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The Carinthian Slovene Question in the Light of Recent German Austrian Scholarship∗

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Thomas M. Barker
Thomas M. Barker*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Albany
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Extract

Carinthia's nationality struggle has raged more or less unabated since 1848. Until roughly two decades ago there was a relative dearth of secondary materials that one might regard as scholarly in any sense of the word. Polemics—admittedly of some value as a special kind of source material—predominated. Indeed emotional overtones still creep into serious studies. On balance, however, recent work in both Yugoslavia and Austria may be characterized as objective, solid, and methodologically innovative. While articles and books published in the former country are no less significant than those emanating from the latter, only titles that have appeared in German can be reviewed here.

Type
Symposium (The Carinthian Slovenes)
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , FALL 1979 , pp. 125 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the Study of Nationalities, 1979 

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References

Notes

1. Cf. Ogris, Alfred, “Aus der Arbeit der Historiker und Archivare Kärntens.” Scrinum 15 (1976): 17–13, for the apparently prevailing attitude in the local establishment. Neumann's proposed essay, “Rückblicke und Ausblicke zur Minderheitsfrage,” was inexplicably dropped, after having been listed in the table of contents, from the Heimatdienst's booklet, Kärnten: eine Information (Klagenfurt: Kärntner Landmannschaft, 1974). (The Heimatdienst is a coordinating body for a congeries of self-described “homeland-lyalist” (heimattreu) societies and clubs of unmistakably völkisch character).Google Scholar

2. Neumann, Wilhelm, Abwehrkampf und Volksabstimmung in Kärnten: 1918–1920; Legenden und Tatsachen (Klagenfurt: Kärntner Landesarchiv, 1970). Neumann manages to refute the claims that there was strong Italian influence in the decision to hold a plebiscite and that Karl Renner favored a frontier along the Drau (Drava).Google Scholar

3. This term, like heimattreu, is a good example of the sociopsychological “coding” principle that is so evident in what passes for political discourse in Carinthia. That is to say, it is the symbol for a certain sequence of mental images.Google Scholar

4. Kromer, Claudia, Die Vereinigten Staaten und die Frage Kärnten, 1918–1920 (Klagenfurt: Geschichtsverein für Kärnten, 1970). The auspices under which the book appeared suggest that its publication was pushed by Neumann.Google Scholar

5. Veiter, Theodor, Das Recht der Volksgruppen und Sprachminderheiten in Österreich (Vienna: Braumuller, 1970).Google Scholar

6. Veiter, Theodor, “Wege zu einem modernen Volksgruppenrecht,” Politik und Zeitgeschichte (Beilage of periodical Das Parlament [Bonn], May 5, 1975), pp. 29–37.Google Scholar

7. Veiter's earlier, more discriminating definition is not ethnographic in character but legal. He speaks of a sum of citizens, each of whom possesses certain minority rights that can only be implemented collectively, more specifically as part of an indefinite large number of demands for recognition. There should be neither a numerical nor a territorial limitation. (This view contrasts with interwar practice). Veiter also singles out certain vagaries in French and English usage. Both these languages make the “national minority” synonymous with the—in his opinion—more appropriate term “ethnic group,” yet simultaneously extend it to immigrant elements, more rightly considered—he says—“linguistic minorities.” However he concedes that his legally conceived national minority can in fact overlap with the “ethnic group.” The former may also be divided, in the most stringent of judicial contexts, into “genuine” and “non genuine” varieties. The second sub type would, for example, cover immigrants. Still another interesting distinction that Veiter endeavors to make is that between “borderland” and “inland” minorities. Das Recht der Volksgruppen, pp. 63–87, passim.Google Scholar

8. Veiter, , “Wege zu einem modernen Volksgruppenrecht,” pp. 31–32.Google Scholar

9. Veiter does not make it sufficiently clear in Das Volksgruppenrecht, as he does in “Wege” and elsewhere, that “linguistic minority” is a broader concept, to which “ethnic group” is logically subordinate.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., pp. 33–34. Veiter would have all persons, regardless of their own wishes, study the literary variety of their native speech.Google Scholar

11. Das Recht der Volksgruppen, pp. 89–90.Google Scholar

12. Haas, Hanns, Stuhlpfarrer, Karl, Österreich und seine Slowenen (Vienna: Locker und Wogenstein, 1977).Google Scholar

13. Haas, Hanns, “Kärntner Slowenen—Geschichte als politische Information,” Zeitgeschichte, 3 (1975): 23–25.Google Scholar

14. Kardelj, Edvard, Die Vierteilung: nationale Frage der Slowenen (Vienna, Frankfurt and Zürich: Europa Verlag, 1971).Google Scholar

15. Haas, Hanns, “Ansätze zu einer Strukturanalyse minderheitenfeindlicher Politik,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 1 (1977): 150–153.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 149. See also Österreich und seine Slowenen, pp. 9–12. For an historiographical discussion of Herrschaft, see Thomas M. Barker, “Armed Service and Nobility in the Holy Roman Empire: General Aspects and Habsburg Particulars,” Armed Forces and Society, 4 (1977-78): 456.Google Scholar

17. Österreich und seine Slowenen, pp. 21.Google Scholar

18. Neumann, Wilhelm, Abwehrkampf …, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

19. Österreich und seine Slowenen, pp. 25–29.Google Scholar

20. The reference is to a group under the leadership of Lt. Col. Sherman Miles and Lt. Leroy King. An offshoot of Archibald Cary Coolidge's Viennese expedition, it toured Carinthia in late January 1919 in connection with an attempt to stop the miniature border war between Ljubljana and Klagenfurt (i.e., the Abwehrkampf) and produced a report on its impressions of conditions there. Except for Robert Kerner, the only member of the mission conversant with Slavic languages, the junketeers supported the Carinthian German demand that the province remain undivided.Google Scholar

21. Captain Albert Peter-Pirkham, an ex-Imperial-and-Royal naval officer, was a Carinthian German who served as a kind of guide-factotum for the Miles Mission.Google Scholar

22. These are my conclusions in Chapter Four of The Slovene Minority of Carinthia.Google Scholar

23. Österreich und seine Slowenen, 39.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., 40.Google Scholar

25. This is the traditional argument of the German nationalist camp which has always enjoyed the advantage of being able to exert strong pressure on Slovene-speaking voters, whether by indirect psychological or direct economic means.Google Scholar

26. Österreich und seine Slowenen, 92.Google Scholar

27. Many readers will doubtlessly be put off by the mechanistic patness of Haas' outlook and the easily gained impression that he is arguing that powerful capitalists consciously and ruthlessly invent social machinery for the control and exploitation of others, i.e., systematically plan what they are doing. Although many historical analyses based upon Marxian thought (if only in part) leave room for the latter notion to arise, it does not follow perforce that the writers themselves would insist upon it. A similar problem is an ostensible unwillingness of such persons to grant the “bourgeoisie” any social utility at all (e.g., its function in the distribution of goods and the provision of economically indispensable services).Google Scholar

28. Holzinger, Lutz, “Zur politischen Ökonomie der Kärntner Urangst,” Neues Forum, 228 (December, 1972): 31–32.Google Scholar

29. Traar, Kurt, “Der Deutschnationalismus in Kärnten,” Kärnten, ein Alarmzeichen (Vienna: Österreichische Widerstandsbewegung, 1974), pp. 54–63.Google Scholar

30. Siegert, Michael, “Die Randdeutschen,” Neues Forum, 35–37.Google Scholar

31. Reiterer, Albert, “Zur ökonomischen Situation der slowenischen Minderheit im gemischtsprachigen Gebiet Kärntens,” Raumplanungsgesprach Südkärnten (Vienna: Slowenisches wissenschaftliches Institut, 1977), pp. 114–117. Reiterer's application of Gramsci's concepts is based upon the latter's Il Risorgimento i gli intelletuali (Rome: Editori riuniti, 1972), i.e., excerpts from the so-called Prison Notebooks (English ed., New York, International Publishers, 1971).Google Scholar

32. Stuhlpfarrer, Karl, “Germanisierung in Kärnten”, Neues Forum, 228: 38.Google Scholar

33. Daim, Wilfried, “Psychologie von Minorität und Majoritat und Majorität,” vol. 4, Das gemeinsame Kärnten—Skupna Koroška (Klagenfurt [Celovec]: Deutsch-slowenischer Koordinationsausschuss des Diözesanrates der Diözese Gurk, 1974). (The sociolinguistic approach is considered in Chapter Eight of Barker, The Slovene Minority of Carinthia.)Google Scholar

34. Daim, , “Psychologie,” pp. 37–46.Google Scholar