German-Slovene relations in the Slovene lands from the mid-19th century until today

This paper traces the development of Slovene-German inter-ethnic relations in the Slovene ethnic territory from the 19th century onwards. After the March Revolution of 1848, the Slovenes in Carinthia and Styria, as minority groups in the Habsburg Empire, clashed with the dominant German-speaking groups and were exposed to a progressive process of Germanization and assimilation. After the 1920 plebiscite, Carinthian Slovenes were exposed to accelerated processes of Germanization, while during the Second World War the Nazis sought to resolve the Carinthian question once and for all by instigating forced migrations. In the post-war, bilingual schooling was introduced in southern Carinthia, where it was used as tool for defining the bilingual territory. Further, the Austrian State Treaty appeared to offer guarantees of certain minority rights; however, these have been largely unforthcoming. Recent years have been marked by the Ortstafelsturm – a battle against erecting bilingual village signs – and reforms to the Law on Ethnic Groups