Denial of Ethnic Identity: The Political Manipulation of Beliefs about Language in Slovene Minority Areas of Austria and Hungary

In: Slavic review: interdisciplinary quarterly of Russian, Eurasian and East European studies, Band 55, Heft 2, S. 364-398

Abstract

A significant factor in the history—and one of the bones of contention in the historiography—of the Slovene minority in the Austrian province of Carinthia is what is known as theWindischentheorie.This pseudoacademic "theory" was developed, on the basis of popular beliefs, during the interwar years and promulgated by those with fascist, later Nazi, sympathies and was an apparently very effective weapon in the Germanization process. The Windischentheorie changed over time; according to what may be called its "canonical" version, the language of the Carinthian Slovenes was quite different from Standard Slovene and the Carinthian Slovenes themselves were therefore ethnically distinct from Slovenes in Slovenia. Other versions of the "theory" are described below. The meaning of the wordWindisch, which had been used by German speakers to mean "Slav" for many centuries, was thereby changed radically and with important political effect.