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NATIONALISM TODAY: CARINTHIA's SLOVENES Part I: the Legacy Ofhistory by Dennison I

NATIONALISM TODAY: CARINTHIA's SLOVENES Part I: the Legacy Ofhistory by Dennison I

SOUTHEAST EUROPE SERIES Vol. XXII No. 4 ()

NATIONALISM TODAY: 'S Part I: The Legacy ofHistory by Dennison I. Rusinow October 1977

The bombsmostly destroying Osvobodilna other world is Slovene, and in the valleys of Carin- Fronta or AbwehrMimpfer monumentshave been thia, the two peoples and cultures have been mixed too small and too few and have done too little for more than eleven hundred years. Until the damage to earn much international attention in this "national awakening" of the nineteenth century, age of ubiquitous terrorism in the name of some nobody seems to have minded. Then came the Slo- ideological principle or violated rights. Moreover, vene renaissance and claims to cultural and social the size of the national minority in question, the equality for Slovenes qua Slovenes, backed by the quality of their plight, and the potentially wider shadows of Austro-Slavism, South-(Yugo-)Slavism, Austrian and international repercussions ofthe con- and pan-Slavism. The German Carinthians, feeling flict all pale into insignificance alongside the prob- threatened in their thousand-year cultural, political, lems of the Cypriots, of the Northern Irish, of the and economic dominance on the borderland, Basques, of the Palestinian and Overseas Chinese reacted with a passion that became obsessive and diasporas, of the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet that was to culminate in Nazi attempts during Union, or of many others. Despite these disclaimers, World War II to eradicate the Slovene Carinthians however, the problem of the Carinthian Slovenes is through a combination of forcible assimilation and worth examining for more than its local and population transfers. Meanwhile, the logic of the bilateral Austro-Yugoslav importance. It is, above nation-state ideology and the inclusion after 1918 of all, a particularly tidy and suggestive case study of neighboring and totally Slovenian in a new two intimately related questions that are now and kingdom of Serbs, , and Slovenes (later Yugo- again of worldwide concern and that historically slavia) also brought Slovenian irredentist claims to first became acute precisely in this and similarly Carinthia's ethnically mixed districts. Here, too, the multinational provinces of the Hapsburg Empire. culmination was violent, bringing two short-lived The first of these is what Central Europeans call Yugoslav military occupations of the southern half "the national question," involving the nature and of the province, in 1919-20 and 1945. significance of nationality and nationalism and the inherent contradiction between the ideology of the Today the dispute focuses on Austrian nonimple- nation-state and the existence of multinational ones. mentation of specific and international obligations, The second combines an empirical and a value ques- designed to protect the existence and guarantee the tion: under what circumstances will a national (-- equality of the Carinthian Slovenes, that are part of ethnic? linguistic? cultural?) minority tend (a) to the State Treaty which ended Four Power occupa- survive while integrating in other ways and pros- tion and restored Austrian sovereignty in 1955. For pering, (b) to survive at the price of social immobility two decades the implementation of these provisions in a ghetto or on a reservation, or (c) to disappear has been blocked by an unresolvable disagreement through some form of assimilation? And does it over the superficially curious issue of the relevance (always? sometimes?) matter if it disappears? and need for some kind of head count (Minder- heitenfestellung) to determine how many Slovenes Austria's Carinthia is one of those provinces there are and where they live. First proposed by the like Alsace and prewar Posnania, , or West principal Carinthian German nationalist organiza- Hungarywhere the German world comes gradu- tion in 1957, such a head count was eventually ally to an end and becomes something else. Here the endorsed by all three of Austria's parliamentary

Copyright (C) 1977, American Universities Field Staff, Inc. [DIR-4-'77] DIR-4-'77 -2-

partiesboth government and oppositionas a its source just inside South ), and in the south- precondition for the introduction of bilingual topo- east where the Drau crosses into present-day Yugo- graphic signs, Slovenian as a second language in slavia, the mountains surrender to the great courts and local administration, the definitive regu- Pannonian Plain. Only here and to the northeast lation of bilingual schools, and other measures and east, where the passes into and toward stipulated by the State Treaty. On the other side the are lower and more numerous, is Carinthia two officially recognized Slovenian political and easily accessible. cultural organizations in the province, backed by the Yugoslav government, have vehemently and This geographic configuration, open to the east continually refused to accept its need or legitimacy, over yielding mountains and to the southeast along opposed its execution when it finally came in the Drau, but barely accessible in all other November 1976, and are now refusing to recognize directions, has been important in the history of the results as a basis for settlement. Carinthia and of the national question. The Slovenes came from the east in the second half of the Each item in the history summarized above plays sixth century, driven before the conquering Avars to a role in explaining and giving significance to this an apparently bloodless occupation of valleys either dispute and to the positions assumed by all these uninhabited or sparsely populated by a mixture of actors. Relevant items include such apparently Romanized (Celtic?) peoples and dropouts esoteric questions as the language spoken by the (Langobards? Goths?) from earlier barbarian man who sat on the ancient stone throne on the migrations. The High and the Carnic Carinthian in the early eighth century and imposed western limits on their penetration, while the ethnographic and linguistic validity of the con- the eastward thrusting Karawanken split their cept of a Windisch or Wend people. migration into two streams and thereafter impeded communication between those who settled in the Basin to the south and those who followed and in the Valley ofthe Drau the Drau into the Basin to the north of this mountain barrier. By the time of Carinthia itself is worth fighting over. For my the German Bajuvarii had come, too---both as taste it is Austria's loveliest province. Its many lakes settlers filtering across the high passes into northern are the warmest in all the Alps, and there is some- Carinthia and as a Bavarian king's vassals who were thing about the ratio between the shape of its wide, summoned by Slovene appeals for help against the glacially U-formed valleys and the height and mass Avars and who stayed to rule. Carinthia became a of its mou.ntains that is particularly pleasing to this Bavarian tributary state and with passed observer's soul. It is also, significantly, one of the into the Frankish Empire. As an autonomous most completely enclosed of the AustrianLinder. In German duchy, for a brief time including Styria, the northwest corner rises the , at Carniola, , , and the March of Verona, it 3,798 meters Austria's highest mountain and pride was part of the Ottonian Empire and then of of the , a west-to-east prolongation of Ottokar's short-lived realm. Finally in 1335, both the main backbone of the Alps that cuts these Carinthia and Carniola passed to the Hapsburgs, to southern valleys off from Tyrol, , Upper be joined with Styria after the fifteenth century as Austria, and north winds. In the south the the "Inner Austrian" lands of the Styrian branch of Karawanken Alps, another west-to-east range, the House of Hapsburg. raises a massive, steep-sided barricade between Carinthia and Yugoslav Carniola (gradients on the Whoever may be right about the nationality of the road, now avoidable through a tunnel, first man to sit on that stone throne on the Zollfeld exceed 22 percent). The Karawanken's westward by the Karnburg north of Klagenfurt, by the end of extension in the , beyond the narrow the eighth century he was a German. But even Tarvis Gap that is eastern Austria's only all-weather centuries later, in a curious tradition apparently route to , similarly bars the passage to Friuli. unique in feudal Europe, each new duke was wel- Through the middle of this land, giving it hydro- comed there by a Slovene peasantan honor graphic and geographic unity, flows the river Drau hereditary in one familywho heard his oath to be a ( to the Slavs and to the Italians who command just ruler spoken in the before -3- DIR-4-'77

yielding the throne to him. a In this fashion, and for (written) language for the first time. This is not more than a millennium, German lords and strictly true, since there had been a Slovene trans- German monasteries ruled a Slav peasantry who lation of the Bible and a modest flowering of Slo- were almost alone among the peoples of Central venian books during a "first Slovene renaissance" Europe in never having had an independent and at that coincided with the 's brief triumph least momentarily powerful state to remember. in in the sixteenth century. But the In Carniola, lower Styria, and southern Carinthia Hapsburg Counterreformation put an end to all an ethnic pattern familiar throughout the eastern this, and for over 200 years no books were published in Slovenian. The Hapsburg domains emerged: a countryside of Slav linguistic revival after 1800 therefore a peasants speckled with German market and admin- included significant amount of istrative to which a few ambitious Slavs in updating, new vocabulary, and purging of non- Slavic loan German or each generation came.., and were Germanized. In wordsmostly corrupted northern Carinthia, however, the German peasants German and sometimes forms long obsolete in the also multiplied, spread southward to and across the , further evidence of the antiquity Drau, mixed with the Slovenes in blissful mutual of linguistic and cultural mixing. The product, unawareness of the importance of nationality, and henceforth the Slovenian literary language added German cultural to political hegemony in the (Schriftslowenisch to the Germans), was then taught countryside as well as in the towns. They and their in the new Slovenian schools springing up on both Slovene neighbors both referred to the latter as sides of the Karawanken and frequently sponsored Wends (Wenden, here more commonly Windisch), in ethnically disputed districts by the South Slav an ancient German name for any and all Slavs, from Society of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, another the Baltic to the Adriatic. Only later did Windisch characteristic instrument of the nationalities con- become first a term of ethnic disparagement and flict in the monarchy. Virtually unchallenged in then a designation for what German nationalists Carniola and generally successful in Lower Styria, alleged was a separate Carinthian nationality, dis- the activities of the South Slav Society and of other tinct from the Slovenes of Carniola and Lower Slovenian cultural nationalists were confronted by a Styria. serious rival in Carinthia. This was the German School League and its successor, the German School Slovene Awakening and German Reaction League of the Southern March (Deutsche Schul- verein Siidmark), founded in 1880 to defend The "national question" came to Carinthia in the German schools in beleaguered towns and to sub- early nineteenth century, as it did to other parts of sidize the creation in mixed and Slovene districts of the Hapsburg Empire, in the form of a "Slav "ultraquist" schools, in which "Windisch" was used awakening" encouraged by Slovene priests and an in the first grades to ease the transition to German as initially small number of intellectuals who rejected exclusive language of instruction in higher ones. By the idea that to become urban or to rise in the world 1918 there were 35 such schools, against 3 Slovene a required one to cease being a Slovene. The ensuing language ones, in southern Carinthia. "Slovene renaissance" was characterized by a lin- guistic revival, again like analogous movements The German towns of Carniola and Lower Styria elsewhere in the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, were one by one transformed into Slovene towns and by the spread of Slovene-language primary under the combined pressure of rural-urban migra- education in the countryside, here on a scale tion from exclusively Slav hinterlands and Slav edu- unequaled by most other such movements. A cation. North of the Karawanken, however, where strategy reflecting a synthesis of nationalist ideology German towns could draw from a German as well as and Enlightenment views of education as the means a Slav rural populace as they grew, and where the to liberty and progress, at least in Carniola it had by latter had often learned German in "ultraquist" the end of the century created an unusual entity in schools or from German landowners or neighbors, the world of that time: an almost totally literate such conversion of urban centers did not take place. peasant nation. Thus, while the Carinthian Slovenes contributed their share of talent to the "national renaissance," German nationalists claim that only with this that talent tended to migrate south to Ljubljana, "Slav awakening" did Slovenian become a literary which was now the Slovene cultural center, rather DIR-4-'77 -4-

than to predominantly German Klagenfurt. The when these premodern parties had been replaced by consequences of all these developments included a the three "camps" that still divide polit- relative cultural weakening of Slovenian Carinthia, icallyChristian Social (today's People's Party), where literate Slovene peasants could usually read Socialist, and Greater German Nationalist (whose and write only in German and "nationally con- direct heir is today's Liberal Party)--peasants and scious" urban Slovenes were rare. They also in- gentry elsewhere flocked to the Christian Social cluded a growing gulf between the five Windisch standard. In Carinthia, however, these same classes of Carinthia and those spoken in Carniola, were predominantly German Nationalist, and pur- which were gradually altered and unified by the now portedly as much because the German National widespread teaching of Schriftslowenisch. Today, as Party was anticlerical as because it was nationalist. a result, Carinthian Windisch and the Slovenian In this situation, and again for anticlerical as well as literary language are at times mutually incompre- national reasons, it was natural that Carinthia hensible, a fact exploited since 1920 by those who should in due course produce a disproportionately argue that Carinthian"Wends" are in some sense a large number of Austrian Nazis. But after World separate nationality and that only those Carinthian War II, when the old German Nationalist camp in Slavs who speak Schriftslowenisch (generally its liberal reincarnation shrank to less than 7 synonymous with those known to themselves and in percent of the electorate and most ex-Nazis and as "nationally conscious Slovenes") are others of nationalist sentiment sought refuge in the really Slovenes. People's Party or among the socialists, it was less One other aspect of more remote history deserves "natural"except in the light of this historythat mention for its contemporary relevance. The in Carinthia, alone among Austrian provinces, the Reformation and Counterreformation, in addition Socialist Party got most of them. The consequences to their relationship to the rise and fall of the "first of this anomaly for the Slovene question in the 1970s Slovene renaissance," assumed a particular will emerge later. character in Carinthia that is generally held to be the source of certain peculiarities in the political profile Civil War and the Plebiscite of the province's German-speaking majority four centuries later. Protestantism, briefly triumphant in The collapse of the Hapsburg Empire in 1918 and much of Austria late in the sixteenth century, seems the creation of Yugoslavia transformed the national to have struck exceptionally deep roots along the question in Carinthia and Styria from a struggle Drau valley before the Emperor's hussars eradi- among ethnic groups for cultural and political cated it with their bayonets. Even today there are dominance within each of these provinces into a proportionately more Protestants in Carinthia than territorial question between states. As the Peace in any other part of overwhelmingly Catholic Conference assembled in Paris in December 1918, Austria; most of them live in the higher valleys, a Slovenes from the disbanding Austro-Hungarian phenomenon explained in local folk history by the army, supported by Serbian regular units, hastened observation that seventeenth-century Imperial to bolster with a military occupation their claim that cavalry could not operate above the thousand-meter at least southern Carinthia, including the province's level. The memory of the form and brutality of their principal and undoubtedly German towns of re-Catholicization lived on among the Catholic Klagenfurt (Celovec) and (Bejak), should be majority in the shape of unusually widespread and part of their new state. German Carinthians, also intense anticlericalism. The political consequences returning from the front, defied warnings about the (if indeed there is a causal connection, since the ne.w Austrian Republic's nervous Provincial Gov- thesis presented here is disputed by some historians ernment in Vienna and took up arms again. Civil and political sociologists) emerged in the nineteenth war ensued. An armistice was negotiated through and twentieth centuries. Before the rise of modern American mediation in mid-January and lasted mass parties in the 1880s, anticlerical German until the end of April 1919. Then, with the liberalism tended to be the creed of German Carinthian question still unresolved as the Treaty of Austria's urban middle classes and the clericalist St. Germain entered the final drafting stage (Lower Conservative Party tended to dominate in rural Styria, with only two predominantly German towns areas, but most of Carinthia's country gentry, vil- in a solidly Slovene countryside, was to go to lagers, and farmers were atypically liberal. Later, Yugoslavia), hostilities began again on a more -5- DIR-4-'77

serious scale. After some initial successes, the their conviction that the majority of the affected GermanAbwehrkampferwere driven back, and the population was Slav, when they opposed the Peace Yugoslavs occupied Klagenfurt. The Peace Confer- Conference's decision to hold a plebiscite. 4 One ence intervened again, imposed a new armistice, and reason was economic and in turn geographic. The ordered the holding of a plebiscite in the disputed Austrians (and also the Yugoslavs, when they origi- area. The Yugoslavs were forced to withdraw from nally tried to claim all of the province) had made Klagenfurt, but were left in occupation of most of much of the alleged "indivisibility" of Carinthia on the rest of their claim pending the vote. these grounds. It was a good point, and one that the voters were well aware of. A frontier along or near In recognition of the military situation and the the Drau, which American experts supported at one ethnic map, the disputed area was divided into two stage in 1919, would isolate people living south of zones. Immediately north and east of the that line from all population, cultural, and market Karawanken, in the districts known to contain most centers, since Klagenfurt and Villach would become of the Slovenes and under Yugoslav occupation, foreign, beyond a customs border, while the Zone A included the market centers of V51kermarkt Karawanken would still block their access to any (Velikovec) and (Pliberk), the purely Slo- alternative Yugoslav centers. The behavior of venian Alpine valleys around Zell (Sele), and the Serbian troops and administrators occupying Zone predominantly Slovene Rosenthal (Ro). If the A also seems to have played a role, which was eagerly plebiscite here should result in a majority for dramatized in German nationalist propaganda, for Yugoslavia, a second plebiscite would be held in it could be experienced as an unpleasant foretaste of Zone B to the north, including Klagenfurt and life in a Serb-dominated and thus quasi-barbarian Villach. But if the vote in Zone A were favorable to Balkan kingdom if one voted for Yugoslavia. In Austria, no plebiscite would be held in Zone B, addition, and also a favorite theme of German which meanwhile remained under Austrian admin- propaganda, there was compulsory military service istration. in Yugoslavia (perhaps to be performed in darkest Macedonia!), but none in republican Austria. The plebiscite in Zone A was held on October 10, 1920, under Allied supervision. Despite claims to Finally, and just possibly the most important, the the contrary still commonly heard in Yugoslavia, "indivisibility" of Carinthia had (and has) another, there seems no doubt that it was fairly conducted, noneconomic, meaning. Encouraged by old although both sides had waged a vigorous propa- Austrian traditions of provincial political and cul- ganda campaign and brought to bear such pressures tural autonomy but expressed with even greater as they could, fair and foul (since the zone had been intensity than elsewhere, perhaps because their land under Yugoslav occupation since the spring of 1919, is geographically so self-contained, most Carin- undue Austrian pressure could hardly be alleged). thians of any nationality apparently think of them- The result: 22,025 people, 59 percent of the all-male selves as Carinthians first. German, Slovene, Yugo- electorate, turned in the green ballot for Austria. It slav, or (especially rarely, even now!) Austrian are at was clear, as both sides still agree today, that a large best secondary forms of self-identification. The number of Slovenes had voted against union with Viennese is a highly suspect foreigner to the German their kinsmen in the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, Carinthian, and the Carniolan as well as the Serb is and Slovenes. The Yugoslavs reluctantly evacuated equally an alien to his Slovene neighbor. The validity the zone, taking many of their most active partisans of this generalization and the importance I tend to with them, including 32 teachers and 28 priests. attribute to it, both on the basis of unsystematic Except for two small districts south and east of the personal observations and reading the German and Karawanken that the Peace Conference had already Slovenian Carinthian press over the years, find sup- granted to Yugoslavia without a plebiscite, port in the conclusions of an internationally known Carinthia remained undivided and Austrian Austrian social psychologist, Professor Wilfried Daim. Writing about the plebiscite in a study of There seem to have been several reasons why so attitudinal aspects ot today's Carinthian problem, many Carinthian Slovenes voted for Austria rather Daim points out that those Slovenes who did vote for than for Yugoslaviaan outcome that the Yugoslav Yugoslavia were no more "unpatriotic" or anti- negotiators in Paris had privately expected, despite Austrian than the majority of their German DIR-4-'77 -6-

Austrian contemporaries, who at that time wanted have only one lifetime to lead these misguided union with . As for those who voted for people back to Carinthianism [sic]; the task of re- Austria" education must be completed within the span of one Here the feeling of belonging to a territory generation!" Here were both the thesis and with a long history, a feeling that is very antithesis that have shaped the dialectic of the strong and alive among the population, Slovenian minority's destiny for nearly 50 years. should also be emphasized. A thousand years ago Carinthi (to be sure much larger than today) was the first Dukedom on the soil of The first chapter in this story is a tale of ten years present day Austria, and a rich historical of negotiations over legislation to establish "cultural tradition has encouraged the growth here of autonomy" for the minority, with each side a patriotism for which the integrity of continually accusing the other of bad faith. On May Carinthia's borders has often been more 27, 1931 the provincial legislature's school commis- important than any movement toward sion declared further efforts to be in vain, blaming national unification. "Loyalty to the home- the intransigence of the Slovene leaders, and the land" [Heimattreu] could be understood in debate ended. Slovene spokesmen still use this de- this or that way after 1918, when all frontiers cision as evidence of permanent bad faith on the were in flux. But it is certain that, alongside a part of Austrian authorities, but the evidence seems great variety of other motives, this one above to indicate that at least the provincial and federal all led many Slovenes to vote for Austria in governmentsin contrast to local private national- 1920. ist groups with considerable influencehad made a sincere effort. Slovene cultural societies, periodi- What it all adds up to, in a phrase popular among cals, and a powerful and efficient Slovene coopera- Yugoslav and Carinthian Slovene politicians and tive movement continued to exist, relatively un- political sociologists, is that in 1920 the Carinthian hampered, through the period of the Dolfuss- Slovenes were by and large "not nationally con- Schuschnigg dictatorship. The situation was even scious.'; That is, many and perhaps most of them better, or at least the Slovenes thought it was, in the voted on the basis of other than national or ethnic first years after the , Nazi officialdom criteria. To arouse the "dormant national con- having promised the minority greater autonomy sciousness" of these people has ever since been an than they had enjoyed under the Austrian Republic. objective of governments in Ljubljana and Belgrade, On the other hand, the failure of the negotiations whether royal or communist, and of already over "cultural autonomy" left the minority without "nationally conscious" Slovenes on both sides of the Slovene schools, "ultraquist" schools did not teach Karawanken. Why they feel this to be so important, the Slovenian literary language, and the bilingual why it has been so difficult, and what has happened public signs that had been tokens of official recog- in consequence explain conflicting Slovene and nition of binationalism in Hapsburg times were German nationalist attitudes to this year's disputed painted over leaving German only. Census figures, ethnic census and are the themes of Parts II and III however otherwise inaccurate and misleading,7 are of this series. mute witnesses to the fact that pressures on the minority, whether social, official, or self-inflicted, From the First Republic to Hitler and Tito continued. The last Imperial census of 1910 had counted 74,210 Slovenes on the territory of post- Before and immediately after the plebiscite 1918 Carinthia, as surely an undercounting as the triumph of 1920, Austrian federal and Carinthian 124,000 claimed in Yugoslav presentations to the provincial authorities promised the Slovene Peace Conference was an exaggeration. In the next m.nority full protection, in accordance with clauses census, and the first under the Republic, taken in in the Treaty of St. Germain requiring such 1923 this figure was down to 39,292, and in that of measures. Only a month after the plebiscite, how- 1934 there were apparently only 26,796 Slovenes in ever, Provincial Arthur Lemisch, in a the province. The nature of the reasons for such a statement before the Carinthian Assembly that is rapid decline in reported numbers under the First quoted with expectable regularity by Slovenian Republic becomes ironically even clearer when one nationalists today, referred to the 41 percent of Zone notes that the next census, taken in 1939 during the A's voters who had preferred Yugoslavia in terms postoAnschluss Nazi-Slovene honeymoon, registered that suggested a different policy preference: "We 42,000 as speaking some variant of Slovene. -7- DIR.4-'77

the attitude of the minority, a lecture delivered by Maier-Kaibitsch on July 10, 1942, outlining the tasks before the Carinthians "now that we are part of the Reich," is also worth quoting" The events of the last years in the Balkans have given us the possibility of putting an end to the so-called Slovenian minority in the area north of Karawanken Security measures required at that time, among other things, the imprisonment of some Slovene leaders in the former bilingual zone; others were banished from the . We trust there- fore that the small number of those who since the 1939 census claimed to be Slovenes will now realize the facts and understand our The German in April 1941 warnings and invitations The use of the brought an abrupt end to the uneasy peace in Nazi- Windisch colloquial language must cease Slovene relations. Northern Carniola was annexed once and for all even in private intercourse... to the Reich and to Carinthia and placed under this must be achieved by all means. Only in Klagenfurt. Almost German inscriptions can be put in churches, all Slovene priests on both sides of the Karawanken on flags, crosses, on the gravestones in ceme- were promptly arrested; some were later released teries. It is everybody's task to report to the under pressure from the Bishop's Ordinariat in Gaubureau, Section for Nationality Ques- Klagenfurt, but only in return for an episcopal tions, all inscriptions in Windisch... Slovene promise to remove them to German-speaking areas literature must be confiscated and disappear and to replace them with German priests who---it from use. All party and state institutions was explicitly stated were to know no Slovene. have to issue strict instructions that only Some 272 Slovene families were forcibly removed to German may be spoken,a northern Germany and their farms were given to In this same lecture Maier-Kaibitsch expressed German immigrants. These were the first steps in a concern that the liquidation of the frontier on the plan, approved in , for a "definitive solution" Karawanken through the of northern to the minority problem. Carniola could make his task more difficult by opening the way for the Slovenes of Carniola to In charge of such operations, under Gauleiter support the minority in Carinthia. This was in fact Rainer, was SS-Standartenf'dhrer Alois Maier- already happening in a more drastic and dramatic. Kaibitsch, for many years before the war the head of form than he anticipated. The Osvobodilna Fronta the German nationalist Kiirntner Heimatdienst za Slovensko Korogki (Liberation Front for Slo- (literally "Carinthian Homeland Service"), founded venian Carinthia) is still proudly rememberedin during the 1919 civil war and to be refounded in appropriate circlesas the first and only militarily 1957 to "continue the struggle." Much more will be significant armed anti-Nazi resistance movement on said about the contemporary Heimatdienst in Part the soil of the Third Reich itself. Although in some II of this series: it is worth noting here, however, that measure autonomous, it was essentially an Austrian when I first visited Carinthia and interviewed then branch of the Osvobodilna Fronta (OF), Tito's leaders of the Heimatdienst in 1960, almost all were Partisans, in Yugoslav to the south. Like former friends and colleagues of Maier-Kaibitsch, the parent OF, the Carinthian Partisans were a com- who had died a few years earlier while serving a life munist-dominated coalition of all antifascist forces, sentence for his wartime activities. While they including a strong contingent from the left wings of insisted there was "nothing Nazi" about the new the prewar Catholic parties on both sides of the Heimatdienst, they remembered Maier-Kaibitsch frontier, and in Carinthia the OF also recruited a with affection, defended his and their own records respectable number of German Austrians who during the war with passion, and were happy to give wished to fight or the Anschluss. Dr. Joe me introductions to his and Gauleiter Rainer's Tischler, the Chairman of the Carinthian OF after widows. Because of the psychological as well as the war, who was to be given a place in the political importance of such continuity in explaining Provisional Carinthian Government recognized by DIR-4-'77 -8- the British occupation authorities in 1945, and who Article 7 is still an important figure in minority politics, came from the movement's Christian wing. Rights ofthe Slovene and Croat Minorities Much has been made by both sides of the OF record. For its veterans and other Carinthian of the Slovene and Croat members of the minority, its staunch anti-Nazism 1. Austrian nationals minorities in Carinthia, , and Styria and its sacrifices, and armed re- successes, unique shall the same on terms as all sistance within the Reich merited enjoy rights equal special considera- other Austrian nationals, including the right to their tion by the victorious Allies and still merit the own organizations, meetings, and press in their own respect of all "democratic" Austrians. For many German Corinthians this same record is further language. that the new proof Yugoslavia, even and worse yet a 2. They are entitled to elementary instruction in the communist Yugoslavia, will use force to take Slovene or Croat language and to a proportional Austrian territory if given a chance. More important number of their own secondary schools; in this still of is the record the last months of the war, when connection school curricula shall be reviewed and a units from then of Yugoslavia, by formally part section of the Inspectorate of Education shall be Marshal Tito's new Yugoslav People's Army, established for Slovene and Croat schools. crossed the old frontier to join hands with the Carinthian OF in an apparent repeat of Royal Yugo- 3. In the administrative and judicial districts of slavia's 1919 attempt to anticipate the decisions of a Carinthia, Burgenland, and Styria, where there are peace conference by occupying what they claimed. Slovene, Croat, or mixed populations, the Slovene or In the process Nazi atrocities were answered with Croat language shall be accepted as an official lan- the abduction and dis- communist ones, including guage in addition to German. In such districts topo- appearance into Yugoslavia of about 300 Carinthian graphical terminology and inscriptions shall be in Germans and Slovenes, largely former leaders of the the Slovene or Croat language as well as in German. pro-Austrian campaign of 1919-20 in Zone A. And, although not directly related to the Carinthian ques- 4. Austrian nationals of the Slovene and Croat tion, the fact that the surrender to the Partisans and minorities in Carinthia, Burgenland, and Styria subsequent "death march" of the retreating army of shall participate in the cultural, administrative, and the Nazi-sponsored and ill-famed Independent judicial systems in these territories on equal terms State of began on Carinthian soil, at with other Austrian nationals. Bleiburg, has permitted that bloodiest act of revenge in Titoist history to be co-opted into Carinthian 5. The activity of organizations whose aim is to memories and into Heimatdienst claims that deprive the Croat or Slovene population of their German Nazi oppression was more than cancelled minority character or rights shall be prohibited. out by Slav communist terror. As his forces moved into former Zone A, Tito's four occupying powers (U.S.S.R., United States, government presented to the Allies a demand that Britain, and ), meeting in Paris to draft an Yugoslavia be allowed to participate in the occupa- Austrian State Treaty and deadlocked on other tion of Austria by taking over Carinthia, which had issues, decided that Austria should retain its 1937 been assigned to the British Zone, pending a settle- boundaries unaltered. By then, a year after the ment of the frontier question. The British Foreign outbreak of the great Soviet-Yugoslav quarrel, even Office and American State Department replied that the had lost interest in supporting the frontier question was indeed open, but that for Yugoslav pretensions. And in 1955, when the State this very reason they could not accede to the Yugo- Treaty including this clause was finally signed, the slav request. Nevertheless it took from April 2 (the Yugoslavs acceded to the Treaty and thus legally date of the Yugoslav note) until May 19, 1945 for the abandoned their claim. Anglo-American authorities, through a series of increasingly sharply worded diplomatic notes, to Since that time Yugoslav government and the obtain a Yugoslav evacuation of Austrian territory_ Slovene organizations in Carinthia have maintained The Yugoslavs continued to press their claims. In that they are no longer interested in annexation by 1949, however, the Foreign Ministers of Austria's Yugoslavia, but only in the protection of the -9- DIR-4-'77

minority within Austria and increased cultural the Tarvis Gap (and over the Karst passes to the south from contacts across the Karawanken. German national- Carniola), in contrast, they filtered through, apparently ists maintain that this is only tactically disguised unopposed, into eastern Friuli. Here, however, they found irredentism, and the Carinthian "Titoists," at least, themselves in a land more densely populated and "civilized" than Carinthia or Carnikola; the result was therefore not have not always been very convincing in their another peaceful ethnic takeover but rather a combination of denials. gradual assimilation in the plains and surviving colonies in the foothills and mountains {primarily in the so-called "Slavia The State Treaty also contains two articles veneta" in eastern Province, the site of last year's drafted by the Big Four Foreign Ministers at the disastrous earthquakes, in the Soca [Isonzo] valley, and same 1949 meeting at which they agreed not to alter around }. the prewar Austro-Yugoslav frontier in favor of internationalize the status and 2. In the interest of accuracy it should be added that there Yugoslaviawhich were two {successive) stone thrones: the Furstenstein, now treatment of Austria's ethnic minorities. The first of in a Klagenfurt museum, and the back-to-back, double-seated these, Article 6, refers in general terms to the usual Herzogstuhl, which still stands in place, exposed to the ele- list of "human rights and fundamental freedoms," ments, in the middle of the Zollfeld. For details about the enjoining Austria to "take all measures necessary" ceremonies and symbolism surrounding both, see Dr. , "Furstenstein und Herzogstuhl--Symbole to insure their enjoyment by "all persons under gemeinsamer Landesgeschichte," in Das gemeinsame Austrian jurisdiction, without distinction as to race, Karnten/Sku na Koroska, Nr. 6 (Klagenfurt, 1976, a bilingual sex, language, or religion"; it alsb prohibits laws publication of the German-Slovenian Coordination Com- that discriminate among Austrian citizens on the mittee of the Diocese dedicated to bringing the two basis of such distinctions. The second and more fre- ethnic communities together. quently cited, Article 7, refers explicitly to the state's 3. Figures from Viktor Miltschinsky (a relatively moderate two South Slav minorities and to the three provinces but sometimes unreliable "grand old man" of Carinthian in which they live, committing the republic to a set of German nationalism when I met and subsequently corre- specific and positive acts designed to guarantee their sponded with him in 1960) in Karnten-ein Jahrhundert existence as a national minority and equality as Grenzlandschicksal (Klagenfurt, Eckartschriften, Heft 2, 1950), pp. 16f, and Karnten wehrt sich! {do., Heft 9, 1962), pp. citizens. Those listed are the Slovenes of Carinthia 12f. Since the history of the province has generally been and Styria, the latter so few in number that they have written to serve polemical purposes, from one nationalist generally been ignored by all sides, and the Croats of standpoint or the other, the summary offered here is neces- the Burgenland, whose situation is different, not sarily a synthesis of many often contradictory sources. The least because they live along the Hungarian rather standard work in English on the subject in general is Thomas M. Barker, The Slovenes of Carinthia-A National Minority than the Yugoslav frontier, so that neither they nor Problem (New York, 1960), now being revised for a second the Yugoslav regime can be suspected of harboring edition. irredentist ambitions. Disputes and problems arising from Article 7 and its (non-) application have 4. For this point, see Ivo Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris therefore usually involved only the Carinthian Peace Conference (New Haven, 1963), pp. 220,223. Slovenes. The fate of Article 7, the vicissitudes of the 5. Wilfried Daim, D/e Problematik der Versohnung der minority since 1955, and the significance of both are Volksgruppen in Karnten (Klagenfurt, published as Das the subject of Part II of this series. gemeinsame Karnten/Skupna Koroska, Nrs. 4 in German and 5 in Slovenian, 1976), p. 20.

6. Cf. Valentin Einspieler, Verhandlungen uber die der slowenischen Minderheit angebotene Kulturautonomie 1925- 1930 {Klagenfurt, 1976}. Dr. Einspieler, it should be noted, is both a Carinthian Slovene school administrator and head of the "Verband der Karntner Windischen" {League of Carin- NOTES thian Wends, of which more in Part II), and therefore a bete noire for Slovenian nationalists. 1. The importance of the geographic factor is doubly clear when one notes what happened at the only two usable "holes" 7. As will be seen in Part III along with the reasons why even through the arc of high mountains girdling the western end of the figures given here are only one of several versions. Carinthia. Just beyond the low pass between the headwaters of the Drau and the Pustertal (Val Pusteria) in present-day 8. Copy in my files, also quoted in my report on my 1960 in- , the Slovehes were stopped by a Germanic army terviews, "The Slovenes of Carinthia," Institute of Current in the only recorded battle associated with their arrival. At World Affairs newsletter, DR-28/30, September 1960.

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