14th
Century, Jahrhundertbuch der Gottscheer, Dr. Erich Petschauer,
1980.
For quite some time now, the reigning counts of Ortenburg had at their disposal an administrative center to handle business matters. The seat of the "court leet" is not known. It would, however, have made sense to set up branches in Spittal an der Drau and in Reifnitz. It would also have been appropriate and have made sense organizationally to assign to the "court leet," under the leadership of a member of the House of Ortenburg, the task of checking the basic prerequisites for the colonization. Was the older son of Meinhart I, Hermann III, the right
man for the job? According to all indications, yes. Reason: According to the law, all documents had to be notarized by several witnesses. Understandably, the counts of Ortenburg were desirable as witnesses because of the high regard they enjoyed among the nobility of Carinthia and Carniola. As of 1301, however, the signature of the young Count Hermann disappeared from the documents (that of his brother Meinhart II remained). It is known that Hermann III married young. His wife was a Countess Hohenlohe by birth. Certainly it would be conceivable that he
followed her to another part of the kingdom. But it is just as likely that his father, with the consent of the grandfather, commissioned him to prepare the colonization of the still nameless primeval forest.
The death of the grandfather (1304 in Laibach) did not change the commission which the author of this book is certain was given. On the other hand, it had far-reaching consequences for the property rights of the counts of Ortenburg. The sons and inheritors Frederick II, Meinhart I, Otto V, and Albrecht II divided the countship among themselves. Meinhart, the exceedingly energetic first-born, dealt with his brothers by giving them the fiefs in Carinthia and Styria. He kept the fiefs in Lower Carniola for himself. By nature, Meinhart was a warrior. He had
inherited the tempestuous Görzian temperament from his mother, a Countess of Görz, and was particularly fond of being the "sword of Aquileia." Nevertheless, one would do him an injustice if one did not include him in the clan of Ortenburgers which Türk describes as follows on page 13: "Proud knights, princes of the church, clever calculators and advisors, to be sure also squanderers at times, daring fighters, related and married to the highest nobility, protectors of the patriarch of Aquileia and feared condottieres against the Republic of Venice."
With this great Carinthian noble family, we have now already entered the outskirts of the settlement history of Gottschee. We are intentionally not yet referring to a German settlement.
In proceeding, we encounter the first document which indirectly confirms that the settlement venture had begun. The historiography of Gottschee simply recorded it without placing it into the overall conditions in Carinthia and Carniola at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and thus did not allow it to be heard. At that time, numerous villages, markers, and cities were being founded, and consequently, the population of Lower Carniola shifted extensively. Expressed in modern terms: the employment scene was tense. The lure of the cities with their cry, "City air liberates!" grew from year to year and along with it the aversion to heavy labor, such as clearing the primeval forest. The freeing of the serfs had proceeded interminably slowly but a hundred years earlier a lord could still have forced his serfs to endure the torture of the clearing of such a wilderness. Now no longer!
The document under discussion was the so-called peace accord of Laibach between the counts of Ortenburg and the lords of Auersperg in the year 1320. Duke Henry II of Carinthia of the House of Görz, Tyrol, had accused the two warring families of breaking the peace and had them brought before a noble court of arbitration. Only points 1, 3, and 4 of the decision as quoted from Tangl, Volume 1, page 113, concern us:
The careful relevant interpretation of the document of 1320 reveals a number of points about the settling of Gottschee, points which have been ignored until now but which are nevertheless exceedingly important. Already the preface makes very clear who the aggressor was. It begins with the words, "Count Meinhart of Ortenburg acknowledges that he, with the assent of his sons Hermann and Meinhart, ... accepts the decision of the individually listed noble judges for the termination of the feud between them and Volker and Herbard of Auersperg." Furthermore, the name of Count Hermann III of Ortenburg again appears for the first time nineteen years after its disappearance from documents. This would not be possible if he had not been in Carniola. We see in this a confirmation of the assumption that he had been ordered to prepare for the colonization. Point for point, we can
make the following connections with the document of 1320:
To point 1.: Ortenburg and Auersperg were feuding. The feud was so intense and extensive that the duke was forced to step in. The first skirmishes occurred in 1316 at the latest. From other sources we know that Count Henry II of Görz had come to the aid of the Auerspergers, which allows one to conclude that the Ortenburgers had the upper hand.
To point 3.: Ortenburg had not returned the Auerspergian prisoners of war.
To point 4.: The Ortenburgers had lured people away from the lands of the Auerspergers by making promises to them, that is, "enticed them with advertisements," as one would say today, and settled them on their own lands. Which Ortenburgian lands could they be? Hardly the fiefs in Lower Carniola, which had been administered by the counts for almost two hundred years. The peasants on their lands maintained their numbers from generation to generation in a very natural manner. How did this considerable lack of laborers arise so that Count Meinhart secured them from his neighbor in his own way, namely by force? He must have been under such strong pressure that he took the risk of an unavoidable feud. In fact, the wild count from Upper Carinthia did face serious financial
difficulties. To be sure, he was not a poor man, but everything that he undertook cost a lot of money - his expensive lifestyle, his campaigns with a small private army to protect the patriarchal state. His office as head of state in Carniola, an office he occupied since 1307, likewise demanded a great deal of money. Above all, however, the colonization of the primeval forest turned out to be an extremely expensive undertaking, one which at first did not yield anything, but also one which could not be avoided.
Thus the document of 1320 tells us that Meinhart had to have already begun the colonization in Lower Carniola before 1315 and that his son Hermann III had carried out the tedious planning and the technical preparations. It also gives us indisputable information about the origin of the first settlers. At the beginning, they came from the fiefs of the Ortenburgers themselves and, when their own reservoir of people was exhausted, they took settlers from their neighbors. In other matters, Count Meinhart also did not adhere to the judgment of 1320. On the Feast of the Epiphany in 1326, a new court of arbitration issued a judgment similar to the one issued six years earlier.
Finally, a 1320 document of Laibach also answers the question, often posed but never satisfactorily answered, about the origin of the Slovenian, that is, Slovenian-sounding, names of the villages on the fringes of the linguistic island. They stem mainly from the colonists coming from the fiefs of the Ortenburgers and Auerspergers, above all from the properties of the fiefs of Reifnitz, Ortenegg, Zobelsberg, and Hohenwarth, which belonged to the Ortenburgers and the Auerspergian castles of Oberhaus and Unterhaus. The aforementioned properties - as stated, possessions of Reifnitz - were closest to the primeval forest. Because of the shortage of people that were available to do the extremely difficult work of forestclearing, the first settlements on the edge of the forest, namely on the eastern edge, remained small. Apparently because of their unfavorable location, they did not attract additional settlers. The main focus of the colonization soon shifted to the northern edge of the primeval forest. What happened here?
To be sure, this question can no longer be answered by drawing logical conclusions from the 1320 peace accord of Laibach between the Ortenburgers and Auerspergers. Up to now, moreover, historiography did not concern itself with the settlement history of Gottschee, but considered it to have resulted from a feud arising out of incompatibility. All authors established the year 1339 as the year in which the settlement of the Ortenburgian primeval forest began. There were also no revealing documents available to the "Jahrhundertbuch" for the years from 1320 to 1339. In order to bridge this "silent period" which is extremely important for the origin of the later linguistic island, the author looked for another plausible explanation. It was found in the following logical consideration:
Still today, common sense tells us that it was inconceivable to send people into the wilderness without any planning and then to expect them to survive the enormous physical and psychic strain of clearing the primeval forest without any further support. On the contrary, the Ortenburgers made those preparations that were logically necessary. Since this was purely an economic undertaking, they of course expected an eventual profit. It could only be assured if one made the appropriate preparations for these workers. That is, for the establishment of villages, both the terrain and the simultaneously existing humus layer for the planting of crops and the establishment of meadows had to be compatible. Furthermore natural springs, which flowed at least most of the year and which were not likely to dry up due to the clearing of large wooded areas, had to exist. It would be a mistake to assume that people at that time did not think of these things.
Thus, one first had to have at least some idea which location and what size of settlements promised to be successful. Of course, we cannot assume that these preparations were carried out by surveyors who, with the aid of maps roamed through the land accompanied by aides and equipped with compasses and other mechanical devices. That did not yet exist. The only means for orientation were the eye and common sense.
Before Count Hermann and his helpers could get an overall picture of the settlement area, they had, above all, to make it accessible. Not that they laid out streets as we know them, but several construction crews cut primitive paths into the wilderness in order to prepare the way, literally, for the soil testers and water seekers. It is logical to assume that they could make use of an already existing mule-track that ran through the main valley. Several authors mention it. If one considers the terrain of the Gottscheer highland and its geographical location between the middle and northern regions of Carniola - indeed one also has to include Carinthia - and the Kulpa valley with the large settlements of Tschernembl and Möttling, then there can no longer be any doubt that medieval traders had checked out the primeval forest as a traffic route and had made a north-south shortcut through it. Again, this comment should not be taken to mean that several interested cities or individual families got together jointly to lay this mule-track. Sometime or other, someone began to find a path through the thicket. Let's conclude this thought: the mule-track, which surely was also used to transport salt can only have led from Reifnitz via the later towns of Gottschee, Obermösel Graflinden, and Unterdeutschau. Thus, the direction and course of what was later to be the main traffic route of Gottschee was already determined.
The terrain of the settlement region which was to be prepared demanded still two other unavoidable steps. The settlement had to concentrate on the western region of the later linguistic island because the eastern half of the primeval forest was so very inaccessible. Furthermore, it was strategically necessary to create settlement centers from which other villages were developed and radiated. To be sure, they did not all develop simultaneously but according to the availability of colonists and the supply of food, seed-corn, and cattle. One thing is certain: the settlers certainly did not receive an overabundance of these basic provisions.
The settlement centers are still discernible today. They were carefully chosen and were true centers of the various sections of the Gottscheer landscape They were situated so that they were as accessible as possible. If one were to give a landscape planner the assignment of placing them today, he could not place them more advantageously than the planners of the counts of Ortenburg. It will become evident that these settlement centers later developed into centers of administration and commerce and, in the nineteenth century, into the first school sites. Every Gottscheer who is to some degree familiar with his former homeland can now list them without any difficulty. They are from west to east:
Rieg, the city of Gottschee, Mitterdorf, Altlag, Obermösel, Nesseltal and Tschermoschnitz.
Special people were needed for the task of opening up the Ortenburgian primeval forest. Only young, healthy sons of peasants who were familiar with agriculture could do the job. But these were not available in large numbers,
particularly since the cities and markets beckoned. The first paths that could be traversed with ox-carts had by necessity to be cut to the settlement centers.
These steps alone, however, were not enough. The biggest organizational and financial problem must have been providing for and housing the first settlers and their families until they could support themselves by their own harvest and could survive the winter months in their own shelters. It can be assumed that a settling family or group could at best count on a sufficient harvest from the fields and meadows in the third summer after they were assigned the land. Already in the planning stages, the counts, that is, their co-workers, could readily foresee that sizeable amounts of food and feed, seed corn, and living space would be needed. They could either supply these from their own fiefs in Lower Carniola, that is, transport them there with ox-carts, or they could organize the colonization in such a way that the undertaking could be as self-supporting as possible by constantly controlling the number of settlers who moved there. But how?
Thus, at the beginning of the colonization one had to have a readily available supply of agricultural products that could be stored and that met the needs of the colonists. Hence, the first undertaking had to be the creation of appropriate agricultural concerns. In other words, one first had to set up supply villages which at the same time were already a part of the settlement. The region later to be known as "Oberland" was best suited for this. The forest and the terrain offered the least resistance here and the Rinse assured man and beast of a year-round water supply.
All of this means: the settlement of the Gottscheer region on a large scale began on the northern edge of the Ortenburgian primeval forest fief. At this point, it also becomes apparent why Count Meinhart recruited workers, in other words, settlers, by sordid means. "The properties of the count," mentioned in the document of Laibach in 1320, were located in the region later to be known as "Oberland." The two documents of 1320 and 1326 thus logically allow us to limit substantially the time for the initial settlement in the Oberland. This means that the clearing, settling, and farming of the Oberland took place primarily between 1315 and 1325 - give or take a few years. The plans and routes that were necessary to open the interior of the primeval forest can be assumed to have been laid simultaneously.
A word still about the tribal, that is, national, origin of the Ortenburgian colonists used during this initial phase of the main colonization. The great majority came from the established population of Lower Carniola. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, this population was still linguistically mixed, but the Slovenian element predominated. A "nationalism" in the nineteenth and twentieth century sense did not exist. The Slovenes were familiar with the few German expressions needed in everyday life, and the Germans were similarly familiar with Slovenian. Neither group had a written language for its populace.
If we now try to trace those villages founded within the aforementioned period, we are aided by the fact that the colonists already at that time often gave their settlements names from their homeland, in any case in their native language. Which villages might they have been? Clearly still recognizable today are Windischdorf (the explanation of it is given on a later page); the Slovenian side cites Mitterdorf (see Simonic, page 8); furthermore, Malgern is most likely derived from "Mala Gora" = little hill; Kletsch is without doubt of Slavic origin; the village name Seele fairly certainly stems from the Slovenian Sela = village. The village name "Gottschee" also belongs to this list. We still will have to deal with it in detail.
At this point, it must still be mentioned that the counts of Ortenburg had little success with the small settlements on the eastern perimeter of the primeval forest. Only Tschermoschnitz developed into a settlement center, particularly during the later colonization of the interior. Another advance into the interior of the forest occurred in the western region with the settlement of Göttenitz, originally probably Gotenica. A separate chapter will at the proper time deal with the settlement of the western high valley ridge, the basin of Suchen.
Conclusion from the document of 1320: a preparatory colonizing phase by linguistically mixed, predominantly Slovenian, settlers precedes the actual German settlement of Gottschee. It suffered from a lack of settlers. The author of the "Jahrhundertbuch" realizes that he will not find universal acceptance by introducing two different settlement phases into the historiography of the "Ländchen." This realization, however, could not prevent him from pursuing his ideas in a logical manner. Precisely the comparison of the village names showed that the first
settlement phase did not cease abruptly just because large numbers of settlers might have suddenly swarmed to Lower Carniola from Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol in order to take possession of the Ortenburgian primeval forest. Neither did it cease because 300 Franconian-Thuringian families with the same goal arrived after them. After occupying himself intensively for years with the subject of Gottschee, the author rather came to the conclusion that there was no break between the two phases both in matters of organization and, for the most part, also as far as people were concerned. The two phases merged until the participation of colonists from Lower Carniola ceased altogether. In addition, the author believes that he can support his conclusion about the smooth transition through a new interpretation of documents, through reference to events and developments, as well as by sketching an image of the times.
The second judgment of 1326 against Meinhart and his sons proves that Ortenburg had fallen into disfavor with the Carinthian duke. He could probably also not tolerate - no matter how much he might have wanted to - that the
governor in Carniola himself repeatedly broke the peace. The directly affected Auerspergers, who were ministers at the ducal court in St. Veit, probably had a hand in it, too. Therefore, Meinhart had to cease his feuding if he did not want to lose favor with the duke completely. On the other hand, the settlement of the primeval forest which had begun had to be continued if the investments that had already been made were not to be in vain. Thus, Meinhart had to find colonists by peaceful means. His first thought was to ask his younger brother Otto for
voluntary settlers. It was Otto who had received the original Ortenburgian countship in Upper Carniola when the properties were divided upon the death of the father. The division treaty, whose exact date is not known, was, to be sure, not the cause of severe familial strife, but nevertheless Otto was probably not enthusiastic about
Meinhart's proposal. Yet he nevertheless agreed as future developments showed.
The Ortenburgian recruiters found people who were significantly more eager to begin anew in another region of the Carinthian duchy in the Upper Carinthian region, particularly in the Möll and Lesach valleys, but also in the Puster valley and in the East Tyrolean tributary valleys north of the Drau. This was so particularly since the settlement conditions that were presented seemed exceptionally favorable. The last migrations to settle still unknown territories had already taken place quite some time ago. Thus, above all, people from the far reaches of the Freisingian Monastery of Innichen participated in the founding of the linguistic island of Deutsch-Ruth and the founding of Zarz in Upper Carniola, among others. Zarz had its ultimate expansion, however, only by additional immigration in the second half of the thirteenth century. The ethnic island, smaller in number than Gottschee,
was destroyed by a deliberate Slovenian ethnic policy in the course of the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century. The dialect, not accidentally closely related to the Gottscheer dialect, maintained itself as the language spoken at home into the twentieth century but is now extinct. Its vocabulary and its grammar could fortunately still be preserved for research.
Around 1280 the names of two other linguistic islands settled from the Puster valley made their appearance: Zahre and Pladen. They are located in the region of Carnica, today part of Italy, and like Tischlwang under the Plöckenpass are only remnants of their former expanses. The cited statistics were taken from the book, "Historische Lautgeographie des gesamtbairischen Dialektraumes" by Professor Dr. Eberhard Kranzmayer, Vienna, 1956. In the same work (Introduction, 13 to 15, page 5) he states:
" Around 1325 the large farming region of Gottschee with its capital by the same name was finally colonized from the border regions of Tyrol and Carinthia. The people of Gottschee were re-settled one-and-a-half decades ago." This is the shortest formulation for the beginning and end of the fate of the Gottscheers and their homeland. It is the task of the "Jahrhundertbuch" to depict the 600 years that lie between.
Here we are at the beginning of the settlement of Gottschee.
Professor Kranzmayer's date of "around 1325" finds concurrence with Hugo Grothe, who without the aid of the documents of Laibach of 1320 and 1326 respectively, arrived at the same conclusion as the "Jahrhundertbuch" by plausible estimation. However, we would fundamentally misjudge the actual events surrounding the recruitment of settlers for Gottschee if we assumed that "around 1325" there was a great exodus of voluntary settlers from the "Tyrolean-Carinthian border regions." Because it is purely speculative, it would also be a mistake to make the assumption, projected back into the fourteenth century, that whole villages responded to the call of their lord, the count of Ortenburg.
We also have to rid ourselves of the assumption that the recruited settlers made the preparations for the long journey southward within a very short time. They also cannot be compared in their intellectual receptivity with farmers of the nineteenth and twentieth century. They were poor; the emigration offer was unexpected. The trip to Lower Carniola was extremely difficult given the poor roads of the Middle Ages and could only be undertaken in groups and only during the summer months. Not every future colonist had a covered wagon. Several joined together to transport the meager household belongings in a communal vehicle.
It would not be difficult to describe more fully the week-long journey across passes and rivers in order to reflect on which route alone could have been passable. But let the statement suffice that the new colonists were dispersed across the vast regions of the Oberland. Possibly these first groups of Upper Carinthian settlers had, with the permission of the settlement staff, already stopped outside of the later "homeland" and had founded the villages of Treffen and Deutschdorf, among others. The village name of Treffen can very likely be traced back to the fort and village of Treffen by Villach. This site was well known to the Ortenburgers as the private property of the reigning patriarch. Ulrich I (1086-1121) had already given "Treffen" to the seat of Aquileia. The name "Deutschdorf" could have been coined by the Slovenian inhabitants of the area because it is a translation of the Slovenian "Nemska vas." The village designation of Windischdorf seems to have originated in precisely the opposite manner: Carinthian settlers had probably been settled there to expand an already existing hamlet which, due to a lack of immigration, was not able to maintain itself. Its inhabitants were "Wendian" ("Windisch") because the Carinthians were already accustomed then, and still are so today, to call the inhabitants of South Carinthia who spoke an old Slovenian dialect "Windische." Whereas "Deutschdorf," as well as "Treffen," developed into a Slovenian community, "Windisch" -Dorf became a purely Gottscheer settlement. Without a doubt, other villages occupied by Carinthian colonists arose during this transition period between the two settlement phases. Above all, Schalkendorf and Koflern appear to have been such settlements. To be sure, we do not have any documents about the founding of these villages. Years were to pass before the first documented German settlement appeared: Mooswald, which is mentioned in a letter, dared September 1, 1339, by the Patriarch Bertrand. In this document, the patriarch gives the count permission to appoint a chaplain to the newly built chapel of St. Bartholomew near Mooswald.
By mentioning this letter of September 1, 1339, we have jumped quite far ahead in the general political development in Carinthia and Carniola. The name Mooswald will only appear again after we have dealt with the catastrophe that befell the House of Ortenburg.
Death reaped a rich harvest in the House of Ortenburg. Five counts died within one decade. Meinhart was the first to die in 1332 - not in battle but in the family fortress of his ancestors in Upper Carinthia. His death obviously had
a paralyzing influence on the colonization in Lower Carniola. One cannot exclude the fact that there probably were serious differences of opinion between Meinhart's brothers, Otto and Albrecht, and the sons of the deceased count, Hermann and Meinhart II, about the continuation of the colonization of the primeval forest, namely about the financing of the undertaking. It also cannot be dismissed that Count Otto V, who had surely supplied several hundred settlers by 1332, demanded from his nephews the right also to make decisions in the settlement venture. Otto V had already made personal and financial investments and could be expected to contribute in the future. Hermann II and Meinhart II were the legal heirs of Meinhart I upon the death of their father. It was particularly Hermann, also bellicose, who objected to the demands of the childless Otto. Only if we presume this development within the Ortenburg family does the content of two other documents dated June 24, 1336 make sense. In these documents, Count Otto received castles and their properties in Lower Carniola as fiefs from the patriarch of Aquileia. They represent a decision, or better still a declaration of power, by the church prince as feudal lord of the Ortenburgers.
Historical accuracy, which is the responsibility of the Jahrhundertbuch, calls for the closer examination of the circumstances which forced the patriarch to make the decision of Villach. As we know, the pope had appointed the patriarchs of Aquileia without the agreement of the emperor since 1251. Already since 1208, they had not resided in Aquileia but in Udine.
The scar of the patriarchal state set with the decline of imperial power in Italy. Corruption in the administration and the constant uprisings of the cities and of the nobility destroyed the internal order and the economy. The state no longer could meet its financial obligations towards the papacy. When the death of the patriarch in 1332 necessitated the appointment of a successor, Pope John XXII took his time about making the appointment. The Pope wanted thereby to force the administration in Udine to pay its debts. The seat was vacant until the summer of 1334. Probably the most unusual incident in the history of the patriarchal state occurred in Udine during this interval. A woman named Beatrice was the political and military head in the constitutional capacity as protector and captain-general. She was not yet twenty-three years old but had everyone's respect. The people called her "fanciulla belissima" - approximately translated it means "beautiful girl." The parliament of Friaul lay at her feet and unanimously elected her to these two high offices. The monthly salary: 160 marks in silver. Beatrice would not have been mentioned in this book if she had not been a Bavarian princess, of the House of Wittelsbach of the secondary branch of Lower Bavaria. She herself was not wealthy - her brothers had even taken up a collection for her dowry among the populace of Lower Bavaria - but nevertheless Count Henry II of Görz, born in 1263, could afford to marry her because of her beauty.
Henry of Görz died in 1323 and left behind a newly born son. As decreed by law, the hereditary offices of protector and captain-general of the House of Görz were passed on to him. Together with the duke of Carinthia, Beatrice was made guardian of the child and thus was, for the time being, head of the patriarchal state. Beatrice did not remarry and had to endure her three power hungry brothers-in-law. She lived - totally given to superstitions - for some time in Cividale and then returned to Landshut where she died at the age of sixty.
In order to be able to put the origin and the content of the documents of Villach and the time of their appearance into the correct sequence and to be able to derive some conclusions from them, it is advisable also to sketch a portrait of the general political condition in Carinthia/Carniola in the mid-thirties of the fourteenth century. It reached a critical point with the death of the Carinthian Duke Henry II of the House of Görz, Tyrol on April 4, 1335: Henry did not have a male heir. His daughter Margarethe, called "die Maultasch" (slap in the face), could not inherit. But the Hapsburgs had made preparations. Already in 1330, at the Imperial Diet in Augsburg, they had convinced Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian to give them the duchy of Carinthia in fief in case Henry died without
a male heir. In the astonishingly short period of four weeks they had the fief in hand. Ludwig the Bavarian even bestowed a double fief - surely upon the suggestion of the Hapsburgs - by naming the brothers Otto and Albrecht of Hapsburg Dukes of Carinthia. Otto was proclaimed Duke in the customary ceremony on the Zollfeld and Albrecht received the oath of allegiance from the Carniolian estates and the nobles. Otto, too, pledged him allegiance. But his oath of allegiance surely was to veil the intention of the Hapsburgs to secede Carniola from Carinthia, which
then occurred without causing any sensation in the course of the next fifteen to twenty years. A new duchy was born.
This assumption of power by the Hapsburgs in Carinthia/Carniola was extremely dangerous for the patriarch of Aquileia and thus also for the colonization of the Ortenburgers. The pope, who had been abducted to Avignon in southern France in 1309 by the French royal House of Anjou, like his predecessors harbored a certain degree of mistrust of the Hapsburgs. Patriarch Bertrand, an unusually gifted politician and diplomat, born in southern France, most likely had been given the directive by the pope to counter the Hapsburgs with the appropriate means wherever the interests of the church seemed to be infringed upon. Since the relationship between the Hapsburgs and Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian was so good, it could be assumed that the fief scene in Carniola changed suddenly. A cause could easily be found. If, however, the patriarch of Aquileia lost his fiefs in Carniola, fiefs that he had held since 1077, then they were also lost to the counts of Ortenburg. Thus, the primeval forest fief also fell into other hands. With the loss of the Carniolian fiefs, the House of Ortenburg would have been relegated to its original countship in Upper Carinthia and would have been considerably weakened both economically and militarily. That is to say, the "Sword of Aquileia," whose strike force had already been weakened by the death of Count
Meinhart I, would have lost its power against the Venetian Republic and the destructive forces within the patriarchal state. In addition, a serious quarrel about the Castle Laas with its properties in western Carniola had already broken out between the counts of Ortenburg and the patriarch under the Patriarch Pagano II. It threatened to destroy the feudal relationship. And now on top of it the familial dispute in the House of Ortenburg!
Given these circumstances, Patriarch Bertrand had no other choice than to resort to the law of bargaining. His first step: He gave, that is, he presented, Castle Laas in Central Carniola in fief to the House of Hapsburg. Count Hermann III of Ortenburg had again rashly taken possession of it with a surprise attack just shortly prior to this. Hereby the patriarch proved the following:
1. He demonstrated to Hapsburg, perhaps also to Auersperg, that he felt himself still to be quite in possession of the old fiefs of Aquileia and hence would dispose of them as he saw fit, even though they thereby became fief-takers of the patriarch.
2. By giving the fief to the Hapsburgs, the object of the quarrel had been removed because the Ortenburgers could now no longer make any claims.
3. The counts also had to accept the fact that the patriarch did not necessarily take them into consideration.
Of the subsequent political measures that Bertrand undertook, his announced meeting in Villach with Count Otto V and his nephews on June 24, 1336 is most important. There are considerable doubts if it did not take place at Fort Treffen by Villach, the private estate of the ruling patriarch. Count Albrecht II, the youngest of the three Ortenburg brothers, had died in the spring. His death made the restructuring of the leadership of the Carinthian countship easier for the partriarch. He also proceeded vigorously in this.
As was already stated, two almost identical documents exist about the meeting at Villach. The historiography of Gottschee has also only noted these two documents but not examined them more closely, that is, connected them to the settlement venture of the Ortenburgers. Admittedly, the visible content seems to be unimportant because it simply confirms an administrative decision that could just as well have been proclaimed with the signature of the Patriarch of Udine. It is about the reinvestiture of a vassal, something which was always undertaken whenever the vassal himself or the feudal lord died. In this case, however, much more was at stake for the historiography of Gottschee: Bertrand once more established the personal unity of the leadership of the House of Ortenburg by giving the most important Ortenburgian fiefs in Carniola to Otto. He thus disregarded the division agreement among Meinhart, Otto, and Albrecht that had existed for at least twenty-five years, as well as the succession upon the death of Meinhart I. Meinhart's sons Hermann and Meinhart II should have received the fiefs in Lower Carniola according to the hereditary law. Furthermore, they had already assumed the inheritance.
Now to the matter of the two documents: Even Tangl, the Carinthian Ortenburg-author, is not concerned with their historic significance and interpretation. He also foregoes giving a complete German version of the documents written in Latin and writes about the Carinthian Ortenburgers on page 161 of the second volume of the documentation:
"1336 June Villach. Bertrand, Patriarch of Aquileia bestows the Castles Ortenegg, Zobelsberg and Grafenwarth with all their possessions, jurisdictions, rights and revenues of the same as the counts of Ortenburg of old have held them in fief from the Church of Aquileia, in fief on Count Otto of Ortenburg, his vassal, and his nephews, the sons of the Counts Meinhart and Albrecht deceased (meaning Albrecht II, notation of the author). Otto's brothers."
On page 212, Professor Grothe quotes the original Latin text of the second document as follows: "No. 2 Document of the Patriarch Ludwig of Aquileia of May 1, 1336.
Nos Ludoicus dei gratia sanctae sedis Aquilegensis patriarcha ad memoriam aeternam esse uolumus quod ad nostram deducta notitiam, quod in quibisdam nemoribus seu siluis infra confines curatae ecciesiae sancti Stephan! in Relffniz nostrae aquilegiensis dioecesis, et in eius cora seu parochia, quae inhabitabiles erant et incultae, multae hominum habitationes factae sint et nemora huiusmodi ac siluae ad agriculturum reducta et non modici populi congregatio ad habkandum conuenit in quibus quidem locis per habitantes ibidem, ad honorem dei, et gloriosae virginis matris et ad consolationem dicti populi et subsequentium atque deuotionis augmentum, de nouo quaedam ecciesiae construtae sunt videlicet, in Gotsche, Pölan, Costel, Ossiwniz et Goteniz et una infra confines curatae ecciesiae sancti Petri in Taimansdorff, videlicet, in Chrainau etiam dictae nostrae dioecesis de nouo facta, consentiente, et concedente filio nostro in Christo carissimo spectabili comite domino Ottone de Ortenburg, in cuius dominio et jurisdictione territoria esse et consistrere huiusmodi dinoscontur. Nos deuotionem dicti populi ibidem congregati ut suarum manuum labores manducent paternis affectibus aduertentes et cupientes animarum ipsorum proudidere saluti, ut per huiusmodi prouisionem ad deuotionis et charitatis opera feruertius animentur, supradictio comiti eiusque haeredibus concedimus nostro et successorum patriarcharum nomine instituendi et ordinandi in dictis ecciesis sacerdotes ydoneos, per quos celebrentur diuina, cura animarum exerceatur salubriter, sacramenta administrentur ecclesiastica et seruiatur laudabiliter in diuinis. Quorum sacerdotum praesentationen ad dictos comitem sousque haeredes pro eo, quod in ipsius domino et jurisdictione praedicia consistunt, spectare decreuimus et uolumus et opsorum confirmationem in ecciesiis praedictis videlicet Gotsche, Pölan, Costel, Ossiwniz et Goteniz ad plebanum seu rectorem in Reiffniz et ecciesiae in Chrainau, ad plebanum seu rectorem in Rattmanstorff, sub quorum curis et parochiis esse noscuntur, qui quidem sacerdotes, plebanis praedictis et ipsorum plebibus in omnibus subsint, obediant et Intendant, ac ipsis reuerentiam debitam exhibeant et honorem quodque contradictores et rebelles auctoritate nostra ecciesiastica censura compellant. In quorum omnium testimomum praesentes fieri jussimus nostri sigilli appensione muniri. Datae in Castro nostro Vtim prima die mensis Maij sub anno dominicae natiuitatis millesimo trecentesimo, sexage-simo tertio, indictione prima."
It is noteworthy that Reifnitz is not mentioned in either document even though the primeval forest belonged to its region. Up to now no explanation for this has been found in the literature. It is possible that, in the meantime, the fief of Reifnitz had been given to Ortenegg. The Ortenburgian castle administration was located there at the time Otto was invested.
Is it not peculiar, however, that the patriarch went to Villach, that is to Treffen by Villach, instead of summoning his vassal Otto and the latter's nephew to Udine? Did not the highest prince of the church after the pope lower himself somewhat by undertaking this trip? Hardly! On the contrary, it seems that he also wanted to underscore its significance to the Ortenburgers by appearing personally. Not least of all, financial considerations made the settlement of the primeval forest an important issue for Lord Bertrand, who was deeply in debt. The patriarchal state owed large sums not only to the papacy but also to the bankers in Padua. Only if the primeval forest was settled did it yield money for the church and did it increase the economic power - the number of people subject to the Ortenburgers - as well as their political prestige. These one-time possibilities remained unused it the colonization was not continued and completed.
Given these circumstances, we can easily imagine that Patriarch Bertrand emphatically directed his vassal to resume the colonization of the primeval forest without delay.
It was now much easier for Count Otto to deal with his nephew. We do not know in detail how the relationship to Hermann III and Meinhart II had developed and would have continued. In any case, it was a severe blow to the House of Ortenburg that both died childless in the years 1337 (Hermann III) and 1338 (Meinhart II). Of Otto's nephews, who were alluded to in the documents of Villach only the sons of Albrecht II, Otto VI, and Rudolf remained. It cannot be documented it they were ready and willing to assist their uncle in the colonization effort It may however, be assumed that, as his decreed heirs, they did participate. Above all, Otto VI must have sided with his uncle since, as his cousins met early deaths face had selected him to be the progenitor of the House of Ortenburg.
Patriarch Bertrand´s urging had, however, succeeded in getting the colonization of the primeval forest between Reifnitz and Kulpa started with renewed vigor. This is evident from a letter of the patriarch dated September 1, 1339 to Count Otto V. As far as the historiography about Gottschee is concerned, the settlement venture of the counts of Ortenburg began on this September 1, 1339. The patriarchs of Aquileia receded into the background. One proceeded without making any presuppositions and thus it was unavoidable that absurdities and pronounced
mistakes, as well as false conclusions, occurred. We now want to attempt to clarify these as far as is possible.
In the document of September 1, 1339, which was written in Latin, Patriarch Bertrand gives Count Otto permission to appoint a chaplain to the newly built chapel near the "villa Mooswald," a chapel dedicated to Saint Bartholomew. The reason for the sanctioning of this extension of the Reifnitz parish is given. One wanted to spare the many faithful who had assembled here the long trip to the parish church in Reifnitz. They were also to receive the sacraments there and bury their dead in their own cemetery. On page 211 of Grothe, one can read the German translation of the patriarch's letter.
As the briefly stated content shows, this was not a document dealing with the settlement history but a church decree, wherein understandably church matters predominate. Therefore, one cannot take it to be a tangible and accurate proof of the state of the settlement, of the origin and the number of colonists, nor of their dispersion across the stretches of the settlement region. All of this was only of secondary concern to the secretaries of the patriarch. We particularly would have liked to have found out more about the size, year of founding, and the number of personnel of the "villa Mooswald." Even a reference to the chapel's capacity would have given us a reference point for estimations.
With all due respect for the venerableness of the above document, we cannot refrain from interpreting and evaluating it anew on the basis of our research results. We also want to attempt to bring it into harmony with the brutal reality of the fourteenth century.
Where did the village name Mooswald originate?
Even though the letter of September 1, 1339 also states nothing about this, we are on solid ground with our answer. It originated without a doubt in Carinthia, where there are two "Mooswalds," only one of which, however, can be considered to be the name sponsor for the Mooswald in Gottschee. They are located in the vicinity of Paternion and Spittal an der Drau. The connection to the colonization in Lower Carniola is quickly established: In the fourteenth century Paternion and Spittal an der Drau were still so-called market protectorates of the counts of Ortenburg. The direct name transferrers were with certainty the colonists from the Mooswald near Paternion. Reason: Within view of this village one finds the designation "Nock" for a hill, a designation which is otherwise rare in the German-speaking Alpine region but which - and not coincidentally - also appears within view of the Gottscheer Mooswald.
The moment, however, at which we ask when this Mooswald in the Gottscheer Oberland was settled, we enter historical twilight. What is meant by "villa" in this case? Did Mooswald fulfill a special function because it is the only village name that appears? Only one thing is certain: It cannot first have been founded in 1339. This can be concluded from the comment in the document that one no longer wanted to expect the numerous faithful to travel the long distance to Reifnitz for mass and for the sacraments. Hence, so many people had assembled here that they actually filled a newly built chapel. But also not more than that, because the pious Otto of Ortenburg would not have shunned the sacrifice of building a new church. The construction of the chapel of St. Bartholomew near Mooswald also indicated that the "villa" would be important in his plans for some time to come. In no way, however, would the colonists from Carinthia have been able to complete first the resettling from the old homeland to the new one, then clear the forest, plant the seeds, build winter-hardy shelters, and in addition, erect a church within a few summer months. All of this must have been accomplished when the patriarch's approval for the appointment of a chaplain arrived. This is inconceivable; the "villa" thus must have been established for some time prior to September 1339. In order to be able to be named in the patriarch's letter, Mooswald could not have been established later than 1337. In view of this, it is doubtful if it would have been possible to accomplish the essential preparations in two summers and become self-supporting around 1339. If not, when would Mooswald, that is, the "villa" - this word had the approximate meaning of "estate" or "village" in medieval Latin - have to have been established so that it was already able to carry out an apparently important function in the summer of 1339?
We are getting closer to the time of the founding of Mooswald if we connect it with the year in which Count Meinhart I died, namely 1332. As we know, Otto's older brother died at the family fortress of their ancestors, where Otto lived. What was Meinhart doing at the Ortenburg? Did he discuss the progress of the primeval forest colonization with his brother? We can only surmise what they perhaps agreed upon. If we, however, assume that they agreed to establish the transit and supply camp which was essential for the continued advance into the primeval forest, we certainly would not be engaging in idle speculation. The time from 1333 to 1339 would have made the completion of the strategic base camp of Mooswald possible. If one sets the time of its founding at this early date, it was, upon expanding its capacity; also able to hold the growing influx after the conference of Villach and also to assign the colonists to their settlements.
Aren't the terms such as assembly camp, transit camp, supply depot, or even strategic base camp contrary to the document of 1339, that is, to the designation" villa"?
Certainly the question is justified. On the other hand, this word has been translated in various ways. Besides "estate," one finds village, township, larger farmstead. The translation of "villa" is for us, however, not the decisive issue. Rather we are searching for the place or, better still, the rank which the "villa Mooswald" assumed within the framework of the German settlement of Gottschee. The terms that were used above were selected quite carefully because the administrative staff must have been located in Mooswald. The transit camp, which sheltered the arriving colonists until they were assigned to settlements, was connected to it. Primitive shelters were needed for this process. Storage rooms for seed corn and tools were part of the "estate." Furthermore, at least minimal provisions had to be made for the arriving cattle. Finally, not only perhaps but with certainty, a farm, which was worked by a number of farmers - like the pioneers in the later village of Mooswald - was part of the "estate." Most likely, its meager surplus was barely sufficient to feed not only the permanent personnel of the transit camp (the officials who distributed the land, scribes, attending and supervisory personnel) but also the colonists who were passing through Mooswald itself and those who still were to have their first harvest in their own colony. Supervision was probably necessary to prevent unauthorized searching for and settling of land by possibly dissatisfied colonists. According to the stages which we already attempted to trace in the depiction of the first settlement phase, the villages in the Oberland that had already existed for a longer time had to deliver part of their harvests to the base camp in Mooswald. However, it could also have been quite possible that the Ortenburgers in addition relied upon the properties of the old fiefs of Reifnitz and Ortenegg for this purpose after 1336.
The author of the "Jahrhundertbuch" is quite open to the objection that he may have contrived the schedule and the stages for the settlement of Gottschee. It, however, only seems like that. He again appeals to common sense and refers to very definite principles of organization without whose application the growth of a human community is not possible. What is meant herewith is made clear with the following question: What would have happened if the counts of Ortenburg had been allowed to open their primeval forest fiefs for unregulated and unorganized
settlement? Nothing. Peasants would not have streamed there from everywhere to clear the land, there would not have been any fighting for the best soil and fields, for the springs that yielded the most. On the contrary, aside from the fact that money and more money was needed also in the fourteenth century for colonization, money that the sons of those farmers who were willing to resettle did not have, the peasants of the fourteenth century were still too incapable of undertaking such a difficult task without leadership and direction. An individual, however, had
absolutely no chance of enduring life in the wilderness. He and his family could not have survived without the community, even if he had gotten up the courage to face the evil spirits by himself. Superstition still had an inconceivable influence on the minds of that time.
Even if the counts of Ortenburg had proceeded on a middling course and planted those who were willing to resettle without many constraints in the primeval forest, the Gottschee as we know it today would never have come to be. Certainly the people of the Middle Ages were no less egotistical than we. The least scrupulous and the strongest would have secured the best spots for themselves and whoever came later would have had to take what was left. But who would have gone gladly and voluntarily to the higher plateaus with their unfavorable soil and water conditions? A glance at the map gives us the best proof that the counts of Ortenburg had carefully planned and executed the settlement in the chalky highland of Upper Carniola. The towns and hamlets are distributed across the "Ländchen," the smaller villages clustering around the settlement centers with astonishing adaptation to
the terrain of the region and to the water sources. If nowhere else, the plan is evident here.
The counts of Ortenburg employed neither one nor the other method. Instead, they demanded - and received - an orderly, sensible compliance from those who were willing to settle there in return for the extremely favorable offer. The peasants who cleared the land did not always have an easy job. The names of three towns clearly express this: Verdreng [verdrängen = to expel, suppress (translator's notation)] and Verderb [verderben = to spoil, ruin (translator's notation)] in the township of Obermösel and Kummerdorf [village of sorrow, grief, worry (translator's notation)] in the township of Nesseltal. A clarification is unnecessary. But the peasants who were assigned to these settlements stayed! Their villages are among the most wellknown in the linguistic island. Pilgrimage churches were located on the hills of Verdreng and of Kummerdorf.
The "villa Mooswald" was the most southerly located settlement of Carinthian and East Tyrolean colonists in 1339. Whether a large part of the settlers were already then of East Tyrolean origin will need to be examined. Mooswald's importance diminished as every new village became self-sustaining, that is, as the settlement centers continued to grow and function on their own. It can still be approximately determined when "villa Mooswald" ceased to be the base camp, but it is impossible even to approximate, much less to calculate, the number of colonists who were
processed in the camp or the size of the administrative and maintenance staff of the "villa." The document of September 1, 1339 only states that a chapel had to be built and that a cemetery was planned. Thus, the "villa Mooswald" already had so many people that a clergyman was nearly fully occupied with their spiritual care. Deaths occurred, above all probably due to accidents in the clearing work and to a high rate of infant mortality, but a number does not crystallize. The fact that Count Otto built a chapel and not a church actually speaks against the fact that this number could have been "large." A Slovenian source surmises the opposite. Thus, Simonic states on page 8, among other things: "... because Gottschee was settled by Slovenian peasants only on the fringes, the Ortenburgers began to bring settlers here from their domains in Carinthia in the fourteenth century. Count Otto of Ortenburg, the colonizer of Gottschee, already settled so many colonists here in the 1330's, that in Mooswald he ... " There follows a reference to the chapel of Saint Bartholomew. On page 9 Simonic continues:
"The Ortenburgers began to colonize Gottschee for economic reasons with a larger number of peasants in order to increase their income with more densely populated and cultivated land. They also brought German officials and craftsmen to the estate. The number of German peasants that Count Otto had brought to Gottschee from his domains in Upper Carinthia in the 1330's was very large."
It would be a numbers' game if one were to counter these widely diverging suppositions with a concrete estimate. The uncertainty, however, transforms itself into the probability of a definite number if one introduces the following consideration into the surmised happenings during the colonization. Above all, a personal economic argument has to be considered. Türk writes in his brief characterization of the counts of Ortenburg that they were also "cool calculators." Meinhart I was without a doubt not one of these, but the more frugal Otto had surely instructed the officials of the "court leet" to see to it that the necessary financial outlay would yield increasing returns as soon as possible. Moreover, he might have seen to it that there was not too great a timespan between the supportive maintenance and the self-maintenance of the "Holden" (favorites). This means that the influx of settlers was controlled and it was not possible that any number of interested parties came uncalled. This measure was also one reason why stragglers still arrived in Gottschee until the end of the fourteenth century. Moreover, one must consider that there were not unlimited numbers of voluntary settlers available in Carinthia and East Tyrol, settlers who could meet the challenge of clearing the primeval forest. It is also totally inconceivable that all the regions of the highland or even only one section, the Hinterland or the Unterland, were settled simultaneously, since this was strategically impossible due to the lack of roadways and the climate. Logic dictates that we assume individual groups were formed who then set up a village, their village, on a previously selected and defined terrain. The first villages of the fourteenth century were deliberately kept small and probably did not have more than ten to twelve hearths, excepting the settlement centers. This size would indicate about forty, at the most fifty, inhabitants. The physical hardships must have been enormous. It was at this time that the neighborliness was born of which the Gottscheers still speak and write today. All of the work that was inescapably imposed on the colonist - the building of the log cabin, the clearing and the removal of the stones from the fields, and the setting-up of grazing grounds - all was undertaken jointly.
These financial, economic, organizational, and geological obstacles to a mass settlement can hardly support Simonic's thesis that the number of settlers in the thirties of the fourteenth century was "very large," even if one takes into account that it increased considerably after the conference at Villach. How did the Slovenian festival brochure published by Simonic to commemorate the incorporation of Gottschee 500 years ago arrive at this generous figure?
It can only be explained if one already applied the expression "multae hominum" from the next important document of the year 1363 to that of 1339. Moreover, one must consider that one calculated with essentially different measures in the Middle Ages. To us, eighty or one hundred people are a handful; in a region in which there were zero people until the settlement began this was "a lot." Several hundred people then had to seem like a large number.
The question of numbers aside, what was the offer like that the Ortenburgers made the voluntary settlers? It is still interesting today. They received an entire "hide," Bavarian measure, that was approximately twenty hectares, based on the following law: land and soil were given to the peasant who cleared the land as a permanent fee-farm. Herewith they were "owners," a word that will appear often yet. Two other factors made it quite attractive. The peasants could bequeath, parcel, exchange, and sell their property. The rent payment obligation also applied
to parts of the original property. Perhaps the greatest incentive for accepting this offer was the granting of total personal freedom of mobility. But we do not know, however, if the voluntary settlers were told at the outset about the unfavorable soil conditions.
We do not know how the colonists were assigned their parcels. It would also serve no purpose to ask if, at the beginning, the fields of the village were worked jointly. We cannot answer this question.
It is to be assumed that the settlers did not receive any written agreement, letters of investiture, deeds, or the like. They could not have read them. We surely are not wrong in assuming that they were assigned their property with a handshake in front of witnesses. It is doubtful that the property was made up of a single tract. One surely saw to it that the cultivated land, the meadows, fields, and the forest areas, were more or less fairly distributed. This necessarily means that an authorized official of the feudal lord was present during the parceling of the village terrain. How could he have maintained a survey otherwise? Moreover, it surely did not take long until every owner could attest to which piece of property belonged to whom in his village. The placing of the border stones must have been one of the most unpleasant tasks.
We now leave the historical realm of the patriarchal letter of 1339. Twenty-four years pass before another document issued by the patriarch appears. In the meantime, since much must have happened in the settlement history, there is no news about the continued growth of the "Ländchen." We only hear that Count Otto V died in the year 1342. It is not known which one of his nephews - it could only have been Otto VI or Rudolf or both - continued the settlement in Lower Carniola. They must have gotten into financial difficulties because Professor Saria writes that between 1351 and 1364 "the Ortenburgers" borrowed money from the Jews in Laibach a total of four times ("Die mittelalterliche deutsche Besiedlung von Krain"). What had happened?
1348 was a year of the plague and earthquakes. Much of Laibach was destroyed. It is said that a huge cliff side plunged from the Dobratsch near Villach into the Gail valley and buried seven villages. The plague, however, felled - it is said - about half of the population of Carinthia. From this we can conclude that the number of voluntary settlers had declined so drastically that the counts were forced to make the emigration more appealing by making another concession, namely by offering a money premium, or stated differently, pocket money. The plague also had another consequence. Because of the human loss, the counts were in a position similar to that of their uncle Meinhart I. The human potential in their own countship no longer sufficed to carry out and complete the settlement of the primeval forest within the foreseeable future. They, therefore, had to try to find willing emigrants elsewhere. They found them in the eastern part of the neighboring countship of Tyrol. Of course, the counts of Ortenburg could not simply recruit colonists in the region of East Tyrol. They needed the permission of the count of
Tyrol and of the counts of Görz, who had extensive fiefs there. Also, the cloister of Admont and the monastery of Diessen am Ammersee in Upper Bavaria owned land there. The historical point of this book would have looked good if one could have established a connection between the intentions of the Ortenburgers and Countess Beatrice, Princess of Wittelsbach by birth. If she still had lived in Friaul at this time, she could not have had any influence upon the releasing of colonists for Lower Carniola because her son was now of age and her brothers-in-law, who
lived in Lienz and Braus, surely would not have given her the right to participate. There is much more evidence for than against the supposition that the three counts of Görz released subjects to the Ortenburgers for a price.
In any case, the influx of East Tyroleans into the later linguistic island of Gottschee seems really to have begun only after 1348 and it seems not to have been insignificant. Numerous idiomatic influences from East Tyrol in the Gottscheer dialect substantiate this. Professor Kranzmayer's concise declaration that the ancestors of the Gottscheers came from the Tyrolean-Carinthian fringes can be proven not only linguistically but, as we have seen - with some reliance upon probability - also historically. Before we, however, take a closer look at the conclusions of the Carinthian scholar, let us take a look at other views on this topic. These brought forth the strangest blossoms, also with regard to the interpretation of the name of the city of Gottschee, which gave its name to the entire "Ländchen."
Much amateur historicizing and much historical wishful thinking took place. The theories about the origin ranged from the assumption that the ancestors of the Gottscheers had been descendants of the last Goths who had withdrawn to the forests of the chalk highland to "Gottes Segen" (God's blessing) and "Gottes See" (God's Lake) or "Gatschen" and Kocevje, a Slovenian word, which comes closest to the historical reality. It is derived from "koca" = hut and has the equivalent meaning of "clustering of huts." With the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century, some Gottscheers dreamed that their forefathers descended from all German tribes and considered the "Ländchen" to be a little Germany. The "Thuringian-Franconian-Theory" was the most persistent. It claimed that Emperor Charles IV (he reigned from 1346 to 1378) had released to a Count Frederick of Ortenburg, upon the latter's request, 300 men and their families as colonists in the forests of Gottschee. They were supposedly rebels from Thuringia and Franconia who were said to have forfeited their lives. Valvasor was cited as the source for this tale. He writes on page 194 of Volume XI of his main work, "Die Ehre des Herzogtums Crain", that Bishop Chroen of Laibach supposedly found a notation in the archives of Bischoflak near Laibach which stated that "300 men with their wives and children passed through." They are said to have continued on to Gottschee to clear the forests there. Nothing against the bishop, nothing against the author of the notation, but everything against the number 300 and against Count Frederick of Ortenburg, who supposedly asked for this cheap crew for the colonization of the primeval forest in Lower Carniola. The number 300 is simply too even and - too high. It is without a doubt an estimate and we have already discussed what one can conclude about the scale of medieval estimators in comparison to those of today and in reference to the number of people. But the historian and the linguist have irrefutable arguments against the "Thuringian-Franconian-Theory":
"300 men with their wives and children" means, even if one assumes only four family members on the average, 1,200 people; probably there would, however, have been 1,400 to 1,500. With a little imagination, we can still picture today what it would have meant to steer this line of people several hundred meters in length, together with a corresponding number of ox-carts, from Thuringia and Upper Franconia through partly uninhabited regions across rivers and streams, mountains and valleys, under the most miserable conditions to Gottschee. We can particularly imagine that this mass of people would not have been welcome in all the places through which they begged their way, because they were surely blessed with children but hardly with ready money.
But let us assume that all hardships were overcome and the "300 men with their wives and children" arrived in Gottschee. What then? The organizers of the Ortenburgian settlement venture could not have lodged them in Mooswald or elsewhere. This procession of misery would only have ended when summer was over. Where was one to put them? Crowd them into the already existing villages? Moreover, it is simply unrealistic and wishful thinking to assume that the colonists from Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol who had already settled there would not have objected to the flooding of their settlements by Thuringians and Franconians. The subsequent course of the history of the Gottscheers lets one assume that if this had been the case, the first Gottscheers would have become rebels for the first time.
The defenders of the "Thuringian-Franconian-Theory" might retort that the counts of Ortenburg would then simply have stepped in as feudal lords and restored order. Too simple! Whoever could not be convinced by the above objections will have to accept the major irrefutable scholarly finding: There is no noteworthy indication in the Gottscheer dialect that 1,200 to 1,500 Thuringians and Franconians participated in this early stage of the colonization of the "Ländchen." In any case, at least the Thuringian dialect, closely related to the Saxonian, would have established itself in the already opened settlement region. If the Ortenburgers had, however, established several villages exclusively with Thuringians and Franconians, then their dialect would have most certainly maintained itself. Moreover, already Valvasor was not certain if the notation found by Chroen reflected the reality. And, by the way, we do not have to exclude the possibility that Charles IV or someone else put a number of peasant families from Thuringia and Franconia at the disposal of the Ortenburgers. It is quite conceivable that they would then have been assigned in small groups to the already existing settlements. The formulation "300 men with their wives and children" is historically false. There is also no proof for the assertion that a Count Frederick of Ortenburg asked the emperor for colonists. Between 1346 and 1363, the period in question, there was no Ortenburgian Count Frederick but there did live a Carniolian governor by the name of Frederick of Sanneck. A Count Frederick of Ortenburg could not exist because the two sons of Meinhart I died childless and there was no Frederick among the nine children of Count Albrecht II. Furthermore, the author of the "Jahrhundertbuch" has convinced himself that there are no entries about an imperial decree concerning the release of 300 rebels with their wives and children in the "Regesten," which are summaries of decrees and ordinances issued during the reign of Charles IV.
We leave this period of twenty-four years between the document of September 1, 1339 and May 1, 1363, a period which yields no other documents, not without the certainty that the financial expenditures of the counts of Ortenburg were apparently much greater than was originally estimated. Thus, we encounter the next significant document for the settlement history of Gottschee in 1363. Again it is a patriarchal letter, this time from Ludwig I de la Torre, dated May 1. We are mainly interested in that part of this document on church matters which deals
with Gottschee and was translated by Professor Grothe from the Latin text into German on page 26 of his book:
"It was brought to the attention of the Patriarch Ludwig of the Holy Seat at Aquileia that many human dwellings had been set up within the borders of the church jurisdiction of Saint Steven of Reifnitz, a region which belongs to our Aquileian diocese, namely in certain groves and forests in its parish which had been uninhabitable and uncultivated. These groves and forests were converted to farmland and not an insignificant number of people came to live therein."
Aquileia granted that five parishes be established, namely "Gotsche, Pölan, Costel, Ossiwnitz et Goteniz," to see to the spiritual needs of this "not insignificant number of people." Later these were written as follows: Gottschee, Pölland, Kostel, Ossilnitz, and Göttenitz. The Latin text of the document is found on page 212 of Grothe. It is noteworthy that the document also addresses a Count Otto of Ortenburg. It clearly refers to Otto VI, son of Count Albrecht II, progenitor of his tribe.
Again we are faced with a difficult task. We must interpret a time-bound document that was not written with great accuracy and also attempt to assign it to its correct place with regard to the past and the future. First, let us see what it explicitly states.
For the first time, a document records the village name Gottschee as "Gotsche." At the same time, Göttenitz is named in the northern half of the linguistic island - Mooswald, on the other hand, is no longer mentioned. The southern and southeastern sections of the settlement region come very much into the foreground with the naming of the castles Pölland and Kostel, as well as the village of Ossilnitz at the confluence of the Cabranka and the Kulpa. The document further substantiates that the primeval forest fief of the Ortenburgers was uninhabitable and uncultivated and that now, however, a "not insignificant number of people" had settled and were farming there.
Based on the preliminary work for the "Jahrhundertbuch", we are in a position to have indirect access to other historical facts:
First: All five newly created parishes are located in the region of the first colonization phase. Of course, they were already quite more advanced with regard to population than the colonial villages of the Upper Carinthians and East Tyroleans. Their settlement centers had not yet matured into parishes. They were certainly, however, a part of the not insignificant number of people that the document of Patriarch Ludwig mentions. Also, the eastern sector of the settlement region, the Moschnitze, is still of no interest as far as the church is concerned. From this, one can conclude that it was also still on the fringes as far as the colonization was concerned.
Second: Mooswald apparently relinquished its importance as the base camp of the colonization to "Gotsche." According to the document, the patron saint of the chapel at Mooswald, Saint Bartholomew, also appears in Gottschee. That does not have to mean that the "villa" was already disbanded in 1363 and no longer played a role in the administration of the settlement. But the population of "Gotsche" had increased to such an extent that a parish together with its church had to be established.
The author's views with regard to the transference of the administrative functions from Mooswald to Gottschee do not agree with the Slovenian suppositions on this matter. Thus, Simonic writes on page 8, "Because the first subsequent document of the year 1363 no longer mentions the chapel of St. Bartholomew but only the church of St. Bartholomew in Gottschee, which had been enlarged in the meantime; that originally Gottschee was called Mooswald, which had been a flourishing settlement on Ortenburgian land. The name Gottschee had previously not appeared in official usage."
Three solid arguments speak against accepting the view that Gottschee was originally called Mooswald:
But where does the village and region designation "Gottschee" come from?
We can afford to forego the interpretive theories of the nineteenth century since we can present an alternative based on research. We repeat: Count Meinhart I and his son Hermann II had already begun to settle mainly Slovenian-speaking colonists from their fiefs in Lower Carniola before 1315. They first opened up the Oberland and advanced from the north into the forests to what was later to be Gottschee and the Hinterland, to Göttenitz, the southernmost points. Still in our time, the theory that the name Gottschee derives from the Slovenian "Kocevje"
was considered to be quite realistic, because it surely began with a "number of huts." Effortlessly, one could also construct a linguistic development from "Kocevje" to "Gottschee." That did happen and the Slovenes were satisfied with this but the Gottscheers less so. Nothing and no one, however, forces us to accept that" Kocevje" has to be the base word. Actually, it could have been a similarly sounding word. The author already noticed the village name "Hocevje" east of Reifnitz (the initial h is to be pronounced ch) when he prepared his series of articles, "Alle Spuren führen nach Kärnten" ("All Tracks Lead to Carinthia"). According to Grothe (Map No. 5), it was first mentioned in a document in 1145. Neither the professor from Leipzig nor the author surmised a connection with the village
designation "Gottschee." Only later did he encounter the full meaning of the word "Hocevje" in the work of Professor Saria, one of the best experts on the colonial history of Carniola (page 96). The scholar, who died in 1974 in Graz, realized that "Gotsche" did not derive from "Kocevje" but from "Hocevje." "Hocevje" means the "pine forest." Saria did not yet relate his linguistic discovery to the settlement history of Gottschee. We who know its origins have only to make a short mental leap to that time and place in history:
The original "Hocevje" was located either on the fiefs of the Auerspergers or of the Ortenburgers in Lower Carniola. In either case, the Ortenburgers could have transplanted settlers from this village to the central region of the Rinse. That these colonists with a Slovenian vernacular gave the name of their old homeland to their new one, does not require any special explanation. As we also know, Count Otto V had supplied his brother Meinhart or his son Hermann III with Carinthian settlers. Neither of the Ortenburgers of that time realized that they were settling members of two different ethnic groups. Therefore, they mixed them quite freely. As the quick growth of the village indicates, they settled especially "Hocevje," later "Gottschee," with voluntary settlers from far-away Carinthia because the small village on the central region of the Rinse was particularly accessible and had the necessary water supply and - this must already have been clear to the colonizers before 1363 - it seemed to be suited as the center for the entire settlement region.
Since only German colonists now followed in quick succession, their Bavarian-Austrian dialect just as quickly predominated. The existing village name "Hocevje" did not suit the new settlers. In general, the German avoids the ch at the beginning of a word. He prefers to substitute the k or g wherever he encounters it. On the other hand, the Slovenes and other Slavic nations do not appreciate the aspirated initial h. The development of "Hocevje" to "Gottschee," however, only becomes very clear when one looks at the dialect names for the city and the region of
Gottschee.
The transformation of h to g was the first step. Under the influence of the g, the o changed to a short explosive a. The tsch remained, while the e split into e and a through emphasis. The v shifted to b. The end syllable je however was dropped. The final result was - and that could not have taken more than one generation - the "Gatscheab" still in use today. Not lastly, a child's pronunciation probably had a lot to do with this transformation. Still today, the Gottscheer calls himself "Gattscheabar" - the r is only intimated. But the Gottscheer woman is called "Gattscheabarin."
Third: The authors of the document of May 1, 1363 - the patriarch surely only signed it - likewise limited themselves to an undefined (and for the reader after 650 years, undefinable) amount: "... a not insignificant number of people." Nevertheless, we come close to the actual number if we take a look at the next document. In 1377 the village of "Gotsche" was elevated to a market. "Market" means the coming together of producers and consumers, as well as trade between them. Without a doubt, the elevation to a market came about at the instigation of the counts of Ortenburg who wanted to spur on the economy that was flourishing with the continuing colonization. Gotsche and Mooswald by themselves, however, would not have made a market worthwhile. Thus, other villages must have already existed in numbers, so that the establishment of an economic center seemed useful for the peasants, as well as for the feudal lord, whose income grew. The Ortenburgers would not have been "cool calculators" if they had not seen to it that their new peasants paid and also were able to pay the rent for their fee farm.
We must also include in our considerations the fact that about two generations had passed since the beginning of the colonization. That is to say, that already sixty yearly age groups of Gottscheers had been born, and each one grew larger than the one before due to natural procreation and the continued influx. The logical conclusion: This steadily increasing population could no longer be housed in the Oberland or within the area of the new market, particularly since it was not the intention of the Ortenburgian colonization to squeeze the people into one spot. This will only happen later, about 600 years later, under totally different circumstances.
The dispersion of the colonists across the western half of the settlement region must already have neared completion around 1377. Simonic's (see page 23) statement, that the first land register of the settlement region of Gottschee was already set up in 1398 especially supports this conclusion. Unfortunately, only the set-up of the settlement and its taxes in the district of Rieg have been preserved. It is being kept in the federal archives in Ljubljana. Understandably, this land register was not yet available to the author at the conclusion of his work. Nevertheless we know, however, that a district of Rieg already existed in 1398 and that, on the whole, the colonization of Gottschee was completed then. This conclusion agrees with Professor Saria's viewpoint that the influx of colonists ceased at the end of the fourteenth century. If we now also look ahead to the completely preserved land register of 1574, we encounter an estimate of 9,000 Gottscheers. Finally, if we consider that the infant mortality rate was very high and that the average life expectancy was about forty-two years, we remain realistic if we estimate that there were approximately 2,500 to 2,600 Gottscheers in 1363 and thirty-two years later, in 1398, about 3,500.
The settlement venture of the counts of Ortenburg in the primeval forest between Reifnitz and Kulpa seems to have succeeded by the end of the fourteenth century. Were its first colonists, and the first and second generations born there, happy? That we do not know. We only know that they were subject to the inalterable laws of life and the parameters of the Gottscheers: climate and soil, forest and water, confined living space and small population, politics and religion. In 1393 the parish of Gottschee was separated from the greater parish of Reifnitz and established as an independent parish. Its function as center of the "Ländchen" was already documented thirty years earlier.
Before we concern ourselves with the fate of the counts of Ortenburg, we will briefly record the tragic death of Patriarch Bertrand of Aquileia. Loved and revered by the people of the patriarchy, hated and opposed by the nobility of Friaul and the cities because as ruler he insisted upon an orderly government, he was killed in 1350 by the swords of conspirators. He, in person a courageous man, who always wore the coat of mail underneath the surplice, had dismissed the warnings of those around him about an attack on a trip from Padua to Udine.
We dedicate more space after the end of the fourteenth century to the vassals of the patriarchs of Aquileia, the counts of Ortenburg, than to this noteworthy personality on the seat of Saint Hermagoras. We already know that Otto V died in 1342 and that his nephew. Otto VI, the procreator of his line, assumed the leadership of the countship. In his son Frederick III, we again encounter one of these Ortenburgian figures who brought power and esteem to the House of Ortenburg far beyond the boundaries of Carinthia. Talented, superior, courageous and - faithful as the "Sword of Aquileia." He held the highest political offices ever held by an Ortenburger, without being particularly lucky in political affairs. Already at a relatively young age, he made a mutually binding inheritance agreement with the counts of Cilli (his mother was a countess of Cilli by birth) in the event that one of the ruling counts remained without a male heir. Frederick was married to Margaretha, a daughter of the duke of Teck in Würtembergian Swabia. Their only son died as a child. The count enjoyed the special support of Emperor Sigismund (he reigned from 1407 to 1437). Like Frederick's father, the emperor was married to a countess of Cilli.
Because the reliability of the Ortenburger had already been tested prior to Sigismund's coming to office, the latter temporarily bestowed upon him the office of vicar-general in Northern Italy and gave him special assignments in the battle against the Venetian Republic - to which Frederick dealt not inconsiderable blows with his small private army. Due to his vanity and position, Frederick did not find it particularly difficult to have his brother-in-law, Duke Ludwig of Teck, made patriarch. But this already takes us into the fifteenth century.
For quite some time now, the reigning counts of Ortenburg had at their disposal an administrative center to handle business matters. The seat of the "court leet" is not known. It would, however, have made sense to set up branches in Spittal an der Drau and in Reifnitz. It would also have been appropriate and have made sense organizationally to assign to the "court leet," under the leadership of a member of the House of Ortenburg, the task of checking the basic prerequisites for the colonization. Was the older son of Meinhart I, Hermann III, the right
man for the job? According to all indications, yes. Reason: According to the law, all documents had to be notarized by several witnesses. Understandably, the counts of Ortenburg were desirable as witnesses because of the high regard they enjoyed among the nobility of Carinthia and Carniola. As of 1301, however, the signature of the young Count Hermann disappeared from the documents (that of his brother Meinhart II remained). It is known that Hermann III married young. His wife was a Countess Hohenlohe by birth. Certainly it would be conceivable that he
followed her to another part of the kingdom. But it is just as likely that his father, with the consent of the grandfather, commissioned him to prepare the colonization of the still nameless primeval forest.
The death of the grandfather (1304 in Laibach) did not change the commission which the author of this book is certain was given. On the other hand, it had far-reaching consequences for the property rights of the counts of Ortenburg. The sons and inheritors Frederick II, Meinhart I, Otto V, and Albrecht II divided the countship among themselves. Meinhart, the exceedingly energetic first-born, dealt with his brothers by giving them the fiefs in Carinthia and Styria. He kept the fiefs in Lower Carniola for himself. By nature, Meinhart was a warrior. He had
inherited the tempestuous Görzian temperament from his mother, a Countess of Görz, and was particularly fond of being the "sword of Aquileia." Nevertheless, one would do him an injustice if one did not include him in the clan of Ortenburgers which Türk describes as follows on page 13: "Proud knights, princes of the church, clever calculators and advisors, to be sure also squanderers at times, daring fighters, related and married to the highest nobility, protectors of the patriarch of Aquileia and feared condottieres against the Republic of Venice."
With this great Carinthian noble family, we have now already entered the outskirts of the settlement history of Gottschee. We are intentionally not yet referring to a German settlement.
In proceeding, we encounter the first document which indirectly confirms that the settlement venture had begun. The historiography of Gottschee simply recorded it without placing it into the overall conditions in Carinthia and Carniola at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and thus did not allow it to be heard. At that time, numerous villages, markers, and cities were being founded, and consequently, the population of Lower Carniola shifted extensively. Expressed in modern terms: the employment scene was tense. The lure of the cities with their cry, "City air liberates!" grew from year to year and along with it the aversion to heavy labor, such as clearing the primeval forest. The freeing of the serfs had proceeded interminably slowly but a hundred years earlier a lord could still have forced his serfs to endure the torture of the clearing of such a wilderness. Now no longer!
The document under discussion was the so-called peace accord of Laibach between the counts of Ortenburg and the lords of Auersperg in the year 1320. Duke Henry II of Carinthia of the House of Görz, Tyrol, had accused the two warring families of breaking the peace and had them brought before a noble court of arbitration. Only points 1, 3, and 4 of the decision as quoted from Tangl, Volume 1, page 113, concern us:
| 1. | All fighting is to cease. |
| 2. | All prisoners are finally to be freed. However, whoever promised a sum of money for his freedom before the peace accord shall pay it. |
| 4. | People, who moved from the properties of the lords of Auersperg to the properties of the counts, we (the counts of Ortenburg, author's notation) shall let go. |
The careful relevant interpretation of the document of 1320 reveals a number of points about the settling of Gottschee, points which have been ignored until now but which are nevertheless exceedingly important. Already the preface makes very clear who the aggressor was. It begins with the words, "Count Meinhart of Ortenburg acknowledges that he, with the assent of his sons Hermann and Meinhart, ... accepts the decision of the individually listed noble judges for the termination of the feud between them and Volker and Herbard of Auersperg." Furthermore, the name of Count Hermann III of Ortenburg again appears for the first time nineteen years after its disappearance from documents. This would not be possible if he had not been in Carniola. We see in this a confirmation of the assumption that he had been ordered to prepare for the colonization. Point for point, we can
make the following connections with the document of 1320:
To point 1.: Ortenburg and Auersperg were feuding. The feud was so intense and extensive that the duke was forced to step in. The first skirmishes occurred in 1316 at the latest. From other sources we know that Count Henry II of Görz had come to the aid of the Auerspergers, which allows one to conclude that the Ortenburgers had the upper hand.
To point 3.: Ortenburg had not returned the Auerspergian prisoners of war.
To point 4.: The Ortenburgers had lured people away from the lands of the Auerspergers by making promises to them, that is, "enticed them with advertisements," as one would say today, and settled them on their own lands. Which Ortenburgian lands could they be? Hardly the fiefs in Lower Carniola, which had been administered by the counts for almost two hundred years. The peasants on their lands maintained their numbers from generation to generation in a very natural manner. How did this considerable lack of laborers arise so that Count Meinhart secured them from his neighbor in his own way, namely by force? He must have been under such strong pressure that he took the risk of an unavoidable feud. In fact, the wild count from Upper Carinthia did face serious financial
difficulties. To be sure, he was not a poor man, but everything that he undertook cost a lot of money - his expensive lifestyle, his campaigns with a small private army to protect the patriarchal state. His office as head of state in Carniola, an office he occupied since 1307, likewise demanded a great deal of money. Above all, however, the colonization of the primeval forest turned out to be an extremely expensive undertaking, one which at first did not yield anything, but also one which could not be avoided.
Thus the document of 1320 tells us that Meinhart had to have already begun the colonization in Lower Carniola before 1315 and that his son Hermann III had carried out the tedious planning and the technical preparations. It also gives us indisputable information about the origin of the first settlers. At the beginning, they came from the fiefs of the Ortenburgers themselves and, when their own reservoir of people was exhausted, they took settlers from their neighbors. In other matters, Count Meinhart also did not adhere to the judgment of 1320. On the Feast of the Epiphany in 1326, a new court of arbitration issued a judgment similar to the one issued six years earlier.
Finally, a 1320 document of Laibach also answers the question, often posed but never satisfactorily answered, about the origin of the Slovenian, that is, Slovenian-sounding, names of the villages on the fringes of the linguistic island. They stem mainly from the colonists coming from the fiefs of the Ortenburgers and Auerspergers, above all from the properties of the fiefs of Reifnitz, Ortenegg, Zobelsberg, and Hohenwarth, which belonged to the Ortenburgers and the Auerspergian castles of Oberhaus and Unterhaus. The aforementioned properties - as stated, possessions of Reifnitz - were closest to the primeval forest. Because of the shortage of people that were available to do the extremely difficult work of forestclearing, the first settlements on the edge of the forest, namely on the eastern edge, remained small. Apparently because of their unfavorable location, they did not attract additional settlers. The main focus of the colonization soon shifted to the northern edge of the primeval forest. What happened here?
To be sure, this question can no longer be answered by drawing logical conclusions from the 1320 peace accord of Laibach between the Ortenburgers and Auerspergers. Up to now, moreover, historiography did not concern itself with the settlement history of Gottschee, but considered it to have resulted from a feud arising out of incompatibility. All authors established the year 1339 as the year in which the settlement of the Ortenburgian primeval forest began. There were also no revealing documents available to the "Jahrhundertbuch" for the years from 1320 to 1339. In order to bridge this "silent period" which is extremely important for the origin of the later linguistic island, the author looked for another plausible explanation. It was found in the following logical consideration:
Still today, common sense tells us that it was inconceivable to send people into the wilderness without any planning and then to expect them to survive the enormous physical and psychic strain of clearing the primeval forest without any further support. On the contrary, the Ortenburgers made those preparations that were logically necessary. Since this was purely an economic undertaking, they of course expected an eventual profit. It could only be assured if one made the appropriate preparations for these workers. That is, for the establishment of villages, both the terrain and the simultaneously existing humus layer for the planting of crops and the establishment of meadows had to be compatible. Furthermore natural springs, which flowed at least most of the year and which were not likely to dry up due to the clearing of large wooded areas, had to exist. It would be a mistake to assume that people at that time did not think of these things.
Thus, one first had to have at least some idea which location and what size of settlements promised to be successful. Of course, we cannot assume that these preparations were carried out by surveyors who, with the aid of maps roamed through the land accompanied by aides and equipped with compasses and other mechanical devices. That did not yet exist. The only means for orientation were the eye and common sense.
Before Count Hermann and his helpers could get an overall picture of the settlement area, they had, above all, to make it accessible. Not that they laid out streets as we know them, but several construction crews cut primitive paths into the wilderness in order to prepare the way, literally, for the soil testers and water seekers. It is logical to assume that they could make use of an already existing mule-track that ran through the main valley. Several authors mention it. If one considers the terrain of the Gottscheer highland and its geographical location between the middle and northern regions of Carniola - indeed one also has to include Carinthia - and the Kulpa valley with the large settlements of Tschernembl and Möttling, then there can no longer be any doubt that medieval traders had checked out the primeval forest as a traffic route and had made a north-south shortcut through it. Again, this comment should not be taken to mean that several interested cities or individual families got together jointly to lay this mule-track. Sometime or other, someone began to find a path through the thicket. Let's conclude this thought: the mule-track, which surely was also used to transport salt can only have led from Reifnitz via the later towns of Gottschee, Obermösel Graflinden, and Unterdeutschau. Thus, the direction and course of what was later to be the main traffic route of Gottschee was already determined.
The terrain of the settlement region which was to be prepared demanded still two other unavoidable steps. The settlement had to concentrate on the western region of the later linguistic island because the eastern half of the primeval forest was so very inaccessible. Furthermore, it was strategically necessary to create settlement centers from which other villages were developed and radiated. To be sure, they did not all develop simultaneously but according to the availability of colonists and the supply of food, seed-corn, and cattle. One thing is certain: the settlers certainly did not receive an overabundance of these basic provisions.
The settlement centers are still discernible today. They were carefully chosen and were true centers of the various sections of the Gottscheer landscape They were situated so that they were as accessible as possible. If one were to give a landscape planner the assignment of placing them today, he could not place them more advantageously than the planners of the counts of Ortenburg. It will become evident that these settlement centers later developed into centers of administration and commerce and, in the nineteenth century, into the first school sites. Every Gottscheer who is to some degree familiar with his former homeland can now list them without any difficulty. They are from west to east:
Rieg, the city of Gottschee, Mitterdorf, Altlag, Obermösel, Nesseltal and Tschermoschnitz.
Special people were needed for the task of opening up the Ortenburgian primeval forest. Only young, healthy sons of peasants who were familiar with agriculture could do the job. But these were not available in large numbers,
particularly since the cities and markets beckoned. The first paths that could be traversed with ox-carts had by necessity to be cut to the settlement centers.
These steps alone, however, were not enough. The biggest organizational and financial problem must have been providing for and housing the first settlers and their families until they could support themselves by their own harvest and could survive the winter months in their own shelters. It can be assumed that a settling family or group could at best count on a sufficient harvest from the fields and meadows in the third summer after they were assigned the land. Already in the planning stages, the counts, that is, their co-workers, could readily foresee that sizeable amounts of food and feed, seed corn, and living space would be needed. They could either supply these from their own fiefs in Lower Carniola, that is, transport them there with ox-carts, or they could organize the colonization in such a way that the undertaking could be as self-supporting as possible by constantly controlling the number of settlers who moved there. But how?
Thus, at the beginning of the colonization one had to have a readily available supply of agricultural products that could be stored and that met the needs of the colonists. Hence, the first undertaking had to be the creation of appropriate agricultural concerns. In other words, one first had to set up supply villages which at the same time were already a part of the settlement. The region later to be known as "Oberland" was best suited for this. The forest and the terrain offered the least resistance here and the Rinse assured man and beast of a year-round water supply.
All of this means: the settlement of the Gottscheer region on a large scale began on the northern edge of the Ortenburgian primeval forest fief. At this point, it also becomes apparent why Count Meinhart recruited workers, in other words, settlers, by sordid means. "The properties of the count," mentioned in the document of Laibach in 1320, were located in the region later to be known as "Oberland." The two documents of 1320 and 1326 thus logically allow us to limit substantially the time for the initial settlement in the Oberland. This means that the clearing, settling, and farming of the Oberland took place primarily between 1315 and 1325 - give or take a few years. The plans and routes that were necessary to open the interior of the primeval forest can be assumed to have been laid simultaneously.
A word still about the tribal, that is, national, origin of the Ortenburgian colonists used during this initial phase of the main colonization. The great majority came from the established population of Lower Carniola. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, this population was still linguistically mixed, but the Slovenian element predominated. A "nationalism" in the nineteenth and twentieth century sense did not exist. The Slovenes were familiar with the few German expressions needed in everyday life, and the Germans were similarly familiar with Slovenian. Neither group had a written language for its populace.
If we now try to trace those villages founded within the aforementioned period, we are aided by the fact that the colonists already at that time often gave their settlements names from their homeland, in any case in their native language. Which villages might they have been? Clearly still recognizable today are Windischdorf (the explanation of it is given on a later page); the Slovenian side cites Mitterdorf (see Simonic, page 8); furthermore, Malgern is most likely derived from "Mala Gora" = little hill; Kletsch is without doubt of Slavic origin; the village name Seele fairly certainly stems from the Slovenian Sela = village. The village name "Gottschee" also belongs to this list. We still will have to deal with it in detail.
At this point, it must still be mentioned that the counts of Ortenburg had little success with the small settlements on the eastern perimeter of the primeval forest. Only Tschermoschnitz developed into a settlement center, particularly during the later colonization of the interior. Another advance into the interior of the forest occurred in the western region with the settlement of Göttenitz, originally probably Gotenica. A separate chapter will at the proper time deal with the settlement of the western high valley ridge, the basin of Suchen.
Conclusion from the document of 1320: a preparatory colonizing phase by linguistically mixed, predominantly Slovenian, settlers precedes the actual German settlement of Gottschee. It suffered from a lack of settlers. The author of the "Jahrhundertbuch" realizes that he will not find universal acceptance by introducing two different settlement phases into the historiography of the "Ländchen." This realization, however, could not prevent him from pursuing his ideas in a logical manner. Precisely the comparison of the village names showed that the first
settlement phase did not cease abruptly just because large numbers of settlers might have suddenly swarmed to Lower Carniola from Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol in order to take possession of the Ortenburgian primeval forest. Neither did it cease because 300 Franconian-Thuringian families with the same goal arrived after them. After occupying himself intensively for years with the subject of Gottschee, the author rather came to the conclusion that there was no break between the two phases both in matters of organization and, for the most part, also as far as people were concerned. The two phases merged until the participation of colonists from Lower Carniola ceased altogether. In addition, the author believes that he can support his conclusion about the smooth transition through a new interpretation of documents, through reference to events and developments, as well as by sketching an image of the times.
The second judgment of 1326 against Meinhart and his sons proves that Ortenburg had fallen into disfavor with the Carinthian duke. He could probably also not tolerate - no matter how much he might have wanted to - that the
governor in Carniola himself repeatedly broke the peace. The directly affected Auerspergers, who were ministers at the ducal court in St. Veit, probably had a hand in it, too. Therefore, Meinhart had to cease his feuding if he did not want to lose favor with the duke completely. On the other hand, the settlement of the primeval forest which had begun had to be continued if the investments that had already been made were not to be in vain. Thus, Meinhart had to find colonists by peaceful means. His first thought was to ask his younger brother Otto for
voluntary settlers. It was Otto who had received the original Ortenburgian countship in Upper Carniola when the properties were divided upon the death of the father. The division treaty, whose exact date is not known, was, to be sure, not the cause of severe familial strife, but nevertheless Otto was probably not enthusiastic about
Meinhart's proposal. Yet he nevertheless agreed as future developments showed.
The Ortenburgian recruiters found people who were significantly more eager to begin anew in another region of the Carinthian duchy in the Upper Carinthian region, particularly in the Möll and Lesach valleys, but also in the Puster valley and in the East Tyrolean tributary valleys north of the Drau. This was so particularly since the settlement conditions that were presented seemed exceptionally favorable. The last migrations to settle still unknown territories had already taken place quite some time ago. Thus, above all, people from the far reaches of the Freisingian Monastery of Innichen participated in the founding of the linguistic island of Deutsch-Ruth and the founding of Zarz in Upper Carniola, among others. Zarz had its ultimate expansion, however, only by additional immigration in the second half of the thirteenth century. The ethnic island, smaller in number than Gottschee,
was destroyed by a deliberate Slovenian ethnic policy in the course of the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century. The dialect, not accidentally closely related to the Gottscheer dialect, maintained itself as the language spoken at home into the twentieth century but is now extinct. Its vocabulary and its grammar could fortunately still be preserved for research.
Around 1280 the names of two other linguistic islands settled from the Puster valley made their appearance: Zahre and Pladen. They are located in the region of Carnica, today part of Italy, and like Tischlwang under the Plöckenpass are only remnants of their former expanses. The cited statistics were taken from the book, "Historische Lautgeographie des gesamtbairischen Dialektraumes" by Professor Dr. Eberhard Kranzmayer, Vienna, 1956. In the same work (Introduction, 13 to 15, page 5) he states:
" Around 1325 the large farming region of Gottschee with its capital by the same name was finally colonized from the border regions of Tyrol and Carinthia. The people of Gottschee were re-settled one-and-a-half decades ago." This is the shortest formulation for the beginning and end of the fate of the Gottscheers and their homeland. It is the task of the "Jahrhundertbuch" to depict the 600 years that lie between.
Here we are at the beginning of the settlement of Gottschee.
Professor Kranzmayer's date of "around 1325" finds concurrence with Hugo Grothe, who without the aid of the documents of Laibach of 1320 and 1326 respectively, arrived at the same conclusion as the "Jahrhundertbuch" by plausible estimation. However, we would fundamentally misjudge the actual events surrounding the recruitment of settlers for Gottschee if we assumed that "around 1325" there was a great exodus of voluntary settlers from the "Tyrolean-Carinthian border regions." Because it is purely speculative, it would also be a mistake to make the assumption, projected back into the fourteenth century, that whole villages responded to the call of their lord, the count of Ortenburg.
We also have to rid ourselves of the assumption that the recruited settlers made the preparations for the long journey southward within a very short time. They also cannot be compared in their intellectual receptivity with farmers of the nineteenth and twentieth century. They were poor; the emigration offer was unexpected. The trip to Lower Carniola was extremely difficult given the poor roads of the Middle Ages and could only be undertaken in groups and only during the summer months. Not every future colonist had a covered wagon. Several joined together to transport the meager household belongings in a communal vehicle.
It would not be difficult to describe more fully the week-long journey across passes and rivers in order to reflect on which route alone could have been passable. But let the statement suffice that the new colonists were dispersed across the vast regions of the Oberland. Possibly these first groups of Upper Carinthian settlers had, with the permission of the settlement staff, already stopped outside of the later "homeland" and had founded the villages of Treffen and Deutschdorf, among others. The village name of Treffen can very likely be traced back to the fort and village of Treffen by Villach. This site was well known to the Ortenburgers as the private property of the reigning patriarch. Ulrich I (1086-1121) had already given "Treffen" to the seat of Aquileia. The name "Deutschdorf" could have been coined by the Slovenian inhabitants of the area because it is a translation of the Slovenian "Nemska vas." The village designation of Windischdorf seems to have originated in precisely the opposite manner: Carinthian settlers had probably been settled there to expand an already existing hamlet which, due to a lack of immigration, was not able to maintain itself. Its inhabitants were "Wendian" ("Windisch") because the Carinthians were already accustomed then, and still are so today, to call the inhabitants of South Carinthia who spoke an old Slovenian dialect "Windische." Whereas "Deutschdorf," as well as "Treffen," developed into a Slovenian community, "Windisch" -Dorf became a purely Gottscheer settlement. Without a doubt, other villages occupied by Carinthian colonists arose during this transition period between the two settlement phases. Above all, Schalkendorf and Koflern appear to have been such settlements. To be sure, we do not have any documents about the founding of these villages. Years were to pass before the first documented German settlement appeared: Mooswald, which is mentioned in a letter, dared September 1, 1339, by the Patriarch Bertrand. In this document, the patriarch gives the count permission to appoint a chaplain to the newly built chapel of St. Bartholomew near Mooswald.
By mentioning this letter of September 1, 1339, we have jumped quite far ahead in the general political development in Carinthia and Carniola. The name Mooswald will only appear again after we have dealt with the catastrophe that befell the House of Ortenburg.
Death reaped a rich harvest in the House of Ortenburg. Five counts died within one decade. Meinhart was the first to die in 1332 - not in battle but in the family fortress of his ancestors in Upper Carinthia. His death obviously had
a paralyzing influence on the colonization in Lower Carniola. One cannot exclude the fact that there probably were serious differences of opinion between Meinhart's brothers, Otto and Albrecht, and the sons of the deceased count, Hermann and Meinhart II, about the continuation of the colonization of the primeval forest, namely about the financing of the undertaking. It also cannot be dismissed that Count Otto V, who had surely supplied several hundred settlers by 1332, demanded from his nephews the right also to make decisions in the settlement venture. Otto V had already made personal and financial investments and could be expected to contribute in the future. Hermann II and Meinhart II were the legal heirs of Meinhart I upon the death of their father. It was particularly Hermann, also bellicose, who objected to the demands of the childless Otto. Only if we presume this development within the Ortenburg family does the content of two other documents dated June 24, 1336 make sense. In these documents, Count Otto received castles and their properties in Lower Carniola as fiefs from the patriarch of Aquileia. They represent a decision, or better still a declaration of power, by the church prince as feudal lord of the Ortenburgers.
Historical accuracy, which is the responsibility of the Jahrhundertbuch, calls for the closer examination of the circumstances which forced the patriarch to make the decision of Villach. As we know, the pope had appointed the patriarchs of Aquileia without the agreement of the emperor since 1251. Already since 1208, they had not resided in Aquileia but in Udine.
The scar of the patriarchal state set with the decline of imperial power in Italy. Corruption in the administration and the constant uprisings of the cities and of the nobility destroyed the internal order and the economy. The state no longer could meet its financial obligations towards the papacy. When the death of the patriarch in 1332 necessitated the appointment of a successor, Pope John XXII took his time about making the appointment. The Pope wanted thereby to force the administration in Udine to pay its debts. The seat was vacant until the summer of 1334. Probably the most unusual incident in the history of the patriarchal state occurred in Udine during this interval. A woman named Beatrice was the political and military head in the constitutional capacity as protector and captain-general. She was not yet twenty-three years old but had everyone's respect. The people called her "fanciulla belissima" - approximately translated it means "beautiful girl." The parliament of Friaul lay at her feet and unanimously elected her to these two high offices. The monthly salary: 160 marks in silver. Beatrice would not have been mentioned in this book if she had not been a Bavarian princess, of the House of Wittelsbach of the secondary branch of Lower Bavaria. She herself was not wealthy - her brothers had even taken up a collection for her dowry among the populace of Lower Bavaria - but nevertheless Count Henry II of Görz, born in 1263, could afford to marry her because of her beauty.
Henry of Görz died in 1323 and left behind a newly born son. As decreed by law, the hereditary offices of protector and captain-general of the House of Görz were passed on to him. Together with the duke of Carinthia, Beatrice was made guardian of the child and thus was, for the time being, head of the patriarchal state. Beatrice did not remarry and had to endure her three power hungry brothers-in-law. She lived - totally given to superstitions - for some time in Cividale and then returned to Landshut where she died at the age of sixty.
In order to be able to put the origin and the content of the documents of Villach and the time of their appearance into the correct sequence and to be able to derive some conclusions from them, it is advisable also to sketch a portrait of the general political condition in Carinthia/Carniola in the mid-thirties of the fourteenth century. It reached a critical point with the death of the Carinthian Duke Henry II of the House of Görz, Tyrol on April 4, 1335: Henry did not have a male heir. His daughter Margarethe, called "die Maultasch" (slap in the face), could not inherit. But the Hapsburgs had made preparations. Already in 1330, at the Imperial Diet in Augsburg, they had convinced Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian to give them the duchy of Carinthia in fief in case Henry died without
a male heir. In the astonishingly short period of four weeks they had the fief in hand. Ludwig the Bavarian even bestowed a double fief - surely upon the suggestion of the Hapsburgs - by naming the brothers Otto and Albrecht of Hapsburg Dukes of Carinthia. Otto was proclaimed Duke in the customary ceremony on the Zollfeld and Albrecht received the oath of allegiance from the Carniolian estates and the nobles. Otto, too, pledged him allegiance. But his oath of allegiance surely was to veil the intention of the Hapsburgs to secede Carniola from Carinthia, which
then occurred without causing any sensation in the course of the next fifteen to twenty years. A new duchy was born.
This assumption of power by the Hapsburgs in Carinthia/Carniola was extremely dangerous for the patriarch of Aquileia and thus also for the colonization of the Ortenburgers. The pope, who had been abducted to Avignon in southern France in 1309 by the French royal House of Anjou, like his predecessors harbored a certain degree of mistrust of the Hapsburgs. Patriarch Bertrand, an unusually gifted politician and diplomat, born in southern France, most likely had been given the directive by the pope to counter the Hapsburgs with the appropriate means wherever the interests of the church seemed to be infringed upon. Since the relationship between the Hapsburgs and Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian was so good, it could be assumed that the fief scene in Carniola changed suddenly. A cause could easily be found. If, however, the patriarch of Aquileia lost his fiefs in Carniola, fiefs that he had held since 1077, then they were also lost to the counts of Ortenburg. Thus, the primeval forest fief also fell into other hands. With the loss of the Carniolian fiefs, the House of Ortenburg would have been relegated to its original countship in Upper Carinthia and would have been considerably weakened both economically and militarily. That is to say, the "Sword of Aquileia," whose strike force had already been weakened by the death of Count
Meinhart I, would have lost its power against the Venetian Republic and the destructive forces within the patriarchal state. In addition, a serious quarrel about the Castle Laas with its properties in western Carniola had already broken out between the counts of Ortenburg and the patriarch under the Patriarch Pagano II. It threatened to destroy the feudal relationship. And now on top of it the familial dispute in the House of Ortenburg!
Given these circumstances, Patriarch Bertrand had no other choice than to resort to the law of bargaining. His first step: He gave, that is, he presented, Castle Laas in Central Carniola in fief to the House of Hapsburg. Count Hermann III of Ortenburg had again rashly taken possession of it with a surprise attack just shortly prior to this. Hereby the patriarch proved the following:
1. He demonstrated to Hapsburg, perhaps also to Auersperg, that he felt himself still to be quite in possession of the old fiefs of Aquileia and hence would dispose of them as he saw fit, even though they thereby became fief-takers of the patriarch.
2. By giving the fief to the Hapsburgs, the object of the quarrel had been removed because the Ortenburgers could now no longer make any claims.
3. The counts also had to accept the fact that the patriarch did not necessarily take them into consideration.
Of the subsequent political measures that Bertrand undertook, his announced meeting in Villach with Count Otto V and his nephews on June 24, 1336 is most important. There are considerable doubts if it did not take place at Fort Treffen by Villach, the private estate of the ruling patriarch. Count Albrecht II, the youngest of the three Ortenburg brothers, had died in the spring. His death made the restructuring of the leadership of the Carinthian countship easier for the partriarch. He also proceeded vigorously in this.
As was already stated, two almost identical documents exist about the meeting at Villach. The historiography of Gottschee has also only noted these two documents but not examined them more closely, that is, connected them to the settlement venture of the Ortenburgers. Admittedly, the visible content seems to be unimportant because it simply confirms an administrative decision that could just as well have been proclaimed with the signature of the Patriarch of Udine. It is about the reinvestiture of a vassal, something which was always undertaken whenever the vassal himself or the feudal lord died. In this case, however, much more was at stake for the historiography of Gottschee: Bertrand once more established the personal unity of the leadership of the House of Ortenburg by giving the most important Ortenburgian fiefs in Carniola to Otto. He thus disregarded the division agreement among Meinhart, Otto, and Albrecht that had existed for at least twenty-five years, as well as the succession upon the death of Meinhart I. Meinhart's sons Hermann and Meinhart II should have received the fiefs in Lower Carniola according to the hereditary law. Furthermore, they had already assumed the inheritance.
Now to the matter of the two documents: Even Tangl, the Carinthian Ortenburg-author, is not concerned with their historic significance and interpretation. He also foregoes giving a complete German version of the documents written in Latin and writes about the Carinthian Ortenburgers on page 161 of the second volume of the documentation:
"1336 June Villach. Bertrand, Patriarch of Aquileia bestows the Castles Ortenegg, Zobelsberg and Grafenwarth with all their possessions, jurisdictions, rights and revenues of the same as the counts of Ortenburg of old have held them in fief from the Church of Aquileia, in fief on Count Otto of Ortenburg, his vassal, and his nephews, the sons of the Counts Meinhart and Albrecht deceased (meaning Albrecht II, notation of the author). Otto's brothers."
On page 212, Professor Grothe quotes the original Latin text of the second document as follows: "No. 2 Document of the Patriarch Ludwig of Aquileia of May 1, 1336.
Nos Ludoicus dei gratia sanctae sedis Aquilegensis patriarcha ad memoriam aeternam esse uolumus quod ad nostram deducta notitiam, quod in quibisdam nemoribus seu siluis infra confines curatae ecciesiae sancti Stephan! in Relffniz nostrae aquilegiensis dioecesis, et in eius cora seu parochia, quae inhabitabiles erant et incultae, multae hominum habitationes factae sint et nemora huiusmodi ac siluae ad agriculturum reducta et non modici populi congregatio ad habkandum conuenit in quibus quidem locis per habitantes ibidem, ad honorem dei, et gloriosae virginis matris et ad consolationem dicti populi et subsequentium atque deuotionis augmentum, de nouo quaedam ecciesiae construtae sunt videlicet, in Gotsche, Pölan, Costel, Ossiwniz et Goteniz et una infra confines curatae ecciesiae sancti Petri in Taimansdorff, videlicet, in Chrainau etiam dictae nostrae dioecesis de nouo facta, consentiente, et concedente filio nostro in Christo carissimo spectabili comite domino Ottone de Ortenburg, in cuius dominio et jurisdictione territoria esse et consistrere huiusmodi dinoscontur. Nos deuotionem dicti populi ibidem congregati ut suarum manuum labores manducent paternis affectibus aduertentes et cupientes animarum ipsorum proudidere saluti, ut per huiusmodi prouisionem ad deuotionis et charitatis opera feruertius animentur, supradictio comiti eiusque haeredibus concedimus nostro et successorum patriarcharum nomine instituendi et ordinandi in dictis ecciesis sacerdotes ydoneos, per quos celebrentur diuina, cura animarum exerceatur salubriter, sacramenta administrentur ecclesiastica et seruiatur laudabiliter in diuinis. Quorum sacerdotum praesentationen ad dictos comitem sousque haeredes pro eo, quod in ipsius domino et jurisdictione praedicia consistunt, spectare decreuimus et uolumus et opsorum confirmationem in ecciesiis praedictis videlicet Gotsche, Pölan, Costel, Ossiwniz et Goteniz ad plebanum seu rectorem in Reiffniz et ecciesiae in Chrainau, ad plebanum seu rectorem in Rattmanstorff, sub quorum curis et parochiis esse noscuntur, qui quidem sacerdotes, plebanis praedictis et ipsorum plebibus in omnibus subsint, obediant et Intendant, ac ipsis reuerentiam debitam exhibeant et honorem quodque contradictores et rebelles auctoritate nostra ecciesiastica censura compellant. In quorum omnium testimomum praesentes fieri jussimus nostri sigilli appensione muniri. Datae in Castro nostro Vtim prima die mensis Maij sub anno dominicae natiuitatis millesimo trecentesimo, sexage-simo tertio, indictione prima."
It is noteworthy that Reifnitz is not mentioned in either document even though the primeval forest belonged to its region. Up to now no explanation for this has been found in the literature. It is possible that, in the meantime, the fief of Reifnitz had been given to Ortenegg. The Ortenburgian castle administration was located there at the time Otto was invested.
Is it not peculiar, however, that the patriarch went to Villach, that is to Treffen by Villach, instead of summoning his vassal Otto and the latter's nephew to Udine? Did not the highest prince of the church after the pope lower himself somewhat by undertaking this trip? Hardly! On the contrary, it seems that he also wanted to underscore its significance to the Ortenburgers by appearing personally. Not least of all, financial considerations made the settlement of the primeval forest an important issue for Lord Bertrand, who was deeply in debt. The patriarchal state owed large sums not only to the papacy but also to the bankers in Padua. Only if the primeval forest was settled did it yield money for the church and did it increase the economic power - the number of people subject to the Ortenburgers - as well as their political prestige. These one-time possibilities remained unused it the colonization was not continued and completed.
Given these circumstances, we can easily imagine that Patriarch Bertrand emphatically directed his vassal to resume the colonization of the primeval forest without delay.
It was now much easier for Count Otto to deal with his nephew. We do not know in detail how the relationship to Hermann III and Meinhart II had developed and would have continued. In any case, it was a severe blow to the House of Ortenburg that both died childless in the years 1337 (Hermann III) and 1338 (Meinhart II). Of Otto's nephews, who were alluded to in the documents of Villach only the sons of Albrecht II, Otto VI, and Rudolf remained. It cannot be documented it they were ready and willing to assist their uncle in the colonization effort It may however, be assumed that, as his decreed heirs, they did participate. Above all, Otto VI must have sided with his uncle since, as his cousins met early deaths face had selected him to be the progenitor of the House of Ortenburg.
Patriarch Bertrand´s urging had, however, succeeded in getting the colonization of the primeval forest between Reifnitz and Kulpa started with renewed vigor. This is evident from a letter of the patriarch dated September 1, 1339 to Count Otto V. As far as the historiography about Gottschee is concerned, the settlement venture of the counts of Ortenburg began on this September 1, 1339. The patriarchs of Aquileia receded into the background. One proceeded without making any presuppositions and thus it was unavoidable that absurdities and pronounced
mistakes, as well as false conclusions, occurred. We now want to attempt to clarify these as far as is possible.
In the document of September 1, 1339, which was written in Latin, Patriarch Bertrand gives Count Otto permission to appoint a chaplain to the newly built chapel near the "villa Mooswald," a chapel dedicated to Saint Bartholomew. The reason for the sanctioning of this extension of the Reifnitz parish is given. One wanted to spare the many faithful who had assembled here the long trip to the parish church in Reifnitz. They were also to receive the sacraments there and bury their dead in their own cemetery. On page 211 of Grothe, one can read the German translation of the patriarch's letter.
As the briefly stated content shows, this was not a document dealing with the settlement history but a church decree, wherein understandably church matters predominate. Therefore, one cannot take it to be a tangible and accurate proof of the state of the settlement, of the origin and the number of colonists, nor of their dispersion across the stretches of the settlement region. All of this was only of secondary concern to the secretaries of the patriarch. We particularly would have liked to have found out more about the size, year of founding, and the number of personnel of the "villa Mooswald." Even a reference to the chapel's capacity would have given us a reference point for estimations.
With all due respect for the venerableness of the above document, we cannot refrain from interpreting and evaluating it anew on the basis of our research results. We also want to attempt to bring it into harmony with the brutal reality of the fourteenth century.
Where did the village name Mooswald originate?
Even though the letter of September 1, 1339 also states nothing about this, we are on solid ground with our answer. It originated without a doubt in Carinthia, where there are two "Mooswalds," only one of which, however, can be considered to be the name sponsor for the Mooswald in Gottschee. They are located in the vicinity of Paternion and Spittal an der Drau. The connection to the colonization in Lower Carniola is quickly established: In the fourteenth century Paternion and Spittal an der Drau were still so-called market protectorates of the counts of Ortenburg. The direct name transferrers were with certainty the colonists from the Mooswald near Paternion. Reason: Within view of this village one finds the designation "Nock" for a hill, a designation which is otherwise rare in the German-speaking Alpine region but which - and not coincidentally - also appears within view of the Gottscheer Mooswald.
The moment, however, at which we ask when this Mooswald in the Gottscheer Oberland was settled, we enter historical twilight. What is meant by "villa" in this case? Did Mooswald fulfill a special function because it is the only village name that appears? Only one thing is certain: It cannot first have been founded in 1339. This can be concluded from the comment in the document that one no longer wanted to expect the numerous faithful to travel the long distance to Reifnitz for mass and for the sacraments. Hence, so many people had assembled here that they actually filled a newly built chapel. But also not more than that, because the pious Otto of Ortenburg would not have shunned the sacrifice of building a new church. The construction of the chapel of St. Bartholomew near Mooswald also indicated that the "villa" would be important in his plans for some time to come. In no way, however, would the colonists from Carinthia have been able to complete first the resettling from the old homeland to the new one, then clear the forest, plant the seeds, build winter-hardy shelters, and in addition, erect a church within a few summer months. All of this must have been accomplished when the patriarch's approval for the appointment of a chaplain arrived. This is inconceivable; the "villa" thus must have been established for some time prior to September 1339. In order to be able to be named in the patriarch's letter, Mooswald could not have been established later than 1337. In view of this, it is doubtful if it would have been possible to accomplish the essential preparations in two summers and become self-supporting around 1339. If not, when would Mooswald, that is, the "villa" - this word had the approximate meaning of "estate" or "village" in medieval Latin - have to have been established so that it was already able to carry out an apparently important function in the summer of 1339?
We are getting closer to the time of the founding of Mooswald if we connect it with the year in which Count Meinhart I died, namely 1332. As we know, Otto's older brother died at the family fortress of their ancestors, where Otto lived. What was Meinhart doing at the Ortenburg? Did he discuss the progress of the primeval forest colonization with his brother? We can only surmise what they perhaps agreed upon. If we, however, assume that they agreed to establish the transit and supply camp which was essential for the continued advance into the primeval forest, we certainly would not be engaging in idle speculation. The time from 1333 to 1339 would have made the completion of the strategic base camp of Mooswald possible. If one sets the time of its founding at this early date, it was, upon expanding its capacity; also able to hold the growing influx after the conference of Villach and also to assign the colonists to their settlements.
Aren't the terms such as assembly camp, transit camp, supply depot, or even strategic base camp contrary to the document of 1339, that is, to the designation" villa"?
Certainly the question is justified. On the other hand, this word has been translated in various ways. Besides "estate," one finds village, township, larger farmstead. The translation of "villa" is for us, however, not the decisive issue. Rather we are searching for the place or, better still, the rank which the "villa Mooswald" assumed within the framework of the German settlement of Gottschee. The terms that were used above were selected quite carefully because the administrative staff must have been located in Mooswald. The transit camp, which sheltered the arriving colonists until they were assigned to settlements, was connected to it. Primitive shelters were needed for this process. Storage rooms for seed corn and tools were part of the "estate." Furthermore, at least minimal provisions had to be made for the arriving cattle. Finally, not only perhaps but with certainty, a farm, which was worked by a number of farmers - like the pioneers in the later village of Mooswald - was part of the "estate." Most likely, its meager surplus was barely sufficient to feed not only the permanent personnel of the transit camp (the officials who distributed the land, scribes, attending and supervisory personnel) but also the colonists who were passing through Mooswald itself and those who still were to have their first harvest in their own colony. Supervision was probably necessary to prevent unauthorized searching for and settling of land by possibly dissatisfied colonists. According to the stages which we already attempted to trace in the depiction of the first settlement phase, the villages in the Oberland that had already existed for a longer time had to deliver part of their harvests to the base camp in Mooswald. However, it could also have been quite possible that the Ortenburgers in addition relied upon the properties of the old fiefs of Reifnitz and Ortenegg for this purpose after 1336.
The author of the "Jahrhundertbuch" is quite open to the objection that he may have contrived the schedule and the stages for the settlement of Gottschee. It, however, only seems like that. He again appeals to common sense and refers to very definite principles of organization without whose application the growth of a human community is not possible. What is meant herewith is made clear with the following question: What would have happened if the counts of Ortenburg had been allowed to open their primeval forest fiefs for unregulated and unorganized
settlement? Nothing. Peasants would not have streamed there from everywhere to clear the land, there would not have been any fighting for the best soil and fields, for the springs that yielded the most. On the contrary, aside from the fact that money and more money was needed also in the fourteenth century for colonization, money that the sons of those farmers who were willing to resettle did not have, the peasants of the fourteenth century were still too incapable of undertaking such a difficult task without leadership and direction. An individual, however, had
absolutely no chance of enduring life in the wilderness. He and his family could not have survived without the community, even if he had gotten up the courage to face the evil spirits by himself. Superstition still had an inconceivable influence on the minds of that time.
Even if the counts of Ortenburg had proceeded on a middling course and planted those who were willing to resettle without many constraints in the primeval forest, the Gottschee as we know it today would never have come to be. Certainly the people of the Middle Ages were no less egotistical than we. The least scrupulous and the strongest would have secured the best spots for themselves and whoever came later would have had to take what was left. But who would have gone gladly and voluntarily to the higher plateaus with their unfavorable soil and water conditions? A glance at the map gives us the best proof that the counts of Ortenburg had carefully planned and executed the settlement in the chalky highland of Upper Carniola. The towns and hamlets are distributed across the "Ländchen," the smaller villages clustering around the settlement centers with astonishing adaptation to
the terrain of the region and to the water sources. If nowhere else, the plan is evident here.
The counts of Ortenburg employed neither one nor the other method. Instead, they demanded - and received - an orderly, sensible compliance from those who were willing to settle there in return for the extremely favorable offer. The peasants who cleared the land did not always have an easy job. The names of three towns clearly express this: Verdreng [verdrängen = to expel, suppress (translator's notation)] and Verderb [verderben = to spoil, ruin (translator's notation)] in the township of Obermösel and Kummerdorf [village of sorrow, grief, worry (translator's notation)] in the township of Nesseltal. A clarification is unnecessary. But the peasants who were assigned to these settlements stayed! Their villages are among the most wellknown in the linguistic island. Pilgrimage churches were located on the hills of Verdreng and of Kummerdorf.
The "villa Mooswald" was the most southerly located settlement of Carinthian and East Tyrolean colonists in 1339. Whether a large part of the settlers were already then of East Tyrolean origin will need to be examined. Mooswald's importance diminished as every new village became self-sustaining, that is, as the settlement centers continued to grow and function on their own. It can still be approximately determined when "villa Mooswald" ceased to be the base camp, but it is impossible even to approximate, much less to calculate, the number of colonists who were
processed in the camp or the size of the administrative and maintenance staff of the "villa." The document of September 1, 1339 only states that a chapel had to be built and that a cemetery was planned. Thus, the "villa Mooswald" already had so many people that a clergyman was nearly fully occupied with their spiritual care. Deaths occurred, above all probably due to accidents in the clearing work and to a high rate of infant mortality, but a number does not crystallize. The fact that Count Otto built a chapel and not a church actually speaks against the fact that this number could have been "large." A Slovenian source surmises the opposite. Thus, Simonic states on page 8, among other things: "... because Gottschee was settled by Slovenian peasants only on the fringes, the Ortenburgers began to bring settlers here from their domains in Carinthia in the fourteenth century. Count Otto of Ortenburg, the colonizer of Gottschee, already settled so many colonists here in the 1330's, that in Mooswald he ... " There follows a reference to the chapel of Saint Bartholomew. On page 9 Simonic continues:
"The Ortenburgers began to colonize Gottschee for economic reasons with a larger number of peasants in order to increase their income with more densely populated and cultivated land. They also brought German officials and craftsmen to the estate. The number of German peasants that Count Otto had brought to Gottschee from his domains in Upper Carinthia in the 1330's was very large."
It would be a numbers' game if one were to counter these widely diverging suppositions with a concrete estimate. The uncertainty, however, transforms itself into the probability of a definite number if one introduces the following consideration into the surmised happenings during the colonization. Above all, a personal economic argument has to be considered. Türk writes in his brief characterization of the counts of Ortenburg that they were also "cool calculators." Meinhart I was without a doubt not one of these, but the more frugal Otto had surely instructed the officials of the "court leet" to see to it that the necessary financial outlay would yield increasing returns as soon as possible. Moreover, he might have seen to it that there was not too great a timespan between the supportive maintenance and the self-maintenance of the "Holden" (favorites). This means that the influx of settlers was controlled and it was not possible that any number of interested parties came uncalled. This measure was also one reason why stragglers still arrived in Gottschee until the end of the fourteenth century. Moreover, one must consider that there were not unlimited numbers of voluntary settlers available in Carinthia and East Tyrol, settlers who could meet the challenge of clearing the primeval forest. It is also totally inconceivable that all the regions of the highland or even only one section, the Hinterland or the Unterland, were settled simultaneously, since this was strategically impossible due to the lack of roadways and the climate. Logic dictates that we assume individual groups were formed who then set up a village, their village, on a previously selected and defined terrain. The first villages of the fourteenth century were deliberately kept small and probably did not have more than ten to twelve hearths, excepting the settlement centers. This size would indicate about forty, at the most fifty, inhabitants. The physical hardships must have been enormous. It was at this time that the neighborliness was born of which the Gottscheers still speak and write today. All of the work that was inescapably imposed on the colonist - the building of the log cabin, the clearing and the removal of the stones from the fields, and the setting-up of grazing grounds - all was undertaken jointly.
These financial, economic, organizational, and geological obstacles to a mass settlement can hardly support Simonic's thesis that the number of settlers in the thirties of the fourteenth century was "very large," even if one takes into account that it increased considerably after the conference at Villach. How did the Slovenian festival brochure published by Simonic to commemorate the incorporation of Gottschee 500 years ago arrive at this generous figure?
It can only be explained if one already applied the expression "multae hominum" from the next important document of the year 1363 to that of 1339. Moreover, one must consider that one calculated with essentially different measures in the Middle Ages. To us, eighty or one hundred people are a handful; in a region in which there were zero people until the settlement began this was "a lot." Several hundred people then had to seem like a large number.
The question of numbers aside, what was the offer like that the Ortenburgers made the voluntary settlers? It is still interesting today. They received an entire "hide," Bavarian measure, that was approximately twenty hectares, based on the following law: land and soil were given to the peasant who cleared the land as a permanent fee-farm. Herewith they were "owners," a word that will appear often yet. Two other factors made it quite attractive. The peasants could bequeath, parcel, exchange, and sell their property. The rent payment obligation also applied
to parts of the original property. Perhaps the greatest incentive for accepting this offer was the granting of total personal freedom of mobility. But we do not know, however, if the voluntary settlers were told at the outset about the unfavorable soil conditions.
We do not know how the colonists were assigned their parcels. It would also serve no purpose to ask if, at the beginning, the fields of the village were worked jointly. We cannot answer this question.
It is to be assumed that the settlers did not receive any written agreement, letters of investiture, deeds, or the like. They could not have read them. We surely are not wrong in assuming that they were assigned their property with a handshake in front of witnesses. It is doubtful that the property was made up of a single tract. One surely saw to it that the cultivated land, the meadows, fields, and the forest areas, were more or less fairly distributed. This necessarily means that an authorized official of the feudal lord was present during the parceling of the village terrain. How could he have maintained a survey otherwise? Moreover, it surely did not take long until every owner could attest to which piece of property belonged to whom in his village. The placing of the border stones must have been one of the most unpleasant tasks.
We now leave the historical realm of the patriarchal letter of 1339. Twenty-four years pass before another document issued by the patriarch appears. In the meantime, since much must have happened in the settlement history, there is no news about the continued growth of the "Ländchen." We only hear that Count Otto V died in the year 1342. It is not known which one of his nephews - it could only have been Otto VI or Rudolf or both - continued the settlement in Lower Carniola. They must have gotten into financial difficulties because Professor Saria writes that between 1351 and 1364 "the Ortenburgers" borrowed money from the Jews in Laibach a total of four times ("Die mittelalterliche deutsche Besiedlung von Krain"). What had happened?
1348 was a year of the plague and earthquakes. Much of Laibach was destroyed. It is said that a huge cliff side plunged from the Dobratsch near Villach into the Gail valley and buried seven villages. The plague, however, felled - it is said - about half of the population of Carinthia. From this we can conclude that the number of voluntary settlers had declined so drastically that the counts were forced to make the emigration more appealing by making another concession, namely by offering a money premium, or stated differently, pocket money. The plague also had another consequence. Because of the human loss, the counts were in a position similar to that of their uncle Meinhart I. The human potential in their own countship no longer sufficed to carry out and complete the settlement of the primeval forest within the foreseeable future. They, therefore, had to try to find willing emigrants elsewhere. They found them in the eastern part of the neighboring countship of Tyrol. Of course, the counts of Ortenburg could not simply recruit colonists in the region of East Tyrol. They needed the permission of the count of
Tyrol and of the counts of Görz, who had extensive fiefs there. Also, the cloister of Admont and the monastery of Diessen am Ammersee in Upper Bavaria owned land there. The historical point of this book would have looked good if one could have established a connection between the intentions of the Ortenburgers and Countess Beatrice, Princess of Wittelsbach by birth. If she still had lived in Friaul at this time, she could not have had any influence upon the releasing of colonists for Lower Carniola because her son was now of age and her brothers-in-law, who
lived in Lienz and Braus, surely would not have given her the right to participate. There is much more evidence for than against the supposition that the three counts of Görz released subjects to the Ortenburgers for a price.
In any case, the influx of East Tyroleans into the later linguistic island of Gottschee seems really to have begun only after 1348 and it seems not to have been insignificant. Numerous idiomatic influences from East Tyrol in the Gottscheer dialect substantiate this. Professor Kranzmayer's concise declaration that the ancestors of the Gottscheers came from the Tyrolean-Carinthian fringes can be proven not only linguistically but, as we have seen - with some reliance upon probability - also historically. Before we, however, take a closer look at the conclusions of the Carinthian scholar, let us take a look at other views on this topic. These brought forth the strangest blossoms, also with regard to the interpretation of the name of the city of Gottschee, which gave its name to the entire "Ländchen."
Much amateur historicizing and much historical wishful thinking took place. The theories about the origin ranged from the assumption that the ancestors of the Gottscheers had been descendants of the last Goths who had withdrawn to the forests of the chalk highland to "Gottes Segen" (God's blessing) and "Gottes See" (God's Lake) or "Gatschen" and Kocevje, a Slovenian word, which comes closest to the historical reality. It is derived from "koca" = hut and has the equivalent meaning of "clustering of huts." With the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century, some Gottscheers dreamed that their forefathers descended from all German tribes and considered the "Ländchen" to be a little Germany. The "Thuringian-Franconian-Theory" was the most persistent. It claimed that Emperor Charles IV (he reigned from 1346 to 1378) had released to a Count Frederick of Ortenburg, upon the latter's request, 300 men and their families as colonists in the forests of Gottschee. They were supposedly rebels from Thuringia and Franconia who were said to have forfeited their lives. Valvasor was cited as the source for this tale. He writes on page 194 of Volume XI of his main work, "Die Ehre des Herzogtums Crain", that Bishop Chroen of Laibach supposedly found a notation in the archives of Bischoflak near Laibach which stated that "300 men with their wives and children passed through." They are said to have continued on to Gottschee to clear the forests there. Nothing against the bishop, nothing against the author of the notation, but everything against the number 300 and against Count Frederick of Ortenburg, who supposedly asked for this cheap crew for the colonization of the primeval forest in Lower Carniola. The number 300 is simply too even and - too high. It is without a doubt an estimate and we have already discussed what one can conclude about the scale of medieval estimators in comparison to those of today and in reference to the number of people. But the historian and the linguist have irrefutable arguments against the "Thuringian-Franconian-Theory":
"300 men with their wives and children" means, even if one assumes only four family members on the average, 1,200 people; probably there would, however, have been 1,400 to 1,500. With a little imagination, we can still picture today what it would have meant to steer this line of people several hundred meters in length, together with a corresponding number of ox-carts, from Thuringia and Upper Franconia through partly uninhabited regions across rivers and streams, mountains and valleys, under the most miserable conditions to Gottschee. We can particularly imagine that this mass of people would not have been welcome in all the places through which they begged their way, because they were surely blessed with children but hardly with ready money.
But let us assume that all hardships were overcome and the "300 men with their wives and children" arrived in Gottschee. What then? The organizers of the Ortenburgian settlement venture could not have lodged them in Mooswald or elsewhere. This procession of misery would only have ended when summer was over. Where was one to put them? Crowd them into the already existing villages? Moreover, it is simply unrealistic and wishful thinking to assume that the colonists from Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol who had already settled there would not have objected to the flooding of their settlements by Thuringians and Franconians. The subsequent course of the history of the Gottscheers lets one assume that if this had been the case, the first Gottscheers would have become rebels for the first time.
The defenders of the "Thuringian-Franconian-Theory" might retort that the counts of Ortenburg would then simply have stepped in as feudal lords and restored order. Too simple! Whoever could not be convinced by the above objections will have to accept the major irrefutable scholarly finding: There is no noteworthy indication in the Gottscheer dialect that 1,200 to 1,500 Thuringians and Franconians participated in this early stage of the colonization of the "Ländchen." In any case, at least the Thuringian dialect, closely related to the Saxonian, would have established itself in the already opened settlement region. If the Ortenburgers had, however, established several villages exclusively with Thuringians and Franconians, then their dialect would have most certainly maintained itself. Moreover, already Valvasor was not certain if the notation found by Chroen reflected the reality. And, by the way, we do not have to exclude the possibility that Charles IV or someone else put a number of peasant families from Thuringia and Franconia at the disposal of the Ortenburgers. It is quite conceivable that they would then have been assigned in small groups to the already existing settlements. The formulation "300 men with their wives and children" is historically false. There is also no proof for the assertion that a Count Frederick of Ortenburg asked the emperor for colonists. Between 1346 and 1363, the period in question, there was no Ortenburgian Count Frederick but there did live a Carniolian governor by the name of Frederick of Sanneck. A Count Frederick of Ortenburg could not exist because the two sons of Meinhart I died childless and there was no Frederick among the nine children of Count Albrecht II. Furthermore, the author of the "Jahrhundertbuch" has convinced himself that there are no entries about an imperial decree concerning the release of 300 rebels with their wives and children in the "Regesten," which are summaries of decrees and ordinances issued during the reign of Charles IV.
We leave this period of twenty-four years between the document of September 1, 1339 and May 1, 1363, a period which yields no other documents, not without the certainty that the financial expenditures of the counts of Ortenburg were apparently much greater than was originally estimated. Thus, we encounter the next significant document for the settlement history of Gottschee in 1363. Again it is a patriarchal letter, this time from Ludwig I de la Torre, dated May 1. We are mainly interested in that part of this document on church matters which deals
with Gottschee and was translated by Professor Grothe from the Latin text into German on page 26 of his book:
"It was brought to the attention of the Patriarch Ludwig of the Holy Seat at Aquileia that many human dwellings had been set up within the borders of the church jurisdiction of Saint Steven of Reifnitz, a region which belongs to our Aquileian diocese, namely in certain groves and forests in its parish which had been uninhabitable and uncultivated. These groves and forests were converted to farmland and not an insignificant number of people came to live therein."
Aquileia granted that five parishes be established, namely "Gotsche, Pölan, Costel, Ossiwnitz et Goteniz," to see to the spiritual needs of this "not insignificant number of people." Later these were written as follows: Gottschee, Pölland, Kostel, Ossilnitz, and Göttenitz. The Latin text of the document is found on page 212 of Grothe. It is noteworthy that the document also addresses a Count Otto of Ortenburg. It clearly refers to Otto VI, son of Count Albrecht II, progenitor of his tribe.
Again we are faced with a difficult task. We must interpret a time-bound document that was not written with great accuracy and also attempt to assign it to its correct place with regard to the past and the future. First, let us see what it explicitly states.
For the first time, a document records the village name Gottschee as "Gotsche." At the same time, Göttenitz is named in the northern half of the linguistic island - Mooswald, on the other hand, is no longer mentioned. The southern and southeastern sections of the settlement region come very much into the foreground with the naming of the castles Pölland and Kostel, as well as the village of Ossilnitz at the confluence of the Cabranka and the Kulpa. The document further substantiates that the primeval forest fief of the Ortenburgers was uninhabitable and uncultivated and that now, however, a "not insignificant number of people" had settled and were farming there.
Based on the preliminary work for the "Jahrhundertbuch", we are in a position to have indirect access to other historical facts:
First: All five newly created parishes are located in the region of the first colonization phase. Of course, they were already quite more advanced with regard to population than the colonial villages of the Upper Carinthians and East Tyroleans. Their settlement centers had not yet matured into parishes. They were certainly, however, a part of the not insignificant number of people that the document of Patriarch Ludwig mentions. Also, the eastern sector of the settlement region, the Moschnitze, is still of no interest as far as the church is concerned. From this, one can conclude that it was also still on the fringes as far as the colonization was concerned.
Second: Mooswald apparently relinquished its importance as the base camp of the colonization to "Gotsche." According to the document, the patron saint of the chapel at Mooswald, Saint Bartholomew, also appears in Gottschee. That does not have to mean that the "villa" was already disbanded in 1363 and no longer played a role in the administration of the settlement. But the population of "Gotsche" had increased to such an extent that a parish together with its church had to be established.
The author's views with regard to the transference of the administrative functions from Mooswald to Gottschee do not agree with the Slovenian suppositions on this matter. Thus, Simonic writes on page 8, "Because the first subsequent document of the year 1363 no longer mentions the chapel of St. Bartholomew but only the church of St. Bartholomew in Gottschee, which had been enlarged in the meantime; that originally Gottschee was called Mooswald, which had been a flourishing settlement on Ortenburgian land. The name Gottschee had previously not appeared in official usage."
Three solid arguments speak against accepting the view that Gottschee was originally called Mooswald:
| a) | Gotsche is older than Mooswald. |
| b) | Mooswald would have disappeared from the register of villages in Gottschee if Gotsche had taken its place. |
| c) | The village name Gottschee underwent its own linguistic development, which is closely tied to its settlement history but which has nothing to do with the origin of the ancestors of the Gottscheers from Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol. |
But where does the village and region designation "Gottschee" come from?
We can afford to forego the interpretive theories of the nineteenth century since we can present an alternative based on research. We repeat: Count Meinhart I and his son Hermann II had already begun to settle mainly Slovenian-speaking colonists from their fiefs in Lower Carniola before 1315. They first opened up the Oberland and advanced from the north into the forests to what was later to be Gottschee and the Hinterland, to Göttenitz, the southernmost points. Still in our time, the theory that the name Gottschee derives from the Slovenian "Kocevje"
was considered to be quite realistic, because it surely began with a "number of huts." Effortlessly, one could also construct a linguistic development from "Kocevje" to "Gottschee." That did happen and the Slovenes were satisfied with this but the Gottscheers less so. Nothing and no one, however, forces us to accept that" Kocevje" has to be the base word. Actually, it could have been a similarly sounding word. The author already noticed the village name "Hocevje" east of Reifnitz (the initial h is to be pronounced ch) when he prepared his series of articles, "Alle Spuren führen nach Kärnten" ("All Tracks Lead to Carinthia"). According to Grothe (Map No. 5), it was first mentioned in a document in 1145. Neither the professor from Leipzig nor the author surmised a connection with the village
designation "Gottschee." Only later did he encounter the full meaning of the word "Hocevje" in the work of Professor Saria, one of the best experts on the colonial history of Carniola (page 96). The scholar, who died in 1974 in Graz, realized that "Gotsche" did not derive from "Kocevje" but from "Hocevje." "Hocevje" means the "pine forest." Saria did not yet relate his linguistic discovery to the settlement history of Gottschee. We who know its origins have only to make a short mental leap to that time and place in history:
The original "Hocevje" was located either on the fiefs of the Auerspergers or of the Ortenburgers in Lower Carniola. In either case, the Ortenburgers could have transplanted settlers from this village to the central region of the Rinse. That these colonists with a Slovenian vernacular gave the name of their old homeland to their new one, does not require any special explanation. As we also know, Count Otto V had supplied his brother Meinhart or his son Hermann III with Carinthian settlers. Neither of the Ortenburgers of that time realized that they were settling members of two different ethnic groups. Therefore, they mixed them quite freely. As the quick growth of the village indicates, they settled especially "Hocevje," later "Gottschee," with voluntary settlers from far-away Carinthia because the small village on the central region of the Rinse was particularly accessible and had the necessary water supply and - this must already have been clear to the colonizers before 1363 - it seemed to be suited as the center for the entire settlement region.
Since only German colonists now followed in quick succession, their Bavarian-Austrian dialect just as quickly predominated. The existing village name "Hocevje" did not suit the new settlers. In general, the German avoids the ch at the beginning of a word. He prefers to substitute the k or g wherever he encounters it. On the other hand, the Slovenes and other Slavic nations do not appreciate the aspirated initial h. The development of "Hocevje" to "Gottschee," however, only becomes very clear when one looks at the dialect names for the city and the region of
Gottschee.
The transformation of h to g was the first step. Under the influence of the g, the o changed to a short explosive a. The tsch remained, while the e split into e and a through emphasis. The v shifted to b. The end syllable je however was dropped. The final result was - and that could not have taken more than one generation - the "Gatscheab" still in use today. Not lastly, a child's pronunciation probably had a lot to do with this transformation. Still today, the Gottscheer calls himself "Gattscheabar" - the r is only intimated. But the Gottscheer woman is called "Gattscheabarin."
Third: The authors of the document of May 1, 1363 - the patriarch surely only signed it - likewise limited themselves to an undefined (and for the reader after 650 years, undefinable) amount: "... a not insignificant number of people." Nevertheless, we come close to the actual number if we take a look at the next document. In 1377 the village of "Gotsche" was elevated to a market. "Market" means the coming together of producers and consumers, as well as trade between them. Without a doubt, the elevation to a market came about at the instigation of the counts of Ortenburg who wanted to spur on the economy that was flourishing with the continuing colonization. Gotsche and Mooswald by themselves, however, would not have made a market worthwhile. Thus, other villages must have already existed in numbers, so that the establishment of an economic center seemed useful for the peasants, as well as for the feudal lord, whose income grew. The Ortenburgers would not have been "cool calculators" if they had not seen to it that their new peasants paid and also were able to pay the rent for their fee farm.
We must also include in our considerations the fact that about two generations had passed since the beginning of the colonization. That is to say, that already sixty yearly age groups of Gottscheers had been born, and each one grew larger than the one before due to natural procreation and the continued influx. The logical conclusion: This steadily increasing population could no longer be housed in the Oberland or within the area of the new market, particularly since it was not the intention of the Ortenburgian colonization to squeeze the people into one spot. This will only happen later, about 600 years later, under totally different circumstances.
The dispersion of the colonists across the western half of the settlement region must already have neared completion around 1377. Simonic's (see page 23) statement, that the first land register of the settlement region of Gottschee was already set up in 1398 especially supports this conclusion. Unfortunately, only the set-up of the settlement and its taxes in the district of Rieg have been preserved. It is being kept in the federal archives in Ljubljana. Understandably, this land register was not yet available to the author at the conclusion of his work. Nevertheless we know, however, that a district of Rieg already existed in 1398 and that, on the whole, the colonization of Gottschee was completed then. This conclusion agrees with Professor Saria's viewpoint that the influx of colonists ceased at the end of the fourteenth century. If we now also look ahead to the completely preserved land register of 1574, we encounter an estimate of 9,000 Gottscheers. Finally, if we consider that the infant mortality rate was very high and that the average life expectancy was about forty-two years, we remain realistic if we estimate that there were approximately 2,500 to 2,600 Gottscheers in 1363 and thirty-two years later, in 1398, about 3,500.
The settlement venture of the counts of Ortenburg in the primeval forest between Reifnitz and Kulpa seems to have succeeded by the end of the fourteenth century. Were its first colonists, and the first and second generations born there, happy? That we do not know. We only know that they were subject to the inalterable laws of life and the parameters of the Gottscheers: climate and soil, forest and water, confined living space and small population, politics and religion. In 1393 the parish of Gottschee was separated from the greater parish of Reifnitz and established as an independent parish. Its function as center of the "Ländchen" was already documented thirty years earlier.
Before we concern ourselves with the fate of the counts of Ortenburg, we will briefly record the tragic death of Patriarch Bertrand of Aquileia. Loved and revered by the people of the patriarchy, hated and opposed by the nobility of Friaul and the cities because as ruler he insisted upon an orderly government, he was killed in 1350 by the swords of conspirators. He, in person a courageous man, who always wore the coat of mail underneath the surplice, had dismissed the warnings of those around him about an attack on a trip from Padua to Udine.
We dedicate more space after the end of the fourteenth century to the vassals of the patriarchs of Aquileia, the counts of Ortenburg, than to this noteworthy personality on the seat of Saint Hermagoras. We already know that Otto V died in 1342 and that his nephew. Otto VI, the procreator of his line, assumed the leadership of the countship. In his son Frederick III, we again encounter one of these Ortenburgian figures who brought power and esteem to the House of Ortenburg far beyond the boundaries of Carinthia. Talented, superior, courageous and - faithful as the "Sword of Aquileia." He held the highest political offices ever held by an Ortenburger, without being particularly lucky in political affairs. Already at a relatively young age, he made a mutually binding inheritance agreement with the counts of Cilli (his mother was a countess of Cilli by birth) in the event that one of the ruling counts remained without a male heir. Frederick was married to Margaretha, a daughter of the duke of Teck in Würtembergian Swabia. Their only son died as a child. The count enjoyed the special support of Emperor Sigismund (he reigned from 1407 to 1437). Like Frederick's father, the emperor was married to a countess of Cilli.
Because the reliability of the Ortenburger had already been tested prior to Sigismund's coming to office, the latter temporarily bestowed upon him the office of vicar-general in Northern Italy and gave him special assignments in the battle against the Venetian Republic - to which Frederick dealt not inconsiderable blows with his small private army. Due to his vanity and position, Frederick did not find it particularly difficult to have his brother-in-law, Duke Ludwig of Teck, made patriarch. But this already takes us into the fifteenth century.
("Jahrhundertbuch der Gottscheer", Dr. Erich Petschauer)
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