Austrian propaganda poster in Slovene from 1920. The text reads: "Mother, do not vote for Yugoslavia, or I will be drafted for King Peter". With such messages, the Austrian side tried to persuade voters that the military matters and bloodthirstiness were characteristic of Yugoslavs, whereas the Austrians and Germans were depicted as peace-loving.A Yugoslav propaganda sticker. The text reads: "In Yugoslavia, the farmer is the prince. In German Austria, the Jews and the barons are."
German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol (Italy), the German-speaking Community of Belgium, and Liechtenstein. It is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg and a co-official language in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland. The languages which are most similar to German are the other members of the West Germanic language branch: Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German/Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish. There are also strong similarities in vocabulary with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although those belong to the North Germanic group. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English.
Slovene or Slovenian belongs to the group of South Slavic languages. It is spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 2.1 million Slovenian people and is one of the 24 official and working languages of the European Union.
Carinthian Slovenes or Carinthian Slovenians are the indigenous Slovene-speaking population group in the Austrian state of Carinthia. They send representatives to the National Ethnic Groups Advisory Council. The status of the minority group is guaranteed in principle by the Constitution of Austria and under international law.
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Dual Monarchy, was a constitutional monarchy in Central and Eastern Europe from 1867 to 1918. It was formed by giving a new constitution to the Austrian Empire, which devolved powers on Austria (Cisleithania) and Hungary (Transleithania) and placed them on an equal footing. It broke apart into several states at the end of World War I.
World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.
The State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was a political entity that was constituted in October 1918, at the end of World War I, by Slovenes, Croats and Serbs resident in what were the southernmost parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although internationally unrecognized, this was the first incarnation of a Yugoslav state founded on the Pan-Slavic ideology. Thirty-three days after it was proclaimed, the State joined the Kingdom of Serbia to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
The Julian March or Julian Venetia is an area of southeastern Europe which is divided among Croatia, Italy and Slovenia. The term was coined in 1863 by Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli to demonstrate that the Austrian Littoral, Veneto, Friuli and Trentino had a common Italian linguistic identity. Ascoli emphasized the Augustan partition of Roman Italy at the beginning of the Empire, when Venetia et Histria was Regio X.
London Pact, or more correctly, the Treaty of London, 1915, was a secret pact between the Triple Entente and the Kingdom of Italy. The treaty was signed in London on 26 April 1915 by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the French Third Republic, the Russian Empire, and the Kingdom of Italy. Its intent was to gain the alliance of Italy against its former allies, including the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. The main lure was promising large swaths of Austria-Hungary to the north of Italy and to the east across the Adriatic. Britain also promised funding. Italy promised to enter the war the next month. The alliance with Italy's old enemy Austria had been promoted by some politicians as a realpolitik move and had never been popular with the public. Also, the Allies could easily outbid Austria-Hungary and thereby won a military alliance with 36 million Italians. The secret provisions were published by the Bolsheviks when they came to power in Russia in late 1917.
The Republic of German-Austria was a country created following World War I as the initial rump state for areas with a predominantly German-speaking population within what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In particular the "Carinthian question" had become an issue in the closing days of World War I, when events developed rapidly, beginning with territorial claims by the Slovenian National Assembly on October 17, 1918. These claims were rejected by the Carinthian provisional Landtag assembly on 25 October 1918, declaring the state's accession to German-Austria. From November 5, Yugoslav forces moved into the settlement area of the Carinthian Slovenes from the Karawanks mountain range down to the Drava River and beyond. The Landtag assembly fled from Klagenfurt to the northwestern town of Spittal an der Drau and on 11 November officially demanded self-determination, which in this case amounted to demanding a plebiscite for a region with a mixed population.
A Landtag is a representative assembly (parliament) in German-speaking countries with legislative authority and competence over a federated state (Land). Landtage assemblies are the legislative bodies for the individual states of Germany and states of Austria, and have authority to legislate in non-federal matters for the regional area.
The Karawanks or Karavankas or Karavanks are a mountain range of the Southern Limestone Alps on the border between Slovenia to the south and Austria to the north. With a total length of 120 kilometres (75 mi) in an east-west direction, the Karawanks chain is one of the longest ranges in Europe. It is traversed by important trade routes and has a great tourist significance. Geographically and geologically, it is divided into the higher Western Karawanks and the lower-lying Eastern Karawanks. It is traversed by the Periadriatic Seam, separating the Apulian tectonic plate from the Eurasian Plate.
The Drava or Drave is a river in southern Central Europe. With a length of 710 kilometres (440 mi), 724 kilometres (450 mi) including the Sextner Bach source, it is the fifth or sixth longest tributary of the Danube, after the Tisza, Sava, Prut, Mureș and perhaps Siret. Its source is near the market town of Innichen, in the Puster Valley of South Tyrol, Italy. The river flows eastwards through East Tirol and Carinthia in Austria into the Styria region of Slovenia. It then turns southeast, passing through Croatia and, after merging with its main tributary Mur, forms most of the border between Croatia and Hungary, before it joins the Danube near Osijek.
With the occupation of southeastern Carinthia by Yugoslav troops, the confrontation evolved into armed clashes. The provisional Carinthian government under Governor Arthur Lemisch decided to lead off the armed struggle in order to preserve the southern Carinthian border on the Karawanks range. Bitter fighting of paramilitary groups around Arnoldstein and Ferlach alarmed the Entente powers. They arbitrated a ceasefire, whereafter a nine-day U.S. Army commission under Lt.Col. Sherman Miles scouted the disputed region between river and mountains in January and February 1919 and made the crucial recommendation that the Karawanks frontier should be retained, thus opening the possibility of a plebiscite. Yugoslav representatives urged for a border on the Drava; American delegates however spoke in favor of preserving the unity of the Klagenfurt Basin and convinced the British and French delegations. Until May 7, all occupied Carinthian territories were vacated. When Yugoslav forces under General Rudolf Maister made an attempt to re-enter the region on 28 May 1919, they were forced to withdraw by the Entente authorities.
Arnoldstein is a market town in the district of Villach-Land in the Austrian state of Carinthia.
Ferlach in the district of Klagenfurt-Land in Carinthia is the southernmost town in Austria. It is known for its centuries-old gunsmith tradition, part of the Austrian intangible cultural heritage since 2010.
The Allies of World War I or Entente Powers is the term commonly used for the coalition that opposed the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria during the First World War (1914–1918).
The question was whether the considerable Slovene-speaking majority in the state's southeastern region, adjoining the Karawanks range, would carry the vote for union with Austria or whether that majority wished to join a newly created South Slavic state. This was to a large extent a consequence of rising romantic nationalism under the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy and the idea of an autonomy of the "Slovene lands", referring to the early medieval Slavic principality of Carantania, which had perished in the ninth century. A common state with other southern Slavic peoples seemed the most acceptable compromise toward fulfillment of nationalist strivings.
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs. This includes, depending on the particular manner of practice, the language, race, culture, religion, and customs of the nation in its primal sense of those who were born within its culture. This form of nationalism arose in reaction to dynastic or imperial hegemony, which assessed the legitimacy of the state from the top down, emanating from a monarch or other authority, which justified its existence. Such downward-radiating power might ultimately derive from a god or gods (see the divine right of kings and the Mandate of Heaven).
Carantania, also known as Carentania, was a Slavic principality that emerged in the second half of the 7th century, in the territory of present-day southern Austria and north-eastern Slovenia. It was the predecessor of the March of Carinthia, created within the Carolingian Empire in 889.
Plebiscite
Poster in Slovene ("Let us go and vote! It is our sacred duty, our homeland is calling us. You are Carinthians, and you should remain Carinthians!"), featuring zones A and B
The Treaty of Saint-Germain with the Republic of Austria, signed on 10 September 1919, should have determined the Austrian-Yugoslav border. It ascertained that some small parts of Carinthia—i.e. the Meža Valley (German: Mießtal) with the town of Dravograd (Unterdrauburg) and the Jezersko (Seeland) municipal area—should be incorporated into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, while the fate of wider southeastern Carinthia area down to the Klagenfurt basin was to be determined by a plebiscite.
Wanting to resolve the conflict peacefully, the Allied victors in World War I divided southeastern Carinthia into two zones, "A" in the south and "B" in the north. A two-stage referendum was to be held to determine annexation by either Austria or the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, in the smaller Zone B only if a majority of the people in Zone A would have voted for Yugoslavia. The population of Zone A was predominantly Slovene-speaking: according to the pre-war Austrian census of 1910, people in these municipalities who used Slovene as their primary language represented nearly 70% of the population; while the number of ethnic Slovenes was probably higher. German speakers were concentrated in the town of Völkermarkt and certain smaller localities, especially around Bleiburg (Slovene: Pliberk) and Ferlach (Borovlje).
Before the plebiscite, both sides waged intensive propaganda campaigns. Austrian propaganda emphasized the economic benefits of maintaining the unity of the Klagenfurt Basin and appealed to feelings of Carinthian unity and brotherhood between the Slovene- and German-speaking peoples of Carinthia. Conducted in the Slovene Carinthian dialect, Austrian propaganda promised that the Slovene language and national identity would be treated as equal to the German in Austria, officially confirmed by the Carinthia Landtag assembly two weeks before the plebisicite was held. It nevertheless also had an anti-Yugoslav tendency, picturing the conditions in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes as chaotic. Yugoslav propaganda almost exclusively used arguments emphasizing Slovene national awareness. It took an aggressive anti-German view from the beginning and turned to economic issues only in the last few weeks before the plebiscite. The campaigners were not capable of using the political instability of the young Austrian republic and its then unenviable position in the international community for advantage.
Despite the six-months term determined by the Treaty of Saint-Germain, the referendum was not held in Zone A until October 10, 1920. In addition to changing the date of the plebiscite, other terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain allegedly were ignored or changed: an Austrian representative was accepted into the commission, and the plebiscite commission changed rules by not allowing the Yugoslav military to control the border between Zones A and B on 8 June 1920. Instead the Yugoslav army had to withdraw from Zone A in accord with the decision of the plebiscite commission on 18 September 1920. Changes may also have been made in electoral registers which allowed people from northern Zone B voting in Zone A, backing the Austrian side. In the following decades both sides would continue to interpret and instrumentalize the plebiscite's circumstances in their own way.
Results
The outcome of the plebiscite held on 10 October, was 22,025 votes (59.1% of the total cast) in favor of adhesion to Austria and 15,279 (40.9%) in favor of annexation by the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Assumed that the whole German-speaking minority had voted for Austria, also every second Carinthian Slovene had decided to remain with the Republic. While a majority in the remote Alpine villages on the slopes of the Karawanks range voted for Yugoslavia, the inhabitants of the densely settled Klagenfurt Basin were motivated by their evolved social and cultural, not least economic ties to the central Carinthian region.
After the Austrian option had gained a majority of votes in predominantly Slovene Zone A, the second stage of the referendum in northern Zone B, populated chiefly by German speakers, was not carried out. Another Yugoslav foray was fiercely rejected by the Entente powers. The Carinthian Plebiscite region was placed under Austrian administration on 18 November 1920 and declared part of the sovereign Austrian Republic on November 22. Up to today, October 10 is a public holiday in the State of Carinthia.
The plebiscite ultimatively determined the border between Austria and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The border remained unchanged after World War II, even as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia gave way to Josip Broz Tito's Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, though at the end of the war Yugoslav Partisans again briefly occupied the area, including the capital city of Klagenfurt. Since the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the border has separated Austria and Slovenia.
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Minority languages are spoken in a number of autochthonous settlements in Austria. These are:
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