On the main road through the village of Občice in the municipality of Dolenjske Toplice stands a restored, blue-painted old farmhouse. Since 1998, it has housed the Society of Native Gottschee Settlers. The society was founded in 1992 and promotes and preserves the cultural heritage of the Gottschee region. The main activities of the society include a folklore and singing group, the publication of the newspaper “Bakh – Pot“, German and Gottscheer language courses and children’s workshops. In 2014, an orchard was planted next to the main building, where old varieties of fruit trees typical of the Gottschee region are preserved. The association also actively participates in the Days of Gottschee Culture, an event starting in 2015 alternately organised by the municipalities of Kočevje, Dolenjske Toplice and Semič.

The redesign of the ethnological collection of the Gottscheers in Občice

Co-workers in the arrangement of the Gottscheer collection

Within the framework of the so-called student project for sustainable development “Ethnological collection of Gottscheers and the walking path among old varieties of fruit trees“, funded by the University of Ljubljana, the already existing ethnological collection and the orchard of old varieties of trees were reinterpreted and redesigned. The students who participated in the project, which started in June 2023 and ended in September 2023, were Jana Rajh Plohl, Pika Pipan, Gaja Slapnik, Klara Vrabl and Kaja Večko. The project leader was Dr. Anja Moric from the Department of Ethology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Other co-mentors of the project were Dr. Tanja Žigon, Department of Translation at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, and Primož Primec, the President of the Society of Native Gottschee Settlers. Urška Gruden from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana was responsible for the administration and coordination of the project.

The process of setting up the ethnological collection of the Gottscheers

In the attic of the main house, the outbuilding and under the adjacent hayrack, we have set up a collection of objects used by the Gottscheers from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century in their work in the fields and in their daily lives, such as dormouse traps, scales, agricultural tools, beehives, etc. In addition, two models of Gottschee villages made by forester Anton Prelesnik are exhibited in the outbuilding.

The students conducted several interviews with Gottscheers from Občice and the surrounding area and, as far as possible, recorded Gottscheer expressions for the exhibited objects. Nowadays only a few can speak the Gottscheer language. In the interviews we inquired about their daily life, customs, beekeeping, fruit trees, etc. Through the conversations with the locals, we learned firsthand how the people of the Gottschee region used to live. Sometimes the conversation also revolved around the differences between generations. In one of the interviews with Johannes Hans Jaklitsch, the topic of pasture farming came up. We compared how differently young people grow up today. Mr. Jaklitsch regretted that the games that children used to play in the pasture are no longer played by the younger generations.

Translation work

During the project, two students from the Department of Translation translated a section from the book “Abbildung und Beschreibung der südwest- und östlichen Wenden, Illyrer und Slaven” by Balthasar Hacquet. In it Hacquet described the Gottscheers; therefore the texts were also used for the exhibition panels. This was the first time we were confronted with a 19th century German text that had to be translated into Slovenian. Although we updated the text for today’s readers, we tried to keep the original writing style, as we felt it was important to preserve it. Later, all the texts on the exhibition panels, which were originally written in Slovenian, were translated into English and German. In addition, the project produced an information brochure for visitors about the ethnological collection and the orchard, also in three languages.

Anyone interested in the historical and ethnological features of the Kočevje region, such as: dormouse hunting, peddling, waggon driving, fruit growing, etc., is invited to visit the renovated ethnological collection and the orchard with old fruit varieties of the Association of Gottscheer Native Settlers, which was opened on September 18, 2023.

The authors of the article, Klara Vrabl and Kaja Večko, are students at the Department of Translation Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.

In September 2023, 130 years have passed since the arrival of the railway in Kočevje. Read more.

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We left Austria in 1956 for America, when I was 4 years old. My parents lived in Gottschee until 1938 when my father opened a clothing store in Ljubljana, where he sold clothes made by the Kresse company in Gottschee. When the second world war ended my parents were living in Jesenice and their Slovenian friends suggested that it was best for them to flee the country, so my parents packed up and left. My father drove his “Holtz Gazer” truck across the border with a few personal belongings.

The main cherished items thereof, which I still own are family photographs made by my father in Gottschee and also bound in a book format, original “Gottscheer Kalendars” from 1921 to 1941 which my mother received from her father, who was a teacher and writer, he wrote articles for the “Gottscheer Kalendar.” The “Gottscheer Kalendars” were annual magazines with articles, poems and pictures about life in Gottschee.

Living in a Gottscheer community in Ridgewood, New York

We arrived in the United States and found an apartment in a six family apartment house owned by the Michitsch family who also came from Gottschee 10 years earlier. On our street in Ridgewood, New York, there were other Gottscheer families with the surnames, Kikel, Loser, Tramposch, Jurkowitsch and Urbanitsch. One could hear Gottscheerisch being spoken in the neighborhood on a daily basis.

Gottscheer Club in Ridgewood

Once a week my sister and I would go to the Gottscheer Clubhoose, our community center, to sing in the “Kinder Chor” where we would learn German and English songs for the annual performance in a Brooklyn concert hall. At the community center also called “Gottscheer Halle” there are club meetings for the “Blau Weiss Gottschee Fussball Verein”, “Damen und Maenner Chor”, “Gottscheer Relief” founded to help immigrants from Gottschee, the “fishing and Hunting Club’, and the “Bowling Club.” At the bar in the “Gottscheer Hall” Mr. Samide would bring his accordion and play Gottscheer and Slovenian melodies for the patrons who were drinking beers and talking Gottscheerisch.

In the Clubhouse there is a big room for weddings, dances and parties. By the bar there is a big framed map of Gottschee and near to the entrance there are photos of women who were “Miss Gottschee” at our annual picnic, where thousands of people of Gottscheer heritage still meet annually and enjoy accordion music, eat Roast beef, “Krainerwurst”, “Pobolitzen” and apple strudel. In the spring time every club sponsors a dance where we dance to polkas, waltzes and popular American music.

We moved four different times in Ridgewood, each time to a bigger and better house but what is interesting is that wherever we moved in Ridgewood there were always Gottscheer people living nearby. Some of the surnames of the new neighbors were, Stalzer, Siegmund, Stampfel, Kostner, Stritzl, Lukan, Morscher, Morschner, Petschauer, Hutter, Maurin, Krainer and Stiene.

The Christian Holidays are celebrated in Ridgewood with German Mass at St. Mathias Church, St. Nicholas Day at the Gottscheer clubhouse and Easter weekend with blessing of Easter food at the four catholic churches in my New York City neighborhood.

Keeping contacts with Gottschee

My uncle Albert Loser was a writer for the “Gottscheer Zeitung” newspaper, because I studied photography in college and became an avid photographer, he published my photographs of Gottscheer events in the monthly newspaper. Now I have a Gottscheer internet site: www.gottschee.us where I publish subject matter relevant to the Gottscheer community and my documentary videos can be viewed on Youtube in the “Gottscheerisch” Channel. By travelling to Slovenia every year I also enjoy photographing and videotaping the scenery where Gottscheers lived for 600 years.

I have friends and relatives who also publish information about Gottschee on the internet so therefore our cultural heritage passes on to the next generation who speak and read mainly English. Thousands of people left Gottschee for the new world abroad but many of their cultural activities, customs and language are still practiced and carried on to the next generation, thanks to the democratic aspect of the internet where everyone can broadcast information freely.

John B. Gladitsch shared with us his experience of living in a Gottscheer community in the United States. You can also read Urška Kop’s post about the activities of the Gottscheer – natives from Občice (Krapflern).

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