The discourse of historical legitimization: a comparative examination of Southern Jutland and the Slovenian language area

Abstract

This article analyzes the discourse of historical legitimacy in the duchy of Schleswig and in the Slovenian-speaking regions of Carniola, Styria, and especially Carinthia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The question as to who had arrived in the area first was never far from the surface, because in an era of national romanticism, duration of stay seemed to allot special claims to possession. Rather than challenging this rationale, all sides tended to focus their efforts on enhancing their local genealogy. Yet the national conflicts of the period were not about political and linguistic history, but about contemporary interests and identities. In both Jutland and the southeastern Alps, national movements tended to focus on select moments in time that corresponded most closely to their modern-day political aspirations. The comparative analysis of two otherwise fairly divergent European regions reveals the pragmatic similarities of historical nation-building.

Keywords:

• historical legitimization
• national movements
• Slovenia
• Carinthia
• Schleswig

Notes

His central works on the topic were Les Cadres sociaux de la me´moire, La Topographie le´gendaire des E´vangiles en Terre Sainte, and the posthumously published La me´moire collective. In English, see On Collective Memory. For a recent assessment of Durkheim's influence, see Misztal.

See especially Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, and Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume.

For a schematic juxtapostion of communicative and commemorated history, see especially Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis.

For the following, see Berger, “On the Role.”

Numerous additional examples of mythical representations of the national past can be found in Flacke. See also Berger, Donovan and Passmore, Writing National Histories.

The Dani were originally just one of the cultural groups that inhabited the later Denmark. As has frequently been the case, the name of one group subsequently extended to a larger entity.

For one of the central early lines of argument, see Lauridsen.

The evidence was provided by the Egyptian geographer Ptolemy and by Bishop Adam of Bremen.

For the immediate rejection of Grimm's political conclusions, see Rafn's response of 13 February 1849 in Schmidt 164.

In 1460, the noble councils of Schleswig and Holstein elected the Danish king Christian I duke of Schleswig and count of Holstein. In exchange, the ruler granted extensive privileges to the territories and their estates. A stipulation that was bitterly debated in the nineteenth century also stated that the provinces were to remain forever united and indivisible. For recent examinations of this clause, see Hansen and Jahnke.

See Paulsen's own assessment in Fabricius and Lomholt-Thomsen 184f.

In contrast to later generations of Danish nationalists, however, Paulsen still presumed an originally West Germanic population in premedieval Jutland (Paulsen, “Ueber Volksthümlichkeit” 362, 367).

The designation Eiderdanism derives from the name of the river Eider (Ejder), which separates Schleswig from Holstein.

Notable examples would be Bauer (Die Nationalitätenfrage) and Renner (Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht). But a number of theorists of nationalism that do not focus primarily on Austria are also deeply influenced by this country's experience; one might mention Hans Kohn and Eric Hobsbawm in this context.

For all the census numbers in this section, see the Österreichische Statistik for the years of 1882, 1892, 1902, and 1912, published by the Statistische Zentralkommission in Vienna, and the overviews in Brix and Pfaundler.

Although much of the reduction of the German share derived from the influx of Slovenian speakers into the capital, the absolute numbers of Germans in Ljubljana (Laibach) stagnated at a time of general population growth and even declined periodically.

For an introduction to the formation of national identities in Slovenia, see Zwitter, Cox, and Hösler.

For the Austrian censuses, see especially Brix.

Similar developments, if on a smaller scale in relative terms, occurred in parts of southern Styria.

[Gregor Žerjav], Die nationale Abgrenzung. In view of his demand to dissolve the existing monarchy and his previous incarceration during the war, Žerjav published the booklet under the pseudonym “by a Southern Slav.”

The German term was deutschfreundliche Slowenen.

The postwar Slovenian historian Janko Pleterski also objected to the term because it seemed to imply that Slovenian nationalism was intrinsically Germanophobe, which Pleterski considered inaccurate (Pleterski 205).

For an important expression of the theory, see Wutte. See also Priestly 81–83.

In this essay, Yugoslavia will also be used as a synonym for Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes during the period when it did not constitute the country's official designation.

The Yugoslav census used native tongue as its category of classification.

For an introduction to the postwar history of the Masurians, see Sakson; Belzyt, “Problem weryfikacji,” “Zur Frage.” For a comparative look at contemporary Upper Silesian and Masurian conditions, see Łukowski and Nawrocki. For a longer horizon, see also Jasin´ski, Blanke.

Ludmannsdorf and Oberdörfl were municipally merged in 1957 and are therefore treated as one community in the current investigation.