There is a small ethnic community in south Slovenia that not many know about called the Gottscheers. Traces of their heritage are disappearing, but now they are becoming more visible once again.

Only a third of 176 Gottschee villages in Slovenia have been preserved, and only a few hundred Gottscheers still live there. In five villages in Dolenjske Toplice municipality, a group fighting for the preservation of Gottschee has now erected info boards testifying to their origin.

The plan is to erect more info boards every year, at least in villages where people still live or which are not yet in ruin, Primož Primec, head of the Association of Gottscheers, has told the Slovenian Press Agency.

"Each info board brings the history of the village and some pictures. There is also a QR code for additional information in three languages - Slovenian, German and English," he said.

The project started in 2021 and is financed by the Austrian Ministry of European and International Affairs.

Long history

German-speaking people, whose descendants are known as the Gottscheers or Kočevarji, were resettled in present-day Slovenian municipalities Kočevje, Dolenjske Toplice and Semič from Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol in the 14th century by the Counts of Ortenburg.

According to Primec, they settled an area of 860 square kilometres with Kočevje as their centre.

Since they were relatively isolated, they preserved their culture and language through centuries.

In the middle of the 19th century, the community numbered around 28,500.

Since many saw no prospects there, they started emigrating at the end of the 19th century, mostly to the US. The first villages died out before WWI.

Devastated by war

A major blow came with WWII when Hitler ordered that they move to the Third Reich, to the present-day Slovenian region of Posavje.

After WWII, the majority moved from Posavje to Austria and Germany.

Those who stayed were second-rate citizens under the new Yugoslav authorities, according to the association's former president Hans Ivan Jaklitsch.

"We lost all our rights, including the right to work, to speak in Gottschee, our schools were closed. The situation did not normalise until after Slovenian independence," says.

Language being lost

The German-speaking community in Slovenia some 5,000 people, but only around 1,000 are Gottscheers, according to Primec. Their unique language is spoken by only a few.

Justina Rabzelj, a Gottscheer born in 1936, said she can speak the language only with some relatives or friends who are of the same age. She has one such friend in Slovenia and some penfriends in the US.

Until the end of WWII, all Gottscheers spoke their language, she said, but after the war they had to learn Slovenian.

Although many people refer to the Gottscheers as Gottschee Germans, they themselves do not like this expression.

"We are a completely different category from the Germans. We just have a similar language because of our common Germanic background," Jaklitsch said.

The Gottschee Germans label was imposed on them by the post-WWII authorities, mainly for political reasons, she added.