Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
lands. This would later become one of the key obstacles to Slovenian national and cultural
development.
With the total collapse of the Frankish state in the second half of the 9th century, a Car-
inthian prince named Kocelj established a short-lived (869-74) independent Slovenian
'kingdom' in Lower Pannonia, the area stretching southeast from Styria (Štajerska) to the
Mura, Drava and Danube Rivers. But German King Otto I would soon bring this to an end
after defeating the Magyars in the mid-10th century.
THE TALE IN THE PAIL
Hallstatt is the name of a village in the Salzkammergut region of Austria where objects characteristic of the early
Iron Age (from about 800 BC to 500 BC) were found in the 19th century. Today the term is used generically for
the late Bronze and early Iron Age cultures that developed in Central and Western Europe from about 1200 to 450
BC.
Many regions of Slovenia were settled during this period, particularly Dolenjska and Bela Krajina. Burial
mounds - more than two dozen in Novo Mesto alone - have yielded swords, helmets, jewellery and especially
sit-
ulae
- pails (or buckets) that are often richly decorated with lifelike battle and hunting scenes. Hallstatt art is very
geometric, and typical motifs include birds and figures arranged in pairs. The
Vače situla
in the National Museum
of Slovenia in Ljubljana is a particularly fine example.
German Ascendancy
The Germans decided to re-establish Carinthia, dividing the area into a half-dozen border
regions
(krajina)
or marches. These developed into the Slovenian provinces that would re-
main basically unchanged until 1918: Carniola (Kranjska), Carinthia (Koroška), Styria
(Štajerska), Gorica (Goriška) and the so-called White March (Bela Krajina).
A drive for complete Germanisation of the
Slovenian lands began in the 10th century.
Land was divided between the nobility and
various church dioceses, and German gentry
were settled on it. The population remained es-
sentially Slovenian, however, and it was
largely due to intensive educational and pastor-
al work by the clergy that the Slovenian iden-
tity was preserved.
The proto-democratic process that elected the grand
duke of Carantania was noted by the 16th-century
French political theorist Jean Bodin, whose work is
said to have been a key reference for Thomas Jef-
ferson when he wrote the American
Declaration of
Independence
in 1775-76.
