Kočevje

Municipality_of_Slovenia|nativename=Kočevje
coat=
location=
area=563.7 km²
population=16,292
males=7,965
females=8,327
avg_age=41.55 years
residental_density=28.45 m²/person
households=5,729
families=4,624
workers=8,109
mayor=Janko Veber
unemployed=978
students=480

Kočevje ( _de. Gottschee) is a municipality and town in Slovenia, the largest by area, located between the rivers Krka and Kolpa, but also refers to the former county Gottschee in the Habsburg empire and its German speaking population. It is well known for its ancient forest and wild animals, including brown bears. From the middle of the 13th to the middle of the 20th century, Kočevje was 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.

History

Gottschee was settled in the late 1300s by the Carinthian Counts of Ortenburg initially with colonists from the Ortenburg estates in Carinthia and Tyrol, and by other settlers who came from Austrian and German Dioceses of Salzburg, Brixen and Freising. The settlers cleared the vacant and heavily forested land, and established towns and rural 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.

Gottscheer began to emigrate from their homeland around 1870, with most coming to the United States. The largest wave of immigrants came after World War II.

With the end of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918, Gottschee became a part of the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Thus, the Gottscheer 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.

While some of the Gottscheer community leaders had embraced Nazism and agitated for "assistance" and "repatriation" to the Reich 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 Slovenian neighbors, often intermarrying among Slovenians and becoming bilingual while maintaining their Germanic language and customs since their arrival in the region in the late 1300s. However, propaganda and Nazi ideology prevailed, and the VoMi began planning the Gottschee "resettlement" (forced expulsion) from the Italian occupation zone to the "Ranner Dreieck" or Rann Triangle, a region in Lower Styria between the confluences of the Krka, Sotla, and Sava Rivers.

To achieve that goal, accommodation had to be made for the Gottschee "settlers" and some 46,000 Slovenians in the Rann Triangle region were forcibly deported to eastern Germany for potential Germanization or forced labor beginning in November 1941. Shortly before that time, a largely transparent propaganda effort was aimed toward both the Gottscheer and the Slovenians, promising 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 just after the forced departure of the Slovenians. Most Gottschee left their homes because of coercion and threats since the VoMi had a deadline of December 31, 1941 for the mass movement of both groups . Though many Gottscheer did receive farmland and households, these were of lesser quality as their own, and many were in disarray from the hasty forced expulsion of the Slovenians.

From the time of their arrival to the end of the war, Gottschee farmers were harassed and sometimes killed by Tito's partisans. 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. Most Gottschee were as much victims as the Slovenians deported to the Reich, though the former were not used for forced labor as the latter.

The deported Slovenians were taken to several camps in Saxony, Silesia, and elsewhere in Germany where they were forced to work on German farms or in factories run by German industries from 1941-1945. The forced laborers were not always kept in formal concentration camps, but often just vacant buildings where they slept until the next day's labor took them outside these quarters. Toward the close of the war, these camps were liberated by American and Soviet Army troops, and later repatriated refugees returned to Yugoslavia to find their homes in shambles.

Kočevje was also the location where Tito and the Partisans executed thousands people; collaborationists of the Nazi regime such as the Slovenian Domobranci ("Slovenian Home Guard") and their families. They were thrown into various pits and caves, which were then sealed with explosives.

Notable Inhabitants

Natives

* Roman Erich Petsche (1907-1993), teacher, painter and "Righteous Among the Nations"
* Michael Ruppe (1863-1951), professor and academic painter, born in nearby Ovčjak ("Schäflein")
* Milan Butina (1923-1999), academic painter, Kunstpädagoge und -theoretiker

Non-Natives

* Zofka Kveder (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 Bor (Vladimir Pavšič) (1913-1993), poet and author

Bibliography

*Karl-Markus Gauß: "Die sterbenden Europäer. Unterwegs zu den Sepharden von Sarajevo, Gottscheer Deutschen, Arbëreshe, Sorben und Aromunen". Zsolnay, Wien 2001, ISBN 3-552-05158-9 (Taschenbuchausgabe: dtv, München, ISBN 3-423-30854-0)
*Mitja Ferenc: [http://www2.arnes.si/~krsrd1/conference/Speeches/Ferenc_eng.htm Kočevska, Bleak And Empty]

External links

* [http://www.kocevje.si/ Kočevje Official Site]
* [http://www.pmk-kocevje.si/ Pokrajinski Muzej Kočevje] - Local Museum with a permanent exhibit on the history of the German population around Gottschee.
* [http://www.gottschee.de/ Information about the resettlement of the German-speaking people of Gottscheer and their deportation out of their homeland in the former Untersteiermark]
* [http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/chris.html Endangered languages in Europe and adjacent areas]