate into the New World. It also describes the doings of those who chose or were forced to remain in Europe and how their lingering ideology effected the new immigrants and those who arrived in America before WW2. I also describes how thus lingering ideology ultimately contributed to the demise of a more than 600 year old German Ethnic Minority.
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For years after 1945, the exiled Gottscheer, together with other ethnic Germans languished in various refugee camps in Austria and West Germany. Some found employment with farmers or in industries short of labor since many menfolk had not yet returned from POW captivity. Many were, however, forced to stay in camps where they were assisted by various refugee relief organizations including the Red Cross. Permanent residency in either Austria (where most of the camps were) or Germany was not likely since both countries were overwhelmed with refugees that kept arriving from eastern countries now under Communism. Estimates show that at that time there were more than 11 million refugees, mostly expelled ethnic Germans who lived in the in transition camps of Austria and Germany. About 11,000 of them were Gottscheer.
The news, arriving from Europe that all were now homeless and barely surviving in refugee camps, was great shock to the Gottscheer in America. Few knew how this came to be, nor the reasons why.
After postal service was re-established after the war, help for the exiled arrived from America where most of the homeless had a least one relative. Contacts were made and letters were answered with assurances that help was on its way. It came in the form of cash, packages of clothing, canned or dried food and CARE packages. Adding to that was the promise that all will be done to make it possible for them to come to America or Canada soon.
Social Clubs that had been formed in past years both in the USA and Canada, joined to form an umbrella organization called “Gottscheer Hilfswerk” (Gottscheer Helpworks). Initially the Hilfswerk included ten separate social club organizations. To obtain official recognition, it was registered as a legal organization on April 15, 1946. Its objective was to coordinate and enlarge the various individual efforts on behalf of their compatriots abroad and find a way to obtain permission for them to immigrate to the US or Canada.
-- (For reference, the annual quota system, established by President Franklin Roosevelt in March 1938 was still in effect in 1946. It combined the German and Austrian quotas, making 27,370 Visas available each year for people born in these two countries, each of them considered to be "German." Half of this number was allocated to ethnic Germans and 10,400 of them were allowed to immigrate in the next two years.
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The 1946 quota system was replaced by the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. It is preserved in the Archives of the Truman Library and is summarized as follows:
“On June 25, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. In its most basic sense, the Act would assist in the resettlement of thousands of European refugees (through granting Visas) who had been displaced from their home countries due to World War 2. While the Act offered hope to refugees, it simultaneously placed strict limits on the number of people who could enter the U.S. by deeming any person to be -- ineligible -- for an American visa who had entered a refugee camp after December 22, 1945.”
It did not affect those who entered a WW2 refugee camp before December 22, 1945. Among them were 2,000 Gottscheers, including this author who arrived in NY on May 20, 1950. It did, however, affected the Gottscheer who had applied for an Immigration Visa and were turned down as a result the Act of 1948.
In 1950, Truman succeeded in persuading Congress to enact an amended version of the 1948 legislation. The amendment permitted the entrance of another 200,000 refugees over the course of the following two years, just as the original version had, but it removed the cutoff date of December 1945 which previously blocked the entrance of thousands of Jewish refugees. (Including the Gottscheer).
The way forward now was to lobby the US Government to include the Gottscheer in the increased immigration quota of 1950 which allowed the 200,000 European refugees to immigrate. The lobbying effort to include the exiled Gottscheer in this quota was successful and the 1950 amendment allowed all of the Gottscheer refugees, who had been rejected under the 1948 Act, to re-apply for an Immigration Visa to the US. 8,000 of them were allowed to immigrate to the US in early 1950’s. Canada had already accepted three-thousands of them prior to 1950 by Canada.
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To obtain an Immigration Visa the US Government required, in addition to a personal questionnaire, two sponsors and an interview with a consular official. The questionnaire also required specifics about political orientation and the reasons for becoming a refugee.
The definition for a refugee after the war was formalized in the ‘Refugee Relief Act of 1951’. (See Google). It defined a Refugee either as an “escapee”, or an “expellee" out of Eastern Europe. This definition placed the Gottscheers applying for a Visa in a quandary since they were forced to choose either “escapee” or “expellee” in their immigration application. Those who made it across the border before May 8, 1945 could rightfully claim that they were “escapees”, while those who did not make it across the border by that date and were kept in Communist holding/screening camps until they were expelled into Austria after the war, were defined as “expellees”.
Most Gottscheers chose “escapee”, (fleeing Communism). So did most of those who were expelled after the war. Admitting to having been expelled would have caused the interviewing American official to ask “Why were you expelled?” In such a case the safe answer was “we were expelled from our homes because we were anti-Communist”, a reply that might have satisfied a then sympathetic Immigration official.
Such an answer was, however, risky since it was not exactly the truth. The fact was the applicant had left his original Gottschee home voluntarily in 1941 when he became a citizen of the Third Reich and swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler. He left his homeland to move to a place from which Slovenes was expelled in 1941 and sent to slave-labor camps by the SS. At the end of the war, he was expelled as a citizen of the Third Reich for being part of the occupier of Yugoslavia. Had this come to light during the interview, his application would likely have been rejected.
However, at that time the interviewers did not probe too deeply. As a result, most of the exiled Gottscheer applicants received the desired Visa and allowed to immigrate to the US.
As a result, most of the now homeless Gottscheer immigrated to North America. According to “650 Jahre Gottschee Festbuch, 1980”, about 8,000 came to the US after 1952. Approximately 3,000 had already gone to Canada. (It had less strict immigration requirements than the US). The rest remained in Austria and Germany.
As a result, the total number of Gottscheer immigrants living in North America after 1952 increased from 22,100 to about 33,100. (30,000 in the US and 3,100 in Canada).
However, some of those Gottschee expelled from Slovenia/Yugoslavia decided to stay in either Austria or Germany for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they had existing family ties there. Most, however, were burdened by their recent political background, revelation of which made obtaining a Visa an impossibility. Included in this group were former members of either the SS, the Nazi party leaders and/or their followers. Examples are Erich Petschauer, his Brother Hermann, Richard Lackner, Ludwig Kren and Wilhelm Lampeter to list only a few. (Erich Petschauer was tried at the Nuremberg Court for his SS role in South Tirol and found guilty of being a “Mitläufer” (active participants) which for years thereafter complicated his private life). He and many others were denied employment in Government and private institutions in both Austria and West-Germany for years. SS Major Wilhelm Lampeter, once the leader of the Gottscheer, avoided Nuremberg prosecution by escaping to Communist East Germany.
Some did slip through the immigrant screening process and got their Visa but were later found out and spent years in US jails or were expelled from the Country.
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The 22,000 Gottscheer already living in North America prior to WW2, were all loyal Citizen of their new Country. They fought the Nazis in Europe and many died on various fronts.
The Gottscheer immigrants who made it to America after WW2, however tried to hide their recent past partly for fear of consequences. Even from their sponsors, relatives and descendants.
Nevertheless, the new immigrants were all helped by relatives who had arrived before WW2 and who now found them lodgings and jobs. They quickly integrated into the social structures established by the prior arrivals. Together, old and new, now some 33,100 strong, mingled in clubs, picnics and social functions where they practiced their ancient dialect and re-established lost family connections. All the while trying to forget and move on.
They tried to hide a past that would have revealed them as having been persuaded/coerced by their own fanatical youthful leadership in the service of Adolf Hitler. Persuaded to become ideologically committed to the Nazi regime and its leader Hitler to whom they swore allegiance in 1941/42. A regime that became a mortal enemy to the country that now took them in as homeless and whose Citizenship they were now seeking.
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The new arrivals, however, differed from the prior immigrants in significant ways.
The pre-WW2 immigrants had arrived in the new world from an isolated environment and primitive background, many of them with only four years of elementary education or even less, having limited skills and little exposure to a larger world. All had become content with a stable existence, a desire to integrate and become respected and loyal citizen of their new homeland.
The new arrivals, however, came to America with a different past. They had been subjected to years of change that exposed them to a larger and more sophisticated world. They had survived the post 1918 “Culture War” that forced them into a minority status as ethnic-Germans in the new Slavic state of Yugoslavia. This unwelcome status conditioned them to accept the politics of the Third Reich, brought to the Enclave in the 1930’s. A politics that made them swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler and made them abandon their homeland in the winter of 1941/42. The unfavorable end of the war in 1945 made them homeless and brought them years of misery in refugee camps. These events, however, exposed them to changes which enabled them to acquire new skills and wisdom that now served them well in their new advanced countries.
These, approximately 11,000 recent immigrants, now representing about 1/3 of all Gottscheer living in the US and Canada, were willingly and unconditionally accepted by the prior arrivals. Yes, they had made a mistake in giving up their ancestral land after falling for the lure of Nazi ideology. But after Centuries of being loyal to their ‘Germaneness’ and now fully indoctrinated in the politics of Adolf Hitler, the new immigrants were forced to switch their allegiance to the new homeland virtually overnight. But now it is time to move on. “After all, we are all relatives, friends and members of the same tribe”. Stick together, “Tsonondrhautn” was the keyword. They quickly integrated into the established existing social structure of clubs and cultural groups where they tried to hold on to their lost culture, speak their obsolete Germanic dialect while trying to adjust and forget. And many of the new arrivals soon became leaders of Gottschee-Americans Associations.
And the Gottscheer Zeitung, re-started in Austria in 1955 in German, helped the newcomers by reporting on past and current social events in both Europe and America, providing essays on historical figures, printing recollections of noteworthy Gottscheer personalities, and other topics of interest. However, the GZ categorically claimed that “politics are only very rarely written about in its columns”. (Erich Petschauer „Das Jahrhundertbuch“, pg. 173). This soon turned out to be a Myth-serving lie.
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The Exiled in Europe.
The following is the sequence of when and where the Gottscheer in Europe re-assembled after 1945 and in 1960 united in a world-wide umbrella organization called the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gottscheer Landsmannschaften” or AG for short. This is described in Erich Petschauer’s “Das Jahrhundertbuch, Gottschee and its People through the Centuries” published in 1977 in German. (The English version was printed in 1984. It was sponsored by the Gottscheer Relief Association, Inc., in NY).
Most members in these European associations were the recently displaced Gottscheer who, mostly for obvious political reasons, would not or could not obtain a Visa to either the US nor Canada. Or perhaps they did not wish to go there because they remembered Lampeter’s lecture at the Camp Meeting on July 21, 1941.
-- “America is the sand where German blood oozes away. Thirty million Germans moved there and in the second or third generation they are no longer German. They all became Americans. Of the 30 million, only 4 million are still aware of their Germaneness. A strange world views rule in this land. The Jew has the power in his hand. It is the Dollar hunger that lured the German being to America and thusly became his ruin. The majority of German immigrants never obtained ownership of the Dollar and had to spend a miserable life in some gray hole wishing they could return. But of this, the relatives back home do not hear. Any emigration through which German blood is lost must be stopped. Today the flow of German blood is in the opposite direction; no longer out from the German nation, but returning home to the Great German Reich.” --
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In Carinthia, Austria, the exiled Gottscheer assembled under the “Hilfsverein der Gottscheer and Deutsch-Krainer”. At a meeting in Klagenfurt, Austria on November 9, 1952, a slate of 9 officials was elected. Walter Samide was its Chairman. It was renamed later that year to the “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft in Klagenfurt”, headed by Dr. Viktor Michitsch as Chairman.
At a meeting in Klagenfurt on January 1954 was formed the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Landsmannschaften in Österreich“. Again, its governing body of nine was chaired by Walter Samide. The main objective of the Association was to bring under one Austrian umbrella the loosely connected groups of Gottscheer now living in Vienna, Graz and Klagenfurt and thereby coordinate efforts in claiming Austrian Government restitution for lost properties due the 1941/42 resettlement.
(Note: Those Gottscheer who had Austrian citizenship prior to 1938 were reimbursed by the Republic of Austria in 1955 for loss of their properties in Gottschee due to the resettlement by the Third Reich).
At the meeting on January 1954 it was also decided to re-start the “Gottscheer Zeitung, last published in Gottschee City on December, 1941. Dr. Victor Michitsch became the Publisher and Chief Editor. The first issue, printed in Klagenfurt appeared in June 1955.
Gottscheer associations in Graz and Vienna, in existence prior to 1941, became the central meeting points for the Gottscheer living in those two cities after WW2.
The “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft Graz” was founded in June 1957. The Austrian Dr. Helmuth Karnitschnik was elected as honorary Chairman, assisted by a group of post war Gottscheer emigres. He was succeeded by Josef Petsche in 1963. Already in 1961, this Landsmannschaft had 1,300 members.
The “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft Wien” emerged in 1951 from a group named “Gottscheer in Wien”. The group had ceased assembling during WW2 and was forbidden to function again until 1951 due to its known former sympathies to Hitler’s Reich. The prohibition was lifted on May 5, 1951. At that point the Austrian Gertrude Locker was elected Chairperson of the Landsmannschaft. She was succeeded by the Gottscheer Franz Kraus in 1953.
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The “Landsmannschaft der Deutschen Umsiedler aus Gottschee” was formed in Aldegun, Germany on August 17, 1952. Its leader became Sepp Frank, born in Tschermoschnitz. At the first official meeting of the association in Cologne in 1956, 400 of the exiled Gottscheer in Germany took part.
At a meeting in Munich on May 17, 1959, the “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft in Deutschland” became the successor to the “Landsmannschaft der Deutschen Umsiedler aus Gottschee”. Richard Lackner was elected Chairman. Its statues had been developed by Viktor Michitsch of Klagenfurt and were unanimously agreed to. One objective was to bring under its umbrella the three groups in West Germany under which the exiled Gottscheer could assemble. Its primary objective was to obtain compensation from the ‘Bundesrepublik’ for the loss of properties due to the “re-settlement”.
-- (Note: The responsibility for Gottscheer loss of the immobile property due to the resettlement in 1941/42 was acknowledged by the West-German Republic. Reimbursement was authorized via the Reparations law “RepG” passed on July 13, 1973. The reimbursements excluded those who were reimbursed by Austria after 1955). --
Richard Lackner was the most active member in the “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft in Deutschland”. Lackner, born in 1919, had been made, at age 19, the leader of the Gottscheer “Hitler Youth” from 1938 to 1941. During that time he had also been Staff Leader of the “Volks-Gruppen-Leitung” (VGA), serving SS Major Wilhelm Lampeter who, at age 25, had been promoted to this position personally by Heinrich Himmler. Lackner was also Lampeter’s intimate friend. In 1942, after having been relieved of all his resettlement connected functions due to insubordination, Lackner joined the SS in which he served until the end of the war. After that he was an American POW for SS Officers for nearly two years.
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The “Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gottscheer Landsmannschaften”, (Working Group of Gottscheer Association), AG for short, was formed in Ulm, West Germany on August 14, 1960. Its objective was to become the umbrella organization uniting Gottscheer Associations world-wide to promote interchange and cooperation between various Gottscheer organizations. Its headquarters was to be in Klagenfurt, Austria and the Klagenfurt based attorney Dr. Viktor Michitsch, already Chairman of the Landsmannschaft in Klagenfurt, was elected its Chair.
Initial members of AG were the Gottscheer Landsmannschaften in Germany and the Gottscheer Landsmannschaften in Austria. (Klagenfurt, Vienna and Graz).
The Exiled in North America.
In 1960, the now enlarged Gottscheer community in North America also joined the AG. At that time the North American groups consisted of the “Gottscheer Relief Association, Inc.” in NY and the “Gottscheer Relief Association” in Toronto,
The “Gottscheer Relief Association, Inc.” was incorporated in NY on April 15, 1946,. Its objective was to create a central North-American organization to collect and channel assistance to the homeless Gottscheer in refugee camps of Europe. Under its umbrella assembled initially 10 existing Clubs. Its first President was Adolf Schauer, born in 1901 in Gottschee and had immigrated to NY in 1920. (Jahrhundertbuch, 1984). The Relief Association was initially known as the Gottscheer Hilfwerk.
In 1956 Karl Stalzer was elected President of the Relief Association. Born in Newark in 1905 he returned to Gottschee with his parents but returned to the US in 1923 at age 18. Under Stalzer’s presidency, the Relief Association joined the AG in 1960,
Stalzer was replaced in 1966 by Ernst Eppich who was born on April 10, 1920 in Unterdeutschau, Gottschee. (In 1941 he was 21 years old, part of Lampeter’s militia and a participant at the weeklong leadership training camp of July, 1941). He immigrated to the US in 1952 at age 32.
As President of the Relief Association, Eppich became the primary conduit to the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft” in Klagenfurt. As such, he represented the Gottscheer of North America at the annual Gottscheer Culture Week in Klagenfurt, Austria. Eppich remained president of the Relief Association until 1977. Of note is the fact that at the time of Ernst Eppich’s election as President of the Association in 1966: “… the entire board of trustees [of the Association] was composed of recent immigrants” , i.e., those who immigrated after 1950. (See the “Jahrhundertbuch” pg. 152).
In Canada, the “Verein der Gottscheer in Toronto” was founded in 1955. Its first President was Rudolf Muchitsch, born in Gottschee in 1898 and had immigrated to Canada in 1926. According to the “Jahrhundertbuch”, there were about 100 Gottscheer in Canada in 1945. This number was enlarged by about 3,000 after WW2. In 1965, the President became Norbert Lackner who was born in Hohenegg in 1924 and came to Canada in 1952, (In 1941 Norbert was 17 years old, and a member of the Gottscheer Hitler Youth, led by his namesake Richard Lackner).
Later-on, three other Gottscheer Association became members of the AG. Two of these were located in Slovenia. Its members were those Gottscheer who did not resettle in 1941/42 and remained on their lands. After Slovenia became an independent Republic in June 1991 and freed from Communist isolation imposed by the Tito government, both organization were extensively lobbied to join the AG. They joined shortly after Slovenia’s independence.
The two groups were the “Gottscheer Altsiedler Verein” and the” Gottscheer Verein Peter Kosler”. Total membership being less than 100. Their objective was to renew contact with fellow Gottscheers abroad and obtain financial assistance needed to function as a group. They did this being unaware that the AG organization was now run by the very fanatics who tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade them to leave their properties and re-settle barely 50 years ago. When, after a few years, the constant political interference of the AG became overwhelming, both associations resigned their membership. The Altsiedler Verein resigned on February 8, 2005. The Peter Kosler Verein on April 23, 2005.
The primary reason for the resignation was the political interference of the AG in the affairs of the new Slovene State to the detriment of the two Associations. This interference peaked when the Victor Michitsch, persuaded Jörg Haider, Governor of Carinthia, to submit a Petition to the Austrian Parliament of which Haider was a Member. The Petition requested that Austria block Slovenia entry to the European Union unless the EU grants Minority Status to the 100 or so Gottscheer Slovenes. The request was denied.
The third Association that joined the AG was the GHGA, (Gottscheer Heritage and Genealogy Association), based in Louisville, Colorado. It became a member in 2001. Like the Slovene associations, it claimed to have been unaware of the political orientation of the AG leadership composed mostly of Lampeter’s followers. After being made aware of this, it insisted that it joined the AG for purely culture related reasons. However, very shortly after joining, members of its leadership group, like those of the Relief Association, travelled to Klagenfurt to take part in the annual polity meetings of the AG. Nearly half of the GHGA membership resigned after this was made public. Nevertheless, it did not, like its counterparts in Slovenia, resign from the AG.
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The only organization that did not become a member of the AG was the Gottscheer “Gedenkstätte” (Memorial) based in Graz, Austria. (No connection to the “Gottscheer Landsmannschaft in Graz”, already a member of the AG).
The "Gedenkstätte" organization was founded in 1960 by those exiled Gottscheer who would not accept the renewed attempt by the former leading members of the VGL and their likeminded associates embedded in the AG, to obtain control of the exiled in the Diaspora. The main drivers of this attempt were the top leaders of the AG, i.e., Richard Lackner, Viktor Michitsch and Ludwig Kren, now the Editor of the “new” Gottscheer Zeitung.
The resistance came from the ranks of those Gottscheer who tried to withdraw their Option to resettle in January of 1942. Its leadership consisted mostly of merchants and civil administrators that formerly had been the bourgeoisie of the Gottschee City and realized that they had been betrayed by the very same individuals now in control of the AG.
The Gedenkstätte Chairmen was Alois Krauland, the former Director of the Savings Bank in Gottschee City. He represented the Gottscheer who, in 1941, were not willing to resettle without defined assurances regarding their economic and financial future. Given the disheartening reports from those who had already arrived in the “Reich”, the group had lost trust not only in the VGL under the 25 year old Wilhelm Lampeter but also in the SS Resettling Authority itself.
-- [Note: A letter received by the SS authority in Berlin, dated Jan. 2, 1941 stated “the Gottschee City people are resisting resettlement and are prepared to withdraw their agreement if their resettlement is not postponed until March”. The letter, drafted by Dr. Hans Arko, explained their position in six specific points. (Hans Hermann Frensing, “Die Umsiedlung der Gottscheer Deutschen”, pg. 126.)
This request to Berlin presented a serious challenge to the SS Resettling Authority in accomplishing its mission of “Ingathering” in the allotted time. As a consequence, the Authority was forced to intervene and relieve the VGL of its Hitler given responsibility for the resettlement. The scapegoat for this revolt was found to be Lampeter, which lead to his dismissal as the leader of the Gottscheer in 1942).
To solidify its independence from the AG, (now dominated by the very same individuals that made the re-settlement possible), the Gedenkstätte organization decided to fortify its position and build a Memorial Chapel in Maria-Trost near Graz, Austria. Its objective was to establish a central location fort Gottscheer archives and a place where the exiled could visit and gather anytime to commemorate the lost homeland and honor their ancestors. The chapel would include a documentation facility to store important books and various memorabilia for use by future generations. As such, this central facility would preserve the heritage of the Gottscheer as a centuries old ethnic German minority.
They believed that this was not likely in the facilities of a castle in Kastrowitz near Klagenfurt, Carinthia, rented by the AG for its annual “Gottscheer Culture Week”. The castle had been expanded and converted to house the College of Agriculture of Carinthia and the AG was given permission to hold its annual meetings in its lecture hall for one week during summer vacations. The nearby castle church and its surrounding grounds became the religious focal point for the visitors to the annual “Culture Week” founded by former SS Officer Hermann Petschauer (the brother of Erik). In August of 1966 the first meeting was attended by 60 former Gottscheers living mostly in Europe.
To the dismay of the AG, most of the funds for building the :Gedenkstätte” Memorial Chapel came from the pre WW 2 generation of immigrants in North America. The fund drive was highly successful and the completed chapel was dedicated in 1964 to great acclaim from its membership, now including the majority of all Gottscheers world-wide.
Already in 1963, the Chapel started to publish a German language Journal it called the “Gedenkstätte”. It appeared every two months and was edited by Fritz Högler, the former editor (1955-1962) of the GZ. Its editorial content was apolitical but otherwise similar to the GZ printed in Klagenfurt. Both journals, however, hid the political orientation of the young Gottscheer fanatics when they were in control of the population in Gottschee.
The decision of the Gedenkstätte to go its own way caused a Schism between the two associations. Two-thirds (2/3) of the Diaspora Gottscheer became members and gave it the financial support that formerly flowed to the AG. - ‘The Gedenkstätte was giving the exiled what the politicized AG could not’ - a Memorial to their heritage .
[The animosity peaked in 1994 after former SS Officer Lampeter re-immerged from behind the Iron Curtin and was made an “Honorary Member” and “Cultural Advisor” of the AG. (GZ. Jan. 95). Lampeter proposed a merger of the two association. The leader of an attempted takeover coup became Ludwig Kren, now the editor of the Gottscheer Zeitung, published in Klagenfurt.
Since Kren was also a member of the Gedenkstätte Association, he used his insider position in an illegal takeover in 1997. It is described in detail the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of the Gedenkstätte journal. The attempt failed since a legal basis for such a takeover did not exist.
One recognizes in the methods of the AG the tactics of a failed and rejected ideology. This is possible only under the Myth of “Victimhood” used, un-successfully, by the AG to hang on to the Gottscheer of the Diaspora.
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The loss of allegiance, the loss of financial support now flowing to the Gedenkstätte and the appearance of an alternative to the Gottscheer Zeitung was a severe setback to the AG that until 1963 monopolized the control of the Gottscheer in the Diaspora.
This control was further challenged by the appearance in 1970 of “Die Umsiedlung der Gottscheer Deutschen. Das Ende einer sudostdeutschen Volksgruppe”, (The Resettlement of the Gottschee Germans. The End of a southeast German ethnic Group). It was written by Dr. Hans Herrmann Frensing, a Professor and Director of the Widukind Gymnasium in Spenge, Germany.
The Frensing book was the first of its kind that successfully challenged and refuted the Myth of Victimhood, propagated by the AG and its “Zeitung” since 1955. The book was based on the Dissertation for his PhD Thesis at the Freie Universität in Berlin. It was sponsored by the Süddeutsche Historische Kommission and published in German in 1970 by Verlag R. Oldenburg, Mūnchen.
The family of Wilhelm Lampeter tried to prevent the publication of Frensing’s book without success. And after publication, the AG tried to limit distribution by buying up all available copies. (This author obtained one from the Gedenkstätte which had an extra copy. It became an important reference to his 2012 autobiographical history of the Gottscheer people “The Bells Ring No More”. See Google).
In 1995, this author obtained permission from both Frensing and the Süddeutsche Historische Kommission to translate and publish Frensing’s book into English. The AG, mainly via Richard Lackner, devoted extraordinary efforts to prevent this. An English version would definitively destroy its attempt to hide from the exiled Gottscheer the responsibility of the then leadership for the loss of the Homeland.
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The Gottscheer Diaspora is disappearing. Most of the WW2 generation and its leaders have died. Their living offspring are aware of their history and heritage, but know only a version as told them by their elders. Some still understand the dialect but do not speak it. Some still assemble annually for social functions. All are integrated into the larger society in which they are securing their future and making a name for themselves in business and academia.
Some, like their pre-WW2 ancestors, visit the former homeland and are warmly received by the Slovenes and the offspring of those who resisted its abandonment in 1941/42. If asked “Why did you leave your beautiful land”, they avoid an answer. Most likely because they are unaware or are embarrassed to admit that their ancestors were betrayed twice by their own leaders. The first time in 1941/42 when they were coerced to give up the homeland. The second time when these same leaders, Wilhelm Lampeter, Richard Lackner, Ludwig Kren, Viktor Michitsch and others tried to convince them to accept their self-serving Myth about its loss.
Their sentimental journey usually includes a visit of the “Gedenkstätte” in Graz, Austria. It is the only monument to the, over six Centuries old, Gottscheer heritage. For that, its creators can be proud.
John Tschinkel, Dec. 10, 2024