DOI: 10.3986/Traditio2021500207 TRADITIONES, 50/2, 2021, 123–140
The article calls into question the understanding of the 
Kočevska (Gottschee) area as a “German language island”. 
Through examples of the use of different languages before 
the Second World War, it shows a different –multilingual or 
multicultural– image of this region. The author draws data 
from historical and archival sources, as well as from a survey 
that she conducted among Gottscheers (“Gottschee Germans”) 
living in Slovenia, Austria, Germany, the USA and Canada.
Keywords: Gottschee, Gottscheers, Gottschee Germans, 
multilingualism, nationalism, linguistically mixed regions, 
linguistic islands, national identity
V prispevku so predstavljeni pomisleki o razumevanju 
območja Kočevske kot »nemškega jezikovnega otoka«. 
Vendar primeri rabe različnih jezikov pred 2. svetovno 
vojno pokažejo drugačno – večjezikovno oz. večkulturno – 
podobo te pokrajine. Avtorica podatke črpa iz zgodovinskih 
in arhivskih virov ter iz raziskave, ki jo je opravila med 
Kočevarji (kočevskimi Nemci) v Sloveniji, Avstriji, Nemčiji, 
ZDA in Kanadi.
Ključne besede: Kočevska, Kočevarji, kočevski Nemci, 
večjezikovnost, nacionalizem, večjezična območja, jezikovni 
otoki, narodna identiteta
A GERMAN “LINGUISTIC ISLAND” OR A 
LINGUISTICALLY MIXED REGION?
MULTILINGUAL PRACTICES IN THE KOČEVSKA (GOTTSCHEE) 
AREA
ANJA MORIC
INTRODUCTION
This article focuses on the Kočevska (i.e. Gottschee) region in southeastern Slovenia, 
known as the former “German linguistic island”. The mentioned concept that implies 
its Germanness, was attributed to Kočevska in the 19th century, and though there are 
several witnesses to the actual multilingualism of this area, it persists to this day. The first 
traces of settlement in Kočevska date back to prehistoric times (cf. Mantuani, 1924–1925; 
Simonič, 1939: 45; Jamnik, Velušček, 2011); however, the forest areas were mostly cleared 
and settled only at the time of medieval colonisation. Several theories exist about the 
origin of the Gottscheers. The findings of Austrian linguists, based on the analysis of the 
Gottscheer dialect, are the most widely accepted. According to these, most immigrants 
from northern estates in Carinthia and Tyrol –the Puster and Lesach Valleys– were set-
tled in the Kočevska area by the Counts of Ortenburg in the 1330s (Petschauer, 1984: 
87). On the other hand, according to the writing of the Bishop of Ljubljana, Tomaž Hren 
(consecrated in 1599), 300 rebellious families from Franconia and Thuringia were also 
sent to the Kočevska region after the end of the first phase of colonisation (Grothe, 1931: 
33). Some of the immigrants are even said to have come from other Slovene-speaking 
areas – Stari Trg pri Ložu, Lož, Cerknica, and Idrija (Petschauer, 1984: 87–88), but a 
small number of Carinthian Slovenes were probably also among them (Simonič, 1971: 
9). Due to immigration from diverse locales where different languages and dialects were 
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spoken, as well as due to contacts with the surrounding population, an interesting mixed 
linguistic area developed in the Kočevska region, where for 600 years –until the resettle-
ment of most of the population to the German Reich in 1941/42–, the Gottscheebarisch or 
medieval German with admixtures of Slovene (Schröer, 1869; Hauffen, 1895; Tschinkel, 
2004, etc.) was used predominantly. Nationalist ideas, including the notion of “German 
linguistic islands” that spread across Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 
were not open to diversity as could be found in the Kočevska region (Moric, 2020) as well 
as in other mixed regions of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (Judson, 2006; Zahra, 2008), 
since they did not focus on similarities and coexistence but on differences and borders (cf. 
Barth, 1998) demarcating ethnic groups. Relations between “Germans” and “Slovenes” 
from the Kočevska area radicalised increasingly at the turn of the nineteenth and twenti-
eth centuries, and ethnic divisions became even stronger after the end of the First World 
War or after the establishment of new state borders (Moric, 2021). During the Second 
World War, which fatally shaped relations in the Kočevska region, Gottschee Germans 
opted to resettle near Brežice, on the then-border of the German Reich, on the basis of 
the agreement between Hitler and Mussolini. After the war they found homes in Austria, 
Germany, the USA and Canada, where active emigrant communities can be found today. 
In the article I address the aforementioned concept of the “German linguistic island” and 
the unambiguous understanding of the pre-war reality in the Kočevska region. In addi-
tion, I present some examples from which it is evident that the area was not monolingual 
or mononational, but rather multilingual and multilayered. In doing so, I refer to vari-
ous historical sources, and above all to the data I collected in the qualitative part of the 
research The Maintenance of the Gottscheer Identity (MGI), i.e. while conducting my field 
work among Gottscheers in Slovenia, Austria, Germany, the USA and Canada during the 
years 2007–2015.1
PERCEPTION OF THE “GERMAN LINGUISTIC ISLAND”
As in other parts of Europe (Anderson, 2007; Hobsbawm, 2007, etc.), the 19th century 
brought national differentiation to the Kočevska region. This was particularly encour-
aged by the arrival of foreign, German-speaking intellectuals and bureaucrats inspired 
by romantic-nationalism, who searched the Kočevska area for supposed ancient elements 
of Germanness. The ethnography of the linguistic islands or Sprachinselvolkskunde that 
began in the 1930s (Heinke, 2015), pushed the multiculturalism or multilingualism of 
Kočevska into oblivion and began to emphasise its Germanness. “Islands” located outside 
the homogenous German-speaking area, in addition to Kočevska region also including 
e.g. Szepes, Brno, and Jihlava, were because of their remoteness considered linguistic and 
1 See Moric, 2018a: 9, for more information on the research The Maintenance of the Gottscheer Identity.
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ANJA MORIC
cultural relics (Heinke, 2015) where German researchers began searching for elements of the 
“ancient German soul”. As the very appellation of the “linguistic island” suggests, language, 
as well as dialects, was at the centre of research, and this also included folk tales and folk 
songs. Subsequent research also included historical and cultural features. By emphasising 
the peculiarities of the “linguistic islands”, they influenced the process of differentiation 
between Germans and Slovenes in the Kočevska region.
One of the first to become interested in the Gottscheer people was Jožef Rudež, a 
nobleman from Ribnica, who in 1823 wrote down examples of the Gottscheer dialect and 
the texts of four Gottscheer folk songs. His publication in the Vorzeit und Gegegnwart peri-
odical was followed by other collectors of national treasures, among them Emil Korytko, 
whose premature death prevented him from publishing a monograph with the collected 
Gottscheer folklore materials. The Gottscheer culture, the past and customs then quickly 
became the subject of academic interest – particularly by intellectuals from German-
speaking countries who came to Kočevska with the aim of conducting research, or who 
were employed there as teachers and officials. As the author of the first dictionary of the 
Gottscheer dialect, Karl Julius Schröer, wrote in 1891, the Gottscheer “Germanic people [...] 
have in fact preserved the best features of the German essence and are especially appealing 
due to the ancient features that have been perpetuated in isolation. That is, their language, 
their habits and customs, especially fairy tales and songs that express the deep and sincere 
soul of the people” (Schröer, 1891: 418). The collection of folk tradition, including folk 
songs, together with the establishment of German schools in bilingual villages, supported by 
the German nationalist organisation Deutscher Schulverein and other nationalist activities, 
became the basis for emerging nationalism in Kočevska. These tendencies still intensified 
after the First World War, which brought about new political circumstances and change to 
the status of the Gottscheers that became a minority in the newly formed Yugoslav state. 
Interest in the German “linguistic islands” which at the time remained stranded in the 
middle of the “threatening Slavic sea” thus increased.
The perception of a closed-off “German linguistic island” in the Kočevska region is 
still present today, and practically is not brought into question. This is inappropriate at least 
for linguistic reasons, since the inhabitants of the areas that are today most often identified 
under notions such as “German linguistic islands” (in our case Gottscheers) were mostly (at 
least) bilingual, even though nationalists on both sides, German and Slovene, liked to lay 
claim on them. For these, as suggested by Pieter Judson (2008), it is more correct to use the 
term “linguistically mixed areas”, which implies use of several languages  and coexistence 
between their speakers, a practical reality of these areas until the emergence of nationalisms 
in the 19th century or the change of political borders after the First World War. Such an 
appellation transcends nationalist divisions that are still (though perhaps unconsciously) 
present in scientific research today (Weber-Kellermann, 1959). 
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THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL DIFFERENTIATION (IN THE 
KOČEVSKA REGION)
The events in the Kočevska region in the 19th century can only be understood when placed 
in a broader historical picture of events in the then Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The 
historian Judson has dealt with the emergence and rise of nationalism in three linguisti-
cally mixed areas of the Austrian part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire: the Czech 
Republic, South Tyrol and South Styria. He pointed out that until the rise of nationalism in 
the second half of the 19th century, there were no (significant) tensions or divisions among 
the local population based on linguistic diversity, as they easily used several languages 
and did not identify their ethnicity according to language (Judson, 2006: 3). Similarly, 
Vasilij Melik (1992: 171) describes the linguistic situation in the territory of present-day 
Slovenia. He notes that at the beginning of the 19th century the peasant population spoke 
predominantly Slovene, while the population in the larger towns was bilingual and spoke 
both German and Slovene. The upper class and part of the bourgeoisie generally com-
municated in German, regardless of their mother tongue or origin. However, the use of 
language at that time did not yet determine the (national) affiliation of the population. 
Until the emergence of nationalisms (throughout Europe) with the March Revolution of 
1848, the identity of the population in the area of  present-day Slovenia was mainly local 
and regional (Drnovšek, 2005; Čuček, Cvirn, 2012: 30). 
The transition from older forms of identification associated with the city and 
the countryside, towards identification with one’s own linguistic and “national” 
group in the modern sense, received its first impetus only after the outbreak of 
the March Revolution in 1848. (Čuček, Cvirn, 2012: 30) 
In some places in the multilingual areas of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, bilin-
gualism was promoted as early as the 19th century. In order for children to learn both 
regional languages, parents in rural areas of Moravia and the Czech Republic swapped 
children for longer periods of time, and in parts of Styria and Carinthia they traditionally 
requested establishment of bilingual schools (Judson, 2006: 3). Similarly, in the 1860s, 
some Gottscheer people from Planina, where the German school was located, preferred 
to send their children to a bilingual school in Črnomelj (Trdan, 1999: 62). An interesting 
example of unforced multilingualism can also be found in the record of Bishop Anton 
Bonaventura Jeglič, who on 18 October 1899 reported about the visit of villagers from 
the village of Zdihovo, where there were 52 German and 11 Slovene houses. Although 
the local parish priest Mausser also preached in Slovene language, Slovenes nevertheless 
preferred to visit sermons conducted in German language (Otrin, Čipić Rehar, 2015: 45). 
Such self-evident and unforced bilingualism, however, could by no means be accepted by 
nationalist ideologues. Multilingual areas have been defined as “border regions” where 
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ANJA MORIC
there has always been a conflict between speakers of different languages. In this way, local 
societies asserted differentiation or caused national polarisation among the population of 
these regions.
Mutual tolerance between different language communities was dismantled only by 
external nationalists from German and Austrian cities, who through the establishment of 
German schools, tourism and newspapers created conflict between Germans and Slovenes 
(as well as between Germans and Czechs and other peoples of the monarchy) (Judson, 
2006: 3). After the exclusion of Austria from the German Confederation in 1866, the 
Germans became a minority in the monarchy but made great efforts to maintain a leading 
role in the cultural, political, and economic fields (Promitzer, 2004: 188). After the defeat 
of the German Liberal parties in the parliamentary elections of 1880 and the defeats in the 
elections to the provincial assemblies, they were faced with the fact that there were fewer 
German-speaking inhabitants in the monarchy than they had imagined, and with the fact 
of the legitimacy of the demands of Slavic nationalists for the use of their languages in 
the offices (Judson, 2006: 16). In order to defend Germanness and the German language 
from foreigners –Slavs and Italians (Drobesch, 1992: 190)– intellectuals (teachers, doctors, 
etc.) began to move to rural parts of Austria, which were also visited by nationally inspired 
tourists. They were perceived as the carriers of social change or as bearers of progress and 
greater national consciousness. In the early 20th century, teachers played a leading role in 
promoting nationalist organizations. In the 1880s, Czech, Slovenian, and German nation-
alists recruited itinerant teachers for their own purposes, who visited remote places where 
they encouraged nationalist cohesion (Judson, 2004: 142; 2006: 74-84; on Kočevska, see 
Rus, 1939: 143). The zealous national activists –professors from Austria– were brought to 
the Kočevska area by the Gymnasium (State Lower Grammar School) in Kočevje, founded 
in 1872. The most prominent among these were Benedict Knapp, Josef Obergfoll and 
Peter Wolsegger. Knapp in particular was a well-known nationalist who also brought a 
German kindergarten to Kočevje (Rus, 1930: 64). Obergfoll and Wolsegger, on the other 
hand, were particularly active in publishing numerous historical and ethnographic writ-
ings. Territorially and ethnically oriented forms of the nationalist ideology of German 
bourgeois political parties were implemented by two voluntary organizations that aimed 
to promote national consciousness among the German-speaking inhabitants of the empire 
and encourage the growth of the number of German-speaking people. In 1880, activists 
founded the Deutscher Schulverein (German School Association) in Vienna, which raised 
money for German schools in linguistically mixed areas (Judson, 2006: 17). The initiative 
to establish this organization came mainly from the Viennese centre, while the proponents 
from linguistically mixed regions only formed a minority (Drobesch, 1992: 188), which 
shows that the “conflict” was created outside the multilingual areas themselves. In 1885, 
they were followed by Slovene nationalists with the establishment of Družba sv. Cirila in 
Metoda (The Society of Sts. Cyril and Methodius) (they have already been preceded by 
the Czechs, Italians, and Poles with similar organizations). Another German nationalist 
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organization, Südmark, bought land to support and expand Germanness in linguistically 
mixed regions, settled German colonists there, and also supported German schools and 
libraries (Otrin, Čipić Rehar, 2015: 171).
Practically the only difference between the inhabitants of linguistically mixed areas 
that nationalists could highlight was linguistic. Therefore, nationalist organizations strived 
to build national schools that would educate children to be loyal members of a particular 
nation (Judson, 2006: 21–22). The aforementioned Deutscher Schulverein was founded 
with the aim of developing a German educational system
in Austrian lands with ethnically mixed populations, on borders of German-
speaking areas and German language islands […] Before World War One, it 
raised around thirty million Austrian crowns for this purpose and built more than 
three hundred new schools and provided support and loans for the construction 
of more than 420 school or other facilities. Where it did not receive the neces-
sary funds from the local authorities to build a new German school, or where 
there were no legal conditions for establishing a public German school because 
there were too few German children, it built the school with its own funds and 
maintained it as a private school. Until there were a sufficient number of German 
or Germanised children, and then, under certain conditions –among which the 
basic one was that the school had to be German-only– it was transformed into 
a public German school maintained by the authorities. Of course, the associa-
tion tried to create conditions for a public German school as soon as possible by 
Germanising children, and also helped by establishing German kindergartens 
and special children’s colonies, German libraries, etc. (Ferenc, 1968: 67–68)
The basis for such action was the Constitution of 1867, which guaranteed the peoples 
of the monarchy the right to education in their own language; the Imperial Elementary 
School Act of 1869 thus provided for the establishment of state minority schools in all 
areas where for five consecutive years, an average of 40 children lived at a distance of four 
kilometres or one hour’s walk. The act also encouraged Slavic nationalists to demand the 
use of their own language in schools and offices where the Slavic population formed a 
majority (Judson, 2006: 24–27).
The Schulverein opened its branch in Kočevje as early as 1881 after the efforts of 
Benedict Knapp, and a year later founded a woodcraft school, which was soon nationalized 
although it lacked students (Rus, 1930: 65). Focus was in particular on the establishment 
of schools on the outskirts of the Kočevska area, which they perceived as being the most 
endangered. The first Schulverein German school in Kočevska was opened in 1882 in 
Mavrlen. However, the plan to nationalize it failed as it did not obtain the prescribed 
number of children despite much effort (ibid.). Where schools already existed (e. g. in 
Smuka and Kočevske Poljane), the Schulverein used a different tactic, namely it provided 
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ANJA MORIC
significant financial support under the condition that the language of instruction will be 
exclusively German (ibid.: 66). In 1914, Schulverein owned 8 schools and 4 kindergartens, 
and furthermore financially supported 11 schools and 2 kindergartens (Kordiš, Škufca, 
1995: 13).
The most obvious struggle for the “creation” of Germans and Slovenes was expressed 
in the western part of Kočevska – in the Dragarska dolina (Dragarska Valley). The church 
conflict flared up in 1889/90, when German parishioners in Draga allegedly demanded 
that German sermons be introduced in worship, and the dispute had to be resolved by 
the Bishop of Ljubljana, Jakob Missia (Trdan, 1999: 71). Things became volatile again at 
the end of 1902, the reason why Missia’s successor, Bishop Anton Bonaventura Jeglič, also 
travelled to Draga in December to observe in person the ethnic image of the place. The 
Kočevje District Governor Michael Gstettenhoffer, the Kočevje Mayor Alois Loy, gymnasium 
teacher Josef Obergföll who had moved from Tyrol, and Kočevje Gymnasium Headmaster 
Peter Wolsegger, also an immigrant from Tyrol, convinced him of the German character 
of Draga and the surrounding villages, which is why they wanted the religious instruction 
to be held in German. Jeglič found that the use of the Gottscheer dialect predominates 
in Draga and its surroundings, while all adults also spoke Slovene since a third of them 
immigrated from the surrounding Slovene villages (Otrin, Čipić Rehar, 2015: 181), and 
many also had contacts across the border in Croatia. Jeglič did not report on the use of 
High German in everyday life. He wrote:
The service of God has always been in Slovene here, as well as Christian teachings 
at school. Around the year 1835, when the parish was transferred from Trava to 
Draga, German was preached in Draga for some time, but because people knew 
only Slovene and Gottscheerisch and did not understand German, the faithful 
did not visit the service of God until the introduction of the Slovene language. 
[...] 1. if we look at the colloquial language, I would say that there are mostly 
Germans here, 2. if we look at the lineage, partly the current and partly that of the 
grandfathers, we must say that they are all Slovenes, but 3. it is especially in the 
villages of Trava, Srednja Vas and Draga that they have an awareness that these 
are German villages, 4. people know Slovene and must also know it, because they 
only have Slovenes as their neighbours and are completely mixed with Slovenes, 
5. they should also learn German well, 6. the church is absolutely right not to 
deviate from the Slovene language either in the church or in the school, which 
would only be to the detriment of the inhabitants, all the more so because 7. 
there are German schools and parents are somehow forced to send their children 
to these schools. (Otrin, Čipić Rehar, 2015: 181–182)
It can be concluded that the parishioners did not have any problems with understanding 
Slovene, or that, on the contrary, they had difficulty understanding the standard German 
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language. Therefore, it is likely that the dispute over the use of language in the church 
was created or at least inflamed primarily by (the above-mentioned and other) intellectu-
als. Already in the preceding year, Jeglič mentioned that people were “instigated” by the 
forester of Prince Auersperg (Otrin, Čipić Rehar, 2015: 116). The impact of Schulverein 
who had their branch in Trava near Draga before 1905 and also supported the schools in 
Trava and Draga (Trdan, 1999: 59) should not be neglected. The German school in Trava 
was founded in 1898 (Turk, 2007: 44) by Südmark and in 1902 it was even (temporar-
ily?) achieved that the provincial council forbade the priest to hold religious instruction in 
Slovene. Even then, Bishop Jeglič opposed this because:
everywhere, only Slovene language was used for praying at home, because all 
the service of God is only held in Slovene, because most people are of Slovene 
descent and because the Gottscheer people here do not understand German, but 
if there exists a single schoolboy who only knows German, he should be taught 
in German. (Otrin, Čipić Rehar, 2015: 171)
In addition to the church, a school “war” took place in Draga or the so-called “Fight 
for Draga” as the events were vividly termed by the Slovenski narod (Slovenian Nation) 
newspaper (Beg, 1911: 13). In 1883, when the Utraquist school in Draga was abolished, 
the provincial school council ordered the division of pupils into Slovene and German 
classes according to their mother tongue, with compulsory instruction in another provin-
cial language. Both classes, however, were taught in shifts by the same teacher. As long 
as Slovene teachers were supported by Družba sv. Cirila in Metoda (Society of Sts. Cyril 
and Methodius), the Slovenian class was more frequented than the German one (Beg, 
1911: 12). When the latter withdrew its support, the teaching in both departments was 
taken over by the Gottscheer teacher Tscherne, who, with the support of the Schulverein 
and Auersperg’s forest keeper Künzl, successfully campaigned for Germanness: “The 
inhabitants depend on the prince, or on his keeper for earnings, pastures, supply of fire-
wood, etc. And Schulverein sends rich Christmas presents, which deceives the parents 
and children” (Beg, 1911: 12).
The Schulverein or German nationalists wanted to attract not only German-speaking 
children to German schools, but also children from the so-called mixed marriages and 
also from entirely Slavic families, by providing better equipment, material benefits in their 
schools, e. g. free books or better Christmas presents (Judson, 2006: 44), the same tactics 
were used by Slovenian nationalists. In his memoirs, the teacher of Družba sv. Cirila in 
Metoda Andoljšek described the situation in Draga as follows:
I never forget what conflict arose in front of the school when I asked the parents 
in which class I should enrol the children. The misled Slovenes thought that all 
the children would be taught in the German class. But the nationally conscious 
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men held on. Both classes were somehow equally strong. And what was the con-
sequence of this unnatural division? The school in Draga has become a unique 
example, perhaps in the whole of the world, and to the ridicule of pedagogy. [...] 
And now lessons in the German class. Poor children! I started in German; no one 
understood me; I did not know Gottscheerisch. The misled persons demanded 
that I have to get used to the Gottscheer dialect. Prince Auersperg’s servants spied 
everywhere; the gendarmes were always on my heels and denounced every word 
I uttered in Kočevje. (Andoljšek, 1930: 57)
From 1890 until his departure for Slovene supremacy in the Dragarska dolina, 
Andoljšek strived with the means at his disposal: he often organised national festivities for 
Družba sv. Cirila in Metoda, banned German prayer books and distributed Slovene ones 
published by the same society (Andoljšek, 1930: 58–59). Society of Sts. Cyril and Methodius 
established some of its branches in the Kočevska region: in 1886 in Trava and Draga, and 
for Kočevje and its surroundings in 1910 (Ferenc, 2005: 56), but it did not persist in the 
places it considered to be lost.
National divisions were also incited by censuses, which forced the population of 
linguistically mixed areas to choose only one language from the 1870s onwards. In the 
first official census of 1880, people were asked about their colloquial language, not their 
nationality or mother tongue, and respondents could only list one language, whereby the 
fact of bilingualism (in some areas) had been ignored. The official census became a tool for 
proving which nationality or language predominates in which area (Judson, 2006: 14–27). 
The census was the basis on which German nationalists –statisticians, geographers, eth-
nographers, and historians– built the image of German superiority (cf. Promitzer, 2004). 
The figures were also important to Slovene nationalists, who also constantly checked the 
number of Slovenes and strove to increase it (e.g. Beg, 1911). The politicisation of censuses 
was also shown in the case of Draga, where in 1880, 78 people identified themselves as 
Germans and 158 as Slovenes. Only a decade later, in 1890, the situation was completely 
reversed, i.e. with 238 Germans and 20 Slovenes in the village (Grothe, 1931: 96).
WITNESSES OF FORGOTTEN MULTILINGUALISM IN KOČEVSKA
Due to the decreasing number of Gottscheers, direct information about life in the Kočevska 
region before the Second World War is becoming increasingly difficult to access. Records 
of multilingualism and coexistence among speakers of different languages  are found mainly 
in archival sources such as school reports, newspapers, church books, and literature. For 
example, Tomšič and Ivanc, who visited the town of Kočevje in 1887, reported as fol-
lows: “The vast majority of citizens are Germans, but you can speak Slovene in almost 
all shops and inns. The gymnasium has poor attendance; one third of the students are 
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Slovenes and Croats” (Tomšič, Ivanc, 1887: 70). In the continuation of the article I focus 
particularly on the oral testimonies I collected during the research work conducted among 
the Gottscheers in Slovenia, Austria, Germany, the USA and Canada, where I managed 
to get direct information about relations between Slovenes and Germans and the use of 
different languages  in the Kočevska area before the Second World War. Almost all of my 
interlocutors remember good neighbourly relations, whereby it is worth noting that rela-
tions at the micro-level (village) may have differed from those at the macro-level (state, 
politics), which was also found by Thomason (2010: 52). The intensity of contacts between 
“Germans” and “Slovenes” in the Kočevska region most likely varied according to the 
individual area. Particularly on the borders of the Gottscheer settlement area, there were 
closer contacts between the two communities, which is evident, among other things, from 
the emergence of mixed marriages. For example, Jože, born in Bistrica above Črnomelj, 
said the following to me: “Girls from the valley liked to come up because the Gottscheer lads 
were handsome. And the Gottscheer girls liked to go to the valley because life was easier there” 
(Jože, first generation, MGI).
The predominant language in the Kočevska region before the Second World War 
was Gottscheer dialect Gottscheerisch or Göttscheabarisch2, which was used throughout the 
countryside. The inhabitants of the town of Kočevje mostly spoke High German, which, as 
in other larger towns (Ptuj, Celje, Maribor), was an expression of the bourgeoisie. Brigitte 
(Graz, MGI) lived in Kočevje from birth until 1941. She said: “In the town of Kočevje, we 
didn’t speak Gottscheerisch but German (hochdeutsch). I understand Gottscheerisch very well, 
but I don’t speak it well.”
Despite the similarity between Gottscheerisch and German, we can see from Bishop 
Jeglič’s journal entry and the testimony of teacher Andoljšek (see the previous section) that 
the inhabitants of Draga and the surrounding area who spoke Gottscheer dialect did not 
necessarily understand German. They were more familiar with Slovene which was spoken 
in the area. Fourteen years later, on 16 April 1917, at the other end of the Kočevska area, 
in Planina pri Črnomlju, where the school classes were held in the German language, the 
parish priest Viktor Kragl wrote in a visitation report:
2 Göttscheabarisch in the area of  Kočevska in Slovenia is included in the group of “critically endan-
gered languages” in the UNESCO Atlas of Endangered Languages  of the World (Mosley, 2010), which 
means that it is known only to great-grandparents and is no longer used in everyday life (UNESCO 
Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages  2003: 8–10). During the MGI survey, I found 
that the placement of Göttscheabarisch in the group of “critically endangered languages” does apply 
to the territory of Slovenia, while the dialect in the USA and Canada could be classified under the 
category of “highly endangered” languages, which include the languages /dialects spoken only by the 
generation of grandparents and the older generation, while the generation of parents understands the 
dialect but does not speak it with the children, therefore the use of the dialect is limited to formal 
occasions and events where older members of the community meet. I have extensively discussed the 
topic of preservation of the Gottscheer dialect in Moric, 2010, 2011.
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ANJA MORIC
When a child comes to school, utmost care is taken to nurture the child’s edu-
cational side. However, it is very difficult for beginners because they do not yet 
know the German language and so the child does not comprehend anything in 
the beginning, much less can he speak because he only knows Gottscheerisch. 
(Ljubljana Archiepiscopal Archive)
Similarly, several decades after the war, when the Gottscheers in Klagenfurt were visited 
by the countrymen from the Društvo Kočevarjev – staroselcev (Society of Native Gottschee 
Settlers) from Občice Slovenia, noted teacher Ludwig Kren, born in 1921 in Stara Cerkev, 
who now lives in Klagenfurt/Celovec:
At that time, it turned out that people spoke an even older way of Gottscheerisch, 
which has been preserved in the Črmošnjice valley. And it was also realised that these 
people are not able to speak German – a written language because they have never 
learned it. (Kren, first generation, MGI)
Therefore, the villagers of Kočevska area learned the German language only in German 
schools or German classes – before many were abolished by the Yugoslav authorities in the 
second half of the 1930s3. This information alone could be enough to turn the perception 
of Kočevska region as an (exclusively) German (or German-speaking) enclave.
Language differences did not cause major communication difficulties. Slovenes who 
lived among the Gottscheers knew how to speak the Gottscheer dialect, while Gottscheers 
who lived in predominantly Slovene villages spoke (at least basic) Slovene. One of the 
interlocutors originating from the village of Dolnja Briga said the following:
We had good neighbours who were from Croatia. Their sons spoke Göttscheerisch, and 
with their parents we spoke Slovene. […] Some parents also spoke a little Göttscheerisch. 
Like our neighbour who only knew a few words but understood us. My mother did not 
speak Slovenian, but they still understood each other. These were really good people. 
There was no hatred at the time and it didn’t matter who you were or where you 
came from. (female Gottscheer, first generation, MGI.)
Jožefa’s mother was born into a Gottscheerisch-speaking family in Smuka. She married 
a Slovenian from the nearby village of Pleš. Jožefa remembers that her mother
knew Slovene well, very well, perhaps just not certain words. When she came to Pleš to 
join a Slovene family, she did not know how to ask where those forks for mixing žganci 
3 For more information on the abolition of German schools and classes in the Kočevska region, cf. 
Ferenc, 2005: 78–86.
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A GERMAN “LINGUISTIC ISLAND” OR A LINGUISTICALLY MIXED REGION?
[local mush dish] were. Father was mischievous, so she went to ask grandmother, the 
mother on the father’s side. But he pulled a fast one on her and told her that it was 
called burkeljce [fire tongs]. So she went to grandmother and said: “Dear mother, 
where are those burkeljce for mixing žganci mush?” “Come on, he is pulling your 
leg again!” [laughs] There were very few words she didn’t know, for objects and 
whatnot. Otherwise, she spoke beautiful Slovene, wrote Slovene and German. She 
was also praised by the Gottscheers for writing beautifully, they called it Kornschrift, 
Kornschrift! It’s a sort of high handwriting. (Jožefa Škedelj, in Moric, 2018b)
Jožefa knew Gottscheerisch as a child, but over the years she forgot this dialect due to 
lack of use. She remembers the use of Slovene and Gottscheerisch in the village.
I knew a lot but I forgot. I forgot a lot, too. Yet I knew. We played with the kids and 
whatnot. Across from here there was also a Slovene family, and we also spoke a lot 
of Slovene, didn’t we? But I knew certain things. When my mother sent me to the 
neighbours’ shop to go and buy one, instead of a loaf they said cautle, and then I took 
the change and purchased one cautle. (Jožefa Škedelj, in Moric, 2018b)
In some cases they also encouraged the use of German instead of Gottscheerisch. During 
the interwar period, three Gottscheer families and ten Slovene families lived in Bistrica, 
where Jože spent his childhood. His father was a Gottscheer and his mother a Slovene: 
At home we spoke only Slovene. Even with my father. When we cut the vines he would 
say to me: “You know what, Gottscheerisch is minor, you better learn German.” During 
work he always translated Gottscheerisch words into German. I spoke German more 
easily than Gottscheerisch. I knew both Gottscheerisch and German at the time, but 
over the years I forgot because of the lack of use. (Jože, first generation, MGI)
Jože’s example shows that during the interwar period, some Gottscheers in the old 
homeland were of the opinion that the use of the German language was more useful than 
the use of the Gottscheer dialect, so they began to abandon the dialect: “Allowing chil-
dren to learn and speak the old language has often been seen as an obstacle on the way to 
becoming successful individuals in the outside world” (Hutter, 2003).
If the Austro-Hungarian schools in the Kočevska region were German or Utraquist 
schools, in the new Yugoslav state, Slovenian language prevailed in school education. It 
seems that at that time the previously self-evident (voluntary) multilingualism was replaced 
by a compulsory one, as the Gottscheers recall the change of the official or school language 
as the greatest historical trauma that has befallen their community (cf. also Thomason, 
2010: 47). The knowledge of Slovene was promoted by the school system among the 
135
ANJA MORIC
Gottscheers born between the wars. Justine from Kitchener in Canada, attended school 
in Črmošnjice for two years:
The first year was in German only, but the second one was half-and-half. And then 
when we settled in the Untersteiermark [Lower Styria], we had neighbours that were 
Slovenian and had children my age and I was fluent in Yugoslavian, in the Slovenian 
language. But then, as we moved on again, of course you forget that. But now when 
they talk, I can still understand the other word. (Justine Sigmund, in Moric, 2018b)
Justine, as well as most of my other interlocutors, stopped using the Slovene language 
after the resettlement. The same is true of Rudolph, who has not used Slovene since set-
tling in the USA: “Even in Austria I still spoke it, but I came to the United States and I lost 
the Slovenian language” (Rudolph Kump, in Moric, 2018b).
The actual multiculturalism or multilingualism of pre-war Kočevska is also evi-
denced in Gottscheer folk songs. One, the “Drei Madchen” (Three Girls), has been 
preserved in a pure bilingual form where one line is sung in German and the other in 
Slovene. It was recorded by Adolf Hauffen in his collection of Gottscheer folk songs in 
1895. At the turn of the century, bilingual folk songs were also present in other mixed 
linguistic areas in Slovenia (as well as in Austria), but most of them were lost due to the 
selectivity of recorders, who considered them foreign and excluded them from national 
collections of folk songs. The song Three Girls was present in practically the same form 
among Carinthian Slovenes (Logar 2020) and in other multilingual regions of Austria-
Hungary (Eckard 2020). It is possible that it was brought to the Kočevska region by 
Gottscheer peddlers or other immigrants. The similarity of Gottscheer and Slovene folk 
songs was already recognised by the first linguists and researchers of Gottscheer folk 
songs (e.g. Schröer, 1891; Hauffen, 1895; Tschinkel, 2004) Hans Tschinkel (cf. Kumer, 
1987: 249); an extensive comparative study was written by Zmaga Kumer for the fourth 
volume of the Gottscheer Volkslieder collection. The publication of the book, which was 
to contain comments on Gottscheer folk songs and findings on the mutual influences 
of the Gottscheer and Slovene traditions (Kumer, 1987: 249), was planned in the 1980s, 
but unfortunately was never realised and Kumer’s manuscript, meanwhile, was lost in 
the Deutsches Volksliedarchiv in Freiburg. In addition to Kumer, other researchers have 
written about the similarities between the two traditions (Marolt, 1939; Ruch, 1982; 
Holzapfel, 1999; Golež Kaučič, 2018, etc.), whether it is either a common substance or 
the use of Slovene words and phrases (e.g. Mare, boh pomagaj!, Sinek Marko etc.). The 
latter could be said to be a reflection of multilingualism, which is reflected even in the 
Gottscheer dialect itself or in the multitude of Slovene words it contains (cf., for exam-
ple, Hauffen, 1895; Steska, 1896; Tschinkel, 1908; Koštial, 1939: 328–331) and as such 
testifies to the f luid neighbourly relations in the Kočevska region.
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A GERMAN “LINGUISTIC ISLAND” OR A LINGUISTICALLY MIXED REGION?
CONCLUSION
Relations between Slovenes and Germans in the Kočevska (Gottschee) region were marked 
by the broader political situation in Central Europe at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. 
Although both German and Slovene nationalist activists framed the area as belonging to 
their national or language category, the everyday reality of its inhabitants was different. In 
this article, I have tried to shed light on the relations between the Gottscheer, German and 
Slovene languages  in the Kočevska region during the period before the Second World War, 
which also reveal a view of the initial stages of national movements in the this area. Since 
in the Kočevska region, in addition to the listed languages, Croatian and Romani were 
also spoken, it would be interesting to study their use in the future as well. This is the only 
way to complete the insight into the past language image of Kočevska region. Despite the 
actual multilingualism, the Kočevska region is still perceived today as a former “German 
linguistic island”. The term does not take into account the multicultural nature of the 
area but is a reflection of the nationalist assumptions (and/or ignorance) of the researchers 
who are still using it. Intentionally or unintentionally, its use continues to project a one-
dimensional and incomplete understanding of relations between Germans and Slovenes 
in the Kočevska region, therefore it would make sense to consider abandoning it – if not 
elsewhere, at least in scientific vocabulary.
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»NEMŠKI JEZIKOVNI OTOK« ALI MEŠANO JEZIKOVNO OBMOČJE?: 
VEČJEZIKOVNE PRAKSE NA KOČEVSKEM
Na Kočevskem, v jugovzhodni Sloveniji, je 600 let – od 14. stoletja do 1941, ko je bila na podlagi 
dogovora med nacistično Nemčijo in fašistično Italijo večina prebivalstva premeščena v nemški 
rajh – obstajalo zanimivo mešano jezikovno območje. Glavni jezik in posebnost tega območja 
je bilo kočevarsko narečje, t. i. kočevarščina, ki je ohranila značilnosti srednjeveške nemščine in 
ponotranjila nekatere elemente slovenskega jezika. Čeprav so na Kočevskem poleg kočevarščine 
govorili tudi nemški, slovenski in celo hrvaški ter romski jezik, je to območje še danes dojeto kot 
nekdanji »nemški jezikovni otok«. Ker izraz »jezikovni otok« ne upošteva dejanske večjezične 
in večkulturne narave območja, hkrati pa odseva nacionalistične predpostavke avtorjev, ki ga 
uporabljajo, ga je treba ponovno premisliti. 
Prispevek s primeri jezikovnih praks na Kočevskem pred 2. svetovno vojno pokaže dozdaj 
zapostavljeno večjezikovno podobo t. i. nemškega jezikovnega otoka na Kočevskem. Zgodnjo 
fazo nacionalnega gibanja oz. začetka delitev na »Nemce« in »Slovence« na Kočevskem postavi 
v širši zgodovinski kontekst – v čas, ko so tudi v drugih večjezičnih pokrajinah avstro-ogrske 
monarhije potekale bitke za prevlado narodnih jezikov v javnem življenju. S predstavitvijo 
podatkov iz zgodovinskih in arhivskih virov avtorica problematizira enoznačno razumevanje 
razmerij med govorci različnih jezikov, ki so jih določale zlasti od zgoraj vcepljene nacionalne 
ideje nacionalističnih aktivistov in njihovih organizacij ter jih utrdile spremembe političnih 
mej. Predstavljeni so primeri večjezičnosti v različnih kočevskih krajih na prelomu iz 19. v 
20. stoletje. Večjezikovna in večkulturna prepletanja na Kočevskem pred 2. svetovno vojno 
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A GERMAN “LINGUISTIC ISLAND” OR A LINGUISTICALLY MIXED REGION?
pa ponazarjajo tudi izsledki raziskave, ki jo je avtorica opravila med Kočevarji v Sloveniji, 
Avstriji, Nemčiji, ZDA in Kanadi.
Dr. Anja Moric, Assist. Prof., ZRC SAZU, Institute of Ethnomusicology; University of Ljubljana, 
Faculty of Arts, Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, anja.moric@zrc-sazu.si
The author acknowledges the projects (Thinking Folklore: Approaching Dialect from Folkoristic, 
Ethnological, and Computational Perspectives (J7-9426), Song Reflections on Intercultural 
Coexistence (J6-9369), A reflection of (former) multiculturalism and coexistence in the folklore 
and heritage practices of Slovene and Gottscheer immigrant communities in the United States of 
America (BI-US/19-21-012)) and the research core funding (Slovene Identities in the Context of the 
European Space, No. P6-0187) were financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency.