Kocevje
Encyclopedia
Kočevje is a city and a municipality
in southern Slovenia
. In terms of area it is the largest municipality in Slovenia. It is located between the rivers Krka
and Kolpa
and is part of the traditional region of Lower Carniola
. It is now included in the Jugovzhodna Slovenija statistical region
. The name also refers to the former Gottschee county
in the Habsburg Empire
and its German speaking population that was settled in the area from the 14th century onwards. Until the mid 20th century it remained a German linguistic
enclave
. Their language was a dialect of Bavarian called Gottscheerish
or Granish. The German speakers were known for their folk songs. The Gottscheerish dialect is now considered to be critically endangered, with few remaining native speakers.The area is well known for its ancient forest
and wild animals, including brown bears
.
The parish church
in the city is dedicated to Saint Bartholomew and belongs to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Novo Mesto
. It is a Neo-Romanesque
building erected between 1887 and 1903 on the site of an earlier church.
initially with colonists from their estates in Carinthia
and Tyrol
, and by other settlers who came from the Austrian and German Dioceses of Salzburg
, Brixen
and Freising
. The settlers cleared the vacant and heavily forested land, and established towns and villages. The area of Carniola that was to become Gottschee had been a strategic part of the Holy Roman Empire
since the year 800. As a result, there were a number of important fortifications in and around Gottschee. Gottschee received its municipal charter and city seal in 1471. The Gottschee ethnic and linguistic area consisted of more than 180 villages organized into 31 townships and parishes.
Many Gottscheer began to emigrate from their homeland in the late 19th century, with most settling in the United States
, but the largest wave of emigration came after World War II
. With the end of the Habsburg Monarchy
in 1918, Gottschee became a part of the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia
. The Gottscheer thus went from being part of the ruling ethnicity of Austria-Hungary (and the ruling group in the estates of the province of Carniola
itself) to an ethnic minority in a large Slavic state. With the onset of the Second World War and the Invasion of Yugoslavia
their situation was worsened further.
While some of the Gottscheer community leaders had embraced Nazism
and agitated for "assistance" and "repatriation" to the Reich
even before the German invasion in 1941, most Gottscheer had no interest in reuniting with Greater Germany or joining the Nazis. They had been integrated into society with their Slovene neighbors, often intermarrying and becoming bilingual while maintaining their Germanic language and customs. Propaganda
and Nazi ideology prevailed, however, and the Main Welfare Office for Ethnic Germans (VoMi) began planning the Gottschee "resettlement" (forced expulsion) from the Italian occupation zone to the "Rann
er Dreieck" or Rann Triangle, the region in Lower Styria between the confluences of the Krka, Sotla, and Sava rivers, covering most of Gottschee.
To achieve their goal, accommodation had to be made for the Gottschee settlers and, beginning in November 1941, some 46,000 Slovenes from the Rann Triangle region were deported
to eastern Germany for potential Germanisation
or forced labor
. Shortly before that, propaganda aimed at both the Gottscheer and the Slovenes, promised the latter equivalent farmland in Germany for the land relinquished in Lower Styria. The Gottscheer were given Reich passports and transportation to the Rann area straight after the forced departure of the Slovenes. Most left their homes following coercion
and threats as the VoMi had set the 31 December 1941 as the deadline for the movement of both groups. Though many Gottscheer did receive houses and farmland, inevitably there was great dissatisfaction that many properties were of lesser value and quality than their original lands, and many were in disarray after the hasty expulsion of their previous occupants.
From the time of their arrival until the end of the war, Gottschee farmers were harassed and sometimes killed by partisans who saw them as an instrument of the occupying regime. The attempt to resettle the Gottscheer was a costly failure for the Nazi regime, since extra manpower was required to protect the farmers from the partisans. The deported Slovenes were taken to several camps in Saxony, Silesia, and elsewhere in Germany, where they were forced to work on German farms or in factories from 1941-1945. The forced laborers were not always kept in formal internment
, but often in nearby vacant buildings. After the end of the war, most returned to Yugoslavia to find their homes destroyed.
Kočevje was also the location where the summary execution
s of thousands people believed to be collaborators of the Nazi regime such as the Slovene Home Guard and their families took place immediately after the end of the war. They were thrown into various pits and caves, which were then sealed with explosives.
Municipality
A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...
in southern Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
. In terms of area it is the largest municipality in Slovenia. It is located between the rivers Krka
Krka (Slovenia)
The Krka is a river in the historic Lower Carniola region of Slovenia, a right tributary of the Sava.It sources at Gradiček near the village of Krka, about southwest of Ivančna Gorica and around southeast of Ljubljana, before flowing southeast...
and Kolpa
Kupa (river)
The Kupa or Kolpa river forms a natural border between north-west Croatia and southeast Slovenia.The Kupa originates in Croatia in the mountainous region of Gorski kotar, northeast of Rijeka, in the area of Risnjak National Park...
and is part of the traditional region of Lower Carniola
Lower Carniola
Lower Carniola was a kreis of the historical Habsburg crown land of Carniola from 1849 till 1919 and is nowadays a traditional region of Slovenia. Its center is Novo Mesto, while other urban centers include Kočevje, Grosuplje, Krško, Trebnje, Mirna, Črnomelj, Semič, and Metlika.-See also:* Upper...
. It is now included in the Jugovzhodna Slovenija statistical region
Jugovzhodna Slovenija statistical region
The Southeast Slovenia statistical region is a statistical region in the south-east of Slovenia. The largest town in the region is Novo Mesto. It is the largest region in Slovenia. It has the highest share of young people with 15.8%...
. The name also refers to the former Gottschee county
Gottschee County
Gottschee County refers to the former German speaking region in the Duchy of Carniola , a crownland of the Habsburg Empire, located in modern day Slovenia...
in the Habsburg Empire
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
and its German speaking population that was settled in the area from the 14th century onwards. Until the mid 20th century it remained a German linguistic
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
enclave
Enclave and exclave
In political geography, an enclave is a territory whose geographical boundaries lie entirely within the boundaries of another territory.An exclave, on the other hand, is a territory legally or politically attached to another territory with which it is not physically contiguous.These are two...
. Their language was a dialect of Bavarian called Gottscheerish
Gottscheerish
Gottscheerish, also called Granish is a German dialect which was the main language of communication in Gottschee County in Slovenia before 1941. Today there are only a few speakers left in Slovenia and around the world.- Language history :Gottscheerish belongs to Southern Bavarian within the...
or Granish. The German speakers were known for their folk songs. The Gottscheerish dialect is now considered to be critically endangered, with few remaining native speakers.The area is well known for its ancient forest
Forest
A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...
and wild animals, including brown bears
Eurasian Brown Bear
The Eurasian brown bear is a subspecies of brown bear, found across northern Eurasia. The Eurasian brown bear is also known as the common brown bear, European brown bear and colloquially by many other names....
.
The parish church
Parish church
A parish church , in Christianity, is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish, the basic administrative unit of episcopal churches....
in the city is dedicated to Saint Bartholomew and belongs to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Novo Mesto
Roman Catholic Diocese of Novo Mesto
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Novo Mesto is a diocese located in the city of Novo Mesto in the Ecclesiastical province of Ljubljana in Slovenia.-History:* April 7, 2006: Established as Diocese of Novo Mesto from the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Ljubljana...
. It is a Neo-Romanesque
Romanesque Revival architecture
Romanesque Revival is a style of building employed beginning in the mid 19th century inspired by the 11th and 12th century Romanesque architecture...
building erected between 1887 and 1903 on the site of an earlier church.
History
Gottschee was settled in the late 14th century by the Carinthian Counts of OrtenburgGrafschaft Ortenburg
The Ortenburger were a medieval noble family in the Duchy of Carinthia, with roots in Bavarian nobility. An affiliation with the Counts of Ortenburg-Neuortenburg, a branch line of the Rhenish Franconian House of Sponheim, is not established. Little is known about their reasons for settlement in...
initially with colonists from their estates in Carinthia
Duchy of Carinthia
The Duchy of Carinthia was a duchy located in southern Austria and parts of northern Slovenia. It was separated from the Duchy of Bavaria in 976, then the first newly created Imperial State beside the original German stem duchies....
and Tyrol
County of Tyrol
The County of Tyrol, Princely County from 1504, was a State of the Holy Roman Empire, from 1814 a province of the Austrian Empire and from 1867 a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary...
, and by other settlers who came from the Austrian and German Dioceses of Salzburg
Salzburg (state)
Salzburg is a state or Land of Austria with an area of 7,156 km2, located adjacent to the German border. It is also known as Salzburgerland, to distinguish it from its capital city, also named Salzburg...
, Brixen
Brixen
Brixen is the name of two cities in the Alps:*Brixen, South Tyrol, Italy*Brixen im Thale, Tyrol, AustriaBrixen may also refer to:*Bishopric of Brixen, the former north-Italian state....
and Freising
Freising
Freising is a town in Bavaria, Germany, and capital of the district Freising. Total population 48,500.The city is located north of Munich at the Isar river, near the Munich International Airport...
. The settlers cleared the vacant and heavily forested land, and established towns and villages. The area of Carniola that was to become Gottschee had been a strategic part of the Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
since the year 800. As a result, there were a number of important fortifications in and around Gottschee. Gottschee received its municipal charter and city seal in 1471. The Gottschee ethnic and linguistic area consisted of more than 180 villages organized into 31 townships and parishes.
Many Gottscheer began to emigrate from their homeland in the late 19th century, with most settling in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, but the largest wave of emigration came after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. With the end of the Habsburg Monarchy
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
in 1918, Gottschee became a part of the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
. The Gottscheer thus went from being part of the ruling ethnicity of Austria-Hungary (and the ruling group in the estates of the province of Carniola
Carniola
Carniola was a historical region that comprised parts of what is now Slovenia. As part of Austria-Hungary, the region was a crown land officially known as the Duchy of Carniola until 1918. In 1849, the region was subdivided into Upper Carniola, Lower Carniola, and Inner Carniola...
itself) to an ethnic minority in a large Slavic state. With the onset of the Second World War and the Invasion of Yugoslavia
Invasion of Yugoslavia
The Invasion of Yugoslavia , also known as the April War , was the Axis Powers' attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II...
their situation was worsened further.
While some of the Gottscheer community leaders had embraced Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
and agitated for "assistance" and "repatriation" to the Reich
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
even before the German invasion in 1941, most Gottscheer had no interest in reuniting with Greater Germany or joining the Nazis. They had been integrated into society with their Slovene neighbors, often intermarrying and becoming bilingual while maintaining their Germanic language and customs. Propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
and Nazi ideology prevailed, however, and the Main Welfare Office for Ethnic Germans (VoMi) began planning the Gottschee "resettlement" (forced expulsion) from the Italian occupation zone to the "Rann
Brežice
Brežice is a city and municipality in eastern Slovenia in the Lower Sava Valley, near the Croatian border. The area was traditionally divided between Lower Styria and Lower Carniola...
er Dreieck" or Rann Triangle, the region in Lower Styria between the confluences of the Krka, Sotla, and Sava rivers, covering most of Gottschee.
To achieve their goal, accommodation had to be made for the Gottschee settlers and, beginning in November 1941, some 46,000 Slovenes from the Rann Triangle region were deported
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
to eastern Germany for potential Germanisation
Germanisation
Germanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
or forced labor
Unfree labour
Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery as well as all other related institutions .-Payment for unfree labour:If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms:...
. Shortly before that, propaganda aimed at both the Gottscheer and the Slovenes, promised the latter equivalent farmland in Germany for the land relinquished in Lower Styria. The Gottscheer were given Reich passports and transportation to the Rann area straight after the forced departure of the Slovenes. Most left their homes following coercion
Coercion
Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force. In law, coercion is codified as the duress crime. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way...
and threats as the VoMi had set the 31 December 1941 as the deadline for the movement of both groups. Though many Gottscheer did receive houses and farmland, inevitably there was great dissatisfaction that many properties were of lesser value and quality than their original lands, and many were in disarray after the hasty expulsion of their previous occupants.
From the time of their arrival until the end of the war, Gottschee farmers were harassed and sometimes killed by partisans who saw them as an instrument of the occupying regime. The attempt to resettle the Gottscheer was a costly failure for the Nazi regime, since extra manpower was required to protect the farmers from the partisans. The deported Slovenes were taken to several camps in Saxony, Silesia, and elsewhere in Germany, where they were forced to work on German farms or in factories from 1941-1945. The forced laborers were not always kept in formal internment
Internment
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of 'interning'; confinement within the limits of a country or place." Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction...
, but often in nearby vacant buildings. After the end of the war, most returned to Yugoslavia to find their homes destroyed.
Kočevje was also the location where the summary execution
Summary execution
A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is killed on the spot without trial or after a show trial. Summary executions have been practiced by the police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and...
s of thousands people believed to be collaborators of the Nazi regime such as the Slovene Home Guard and their families took place immediately after the end of the war. They were thrown into various pits and caves, which were then sealed with explosives.
Natives
- Roman Erich PetscheRoman Erich PetscheRoman Erich Petsche was an Austrian teacher, school attendant and painter...
(1907–1993), teacher, painter and Righteous Among the NationsRighteous Among the NationsRighteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis.... - Michael Ruppe (1863–1951), professor and academic painter, born in nearby Ovčjak (Schäflein)
- Milan Butina (1923–1999), academic painter, Kunstpädagoge und -theoretiker
- Ivan JurkovičIvan JurkovičIvan Jurkovič is a Slovenian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He serves as the Nuncio to Russia and Nuncio to Uzbekistan from 19 February and 22 July 2011 respectively having been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI.-Biography:...
(b.1952), apostolic nuncio to Russia
Non-Natives
- Zofka KvederZofka KvederZofka Kveder was writer, playwright, translator and journalist who wrote in Slovene and later in life also in Croatian. She is considered one of the first Slovene women writers and feminists...
(1878–1926), writer - Viktor Parma (1858–1924), composer
- Alois Loy (1860–1923), long time mayor
- Franjo Uršič (1898-?), geologist, taught at the Gymnasium before WW2
- Jože Šeško (1908–1942), Gymnasium professor, social revolutionary, communist resistance fighter
- Matej BorMatej BorMatej Bor was the pen name of Vladimir Pavšič , who was a Slovene poet, translator, playwright, journalist and partisan.-Biography:...
(1913–1993), poet and author
External links
- Kočevje on Geopedia
- Kočevje Official Site
- Pokrajinski Muzej Kočevje site - Local Museum with a permanent exhibit on the history of the German population around Gottschee.
- gottschee.at - Die Internationale Gottscheer Web-Site - die offizielle Web-Site der Gottscheer Organisationen in aller Welt.
- gottschee.de - Comprehensive Website on the topic of Kočevje / Gottschee. Extensive background information on the resettlement of the Gottscheer and the related removal of the resident Slovene from their rightful homeland in Lower Styria.
- Endangered languages in Europe and adjacent areas