Slovenia, Republic of Slovenia

Republic of Slovenia

English: Slovenia; Italian: Slovenia; Hungarian: Szlovénia; Croatian: Slovenija; Latin: Slovenia

The toponym ‘Slovenia’ refers to the name given to its inhabitants: Slovenec, plural Slovenci. It is derived from the Slavic language, either from slovo (word) or slava (glory, the glorious).

Slovenia lies within the Southern Limestone Alps and to the south of them and, as its inhabitants joke, is shaped like a chicken looking eastwards. The country, which covers an area of 20,273 km², borders Austria to the north, Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, and Hungary to the north-east. To the south-west lies its 46.6 km-long coastline on the Adriatic Sea.

Slovenia was already inhabited during the Palaeolithic period. Later, the Norici settled in areas of Lower Styria and Carniola. Together with the Taurisci and other tribes, they founded the Kingdom of Noricum, which later became a Roman province. As early as Roman times, the town of Emona stood on the site where Ljubljana was later founded. As a transit route, what is now Slovenia was traversed from an early stage by the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, the Huns, the Lombards, the Franks and other peoples, and was at times inhabited and ruled by them. By the end of the 6th century at the latest, Slavs, together with the Avars, had settled in the Alpine valleys, where they encountered the Bavarians.

In the 7th century, the Slavic principality of Carantania (Carantania) emerged, encompassing areas of present-day Carinthia, Styria and Carniola. The region was incorporated into the Carolingian Empire, along with Bavaria. It was also at this time that Christianisation began, mainly through missionary work originating from the Archdiocese of Salzburg and Aquileia. Attacks by the Magyars led to the collapse of East Frankish rule in 907; Joachim Hösler refers to an ‘open historical situation 907–955’^[4], before greater stability returned to the region following King Otto I’s (912–973) victory at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, allowing the Christianisation process to continue.

During the High Middle Ages, the territories of present-day Slovenia were colonised, with farmers settling there from regions such as Franconia, Swabia and Bavaria. A striking development, and one of particular relevance to German-language historiography in the region, was the clearing and settlement of the Hornwald (Kočevski rog) and the Gottschee, where settlers from East Tyrol and Carinthia in particular took up residence. The 12th and 13th centuries also saw the founding of important towns throughout the region (including Marburg, Pettau, Krainburg and Ljubljana), in which free citizens lived for the first time. The Margraviate of Cilli was established; in 1180, Styria was elevated to a duchy and soon afterwards came under Babenberg rule. Carniola also passed to the Babenbergs and then to the Spanheimers in the 13th century. Subsequently, Ottokar II Přemysl (c. 1232–1278) ruled until he was defeated by Rudolf of Habsburg (1218–1291) in the election for the German Emperor. His sons were enfeoffed with Austria and Styria in 1282; Carniola also soon fell to the Habsburgs and was elevated to a duchy in the 14th century. The last significant political counterweight in the region were the Counts of Cilli, who held possessions in Carinthia and Carniola as well as in Styria and the Gottschee region. Following armed conflicts with the Habsburgs, a mutual inheritance agreement was concluded, thanks to which the territories of the Princes of Cilli came under Habsburg rule in 1456. The Principality of Cilli served as a cornerstone for the formation of Slovenia’s national identity, a process that began in the 19th century and for which everything ‘German’ provided an important point of contrast. The Cilli coat of arms – three stars on a blue background – was incorporated into the Slovenian national flag introduced in 1991.

Under the Habsburgs, what is now Slovenia was grouped together with Carinthia and the rest of Styria to form the so-called ‘Inner-Austrian’ territorial complex. The Habsburgs’ long-running ‘Turkish Wars’ placed a heavy burden on the population, particularly in rural areas, leading to numerous peasant uprisings in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, many of which originated among the Gottscheers. The Diocese of Ljubljana was founded in 1446. The Reformation movement, which began around 1520, was embraced by the German-speaking middle classes in the Slovenian-speaking areas, but it was also of enormous significance for the Slovenian-speaking sections of the population and the development of their written language, as the Reformation writings were translated into the respective regional languages. The Counter-Reformation brought this development to a relatively abrupt halt for the Slovenian-speaking classes for the time being, whilst the German-speaking Lutherans from the upper social classes were gradually re-Catholicised or resettled. The influx of German-speaking settlers, at least into the towns, continued unabated in the 17th century despite the region’s economic stagnation. At the same time, the total population grew significantly. By the beginning of the 18th century, the economic situation had improved. Thanks to the administrative reforms of Maria Theresa (1717–1780), the Slovenian territories were granted provincial governments, although the grouping of the individual administrative units was restructured several times and ‘Inner Austria’ was dissolved. The school reforms of the 18th century led to an intensification of teaching in Slovenian, and the first newspaper in the Slovenian language was published in 1797.

From 1809, the territory that would later become part of Slovenia was under Napoleon’s rule and, together with Carinthia, Dalmatia and Croatia, formed part of the Illyrian Provinces. Following the Congress of Vienna and the return of the territory to the Habsburgs, the area – albeit slightly reduced in size – became the Kingdom of Illyria. It remained in existence until the Revolution. In 1848, Slovenian nationalist aspirations began to stir, leading to the recognition of Slovenian as one of the official languages. Initially, the national movement was not fundamentally directed against the ‘Germans’, but rather against the ‘Germanisers’ (Nemškutari). Gradually, two political camps emerged, in which Germans and Slovenes found themselves at odds with one another. However, the division was not strictly national in nature; rather, the Germans – who still made up the far larger part of the upper class – and the ‘Germanisers’ advocated liberal policies, which were opposed by the conservative-clerical representatives of Slovenian national movements. Nationalist and ethnically motivated arguments became more prevalent on both sides. Among the German nationalists, anti-Semitism also became more pronounced in more radical circles. The struggles were increasingly played out in the realm of education policy, where the conflicts centred primarily on the language of instruction. As industrialisation intensified, ‘Slovenisation’ also gained momentum, although the region’s economic output remained heavily dependent on the German-speaking population.

From the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, tensions between Germans and Slovenes escalated, and positions continued to diverge even within the two camps; amongst other developments, ‘Yugoslavism’ emerged. At the outbreak of the First World War, however, both sides remained loyal to the Habsburg Emperor. The ‘May Declaration’ issued by Slovenian and other South Slavic members of the Imperial Diet in Vienna in 1917 also called for the unification of the South Slavic territories, albeit under Habsburg rule.

The unfavourable course of the war for Austria-Hungary led to the establishment of the Slovenian National Council in 1918, and on 29 October 1918 the ‘State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs’ (SHS State) was proclaimed. In the same year, the SHS State and the Kingdom of Serbia united to form the ‘Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’ (Kingdom of SHS). The partition of Styria was decided in the Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919. However, in the referendum in Carinthia in 1920, as stipulated in the treaty, the new kingdom was unsuccessful and the entire territory remained part of Austria. The border with Italy was also drawn to the detriment of the Kingdom of SHS. Within the territory of the SHS State, the Ljubljana and Maribor oblasts were established; the relative autonomy of the Slovenian region was not impeded and was particularly evident in the field of education. The German language and the German population were increasingly marginalised, though they retained a presence in the towns and amongst the upper classes. Tensions between federalists and centralists led to the end of parliamentary government in the Kingdom of SHS in 1929. The establishment of the royal dictatorship was accompanied by a renaming to the ‘Kingdom of Yugoslavia’; Slovenia became the ‘Drava Banovina’ (Dravska banovina).

Adolf Hitler’s (1889–1945) rise to power in 1933 and the ‘Anschluss’ of Austria to the ‘Third Reich’ in 1938 were welcomed by the German nationalist organisations in Slovenia. As early as 1931, the ‘Swabian-German Cultural Association’ had been granted admission to operate throughout Yugoslavia. At the start of the Second World War, Yugoslavia sought to maintain a neutral stance and did not position itself in opposition to the Nazi regime. This changed in the spring of 1941, when the Yugoslav government allied itself with the Soviet Union. Germany’s unannounced attack on Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941 was followed eleven days later by Yugoslavia’s surrender. The Slovenian territory was divided between Germany and Italy, whilst Lower Styria and Upper Carniola were annexed by the ‘Third Reich’. For the Germans in Slovenia, this was at times disappointing; the Gottscheer Germans, for example, were resettled to areas occupied by the Nazis. Fierce fighting between German occupying forces and the emerging partisan movement (in Slovenia: the ‘Liberation Front’ [Osvobodilna fronta], which was close to the Communists from the outset and soon became officially Communist) claimed numerous casualties on both sides. Even whilst the Second World War was still raging, the partisans began to stage show trials, murder those found guilty and make them ‘disappear’ into karst gorges and sinkholes. In many cases, those affected were members of the ‘Slovenian Home Guard’ (Domobranci), who had been fighting alongside German units. Immediately after the end of the war, the new ruler and ‘lifetime’ president of what was now the ‘Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia’, Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), ordered the commencement of reprisals. Estimates vary widely: possibly as many as 100,000 people were murdered by the communist regime on Slovenian territory, their bodies thrown into sinkholes or taken to the Hornwald, the former settlement area of the Gottscheer. The Germans, unless they had fled, were dispossessed and resettled; many were taken prisoner, interned in camps for years and killed. As a result, the number of German-speaking people on Slovenian territory within communist Yugoslavia declined steadily. The border with Carinthia was confirmed in 1945, much to the disappointment of many Carinthian Slovenes. The ‘Free Territory of Trieste’, which existed from 1947 to 1954, was divided in 1954: the north, with the capital Trieste (Zone A), reverted to Italy, whilst Zone B became part of Yugoslavia, which allocated the northern part of this zone to Slovenia and the southern part to Croatia.

As the Yugoslav state structure became increasingly fragile following Tito’s death in 1980, the Slovenes were the first to secede from the People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991. Compared with the wars surrounding and within the rest of Yugoslavia, Slovenia’s secession and the ensuing Ten-Day War turned out relatively well for the country. The Republic of Slovenia joined the UN in 1992 and quickly stabilised. In 2004, it joined NATO and the EU.

• Feliks J. Bister, Peter Vodopivec (eds.): Cultural Interaction in Central Europe. German and Slovenian Culture in the Slovenian Region from the Early 19th Century to the Second World War. Symposium, Ljubljana, 29–31 October 1990. Ljubljana 1995 (Austria–Slovenia Academic Library 1).
• Mitja Ferenc, Joachim Hösler (eds.): In Search of Traces in the Gottschee. German-speaking Settlers in Slovenia. Potsdam 2011 (Potsdam Library: Eastern Europe – History).
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• Joachim Hösler: Slovenia. From the Beginnings to the Present Day. Regensburg 2006 (Eastern and South-Eastern Europe – History of Countries and Peoples).
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• Andreas Moritsch, Harald Krahwinkler (eds.): Alps-Adriatic. On the History of a Region. Klagenfurt. Ljubljana 2001.
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• Arnold Suppan: Lower Styrians, Gottscheers and Ljubljana Germans as a German minority between the Adriatic, the Karawanken and the Mur (1918–1948). In: Ibid. (ed.): Between the Adriatic and the Karawanken Mountains. Berlin 1998 (German History in Eastern Europe), pp. 350–426.
• Peter Štih, Vasko Simoniti, Peter Vodopivec: Slovenian History. Society – Politics – Culture. Translated from the Slovenian by Michael Kulnik. Graz 2008 (Publications of the Historical Commission for Styria 40, Zbirka Zgodovinskega časopisa 34).
• Marija Wakounig: Oj Triglav moj dom, kako si krasan! (Oh Triglav, my home, how beautiful you are!). In: East–West. European Perspectives. 2017, Issue 1. Mountains in Central and Eastern Europe. pp. 56–62.
• Johann Weichard Baron von Valvasor: The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola. Volumes I and II. Ljubljana, Nuremberg 1689; 2nd, unaltered edition. Edited by Janez Krajec, Vincenz Novak, Josef Pfeifer. Rudolfswerth 1877–1879.
• Peter Vodopivec: An Outline of Slovenian History and Austro-Slovenian Relations from the 18th to the 20th Century. In: Andreas Brandtner, Werner Michler (eds.): On the History of Austrian-Slovenian Literary Relations. Vienna 1998, pp. 9–28.
• Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Ethnic Policy in Yugoslavia. The German Minority 1918–1978. Göttingen 1980.
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• www.gov.si/ (Official website of the Republic of Slovenia).
• www.nuk.uni-lj.si/ (Website of the National Library of Slovenia).
• www.stat.si/ (Website of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia).
• www.zrc-sazu.si/en/node (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts)

[1] Hochberger, Scherer, Spiegel-Schmitt: The Germans between the Carpathians and Carniola.

[2] SHS stands for ‘State of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs’ (“Država Slovenaca, Hrvata i Srba”), the short-lived predecessor state to Yugoslavia within the territory of Austria-Hungary.

[3] See, for example, Valvasor: The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola.

[4] Hösler: Slovenia, p. 23.

[5] Hösler: Slovenia, p. 52.

[6] Arnold Suppan: Slovenes and Germans in Carniola, Lower Styria and Slovenia in the censuses of 1880, 1910, 1921 and 1931. 4 tables. In: Rumpler, Suppan (eds.): History of the Germans in the Area of Present-Day Slovenia, pp. 311–318.

[7] Karner: Slovenia and its ‘Germans’, p. 25.

[8] Karner: Slovenia and its ‘Germans’, p. 25.

[9] Karner: Slovenia and its ‘Germans’, p. 29.

[10] Census of population, households and housing, Slovenia, 31 March 2002. Rapid Reports No 92/2003 (Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia): www.stat.si/Popis2002/gradivo/si-92.pdf (accessed 16 July 2021).

Vanessa Hannesschläger: Slovenia. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2017. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32646 (accessed 16 July 2021).