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Denial of Ethnic Identity: The Political Manipulation of Beliefs about Language in Slovene Minority Areas of Austria and Hungary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Tom Priestly*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Studies, University of Alberta

Extract

A significant factor in the history—and one of the bones of contention in the historiography—of the Slovene minority in the Austrian province of Carinthia is what is known as the Windischentheorie. This pseudoacademic “theory“ was developed, on the basis of popular beliefs, during the interwar years and promulgated by those with fascist, later Nazi, sympathies and was an apparently very effective weapon in the Germanization process. The Windischentheorie changed over time; according to what may be called its “canonical” version, the language of the Carinthian Slovenes was quite different from Standard Slovene and the Carinthian Slovenes themselves were therefore ethnically distinct from Slovenes in Slovenia. Other versions of the “theory” are described below. The meaning of the word Windisch, which had been used by German speakers to mean “Slav” for many centuries, was thereby changed radically and with important political effect.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1996

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References

My research in Carinthia was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by the University of Alberta. I wish to express my appreciation for their help to Carole Rogel, Vilko Novak, Marc Greenberg, Jan Wirrer, and Marija Kozar-Mukič, and especially to Andreas Moritsch for his advice and to Albina Necak-Liik who drew the parallels between Carinthia and Porabje-Prekmurje to my attention. The translations from Slovene, German, and French are my own; those from Hungarian are by John Cox (Wheeling Jesuit College) and Oona Schreiner (University of Alberta), to whom I extend my gratitude.

1. The accumulation of beliefs about the ethnic identity of members of the minority in Carinthia and about the language varieties spoken by them have traditionally been labeled in this way. The term theory is used here only in this sense; it is not suggested that this is a hypothesis which may be proved.

2. As did the Slovene minority in Italy; the similarities to and differences from the politico-linguistic treatment of this minority are of great interest but are not dealt with here.

3. Schüddekopf, Otto-Ernst, Revolutions of Our Time: Fascism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1973), 68 Google Scholar; Linz, Juan J., “Some Notes Toward a Comparative Study of Fascism in Sociological Historical Perspective,” in Laqueur, Walter, ed., Fascism: A Reader's Guide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 1213 Google Scholar; Simon, Walter B., Österreich 1918-1938: Ideologien und Politik (Vienna: Böhlau, 1984), 20.Google Scholar On nationalism, this study has profited from Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism (New York: Harper, 1971); Seton-Watson, Hugh, Nations and States (London: Methuen, 1977)Google Scholar; and Edwards, John, Language, Society and Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 1016, 37-46.Google Scholar

4. The parallel between the two “theories” has rarely been drawn; the earliest published suggestion is apparently by M. Slavič, “Prekmurske meje v diplomaciji,” in Vilko Novak, ed., Slovenska krajina: Zbornik ob petnajsetletnici osvobojenja (Beltinci: Konzorcij, 1935), 83-107.

5. For the postwar survival of these views, see Haas, Hanns and Stuhlpfarrer, Karl, Österreich und seine Slowenen (Vienna: Löcker and Wögenstein, 1977), 100114 Google Scholar; and Menz, Florian, Lalouschek, Johanna, and Dressier, Wolfgang U., “Der Kampf geht weiter“: Der publizistische Abwehrkampf in Kärntner Zeitungen seit 1918 (Klagenfurt: Drava, 1989)Google Scholar; for their recent relevance, see Fischer, Gero, Das Slowenische in Kdrnten: Eine Studie zur Sprachenpolitik (Klagenfurt: Slowenische Informationscenter, 1980)Google Scholar; and Gstettner, PeterHelle Augen, lange Köpfe und deutsches Blut: Über Kontinuität und Wiederbelebung völkischer Ideologic im Kärntner Sprachenkampf,” in Wodak, R. and Menz, F., eds., Sprache in der Politik—Politik in der Sprache: Analysen zum öffentlichen Sprachgebrauch (Klagenfurt: Drava, 1990).Google Scholar The continuing effects of these views on minority attitudes is discussed in Ludwig Flaschberger and Albert F. Reiterer, Der tdgliche Abwehrkampf: Kärntens Slowenen (Vienna: Braumüller, 1980); and Österreichische Rektorenkonferenz, Bericht der Arbeitsgruppe “Lage und Perspektiven der Volksgruppen in Österreich” (Vienna: Böhlau, 1989), 129-38. The view that the Windische are ethnically non-Slovene found acceptance among scholars (many of them much respected) outside the immediate area: thus Harald Haarmann, Soziologie und Politik der Sprachen Europas (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1975), 52; Stephens, Meic, Linguistic Minorities in Western Europe (Llandyssul: Comer Press, 1976), 8 Google Scholar; and Héraud, Guy, “Notion de minorité linguistique” in Minorites linguistiques et interventions. Essai de typologie, Compte rendu du Colloque sur les minorités linguistiques tenu à l'université Laval du 15 au 18 avril 1977 (Québec: Les presses de l'université Laval, 1978), 32.Google Scholar One other strange echo must be mentioned also: the theory that the Slovenes are descendants of the Veneti, who lived in what is now northern Italy from the sixth to the fourth centuries B.C.: see Jožef Šavli and Matej Bor, Unsere Vorfahren die Veneter (Vienna: Editiones Veneti, 1988); and with reference to the linguistic “proof” of this theory, Rado L. Lencek, “The Linguistic Premises of Matej Bor's Slovene-Venetic Theory,” Slovene Studies 12, no. 1 (1990): 75-86.

6. Two interesting parallels outside this area: the official “Entwelschung” policies in Alsace/Elsaß (Lothar Kettenacker, Nationalsozialistische Volkstumspolitik im Elsaβ [Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1973], 163-73) and the inconsistencies toward Low German (Jan Winer, “Niederdeutsch im Nationalsozialismus,“ Jahrbuch des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung 110 [1987]: 24-58).

7. On politics and language in general, see O'Barr, W. M. and O'Barr, J. F., eds. Language and Politics (The Hague: Mouton, 1976);Google Scholar O'Barr, W. M., “Asking the Right Questions about Language and Power,” in Kramarae, C., Schulz, M., and O'Barr, W. M., eds., Language and Power (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984).Google Scholar For applications to fascist Germany, see Klein, Gabriella, “Tendenzen der Sprachpolitik des italienischen Faschismus und des Nationalsozialismus in Deutschland,” Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 3, no. 1 (1984): 100113.Google Scholar Bochman, KlausPour une étude comparée de la glottopolitique des fascismes,” in Winther, A., ed., Problèmes de Glottopolitique: Symposium International Mont-Saint-Aignan, 20-23 septembre 1984 [Rouen: Publications de l'Université de Rouen, 1985], 119)Google Scholar states that the field of political linguistics under fascism is relatively little studied; but the articles in Konrad Ehlich, ed., Sprache im Faschismus (Frankfürt: Suhrkamp, 1989) disprove this. Most of the relevant work does, however, treat fascist linguistic policies in areas other than that of minority groups and their languages. Winer's work (see Jan Wirrer, ‘“Die Rassenseele ist des Volkes Sprache': Sprache, Standarddeutsch, Niederdeutsch—Zum Sprachbegriff in der Diskussion um das Niederdeutsche wahrend der nationalsozialistischen Diktatur,” in K. Dohnke, N. Hopster, and J. Wirrer, eds., Niederdeutsch im Nationalsozialismus [Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1994]) is an exception; but he treats a linguistic situation (two varieties of one language) that differs from the developments described here. These involve, inter alia, a facet of linguistic intervention, the deliberate imposition of new meanings on words, made famous by George Orwell in 1984; this phenomenon has been well documented for the Nazi period in Germany: Cornelia Berning (Vom ‘Abstimmungsnachweis’ zum ‘Zuchtwarl': Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1964]) provides a long list of vocabulary, both neologisms and old words with new meanings. See also Klemperer, Viktor, LTI. Lingua tertii imperiae: Aus dem Notizbuch eines Philologen (Frankfürt: Roderberg, 1982).Google Scholar A summary of what is most pertinent to this study was written by Michael Clyne, “Language and Racism,” in Andrew Markus and Radha Rasmussen, eds., Prejudice in the Public Arena: Racism (Clayton: Centre for Migrant and Intercultural Studies, 1987).

8. See, e.g. Royce, A. P., Ethnic Identity: Strategies of Diversity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Edwards, Language, 5-10; Paulston, Christina B., Linguistic Minorities in Multilingual Settings (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1994), 2540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A very thorough exposition of definitions of “ethnicity” is in Joshua Fishman's, “Language and Ethnicity,” in Joshua A. Fishman, Language and Ethnicity in Minority Sociolinguistic Perspective (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1989), see esp. notes 2, 3.

9. Héraud, “Notion de minorite linguistique.“

10. Tajfel, Henri, The Social Psychology of Minorities (London: Minority Rights Group, 1978), 3.Google Scholar

11. Most of the extensive literature on the Windischentheorie in Carinthia tends to be polemical; there is much of value in it, nonetheless. The major study is Lojze Ude, Teorija o vindišarjih“Windische” (Klagenfurt: Slovenska prosvetna zveza, 1956); reprinted in Lojze Ude, Koroško vprašanje (Ljubljana: Državna zalozba Slovenije, 1976). Useful perspectives are offered by general histories, e.g., Haas and Stuhlpfarrer, Österreich und seine Slowenen; Barker, Thomas, The Slovene Minority of Carinthia (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984)Google Scholar; and Inzko, Valentin et al., Zgodovina koroških Slovencev od leta 1918 do danes z upoštevanjem vseslovenske zgodovine (Klagenfurt: Druzba sv. Mohorja, 1985)Google Scholar; and by specialized studies such as Fran Zwitter, “Zgodovinski razvoj prebivalstva na Koroškem in njegove socialne osnove,” in Erik Prunč and Gustav Malle, eds., Koroški kulturni dnevi: Zbornik predavanj (Maribor: Obzorja, 1973); Fischer, Das Slowenische. Of particular help have been Martin Fritzl, “ … für Volk und Reich und deutsche Kullur“: Die ‘Kärntner Wissenschaft’ im Dienste des Nationalismus (Klagenfurt: Drava, 1992); and Moritsch, Andreas, “Das Windische—eine nationale Hilfsideologie,” to appear in Moritsch, A. and Domej, T., eds., Problemfelder der Geschichte und Ceschichtsschreibung der Kärntner Slovenen (Klagenfurt: Mohorjeva, 1995), 1531.Google Scholar I owe a great deal to these scholars, as I do to many others who have contributed to the voluminous literature on the Slovene minority in Carinthia.

12. Kokolj, Miroslav and Horvat, Bela, Prekmursko šolstvo od začetka reformacije do zloma nacizma (Murska Sobota: Pomurska založba, 1977)Google Scholar; Mukič, Francek and Kozar, Marija, Slovensko Porabje (Celje: Mohorjeva druzba, 1982)Google Scholar; Kokolj, Miroslav, Prekmurski Slovenci (Murska Sobota: Pomurska zalozba, 1984)Google Scholar; Kozar-Mukič, Marija, Slovensko Porabje (Ljubljana: Znanstveni inštitut Filozofske fakulteta Univerze v Ljubljani, 1984).Google Scholar

13. Endre Angyal, “A vend kérdes,” Dunántúli Tudományos Gyüjtemény 120, Series Historica 69 (1972): 269-91.

14. See Edwards, Language; Howard Giles and Nikolas Coupland, Language: Contexts and Consequences (Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole, 1991), 94-126; Gudykunst, William B. and Schmidt, Karen L., “Language and Ethnic Identity: An Overview and Prologue,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 6 (1987): 157-70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Halliday, M. A. K., Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning (London: Arnold, 1978), 183 Google Scholar (“The relation of language to the social system is not simply one of expression, but more of a complex natural dialectic in which language actively symbolizes the social system, thus creating as well as being created by it“); LePage, R. B. and Tabouret-Keller, Andre, Acts of Identity: Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 45 Google Scholar (“Groups or communities and the linguistic attributes of such groups have no existential locus other than in the minds of individuals, and … such groups or communities inhere only in the way individuals behave towards each other… . [In addition], linguistic terms are not just attributes of groups or communities, they are themselves the means by which individuals both identify themselves and identify themselves with others“).

15. Bolinger, Dwight, Language, The Loaded Weapon: The Use and Abuse of Language Today (London: Longmans, 1980)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 6 (“Stigma, Status, and Standard”, 44- 57); Wolfson, Nessa and Manes, Joan, Language of Inequality (Berlin: Mouton, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grillo, Ralph, Dominant Languages: Language Hierarchy in Britain and France (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Grillo, R., “Anthropology, Language, Politics,” in Grillo, R., ed., Social Anthropology and the Politics of Language (London: Routledge, 1989), 124 Google Scholar; Fairclough, Norman, Language and Power (London: Longmans, 1989), esp. 4749.Google Scholar

16. Edwards, Language, 91-96; Dorian, Nancy, ed., Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. On boundaries, see Edwards, Language, 7-8; Joan Rubin, “Language and Politics from a Sociolinguistic Point of View,” and William M. O'Barr, “Boundaries, Strategies and Power Relations: Political Anthropology and Language,” both in O'Barr and O'Barr, Language and Politics, 389-404 and 413-14; and Banks, Stephen P., “Achieving ‘Unmarkedness’ in Organizational Discourse: A Praxis Perspective on Ethnolinguistic Identity,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 6 (1987): 171-89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also note 105. The cross-boundary shifts can be usefully explained by viewing ethnicity as “a matter of belief” (Edwards, Language, 8) and ethnolinguistic groups as “imagined communities” (Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. [London: Verso, 1991], 5-6), the boundaries of which are manifested in and symbolized by the language varieties involved. Moreover, integral to this process of “imagination” is the enormous importance of attitudes to linguistic and other markers of group membership, see Baker, Colin, Attitudes and Language (Clexedon: Multilingual Matters, 1992)Google Scholar; Fishman, Joshua, “Social Theory and Ethnography: Language and Ethnicity in Eastern Europe,” in Sugar, Peter F., ed., Ethnic Diversity and Conflict in Eastern Europe (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 1980), 99 Google Scholar (“To understand language and ethnicity in Eastern Europe it is necessary to get into the experience itself“).

18. Place-names in bilingual areas are given in German or Hungarian first and Slovene second.

19. The estimates of populations based upon language competence given here, as elsewhere, must be taken with many grains of salt: it is seldom clear whether census reports represent the numbers of those (a) who can understand the language concerned, or (b) who also speak that language at home, or (c) who also speak that language in public; it is an unfortunate fact of minority language life that statistics (a), (b) and (c) often differ dramatically. When it is clear which statistic is meant, the figures may still not be reliable because respondents may (for economic or psychosocial reasons) prefer not to, or even be too afraid to, respond truthfully. For some of these considerations, see Vries, John de, “On Coming to Our Census: A Layman's Guide to Demolinguistics,” in Gorter, Durk et al., eds., International Conference on Minority Languages, II (Clevedon, Eng.: Multilingual Matters, 1990).Google Scholar

20. Important elements in the history of the Windischentheorie must thus be omitted, e.g., the arguments made by the Austrian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference about southern Styria and its purportedly “Windisch” inhabitants. See also Cvirn, Janez, Boj za Celje: Politična orientacija celjskega nemštva 1861-1907 (Ljubljana: Zveza zgodovinskih društev Slovencev, 1988)Google Scholar; and Cvirn, , “Celjsko nemštvo in problem nacionalne identite,” Zgodovinski časopis 46 (1992): 451-55.Google Scholar

21. Mukič and Kozar, Slovensko Porabje, 77.

22. Both quotations from Fishman, Joshua, Language and Nationalism: Two Integrative Essays (Rowley: Newbury House, 1972), 19 Google Scholar; the first adapted slightly to fit the Carinthian context.

23. Smith, Anthony, The Ethnic Revival (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 4546 Google Scholar; compare his phrase “full-blown Romantic theory of the national ‘soul’ expressing itself in purity of language,” Theories of Nationalism, 23. “By its very nature language is the quintessential symbol [of ethnicity],” Fishman, “Language and Ethnicity,” 32; Anderson, Imagined Communities, 67-68. Edwards (Language, 23-27) has an excellent summary of Herder's and Fichte's views and how they were received. See also Barnard, F. M., Herder's Social and Political Thought: From Enlightenment to Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965)Google Scholar; and Grillo, Dominant Languages (“The argument could work two ways: the relevant population was barbarous and savage, and therefore so was their language; or the language was barbarous, and so were the people,” 174.). The assumption is not all pervasive: see LePage and Tabouret-Keller, Acts of Identity for counter examples.

24. The development of the importance of “language” and “race” in Germanophone attitudes toward “ethnicity” shows inevitable confusion. On the one hand, Léon Poliakov (The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, trans. Edmund Howard [New York: Basic Books, 1974], 7) is correct in stating: “It is therefore legitimate to consider the confusion between language and blood as a permanent feature of German history,” for even as late as 1939, for example, Johann Leo Weisgerber was equating Volk with Sprache in Deutsches Volk und deutsche Sprache (Frankfürt: Moritz Diesterweg, 1939). On the other hand, the problem posed by the presence of “undesirable” German speakers was enormous; hence the attempt to argue that Jews did not speak German properly; see Mosse, George L., Towards the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York: Fertig, 1978), 44, 94Google Scholar; Shipman, Pat, The Evolution of Racism: Human Differences and the Use and Abuse of Science (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 133.Google Scholar “The fact of the matter is that nationalism thinks in terms of historical destinies, while racism dreams of eternal contaminations…. Niggers are, thanks to the invisible tar-brush, forever niggers; Jews, the seed of Abraham, forever Jews, no matter what passports they carry or what languages they speak and read” (Anderson, Imagined Communities, 149).

25. As Yakov Malkiel (“A Linguist's View of the Standardization of a Dialect,” in Aldo Scaglione, ed., The Emergence of National Languages [Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1984], 53) expressed it: “Traditionally, among laymen and specialists alike, ‘dialect’ has referred to some regional ('provincial’) parlance, with the connotations of humility, uncouthness, and lack of sophistication almost inescapably attaching to it.” See also Fishman, Language and Nationalism, 15-20; Smith, Anthony, The Ethnic Revival (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Edwards, Language, 21. The theoretical confusion arising from the significance attached to “language” was acute where Low German (Plattdeutsch) was concerned, since its status as a “language” was in doubt; see Wirrer, “Die Rassenseele.“

26. Steinberg, J., “The Historian and the ‘Questione della lingua,'” 198-209, in Burke, P. and Porter, R., eds., The Social History of Language (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 204.Google Scholar

27. I.e., “Carinthians,” “Slovenes,” “Austrians.“

28. For one example of the growth and meaning of “ethnic allegiance,” see Robert G. Minnich, “Speaking Slovene—Being Slovene: Verbal Codes and Collective Selfimages: Some Correlations between Kanaiska dolina and Ziljska dolina,” Slovene Studies 10 (1988): 125-48. Given that the concept of “nation” did not begin to develop until the eighteenth century (Anderson, Imagined Communities, 11) and that this was at first a concept appreciated only by the upper classes, we cannot expect the “ordinary people” to have understood it much before the mid-nineteenth. Two of the chief functions of national standard languages became better understood and more influential during the nineteenth century too, namely, their unifying and differentiating functions. A national language, be this more established (as German) or less (as Slovene), symbolized both the central cohesion of the state and its difference from its neighbors (see EinarHaugen, “Dialect, Language, Nation,” American Anthropologist 68, no. 6 [1966]: 922-35), and these functions became especially marked when two such languages were in conflict—as they were in many parts of the Austrian empire, where minorities were developing their own “national languages.“

29. Bosmajian, Haig, The Language of Oppression (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1974), 1.Google Scholar

30. Its twentieth-century application to denote a group of Slavs with the meaning “non-Slavič” is, in view of its historical origin, extremely ironic.

31. This was, at least, the normal usage; see Ude, Teorija, and Rado Lencek, “The Terms WendeWinde, WendischWindisch in the Historiographic Tradition of the Slovene Lands,” Slovene Studies 12, no. 1 (1990): 93-97. A second usage, with no ethnic content but a solely geographical reference (“native to Carinthia“), is traced from the Middle Ages through the end of the sixteenth century by Wilhelm Neumann in “Wirklichkeit und Idee des ‘windischen’ Erzherzogtums Kärnten: Das Kärntner Landesbewußtsein und die österreichischen Freiheitsbriefe (Privilegium maius),” in Wilhelm Neumann, Bausteine zur Geschichte Kärntens (Klagenfurt: Verlag des Kärntner Landesarchivs, 1985), 110-12.

32. Both the immediate origin of vend and its first use for “Slav” in the Hungarianspeaking area require more research: there is no consensus. Note that Slavič (“Prek murske meje,” 92) states that tót was used pejoratively by Hungarians, but vend was not.

33. Among immigrants from Prekmurje in the United States, vend became a proudly borne ethnonym, distinguishing its bearers from other Slovenes; but that is another part of history. For some aspects of their cultural life in North America, see Sraka, Jože, ed., Prekmurci in Prekmurje (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1984), 296486 Google Scholar; and Krueger, Karl A., “A Windisch Protestant Community in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,” Slovene Studies 6 (1984): 203-26.Google Scholar

34. Several uses of Tschusch (and Čuš) invite etymological linkages: (1) a slur for Bosnians in the Bosnian campaign of the 1870s; (2) words for “owl,” “stupid person,” and “pudenda” in the whole eastern Alpine region; (3) a Carinthian and Styrian slur for “Slovene“; (4) a Viennese slur for “southeast European“; and (5) a slur formerly used by Germans in Bohemia and Moravia for “Slav.” See Priestly, Tom, “On the Etymology of the Ethnic Slur Tschusch ,” Journal of Slavič Linguistics 4, no. 1 (1996): 109-32.Google Scholar

35. Grazer Tageblalt, 11 July 1919 (Peter Wiesinger, Vienna, personal communication).

36. This is the consensus among Slovenophile historians, e.g., Haas and Stuhlpfarrer, Österreich und seine Slowenen, and Germanophile ones, e.g., Josef Feldner, Kärnten Weiβbuch, vol. 2: Grenzland Kärnten (Klagenfurt: Heyn, 1982); for an intermediate view, see Barker, Slovene Minority.

37. Moritsch, Andreas, “Die gesellschaftlichen Voraussetzungen für die slowenische Nationalbewegung in Kärnten bis zum ersten Weltkrieg,” in Dasgemeinsame Kärnten: Skupna Koroška 9 (Klagenfurt: Deutsch-slowenischer Ausschuß der Diozäse Gurk, 1980)Google Scholar; Barker, Slovene Minority, 69-72; Suppan, Arnold, Die österreichischen Volksgruppen: Tendenzen ihrer gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1983): 136-38.Google Scholar

38. Moritsch, Andreas, “Einleitung und Problemstellung,” in Moritsch, A., ed., Vom Ethnos zur Nationalität: Der nationale Differenzierungsprozeβ am Beispiel augewählter Orte in Kärnten und im Burgenland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991), 21.Google Scholar

39. Macartney, C. A., National States and National Minorities (New York: Russell and Russell, 1934), 9899 Google Scholar; Fischer, Roland, “The Bilingual Schools of the Slovenes in Austria,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 7, nos. 2-3 (1986): 187-98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kurz, Maria, Zur Lage der Slowenen in Kärnten: Der Streit um die Volksschule in Kärnten (1867-1914) (Klagenfurt: Verlag des Kärntner Landesarchivs, 1990).Google Scholar

40. Moritsch, “Einleitung,” 21.

41. Feldner, Kärntner Weiβbuch, 12-13.

42. Die Wahrheit über Kärnten: Eine Abwehrschrift gegen die Verunglimpfung unseres Heimatlandes durch die südslawischen Gegner (Klagenfurt: Deutscher Volksverein für Kärnten, 1914), 52.

43. Wutte, Martin, Kärntens Freiheitskampf, 2d rev. ed. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1943), 29.Google Scholar

44. Feldner, Kärntner Weipbuch, 13.

45. There is in this position perhaps an echo of Fichte's argument that, by virtue of the superiority of German over all other languages, German speakers could learn Latin better than speakers of other languages: “Hence the German … can always be superior to the foreigner and understand him fully, even better than the foreigner understands himself,” as cited in Edwards, Language, 26.

46. Urban Jarnik, “Andeutungen über Kärntens Germanisierung,” Carinthia 14 ff (1826); reprinted in Andeutungen uber Kärntens Germanisierung: Pripombe o germanizaciji Koroške (Klagenfurt: Drava, 1984), 9-10.

47. Die Wahrheit uber Kdrnten, 4. The “natural” unity of Carinthia and the “natural” fate of the minority (to be Germanized) thus fit in with the “natural” link between a nation and its language: “In everything ‘natural’ there is always something unchosen. In this way, nation-ness is assimilated to skin-colour, gender, parentage and birthera— all those things one can not help. And in these ‘natural ties’ one senses what one might call ‘the beauty of the gemeinschaft'” (Anderson, Imagined Communities, 143). Fairclough (Language and Power, 77-108) describes how the views of those wielding power come to be equated with notions of “common sense” and “naturalness.“

48. Primus Lessiak, “Alpendeutsche und Alpenslawen in ihren sprachlichen Beziehungen,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschriften 2 (1910): 274-88.

49. Sériot, Patrick, “L'un et le multiple: L'objet-langue dans la politique soviétique,” in États de langue: Peut-on penser une politique linguistique? (Paris: Diderot, 1986), 117-58.Google Scholar

50. See Neweklowsky, Gerhard, “Slowenisch und Deutsch in Kärnten: Phonetische Gemeinsamkeiten,” in Jakopin, Franc, ed., Zbornik razprav iz slovanskega jezikoslovja Tinetu Logarju ob sedemdesetletnici (Ljubljana: SAZU, 1989), 203-11.Google Scholar

51. I.e., by the “High” status of German and “Low” status of Slovene, reinforced by the opposition between Slovene rural “masses” and German urban “elite.” For developments in the theory of diglossia, see Berger, Marianne, “Diglossia within a General Theoretical Perspective: Charles Ferguson's Concept 30 Years Later,” Multilingua 9 (1990): 285-95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a critique, see Marilyn Martin-Jones, “Language, Power and Linguistic Minorities: The Need for an Alternative Approach to Bilingualism, Language Maintenance and Shift,” in Grillo, Social Anthropology, 106-25.

52. Ethnolinguistic vitality is related to the factors of status, demographic, and institutional support; see Allard, Réal and Landry, Rodrigue, “Ethnolinguistic Vitality Beliefs and Language Maintenance and Loss,” in Fase, W., Jaspaert, K., and Kroon, S., eds., Maintenance and Loss of Minority Languages (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1992).Google Scholar

53. Poliakov, Aryan Myth, 302.

54. See Veiter, Theodor, “Die slowenische Volksgruppe in Kärnten—Bemühungen um ihre Gleichberechtigung,” in Inzko, V. and Waldstein, E., eds., Das gemeinsame Kärnten, Skupna Koroska 3 (Klagenfurt: Deutsch-slowenischer Ausschuß der Diozäse Gurk, 1975).Google Scholar

55. Novak, Vilko, ed., Izbor prekmurske književnosti (Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 1936), 9.Google Scholar

56. Marc Greenberg, personal communication.

57. Novak, Izbor prekmurske književnosti, 10; Mukič and Kozar, Slovensko Porabje, 80.

58. Macartney, C. A., Hungary: A Short History (Chicago: Aldine, 1962)Google Scholar; Seton- Watson, R. W., Racial Problems in Hungary (London: Constable, 1908), viiiGoogle Scholar; Pearson, Raymond, National Minorities in Eastern Europe (London: Macmillan, 1983), 1415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59. Kokolj, Prekmurski Slovenci, 287.

60. Kokolj and Horvat, Prekmursko šolstvo, 287; Mukič and Kozar, Slovensko Porabje, 6.

61. Kokolj and Horvat, Prekmursko šolstvo, 234.

62. Kokolj, Prekmurski Slovenci, 287.

63. Kokolj and Horvat, Prekmursko šolstvo, 233.

64. Valentin Bellosics, “Die Wenden im Zalaer und Eisenburger Comitat,” in Die osterreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild, vol. 16: Ungarn (4th vol.) (Vienna: Kaiserlich-künigliche Hof-und Staatsdruckerei, 1896), 259-70.

65. See Barker, Slovene Minority, 90-110; Haas and Stuhlpfarrer, Österreich und seine Slowenen, 26-38; and Wilhelm Neumann, “Zum 50. Jahrestag des Volksabstimmung in Kärnten vom 10. Oktober 1920: Abwehrkampf und Volksabstimmung in Kärnten 1918-1920,” Österreich in Geschichte und Literatur (Graz) 14, no. 8 (1970): 393-401.

66. See Barker, Slovene Minority, 111-71; for complementary views on the plebiscite and its results, see Claudia Fräss-Ehrfeld, “The Role of the United States of America and the Carinthian Question, 1918-1920,” Andreas Moritsch, “German Nationalism and the Slovenes in Austria between the Two World Wars,” and Vodopivec, Peter, “Commentary: The 1920 Carinthian Plebiscite,” Slovene Studies 8, no. 1 (1986): 713, 15-20, and 21-25 respectively.Google Scholar

67. Pauley, Bruce F., Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism (London: Macmillan, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68. Inzko et al., Zgodovina koroških Slovencev, 67.

69. Barker, Slovene Minority, 178-92; Haas and Stuhlpfarrer, Österreich und seine Slowenen, 67-73.

70. Moritsch, “German Nationalism,” 16-19. Note that the premise of this argument was the census result for 1923 (total Slovenes: 34,560), and cf. note 19 above: the actual census question referred to “the language which you speak most readily and in which you normally think“—a question with two (not necessarily compatible) parts, of which the first could only be answered with reference to sociolinguistic contexts, and of which the second must have exaggerated the influence of subjective factors. Any conclusions based on a datum of this kind are suspect; and this tends to be confirmed by the fact that the previous census (of 1910) showed 66,463 “Slovenes,” as a response to a different question (“What is your language of everyday use?“).

71. The major sources on Wutte are his autobiographical sketch, “Mein Lebenslauf: Ungekürzter Abdruck nach dem von Martin Wutte 1947 verfaßten Autograph, das gekürzt in der Carinthia I 1949 veröffentlicht wurde,” in Wilhelm Neumann, ed., Martin Wutte (1987-1948) zum Gedächtnis (Klagenfurt: Verlag des Geschichtsvereines für Kärnten, 1988); a detailed Slovenophile interpretation, Fritzl, “…für Volk und Reich“; and, representing what may be called “the other wing,” Wilhelm Neumann (the successor to Wutte as director of the Carinthian Provincial archives), “Einleitung zur Neuauflage: Martin Wutte. Sein Leben und seine Leistung für Kärnten,” in Martin Wutte, Kdrntens Freiheitskampf 1918-1920, 3d ed., Archiv für vaterländische Geschichte und Topographie, vol. 69 (Klagenfurt: Verlag des Geschichtsvereines für Kärnten, 1985); and Neumann, “Martin Wutte und sein Urteil iiber die nationalsozialistische Slowenenpolitik in Kärnten und Krain aufgrund seiner Denkschrift vom 19. September 1943,” Carinthia 1 196 (1986): 9-40.

72. Wutte, Martin, Deutsch-Windisch-Slowenisch: Zum 7. Jahrestage der Kärnten Volksabstimmung (Klagenfurt: Kartner Heimatbund, 1927).Google Scholar Wutte's many publications (Fritzl, & für Volk und Reich, 210-12 lists 38 books and articles) continue to be influential; thus, his Kdrntens Freiheitskampf, 2d rev. ed. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1943) was reprinted in 1985, see note 71.

73. A contrary opinion is expressed by Wilhelm Neumann in his “Rückblicke und Ausblicke zur Minderheitenfrage in Kärnten,” Carinthia 164 (1974): 273-88; repr. in Neumann, Bausteine, 226-29. He argues that “these Windisch are a discovery [made by] Great-Slovene nationalism in the time of the Monarchy” (227). This view is based on one interpretation of the meaning of the ethnonyms Nemškutar/Nemčur; that they were applied not only to “renegades” who deliberately Germanized themselves but also to “middle-of-the-road” Carinthian Slovenes who were not proactive in any sense. Similarly, Neumann's successor as archivist, Alfred Ogris, “Kdrntens Freiheitskampf als Beitrag zur Staatswerdung Österreichs in den Jahren 1918-1920,” Carinthia I176 (1986) 41-60, 44. The view finds some support in writings by scholars with more Slovenophile orientation, thus Suppan, Die österreichischen Volksgruppen, 141-42. The assumption that uncommitted minority members would have been labeled with the same term as “renegades” by ethnically conscious Slovenes is not accepted here; there appears to be no primary evidence of this, and it seems intuitively more likely that such a term would have been normally used only for “renegades.” In the historiography of the Slovene minority in Carinthia, unfortunately, not enough allowance has been made for different segments of the population. Edwards (Language, 140) distinguishes between “ethnic group members, group spokesmen, mainstream populations, academic constituencies and official policymakers“; in writings about Carinthia over the past century there has been much emphasis on the second, fourth, and fifth categories, whereas the views and attitudes of (and in this case, the terms used for) the first-listed—the minority “persons in the street“—are normally not easy to assess. In any case, to whatever extent the dichotomy had been expressed by some Slovenes, it had not been consistently expressed in German. Note also that one nineteenth-century publication does express the differences in almost precisely this way: Politisches Wörterbuch für die Deutschen in Österreich (Vienna: Deutscher Verein in Wien, 1885), see Moritsch, “Das Windische.” This may well be a nonce-usage.

74. This demonstrates the importance of attitudes to language. Baker (Attitudes, 97-113) lists four functions for an individual's attitudes and shows how each may be involved in attitudinal change; at least two may be related to the Carinthian situation. Thus, Slovene speakers, in developing a positive attitude to their dialects, would now (1) gain a reward (acceptance as members of the majority group), (2) reduce anxiety and insecurity (since they would no longer be stigmatized by speaking the dialects). On the latter point, see also Gudykunst, William B., “Uncertainty and Anxiety,” in Kim, Y. Y. and Gudykunst, W. B., eds., Theories in Intercultural Communication (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1988).Google Scholar Baker (Attitudes, 107) also makes the important point that change is more likely to occur when it is felt to be voluntary.

75. “Although we can say that language can be an extremely important feature of identity, we cannot endorse the view that a given language is essential for identity maintenance…. However, many have considered language an essential pillar” (Edwards, Language, 22).

76. Wutte, Martin, Deutsche und Slowenen in Kärnten (Klagenfurt: Geschichtsverein für Kärnten, 1918).Google Scholar

77. Wutte, Martin, Kdrntens Abstimmungsgebiet (Klagenfurt: Geschichtsverein für Kärnten, 1920).Google Scholar

78. This proposal nominally fulfilled the promises of safeguarding minority rights that were made by Carinthian leaders before the 1920 plebiscite. It was developed after the Estonian Cultural Autonomy Statue of 1925 had, first, been recommended by the Congress of European Nationalities in Geneva, and then urged upon the Carinthian provincial government by German minorities within Slovenia, who were suffering assimilatory pressures and hoped for reciprocal improvements. The final draft of the Carinthian version was placed before the Landtag 17 July 1927. During 1927 the opposing sides drifted fürther apart, and the project was never put into practice (Macartney, National States, 399-400; Moritsch, Andreas, “Das Projekt einer Kulturautonomie für die Kärntner Slovenen im Jahre 1927,” Österreichische Osthefte 20 [1978]: 329-37).Google Scholar

79. See Haas and Stuhlpfarrer (Österreich und seine Slowenen, 51) for an elaboration of the contradictions inherent in the theory. Thus the statement by Wilhelm Neumann: “The fact that the ethnic boundary (Volkstumsgrenze) goes through the middle of many families is well known” (“Rückblicke und Ausblicke,” 230) only makes sense if (using virtually any standard definition) “ethnic” has some kind of nonethnic interpretation.

80. For the general background, see Macartney, Hungary; and Paul Ignotus, Hungary (London: Ernest Benn, 1972); for details of the events in Prekmurje, see M. Slavič, “Narodnost in osvoboditev Prekmurcev,” in Novak, Slovenska krajina, 46-82; for the arguments in Paris, Slavič, “Prekmurske meje v diplomaciji.“

81. Kokolj and Horvath (Prekmursko šolstvo, 382) use the pejorative term Madžaron to refer to Mikola. The major source for Mikola used here is Angyal, “A vend kérdes.“

82. Here the assertion by Slavič (“Narodnost in osvoboditev Prekmurcev,” 70) that the anonymous Mémoire (see note 83) was written by Melich and Mikola is assumed as a working hypothesis; this is confirmed in part by its close similarity to Melich and Mikola, Quelques remarques (see note 84) and also partly by the fact that one copy of the Mémoire, in the National Széchényi Library in Budapest, bears the handwritten notation “irta [written by] Dr. Mikoia” (information supplied by Eva Kurti, Head of International Loans Department).

83. This and the following three quotations from Mémoire concernant la territoire wende (“Prekmurje“) occupé par les Yougoslaves (Budapest: Hornyánszky, n.d. [1919]).

84. Quotations from Melich, J. and Mikoia, Sandor, Quelques remarques sur la brochure intitulée: “La question du Prekmurje étudiée et présentée par M. Slavič” (Budapest: Hornyánszky, 1919).Google Scholar

85. Kokolj, Prekmurski Slovenci, 210-13.

86. Kokolj and Horvat, Prekmursko šolstvo, 382; the editor of Domovina was Sandor Mikola.

87. “Hungary has always refused to identify this people (viz., 66,790 Slavs, akin to the Slovenes, living in the Prekomurye [sic]) with the true Slovenes. She entitles them ‘Wends’ and maintains that they speak a different dialect from the Slovenes proper, have no historical, political, or cultural connexion with that people, never participated in the Slovene national movement, and had no desire to join Yugoslavia” (C. A. Macartney, Hungary and Her Successors: The Treaty of Trianon and Its Consequences, 1919-1937: [New York: Oxford University Press, 1937], 378-79).

88. Sandor Mikola, “Kaksega plemena lüdjé szo bili nasi indasnyi ocsáci,” Domovina 3, nos. 3-4 (1921): 5-6. My thanks to Marc Greenberg for help with the translation.

89. A. A. Shakhmatov (“Zu den ältesten slavisch-keltischen Beziehungen,” Archiv für slavische Philologie 33 [1912]: 51-99) argued that the Veneder/Veneter were Celtic (and had influenced Proto-Slavič), but mentioned neither the Lusatian Sorbs nor the Slavs in Hungary.

90. Quotations all from Sandor Mikola, A Vendség multija és Jelene (Budapest: Kókai Lajos Bizománya, n.d. [1928?]).

91. Haas and Stuhlpfarrer, Österreich und seine Slowenen, 83.

92. Tone Ferenc, “Nacistični raznarodovalni program in Slovenci,” in Augustin Malle and Valentin Sima, eds., Der ‘Anschluβ und die Minderheiten in Österreich: “Ansluš” in manjšine v Avstriji (Klagenfurt: Drava, 1989); Horst Seidler, “Minderheitenverfolgung im Nationalsozialismus,” in ibid.; Valentin Sima, “Die Vertreibung von Karntern Slowenen 1942: Vorgeschichte, Reaktionen und Interventionen von Wehrmachtsstellen,” in Avguštin Malle and Valentin Sima, eds., Narodu in državi sovražni: Pregon koroških Slovencev 1942. Volks- und slaatsfeindlich: Die Vertreibung von Kärntner Slowenen 1942 (Klagenfurt: Drava, 1992); Teodor Domej, “O ponemčevanju južne Koroške za čas nacizma in odmevi nanj (1938-1942),” in ibid. For the background, see Koehl, Robert L., RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), esp. 129, 167.Google Scholar

93. Ude, Teorija, 37; Fischer, Das Slowenische, 39-41.

94. Flaschberger and Reiterer, Der tägliche Abwehrkampf, 67. On the details and effects of the Hider-Mussolini division of Slovenia, see Tone Ferenc, “Položaj slovenskega naroda ob okupaciji leta 1941,” in Malle and Sima, Narodu in državi sovražni.

95. Barker, Slovene Minority, 192-98; Haas and Stuhlpfarrer, Österreich und seine Slowenen, 74-87.

96. The “Reich Commissioner for Strengthening the German Nationality” (Barker, Slovene Minority, 196). Maier-Kaibitsch had been the head of the Kärntner Heimatbund before the war and was made a SS-Standartenführer during the war.

97. Barker, Slovene Minority, 192; Janko Pleterski, “Polozaj slovenskega jezika na avstrijskem Koroškem po drugi svetovni vojni,” in IX seminar slovenskega jezika, literature in kulture 2.-14. julij 1973: Predavanja (Ljubljana: Univerza v Ljubljana, 1973), 176; Domej, “O ponemčevanju,” 211, 226-27.

98. Barker (Slovene Minority, 197-98) discusses the extent to which some “indigenous fascists” may have been worried by this view.

99. Metka Fujs, “Madžarska vojaška in civilna uprava v Prekmurju v drugi svetovni vojni” (paper, Zborovanje Slovenskih zgodovinarjev, Murska Sobota, 1990), 2-3.

100. Ibid.

101. Mikola, Sándor, “A Magyarországi vendek,” Kisebbségi körlevél 5, no. 4 (1941): 232-39Google Scholar; German translation, Die Ungarländischen Wenden (Budapest: Ernst Kellner Jun. Buchdruckerei, 1941).

102. Angyal (“A vend kérdés,” 269-72) traces the confusion of Vend and Vandal during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

103. Greenberg, Marc, “Ágost Pável's Prekmurje Slovene Grammar,” Slavistična revija 37 (1989): 353-64.Google Scholar

104. Another possible (and unexplored) link is the influence of Mikola's idea of a Lusatian (Sorbian) Wend connection on Germanophone thinking in Carinthia.

105. Tajfel, Social Psychology. See also Fishman, “Language and Ethnicity,” 33; Howard Giles, “Ethnicity Markers in Speech,” in K. Scherer and H. Giles, eds., Social Markers in Speech (New Vork: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 257-80; Giles, Howard and Johnson, Patricia, “The Role of Language in Ethnic Group Relations,” in Turner, J. C. and Giles, H., eds., Intergroup Behaviour (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 201.Google Scholar It is difficult to tell how rapidly the minority would have crossed this boundary without this incentive, given that assimilation is normally the rule and not the exception; but, as Edwards (Language, 50) points out, comparative studies should give an insight into this question.

106. Michael Clyne, “Language and Racism,” 36.

107. Bosmajian, Language of Oppression, 7-8, echoing George Orwell, who wrote: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible” (“Politics and the English Language,” in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds., The Collected-Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell [London: Seeker and Warburg, 1968], 4: 127-40, 136). This may also be viewed as a policy choice: “There are three methods of killing languages: the old, repressive ones; the new, progressive ones; and the eternal, psychological ones” ( Breton, Roland, “Linguicide et ethnocide: Pourquoi et comment tuer les langues,” in Sanguin, André-Louis, ed., Les minorités ethniques en Europe [Paris: Éditions Harmattan, 1993]Google Scholar).