TERRITORIAL IDENTIFICATIONS OF THE GOTTSCHEE GERMANS: DIASPORA – HOMELAND RELATION TERITORIÁLNA IDENTIFIKÁCIA KOČEVSKÝCH NEMCOV: VZŤAH DIASPÓRY A VLASTI Anja Moric Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia PhD. (2016)
[email protected] Kľúčové slová Kočevskí Nemci/Kočevarji, rituál, diaspóra, vlasť, miesto Key words Gottschee Germans/Gottscheers, ritual, diaspora, homeland, place 1. Introduction The territory of the Republic of Slovenia has always been ethnically diverse. Besides the Slovenians, Italians, Hungarians, Serbs, Croats, Jews and Roma, it was also home for almost thousand years to a German minority that was strong in number, but that is nowadays present only in fragments in the Kočevska and Styria regions. The reasons for the migrations of Germans away from the territory of Slovenia were primarily of a political and economic nature. Pre-war migrations of Germans out of the Slovenian territory occurred in parallel with the migrations of Slovenians in times of economic crises. Political migrations of Germans started after the collapse of the Austro- Hungarian monarchy when, due to the systematic pressure exercised by the government authorities on the German population, the German officialdom was leaving Slovenia massively. Political migrations of Germans broke out in the autumn of 1941 and the winter of 1942 when the majority of Germans from Kočevje and Ljubljana regions opted for the German Reich. In May 1945, after the end of the 2nd World War, there was a mass deportation of Germans who had not already managed to flee across the border, namely to Austria.