The Fate of the German-Speaking Minority in Slovenia
Abstract
Half a million speakers of German found themselves living in the new Yugoslav state after the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A small portion of them (about 30,000 people or 2.5% of the population) lived in present-day Slovenia in 1931. In economic and social terms, they represented the most powerful and organized part of the German minority. Although the German-speaking minority had more rights than any other minority, these were contingent upon Yugoslav governments’ policy. After World War II, the new Yugoslav authorities made use of the German state’s ethnocide and occupation, and particularly the participation of members of the German minority in it, to settle scores with the German population once and for all. They were interned in concentration camps and then expelled from the country with their belongings confiscated. Several hundred people were subject to extrajudicial killings. The post-war retributions were so severe that only scattered remnants of the minority remained in Slovenia. It can be gathered from the population censuses that the number of Germans and Austrians, i.e. people identifying German as their mother tongue, never even reached a tenth of the number recorded before the war. The minority is characterized by its small number, geographical dispersion, non-native status, migrations, and a demographic structure that diverges from the Slovene average. A mere 963 people identifying German as their mother tongue, 181 of whom identified as Austrian and 499 as German, were recorded in the 2002 population census. A number of German associations emerged after the democratic changes in 1990. The Republic of Austria’s expectations that the German-speaking minority would achieve constitutional recognition in Slovenia were addressed by means of a cultural agreement between the states in 2001. However, this does not satisfy the expectations of the German-speaking community in Slovenia or of the Republic of Austria. They call for the constitutional recognition of the German-speaking minority in Slovenia, as well as for rights comparable to those granted to the Italian and Hungarian community.
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References
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