Carinthia (Slovenia)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Carinthia - known in Slovenian as Koroška and in German as Kärnten - sits tucked into the northernmost reaches of Slovenia, wedged against Austria in the heavily forested valleys of the Karawanks mountain range. Over two thirds of this small region is covered by forest, and the percentage is still rising. It is a place shaped by lead and zinc, by plebiscites and partisan violence, by ski champions and steel mills. How did a region covering just 478 square kilometers come to carry so many competing identities? And why, more than a century after the borders were drawn, do people still debate what Carinthia actually is?

• 2. Where the Duchy Once Ended

  ›

  The name Carinthia traces back to Carantania, an early medieval Slavic principality whose territory once stretched from the present-day Austrian state of Carinthia south into the Styrian lands along the Sava river. That ancient principality gave way to an Imperial Carinthian duchy established in 976. The House of Habsburg ruled it from 1335, and by 1867 it had become a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary.

  World War I broke the duchy apart. The 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain allocated the southeasternmost slice of the former duchy to the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Serbs. The Meža Valley, the area around Dravograd, and the municipality of Jezersko were split off without a referendum. To the north and west of those areas, on the 10th of October 1920, voters in the Carinthian Plebiscite chose to join the newly founded First Austrian Republic instead.

  The plebiscite left a hard border cutting across what had been a single administrative unit. The portion that fell to the south - the part this documentary is about - had no single urban center, only local centres scattered across three river valleys. Towns like Ravne, Prevalje, Mežica, and Dravograd became the anchors of a region without a capital.

• 3. World War and Mass Graves

  ›

  During the 1941 Balkan Campaign of World War II, Nazi Germany annexed the area and placed it under the administration of the Reichsgau of Carinthia, led by Friedrich Rainer. The occupation brought the full weight of wartime administration to bear on a region that had only been Slovenian for two decades.

  When the German Instrument of Surrender came in May 1945, Yugoslav Partisans entered Carinthia. What followed was violent. Numerous alleged collaborators were killed during the Bleiburg repatriations. Mass graves are documented around Dravograd - in Otiški Vrh, Selovec, Bukovska Vas, and Šentjanž - and around Prevalje, in Leše and Poljana.

  After the war the region became part of the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Slovenia. It remained inside Yugoslavia until the country's breakup in 1991, when it passed into the newly independent Republic of Slovenia. The question of official status, however, went unresolved: Carinthia has no formal standing within Slovenia's administrative structure. Its identity has stayed informal ever since.

• 4. Lead, Steel, and the Closed Mine

  ›

  The Meža Valley earned the designation of the most highly industrialized valley in the region, and the evidence ran deep into the soil. Centuries of lead and zinc ore extraction left the lower areas polluted by lead. The lead smelter in Žerjav and the lead and zinc mine in the Meža Valley both closed in the 1990s. The only factory still operating near the former mine site is TAB, a manufacturer of batteries.

  Metal Ravne, the steel mill at Ravne, had a different story. It was already one of the largest employers in the Duchy of Carinthia in the 19th century, and it survived the post-Yugoslav economic transition. Today it specializes in alloy steel and machinery components.

  The Drava Valley carries a different kind of industrial infrastructure: five hydroelectric plants in Carinthia's stretch of the river, with a combined capacity of about 60 megawatts. The processing industry remains the region's biggest employer, though many residents commute to Ljubljana, Maribor, Velenje, and across the border into Austria. In 2008 unemployment in the mining town of Črna na Koroškem stood at 10.5%, while Ravne na Koroškem, known for its steel industry, recorded 11.8%.

• 5. Forests, Fish, and Sulfur Dioxide

  ›

  Mount Peca and Mount Raduha rise above the timberline, home to alpine animal species found nowhere else in the region. Lower down, beech, fir, and spruce dominate a landscape that Pleistocene glaciers carved into its present hilly and mountainous form. The Drava River supports fish populations; hare, deer, and roe deer inhabit the forested areas.

  The environmental record of the Meža Valley has slowly improved since the zinc mine closed. But across Slovenian Carinthia as a whole, forest damage remains severe. In some areas, up to 40% of trees are damaged, a consequence of heavy sulfur dioxide emissions from the Šoštanj Power Plant and the iron works in Ravne.

  Water, at least, has not been a casualty of the pollution. Despite contamination of the Meža and Drava rivers, clean water remains abundant. The mountainous terrain sits on impermeable rock, and almost every farm in the mountains runs its own water supply system. Settlements in the valleys connect to municipal systems. The same geology that made mining profitable has also kept drinking water accessible.

• 6. Culture Without a Capital

  ›

  The Dr. Franc Sušnik Central Carinthian Library and the Carinthian museum are both located in Ravne na Koroškem. But the Carinthian Regional Museum, the Carinthian Gallery of Fine Arts, and the regional radio station sit in Slovenj Gradec - a town that is historically part of Styria, not Carinthia. The institutional map of the region does not follow its geographic borders.

  High schools operate in Ravne and Muta. Students seeking tertiary education mostly head to the universities in Maribor and Ljubljana. In Črna na Koroškem, a centre for the protection and vocational education of physically and mentally handicapped youth provides specialized services the region would otherwise lack.

  The list of notable people from Carinthia spans a remarkable range: skiers including Tina Maze, Aleš Gorza, Mitja Kunc, Nataša Lačen, and Danilo Pudgar; football players Robert Koren, Andrej Pečnik, Nejc Pečnik, Mirnes Šišić, and Marko Šuler; the tennis player Katarina Srebotnik; the volleyball player Tine Urnaut; the basketball player Boštjan Nachbar; the composer Hugo Wolf; the writer Prežihov Voranc; and the philosopher Renata Salecl. Since Slovenia joined the European Union in May 2004, sustained effort has gone into re-integrating Carinthia as a cultural, tourism, and economic unit across what is now an internal EU border.