NATIONALISM TODAY: CARINTHIA's SLOVENES Part III: "Let the Cat Die

1978/No. 23 by Dennison I. Rusinow Nationalism Today: Carinthia's Europe [DIR-1-'78] SIovenes

Part II1: "Let the Cat Die Quickly"

That no one really knows how many Slovenes 120,121a lower growth rate that reflects the there are in Carinthia, and that there is no way of south's relative lack of larger towns during a finding out, is at first glance extremely odd. It century of rapid urbanization in which the popu- would obviously be useful to know, since not lation of cities tended to grow by more and that of knowing has been a primary source of both gen- rural areas by less than natural increase as a uine difficulties and easy excuses for the law- whole. Slovene estimates of their own share in makers and administrators who are supposed to the province's total population in these years design and execute measures to protect the disregarding clearly extreme claimspresent a existence of the minority and guarantee the picture of steady decline from between 96,000 and equality and rights of its members. For more than 116,000 (ca. 33%) in 1846 to 60-70,000 (between a century, moreover, Austrian censuses have 11.4% and 13.3%) at the present time. On the asked questions about language or other criteria other hand, official census results, while close to of national (ethnic)identification, and the pub- agreeing with these estimates for the beginning of lished results regularly include breakdowns of the this period, record a far more precipitous decline Carinthian population into German-speaking, that is especially and suspiciously dramatic in Slovenian-speaking, and other ostensibly national recent decades. According to one version of these categories. On closer examination, however, these official figures, presented in Table 1 (the reasons censuses contain so many anomalies and curious why other versions also exist will be examined or apparently impossible fluctuations over time below), Slovenes now constitute only 3.4 percent of that they are in themselves conclusive evidence the Carinthian population. that the number of Slovenes on any given date is still unknown and in Carinthian circumstances apparently unknowable. The reasons for these Table 1 Year No. of Slovenes anomalies and fluctuations are in turn useful in Carinthia clues to the complex of reasons, both nefarious and natural, why that number (whatever it may 1880 91,927 be) is dwindling and why the minority will some- 1890 92,068 day almost certainly disappear...even if the 1900 85,311 nefarious reasons were to be eliminated, as they 1910 74,210 could be, through an act of political will. 1923 39,292 1934 31,704 In the century between 1869 and 1971 the popu- 1939 ca.42,000 lation of Carinthia increased from about 315,000 1951 22,367 to 526,728, a growth of 66.6 percent. During the 1961 ca. 15,700 same period the population of the southern 1971 17,934 Carinthian districts where most of the Slovenes live increased by 32.5 percentfrom 90,655 to 2/DIR-1-'78

Either set of figures suggests a high rate of language is a Slovene dialect to declare himself (or assimilation into the majority nationality, and at to be encouraged to declare himself) in some other least in the official figures the rate is so high one is category. It is thus instructive to compare the ups inclined to suspect that more than "natural" and downs recorded in Figure 1 with the ways that forces have been at work. More careful examina- the language question has been posed in each of tion also reveals some astonishing fluctuations in the censuses in question "4 individual townships (Gemeinde), and these raise even more questions concerning the validity of 1910 In this last Hapsburg census, as in census results and what they are actually telling us earlier ones, people were asked to re- about the political, socioeconomic, and other cord their "language of communica- reasons for both real and apparent changes in tion" (Umgangssprache), defined as Carinthia's national composition. These fluctua- "the language used in normal com- tions are presented in graphic and dramatic form munications." in Figure 1, which charts the ups and downs in the number of southern Carinthians recorded in cen- 1923 "Language of thought" (Denks- suses since 1910 as speaking Slovenian or prache), defined as "the language "Windisch," singly or in combination with each that one speaks best and in which one other and German. One of the more extreme cases thinks." (This census also asked for thus portrayed is the township of Mieger/ "ethnic adherence" and "race," but Medgorje, where the language spoken by the these results were never published.) majority of the population appears to have changed as follows: 1934 "The language of the cultural environment (Kulturkreis) to which one 1910 96 percent Slovenian-speaking feels that he belongs" (only one could 1923 51 percent Slovenian-speaking be listed). 1934 97 percent German-speaking 1939 81 percent Windisch-speaking* 1939 "Mothertongue" (Muttersprache) 1951 91 percent Slovenian-speaking* defined as "the language in which 1961 72 percent Windisch-speaking*. one thinks and that one prefers to use 1971 76 percent German-speaking in the family because it is easiest." (*including combinations). Bilingualism was recognized and "Windisch" was admitted as a lan- As Dr. Ernst Waldstein, who compiled much of "An guage category. "Ethnic adherence" the data on these censuses, comments: was also asked who is over 50 (Volkszugeh6rigkeit) inhabitant of this township today in this census taken after the German his of years old must have changed language annexation of Austria; only one V olk in the course of his normal communication 5 times could be listed. life." Spokesmen for the minority and their Yugoslav 1951 "Language of Communication," de- friends call the generation and use of figures like fined as the language exclusively or these "statistical genocide." It is certainly demon- primarily used in normal intercourse. strable that the way the censuses have been de- Multilingualism was recognized (in a signed, and even more the way they have been bewildering plethora of hyphenated carried out, have tended to reduce the number of forms as described below), and those registered as non-German-speakers as well "Windisch" was an admitted cate- as playing an important role in the strange fluctu- gory. ations recorded in Figure 1. For example, the fact that successive censuses have posed the language 1961 "Language of communication," now question in different ways is both one reason for defined as the language spoken in the fluctuations in the results and a clue to the census- family. Multilingualism and "Wind- takers' intentions, since some ways of asking this isch" again admissible. question make it easier and others make it less easy for a bilingual person whose first or usual 1971 "Language of communication," this DIR-1-'78/3

time without definition. Multilingua- wrote and used them(as minority spokesmen and lism and "Windisch" were still recog- Yugoslav critics maintain), or are merely a typi- nized, but only "German" was actu- cally Austrian amalgam of German thoroughness ally printed on census forms. and Balkan sloppiness, the results have been the same: confusion, additional openings for sugges- 1976 The "census of a special kind" (boy- tions or pressure by census-takers who have had to cotted by most of the minority as explain what all this means, and a consequent described in Part II of this series) splintering and further reduction in size of the asked for "mother tongue," defined population recorded as non-German-speaking. It as "the language in which one grew also means that politicians and propagandists up." The forms (for use throughout (and even disinterested statisticians and ob- Austria) provided for five possible servers) have been able to come up with wildly answers: German, Slovenian, Croa- divergent figures for the size of the minority and tian, Hungarian, or Other, with a therefore with divergent views about where space to write in which Other. enough of them live to justify or necessitate bilingual schools or topographical inscriptions and Slovenian as a second language in offices and To understand the impact of such changing courtrooms. For example, the postwar census definitions on census results, take the example of results cited in Table 1, which were taken from a a very common phenomenon I have frequently quasi-official brochure published by the Federal encountered on visits to the district: Carinthians Chancellor's Office in 1977, appear to be based on whose first language was a local Slav dialect that the sums of all census categories in which the word some would call "Slovenian" and others "Slovenian" appears, but without those listed as "Windisch," conversing in their favorite caf and "Windisch," "Windisch-German," or "German- unconsciously shifting back and forth between Windisch." If the "Windisch" categories are also that dialect and the local German dialect, accord- includedas in Table 2, from which one can also ing to the changing subject of their discourse. see how wildly the numbers in individual non- Thus the talk will tend to be in a Slav dialect when German categories have fluctuated from one it is about problems with the wife, the cow, or the census to the next--the apparent size of the crops, and in German when the subject is politics minority becomes 42,095 rather than 22,367 in or sports or when the bill is being added up. What, 1951, 25,300 rather than 15,700 in 1961, and then, is their "mothertongue," their "language of 21,918 rather than 17,934 in 1971. On the other communication" (and by which definition), or hand, eliminating the "German-Slovenian" as their "language of thought," and is the answer to well as the "Windisch" categories in counting any one of these questions quite certain and members of the minority eligible for protection, as invariable? Or will it depend instead on the the Heimatdienst and other German nationalist nationality with which one wishes to identify at the sources are wont to do, reduces the size of the moment the question is asked ? residual minority even furtherin 1971 to merely 6,9915. added a further Postwar censuses complication. 'Table2 Recognition of "Windisch" as a language and of multilingualism as a possibilitytwo innovations Census 1951 1961 1971 first introduced in the Nazi census of 1939now German-Slovenian 8,617 3,300 10,935 meant that Carinthians were expected to choose Slovenian-German 5,888 2,200 758 among no less than ten linguistic categories, all of Slovenian 7,707 8,300 6,214 which were listed on their census forms until 1971: German-Windisch 10,944 7,400 3,394 German, Slovenian, Windisch, Slovenian-Ger- Windisch-German 5,330 2,500 124 man, German-Slovenian, German-Windisch, Windisch 3,454 1,600 454 Slovenian-Windisch 117 9 Windisch-German, Slovenian-Windisch, Wind- Vi nd isc h- SIoven ia n 38 isch-Slovenian, and Other or Unknown. Whether Total in non-Germanic such forms represented a deliberate "anti- language categories 42,095 25,300 21,918 minority" strategem on the part of those who 4/DIR-1-'78

Of central importance for all these games with leadership of Dr. Valentin Einspieler, who is also numbers, and for their broader significance and a deputy chief of the Heimatdienst, is dead in all implications, has been the concept of a separate but name. But the idea of a "Windisch" language "Windisch" language and hence, by implication, and people, however much it is now generally dis- a distinct "Windisch" ("Wend") ethnic group, credited, has done its job for the cause of German formerly defined as the racially and now more nationalism and assimilation, a subject to which gingerly as the culturally mixed product of early we shall return. Carinthian Slav and German intermingling.6 Originally propagated by German nationalists All of these games with numbers could be con- early in this century, the concept's official sidered of marginal or esoteric importance were it acceptance as a linguistic category in censuses, not for the use they have been put to by the Aus- first by the Nazi regime and then by the postwar trian and Carinthian governments and because democratic one, give it a legitimacy that few an- they function as both a cause and an indexma- thropologists and other experts outside (or today nipulated and statistically dubious as they may even inside) German nationalist ranks would beofwhat is really happening to the minority. accept. Indeed, the objections of such experts and recent doubts on the subject even in the German First, census results have been used by Austrian nationalist camp are probably the reason why only lawmakers as a basis for delimiting the geographic "German" was printed on census forms in 1971, area in which certain provisions of Article Seven of leaving non-German-speakers to write in which- the State Treaty of 1955 are to be applied. For ever of the nine other linguistic categories seemed example, data from the census of 1951 provided appropriate. The effect of this change and of the the basis for the Federal legislature's decision to declining fashionableness of the concept of limit application of a Law on the Use of the Slo- "Windisch" in general are reflected in the census vene Language in Courts, passed in 1959, to only results" the number of Carinthians recorded as three of nine judicial districts in southern speaking "Windisch," alone or in combination Carinthia. The ill-fated Law on Bilingual Topo- with German or Slovene, declined from 19,883 in graphical Inscriptions of 1972, which was to have 1951 to 3,981 in 1971. As Table 2 reveals, almost applied to 205 localities (one-quarter of the total) all of these remaining "Wends" have put them- in the region defined as Slovene or mixed by the selves in the "German-Windisch" category, which School Law of 1945, was similarly based on what a can probably be considered the final step short of prominent Yugoslav expert calls a "statistically a claim to or self-image of full Germanization. dubious processing of data on the number of the The "League of Carinthian Wends," a subsidiary of the German nationalist Heimatdienst under the

1972: German nationalist vigilantes demolish the first 1977: The bilingual signs go up again, but only a few at a bzlingual German-Slovene highway signs erected in a time to test reactions'at latest report, this one is still in belated and abortive attempt to fulfill one clause of Article place. 7of the State Treaty of 1955 (see Part Hof this series). DIR-1-'78/5

THEBOYCOTTED 'CENSUS OFA SPECIAL KIND (November 1976)

In Carinthia the Slovene minority organizations held In Vienna Federal Chancellor Bruno Kreisky casts his pubEc meetings, under bilingual posters, to rally support "vote "in the special census-presumably registering as a for a boycott of the "minority headcount. German-speaker? Slovene population, collected during the census of "naturally" inherent in the minority's situation. 1961. ''7 It was in fact because of minority and And it is these permanent pressures, both delib- Yugoslav objections to the validity of such a data erate and inherent, which are gradually but basea that Austrian governments, while disagree- ineluctably bringing about the disappearance of ing with further Slovene objections to the need for the minority, so that the lowest estimate of its size or legitimacy of any ethnic census, made the appli- that can be conjured out of each recent census cation of later minority legislation dependent on becomes another in a sequence of partly self- the "census of a special kind" that was described fulfilling prophecies. earlier in this series. As we have seen, it, too, was denounced ex ante and boycotted by the Slovene "Skimmed Milk" and other Socioeconomic minority organizations, who argued that the re- Processes sults would once again and inevitably be a lie. There is nothing uncommon about the social and economic incentives to assimilate that are inherent in the situation of the Carinthian Slovenes, Second, that census results have been and and that would still exist without deliberate inten- might again be used to limit the application of sification by their German neighbors and sins of measures that are unpopular with the majority omission by Austrian governments that have nationality and to counter past and possible failed to do all they could or are legally bound to future Yugoslav irredentist claims has provided do to slow the process. These are pressures that German nationalists and other opponents ofbiiin- are faced by members of any linguistic or similarly gualism in the zone with additional and specific distinct cultural minority whose circumstances incentives to do whatever they can to insure that include most or all of the following: absolutely or each successive census will record ever fewer relatively few in number; without economically Slovenes living primarily in remote and discon- and culturally significant urban centers of their nected parts of the province. This can mean pres- own; economically subordinate to or poorer and sures on individuals at census time and the kind of less "deyeloped" than their neighbors; and either manipulation of census questions and results fragile or frozen as a social community because described here and in complaints by minority their customs and social institutions or externally spokesmen. It can also mean general and delib- imposed restrictions inhibit change and occupa- erate intensification of the permanent social, tional and social differentiation. All of these are economic, and psychological pressures to assimi- true of the Carinthian Slovenes, including relative late that are already and to some degree poverty and socioeconomic "underdevelopment" 6/DIR-1-'78 by Austrian and Carinthian standards or those of language and German-Austrian in culture, .and their German-speaking neighbors, most of whom non-German Austrians are too few in number to are also poorer than Austrian average levels but alter this. In these towns and schools one com- who still tend to control most of the region's petes or prepares to compete with German- comparatively few nonagricultural sources of speakers, and one lives and communicates in a wealth and employment.9 But the magnitude of German-speaking world and a German-Austrian such pressure is not necessarily and always as cultural environment. The surnames in the tele- great as its prima facie potential, nor is the effect phone books of the towns and cities of Carinthia invariably direct or even one-directional. If they and the Burgenland, and in Vienna itself, bear were, many minorities should have disappeared mute witness to the numbers who have indeed long ago. come this way. The given names that are attached to these surnames and the "native-speaking" When there is little deliberate external pressure Austro-German accents that answer the telephone to assimilate, and even (or, in perverse reality, tell us what has happened to them: urbanized and especially) when the external pressure is blatant Germanized at the same time, or in successive and unsubtle, such a minority may remain socially generations, they or their children may even intact and resistant as long as none or only a few of become fanatical German nationalists, in the its members aspire to be "upwardly mobile" atmosphere that prevails in Carinthia a frequent beyond the limits that these circumstances im- phenomenon for which the psychological explana- pose. Thus, for example, a Carinthian Slovene can tions are too obvious to need elaboration. Back on usually remain a Slovene with little economic or the farm and in the village, their non-German social difficultyas distinct from the individual grandparents and cousins constitute a kind of and social psychological kinds that are discussed social "skimmed milk." With the minor belowas long as he is and wishes to remain a exceptions of the rural intelligentsia and peasant or a farmer, or if he is or wishes to become bourgeoisie noted above, the cream of each gen- a village shopkeeper, a small-scale rural entrepre- erationthe talented and the ambitious whom neur in forestry, handicrafts, or tourism, a priest, sociologists refer to as "upwardly mobile"has or even (apart from certain pressures derived from been removed. the need to complete his training in an alien language and culture)a village schoolteacher, lawyer, In Carinthia this process has been going on for a or doctor. Or if he has had such difficulties, it is long time. More than a century ago Vinzenz Rizzi usually because of deliberate economic discrimi- of Villach (1816-1856), a prominent early Carin- nation or political or physical intimidation by thian German Liberal from the optimistic anti-Slovene German nationalists, which is not Mazzinian generation of European nationalists uncommon but as a form of external and delib- who tended to view other nations and their aspira- erate pressure is not the point at issue here. Even tions as equals in value, described with sympathy then, however, a modicum of"national conscious- the plight of his Slovene countrymen. Their num- ness" or an aroused affection for the language and bers and isolation between the Karawanken customs of his forefathers, which he may actually barrier and rapidly urbanizing and developing acquire as an unintended effect of such pressure, German-speaking valleys, he wrote, inevitably can lead him to stiffen his ethnic backbone and so made Slovenian an unequal partner in the co- to resist assimilation more stubbornly and suc- habitation of the two cultures: cessfully than he otherwise might have done. And so the Slovenian culture in Carinthia The story will have a different ending when the must stagnate, and the Slovene isGerman- same Carinthian Slovene or his children wishes to ized... Let me be understood. It is not that enter a profession or rise to a professional or social the Slovenian race is being Germanized, no, level that is not represented in their native rural or it keeps its racial characteristics, its tradi- village environment. The cities and larger towns tions and customs, stubborn as nature and and the universities and other postsecondary peoples everywhere are; but the educated schools of Carinthia and Austria are German in Slovene is Germanized. The people remain DIR-1-'78/7

raw and unenlightened, however much the the economist's "scissors effect"then, with individual who comes from the same origins migration tantamount to assimilation, it is may have acquired an outstanding erudition. obvious that even the skimmed milk remnant of But this education, because it was an alien the minority will shrink over time. This, too, is one, does his people no good) 2 part of the story of the Carinthian Slovenes. As we have seen, the population of southern Carinthia The same phenomenon in its contemporary inten- increased by 32.5 percent between 1869 and 1971 sified form is described by another Carinthian (and by 8.4 percent or 9,300 inhabitants between German, this time a former Federal minister, and the censuses of 1961 and 1971). While this is in any President of the Austrian Catholic Action" case only half the rate of increase recorded in Carinthia as a whole or in the average for all of Austria, a look at more detailed figures reveals the change from an agricultural to an in- that population has actually declined, and by as dustrial society spells danger for all minori- much as 32 to 48 percent, in 14 out of 34 southern ties. Then young people no longer stay in the Carinthian townships over the past century (and village, they become rural-urban commuters in 11 out of the 34, by as much as 20 percent, or move to other places, where they earn their between 1961 and 1971). Most of these are in the living. Slovenian boys and girls have districts where the Slovene minority is most found partners from the other language ,heavily concentrated. On the other hand, the group and the mixing of the peoples, a largest increases have taken place in predomi- Carinthian process for centuries, proceeds nantly German-speaking towns and more recently far more rapidly today. The state language is in rural districts that are becoming suburbs or German. A person who wants to achieve dormitory satellites of Klagenfurt and Villach or something here must fully master this lan- being developed as tourist and retirement centers. guage and also accept the lifestyle of the In all of these last, as the author of a study of people-of-state [Staatsvolk]. The language of population movements in southern Carinthia the minority will still be spoken only at home points out, "The grandchildren and great-grand- in the farmhouse. So it comes about that children of Slovenes who once migrated to urban even convinced Slovenes send their children centers are thus coming back into the multilingual to German schools, so that they will become district, but now as German-speakers. This sub- something, so that they will at last do better. urbanizing trend therefore also had undoubted But that is only possible through the widest Germanizing effects." 4 possible integration with the people-of-state. It would be otherwise if the Slovenes still as formerly lived in a compact, isolated Soft-sell Germanization, or the Psychological homeland, but this is today no longer the Angle case. Particularly decisive is the circum- stance that there is no Slovenian city in The sum total of all "natural" socioeconomic Carinthia that could form a cultural or eco- incentives to assimilate, accentuated by "the nomic center) 3 skimmed milk process," lower birthrates, and the impact of Austria's lately accelerated rate of socioeconomic development on local aspirations Weakened as a social community by such social and migration patterns, would account for a con- decapitation, a minority subjected to this process siderable decline in the size of the Slovenian may survive indefinitely, or as long as the rate of minority. Despite the reservations suggested out-migration is low and the birthrate is high above regarding its effectiveness in any and all enough to compensate, but only as a politically circumstances, it is also reasonable to assume and culturally unimportant and largely "non- that common forms of deliberate economic, modern" island in an alien sea. If, however, these social, and political discrimination by anti- last conditions are also alteredif the rate of out- minority and economically or politically more migration goes up and the rate of natural increase powerful members of the majority nationality goes down, creating a demographic equivalent to have increased the rate of decline. With all these 8/DIR-1-'78

FIGURE

DIE

factors in play, the shrinkage that is admitted in the Slovenes' own most reasonable estimates social pressures to assimilate described above. from 96-116,000 a century ago to 60-70,000 Even here, according to census and school statis- todayis quite credible, but in all probability the tics and with the exception of a few sparsely in- latter figure is still a considerable overestimation habitated townships in the mills and mountains of present numbers. What, then, of the far more immediately abutting on the Yugoslav frontier, dramatic decline recorded in official census many Slav peasants have apparently decided they results? Or the fantastic fluctuations in indi- are German or "Windisch" rather than Slovene vidual townships described above and in Figure and relatively few are registering their children for 1, which are even harder to explain? Even if we bilingual rather than exclusively German edu- discount these figures by a healthy margin on cation.6 grounds of confusion, ambiguity, and manipulation in census-taking and analysis, it will still Whether such apparently fickle linguistic and be true that in a relatively free and democratic hence national confessions are "real" or "a lie," society, where the levels of intimidation and falsi- a sincere aspiration or a matter of momentary fication of data that may explain similarly expediency in the minds of those who change dramatic statistical declines and fluctuations in their declaration or declare what is really their some other countries5 are simply not possible, a second language, the number of such declara- startlingly large number of Austrians have tions and their occurrence in all social classes apparently and by their own declarations clearly require further, supplementary explana- changed their nationality, many of them several tion. At least three additional factors seem to be times in their lives. Also worthy of notice is that involved. All of them concern cultural values and these changes have also occurred in almost purely individual and social psychology. The first two are rural districts, where the skimmed milk residual generalizable far beyond the Carinthian story, the minority is subjected to few of the economic and third is specific if not peculiar to it. DIR-1-'78/9

SPRACHEN IN DEN iHLUNGSERGEBNISSEN 1910 1971

STATISTZEHTRALAMT,

1. If a border community is not "nationally environs, generally agreed to have a Polish conscious," if it betrays the influence of both majority, passed to Czechoslovakia in the neighboring cultures, and (or) especially the two division of the Hapsburg Empire. Discussing the cultures are similar in at least some of their ensuing Czechoslovak-Polish dispute, Hungarian fundamental or highly valued characteristics, Foreign Minister Count Teleki is credited7 with then "nationality" may be a matter of relative the following anecdote: indifference for most or all members of that community. Other considerations and values I once asked a very prominent Czech polit- intervene, and nationality becomes an easily ician how many Poles there were in the dis- changeable personal attribute, a "dependent trict of Teschen. He said, "Perhaps 40,000, variable" in a very special and literal sense. perhaps 100,000." I said "How does it Pre-1914 Austrian Silesia, partly German astride happen that you give me such different the ethnic frontier between Czechs and Poles, figures just when the question seems to be of provides a case in point. The strategic Silesian momentous importance?" He replied, town of Teschen (Tsn, Cieszyn) and its "Well, the figures change. The peoples of 10/DIR-1-'78

certain villages are changing their nation- A term for this relationship that is widely used ality every week, according to their eco- in Carinthiaand much abused by the Heimat- nomic interests and sometimes the eco- dienstis "a community of destiny" (Schick- nomic interests of the mayor of the village." salsgemeinschaft) that has bound the Slovenes The Slavs of Macedonia provide another and Germans of the province for a thousand example. Speaking a variety of dialects generally years. For the Slovenes in this Gemeinschaft, viewed as transitional between those of Serbia to already in some ways culturally intermediate be- the north and of Bulgaria to the east and claimed tween South Slav and German worlds and as co-nationals by both, during the past century speaking local dialects that also betray the influ- they have identified themselves variously and ence of their German neighbors and overlords, often consecutively as nationally unspecified becoming German can be done with compara- Orthodox Christians, as Bulgarians, as Serbs, tively little difficulty, abandoning comparatively and now as Macedonians, a separate South Slav little cultural baggage in the process. The em- nation with a lively "national consciousness" of phasis here is on "comparatively," for it is still its own. not all that easy or without psychological effort For this German and Slovene, as members of two dif- and potentially serious consequences. minor factor ferent Indo-European linguistic and cultural reason this is probably a relatively two that follow. families, are of course not as similar as Czech reinforcing the and Polish (both Western Slav) or Serbian and 2. It is a commonly observed phenomenon Bulgarian (both South Slav). But cultures that (and common sense) that members of a linguistic, cohabited in one physical space under one polit- cultural, or ethnic minority who consider their ical roof for a millennium tend to exchange cus- language, culture, or ethnic characteristics in- toms, legends, outlooks, and values even when ferior to those of the majority are more prone to they remain distinct. This is reflected, for assimilate because of this. Psychologists and example, in the great similarity between social psychologists also tell us that such feelings Slovenian and Alpine Austrian folk music. More of inferiority are always widespread, perhaps suggestive is the remark, frequent among other even ubiquitous, in a minority that has been his- Yugoslavs, that "the Slovenes are our Germans." torically subordinated to its majority, as Carin- If this is in some degree true of Yugoslav Slo- thian Slovenes have been to Carinthian Ger- venes, it is a more accurate description of the mans a. In any case, all partiesSlovene nation- Slovenes of Carinthia, where the intermingling of alists, neutral observers, and German nation cultures and blood has been more intimate at alistsagree that a sense of cultural inferiority more levels. As Vizenz Rizzi pointed out more exists and is indeed widespread among the Carin- than a century ago, in a preface to his remarks on thian Slovenes. They also agree it is an important the assimilation process quoted earlier: factor, for some the most important factor, in the readiness of so many of them to assimilate, to ...the race of Slovenes [in Carinthia] ...is claim that they are German even without being separated by natural frontiers from its assimilated, or, if their sense of logic rebels racial fellows, it dwells on the banks of the against such a claim when they know that they Gail and the Drau and its closest contact is are not German, to opt for the label "Windisch." with the Germans. Specific characteristics must result from this isolation and this close 3. More specific to the Carinthian story than contact with the German element...two either of the above, and in this writer's opinion of small fragments of two larger nationalities particular importance, is the minority's tendency live peacefully together in a small space, to accept a particularly ingenious but in principle neither of them is capable of creating a easily rejectable thesis propagated by their Ger- specific and significant cultural lifestyle out man nationalist opponents. Ever since 1918 and of its own resources, the cultural impulses the creation of Yugoslavia, Slovene-speaking come to them from outside. Habit and Carinthians have in effect been told that to be natural frontiers direct them toward one Slovene is to be Yugoslav, not only as an ethnic another and mutual advantage strengthens fact (Yugoslav means South Slav and the Slo- the bonds. venes are one of the South Slav peoples) but as a DIR-1-'78/11

political aspiration, meaning irredentism. Ever intensive propaganda efforts to persuade Carin- since 1945 they have in effect been told that, thians that every census and other moment when since Slovene equals Yugoslav (as a political language or linguistic preference must be de- aspiration) and Yuglslavia is now a Communist- claredfor example the school strike of 1958 ruled state, to be Slovene is to wish to be Yugo- and the deregistration from bilingual classes that slav and under Communist rule. Ergo, if you do followed is a vote for or against Austria, "a new not wish to be counted as preferring Yugoslavia plebiscite" at which the choice made in 1920 to Austria and Communist dictatorship to must be reaffirmed, even against vascillating and Western democracy, do not be counted as a insufficiently German authorities.2 Slovene. Since language is the defining criterion of nationality, you must also not be counted as a More important, the German nationalist Slovene-speaker, which means declaring some- thesis, despite its obvious logical flaws when pre- thing else. as your "mothertongue," "language of sented as starkly as I have presented it, makes a communication," or whatever the census re- kind of sense in terms of ordinary understand- quires, even if it is in fact Slovene. ings of an ideology that so permeates the Carin- thian atmosphere that it is wittingly or un- Carinthia's Slovenes made their preference for wittingly absorbed by almost all who live there. Austria a matter of public record in the plebiscite This is the ideology of nationalism and the of 1920, when 60 percent of southern Carinthians nation-state, which holds that mankind is voted for the new republic with its capital in naturally divided into units called nations, of Vienna rather than for the new South Slav which Germans and Slovenes are two, and that kingdom with its capital in Belgrade. The per- the nation constitutes the only legitimate basis for centage of this largely conservative and devoutly the division of mankind into states. It follows Catholic community that preferred Austria was that every nation has a right to a state of its own, certainly not reduced when a Communist and and that all members of a given nation have a avowedly atheist regime came to power in Bel- right to be included in it. While difficult if not grade, while a democracy that explicitly dis- impossible to prove empirically, one suspects that avowed German nationalism and its crimes was in an atmosphere permeated by this belief, which established in Vienna and people dreamed "of a both Slovene and German nationalists have been new Austria that would take Switzerland as its propagating in this borderland for more than a model. ''9 Although it soon became clear that in century and which has taken on new, worldwide the minds of most Carinthians this was not a non- vigor in our time, many Carinthian Slovenes feel national state like Switzerland, but one in which in their bones (even then they have never thought to be Carinthian and Austrian was to speak and about it) that in wishing to be Austrian they have be German, for most of the province's non- somehow renounced a birthright, been untrue to Germans and for a variety of reasons that in- the Sloveneness in their identity, committed an cluded the unlikelihood of a real alternative, this un-Slovene act,.., in short, that they have already was still better than Yugoslavia.2 Carinthian in a way renounced their nationality. German nationalists, on the other hand, refused to believe that this is what most Carinthian Slo- At this point, some of the other factors pro- venes feel and continues to treat Slovene as moting assimilation that have been discussed in synonymous with irredentist. Some presumably this Report come into play and make the next do this because they believe their own thesis, step easier. Those censuses with their nine lin- others certainly because they see its usefulness as guistic variations and combinations, legitimizing a weapon of assimilation. But this does not a series of transitional linguistic and hence ethnic explain why it is so useful (i.e., why so many Slo- identities for people who are indeed in an inter- venes have also at least subconsciously accepted mediate position, are one of these. Here the con- the German nationalists' thesis, as their actions cept of a "Windisch" language and nationality is at census time and their attitudes at other times once again of particular importance. It provided seem to indicate.) a plausible answer to the question" "If I am not a Slovene because that means wishing to be a First of all, German nationalists have made Yugoslav and I do not, and if I am not a German 12/DIR-1-'78

because that is not my native language or the In Austria, as we have seen, not even the culture of my forefathers, what am I?" The degree of largely "tolerating protection" required answer offered was that both Slovenian and by the State Treaty has been consistently or con- "Windisch" are Slav languages or dialects and scientiously provided. The reasons, at least since closely related ones, but that Slovenian is the the "storming of the town limits signs" in 1972 language developed by Slovenian nationalists in (see Part II), center on political calculations by the past century, taught in Slovenian schools, the ruling Socialist Party and Federal Chancellor and spoken by "nationally conscious" (and by Bruno Kreisky, who have compromised their implication pro-Yugoslav) Carinthian Slavs, ideological and traditional sympathy for minori- while "Windisch" is spoken by "homeland ties out of fear they will otherwise lose their loving" (heimattreue)ones--two labels that be- electoral majority in Carinthia, where Socialism came a clich in Carinthia. is atypically German nationalist but which is the only province outside Vienna in which a Socialist By the time "Windisch" began to go out of majority is traditional, and that losing in Carin- fashion it had done its job, in part because it had thia will mean losing in Austria. These are ex- been identified with Austrian patriotism and in pedient and possibly miscalculated reasons, part precisely because it had been defined as a easily transcendable by an act of fairly minor Slovene-German mixed language and mixed political courage. Even then, however, it seems people (Mischsprache and Mischvolk): the certain that "natural" socioeconomic incentives plausibility of a change of identity from to assimilate, combined with the social psycho- "Windisch" to German is far greater than that of logical pressures just described, would lead to the a change from Slovene to German. The disappearance of the Carinthian Slovenes within "Windisch" became "German," as German the next few generations. Those who recognize nationalists had intended and as a careful this and regret it, a group including many analysis of statistical trends in the censuses of German Austrians as well as "nationally con- 1961 and 1971 confirms, and sometimes they scious" Carinthian Slovenes, advocate positive as have undoubtedly become Germans without the well as passive measures to encourage the qualifying doubt symbolized by quotation marks. minority's survival and deveropment. But would such additional measures do more than It would be different if Austrian "state con- merely slow the process of assimilation? sciousness" (Staatsbewusstsein) had developed, as the creators of the Second Republic intended, It would at least mean that the virtues of cul- into a viable, non-national substitute for German tural heterogeneity and majority generosity and national consciousness as a principle of legiti- the vices of exclusive, intolerant nationalism had macy (or illegitimacy!) for the Austrian state and been recognized and that political conclusions an Austrian identity. There would then be no had been drawn. In these circumstances one is sense of a contradiction between being Slovene entitled to ask even those who believe that and being Austrian. But in the minds of most Austria should ideally become a consistently Austrians their country is at most what Sehuseh- German nation-state: why not do all that ,the nigg vainly tried to make his countrymen believe State Treaty requires and much more besides? it was in the last desperate years before the Anschluss: the "second" and "better" German Present Austrian policy and practice, with the state. In such a state one may on democratic and exception of some concessions and despite the humanitarian grounds be prepared to offer goodwill and efforts of many Austrians, is not national minorities what specialists call "toler- doing this. It seems to be based instead on the ating protection," such as public as well as pri- dictum recently pronounced to a visiting English vate language rights, minority schools where scholar by a prominent Carinthian member of desired, and freedom to organize an autonomous the minority Liberal Party: "Let the cat die cultural life, but one is disinclined to adopt quickly. '':a In my experience, cats prefer to die measures that would actively rather than in their own time and way, and alone. passively encourage their survival and develop- (May 1978) ment as "strangers in the homeland." [Photographs by Fototanjug, Belgrade] DIR-1-'78/13

NOTES

1. Over the same century the population of Klagenfurt 7. Klemeni, in Osolnik (1977), p. 127. For the legislation grew by 290 percent, that of Villach by 473 percent, and referred to here, see Part II of this series. that of Spittal/Drau by 423.1 percent. All are outside but draw population from the bilingual area, where the 8. e.g., in a memorandum of complaint submitted by the smaller towns grew much more slowly {e.g., Ferlach by two Carinthian Slovene organizations after the 1961 72.5 % and Vfikermarkt by 75.2%). Cf. Ludwig Flasch- census {"Denkschrift des Rates der Kirntner Slowenen berger, "Bevlkerungsentwicklung in Stdklirnten," in und des Zentralverbandes slowenischer Organisationen Wolfgang Brunbauer {ed.), Raumplanungsgesprach in Kirnten"}. Sadkrnten {Vienna, Se.ptember 1977), pp. 47ff. and see below, Note 9. 9. Several contributions to Brunbauer (ed.), Raum- planungsgesprich Siidklrnten (see Note 1), document 2. Figures for 1880-1910 and 1934 from the Austrian both the relative social and economic backwardness of Statistical Office's published results of the 1951 census {p. southern Carinthia as a whole and the additional com- 35), cited with the figures for 1923, 1939, and 1951 {given parative socioeconomic disadvantages suffered by as 23,839) in Josef Tischler, D/e Sprachenfrage in southern Carinthian Slovenes vis-a-vis their German Ktlrnten vor 100 Jahren und Heute {Klagenfurt, n.d. neighbors. Although the 14 authors of this volume are all [1957], p. 62. I have chosen the figures here for 1951, German-Austrian scholars, their sympathies are in- 1961, and 1971 as the variants apparently most tensely pro-minority. So much so that this is less a case acceptable to the present Austrian government, since study in spatial planning, which it pretends to be, than they are reproduced in a quasi-official publication re- another if different and unusually useful contribution to cently issued by the Federal Chancellor's Office {D/e the polemical literature concerned with Austria's rechtliche Stellung der Volksgruppen in Oesterreich- minority problem. Eine Dokumentation [Vienna, Bundeskanzleramt 1977], p. 9). The figure of 96-116,000 Slovenes in 1946 is from 10. Many examples, ranging from "suggestions" made by Fran Zwitter, "The Slovenes and the Habsburg employers, schoolteachers and administrators, and Monarchy," in the Austrian History Yearbook, III, 2 officials, on the firing or nonemployability of those (1967), p. 159; 60-70,000 for the present Slovenian popu- known to have Slovenian nationalist {or sometimes lation in Carinthia can be found in many minority and pro- merely Slovenian) sympathies, to actual physical intimi- minority sources and was the figure most frequently dation, can be found throughout both the polemical and cited by minority leaders in my interviews in Klagenfurt in scholarly literature on the minority problem. Specific 1960 and 1976. incidents and the general atmosphere were dramatized for a broader Austrian public in a controversial television 3. "Wie viele Slowenen gibt es in Kiirnten wirklich?" in special produced by Trautl Brandstaller, entitled Fremde Das gemeinsame Kirnten/Skupna KorOka, nr. 3 in der Heimat {Strangers in the Homeland), and broad- (Klagenfurt, 1975), pp. 50ff. Fig. 2 in this Report originally cast on September 18, 1975. Several prominent appeared as an appendix to Waldstein's article. The Carinthian politicians as well as most viewers who apparently changeable linguistic (and hence ethnic?) phoned the station condemned the production as an anti- preferences of the people of Mieger/Medgorje and other Austrian and scandalous misrepresentation; the pro- southern Carinthian townships are also described in ducer was castigated by the Carinthian media, but she Bogdan Osolnik (ed.), Minority Problems in Yugoslav was also awarded the prestigious Karl Renner Prize of Austrian Relations (Belgrade, 1977), pp. 134ff, based in 1976 for outstanding investigative journalism, "especially turn on the Klemenig studies cited in Note 5 below. about right extremist tendencies and the Slovene question." 4. Cf. Waldstein's article, cited above, p. 54. 11. This apparently accounts for the survival of the 5. For an extremely detailed analysis of the 1951 census Croats of the Burgenland, who seem to have remained results by a prominent Slovenian (Yugoslav) geographer, virtually constant in numbers, despite isolation from see Vladimir Klemen(!i(, "Kritini pretres avstrijskega their motherland and intense Hungarian efforts to popisa 1951 z ozirom na jezikovno strukturo na Magyarize them after 1867, from the sixteenth century Koroskem," in Rasprave in gradivo {Ljubljana), 1960, n. until after World War II, when the "skimmed milk 2, pp. 101-182, recapitulated with briefer critical remarks process" defined in the following paragraph began to on the 1961 and 1971 censuses by the same author, accelerate. "Kritika uradnih avstrijskih popisov prebivalstva v letih 1951, 1961, in 1971 glede na slovensko manjino in slo- 12. As quoted by Erich Nussbaumer, "Das gemeinsame vengdino kot obevalni jezik," ibid., 1976, combined nos. Kirnten," {Dokumente aus der Ktrntner Geistes- 7-8, pp. 101-124, and more briefly in Osolnik {1977), pp. geschichte) in Das gemeinsame Krnten/Skupna Koroka, 123-140. no. 2 {1975), p. 7ff. 6. The origins of the term and its evolution into a pseudo- 13. Ludwig Weiss, "Betrachtungen zur Situation der ethnic category are described in Part I Of this series. Kirntner Slowenen," ibid., p. 1-9. 14/DIR-1'-78

14. Flaschberger, in Brunbauer et al. (1977), p. 51, from 20. One possibly misleading indication of the strength of which the demographic statistics cited in this paragraph pro-Yugoslav sentiment among Carinthian Slovenes in are taken (see also Note I above). the first years of the Communist regime there is in the 2,077 votes cast in provincial elections in 1949 for a party 15. One contemporary European example is provided by called the Democratic Front of the Working People, the the "Macedonian" minority in Bulgarian (Pirin) Mace- political successor of the pro-Communist wing of the donia, whose numbers as recorded in Bulgarian censuses Carinthian Slovene Partisan movement of World War II. have gone up and down with the vicissitudes of postwar In the same elections the political party formed out of the Bulgarian-Yugoslav relations. Officially declared to com- Catholic wing of the Slovene Partisans received 4,617 prise 70 percent of the district's population in 1946 and to votes, a total poll by the two Slovene parties of 6,694. be nonexistent in 1949, Pirin "Macedonians" numbered 178,862, or 63.6 percent of the district total in the census 21. Thus Viktor Miltschinsky, grand old man and ideo- of 1956 but only 8,750 in that of 1965. logue of the Heimatdienst, described the school campaign of 1958: 16. In the 1970s the number of primary school children registered for bilingual instruction throughout the region The high number of deregistrations was...inter- in which schools are legally obliged to offer it {see Part II preted and celebrated as a new plebiscite, except of this series) had stabilized at around 14 percent of all that.., the people's leadership (that is, the govern- those enrolled. In 1972-73 more than 50 percent were ment, the national assembly, the provincial govern- registered for bilingual instruction in only 13 out of then ment, the provincial assembly) took no part in it 42 such school districts in the region, and all of these 13 and the deregistration had to be fought through are so sparsely inhabited that only one of them was against their inclinations (Ktrnten wehrt sich scheduled to retain its own primary school after a con- [Klagenfurt, 1962], p. 51). solidation designed to eliminate small rural schools {with less than 100 pupils). See D/e Slovenen in Ktrnten/Slo- 22. One of the conclusions implicit in Hanns Haas and venvi na Korokem (Klagenfurt, a publication of the two Karl Stuhlpfarrer, Oesterreich und seine Slowenen minority organizations, n.d.), pp. 17ff and map 8. {Vienna, 1977}, the latest and one of the most balanced of the sympa.thetic pro-minority studies by {German) 17. By W. Kolarz in his Myths and Realities in Eastern Austrians that have appeared in recent years. Europe. 23. As told to me by the visitor, Malcolm Anderson of 18. A point made with specific reference to Carinthia by Warwick University. Austrian social psychologist Wilfried Daim, "Die Problematik der Vers(ihnung der Volksgruppen in Kitrnten," in Das gemeinsame Ktrnten/Skupna Korotka, no. 4 {Klagenfurt, 1976), pp. 37-52.

19. Andreas Moritsch {A Carinthian Slovene, born 1936, and now Assistant Professor of history at Vienna Univer- s..ity), "Gedanken eines zweisprachigen Siidkitrntner zum Osterreichischen Staatsbewusstsein," in Das gemeinsame Karnten/Skupna Koroka, no. 3 (1975), p. 68.

[This Report concludes the three-part series begun in1977].