Memories of Gottschee: A Narrated History of Fidelity and Fragility

Gottschee was eine Deutsche Sprachinsel, a German linguistic enclave, inside the borders of present day Slovenia, and at the crossroads of history. Over the centuries, the Gottscheer people witnessed the boarders around them redrawn and experienced forced resettlement. As a result, this tiny ethnic group identifies themselves in relation to the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Habsburg Empire, Austria, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Italy and Germany. Thomason traces the history of the Gottscheers in their own words, from their childhoods in Gottschee, to their resettlement in 1941 and their final migration in the 1950's across Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. In the process of presenting and preserving the Gottscheer history, Thomason shares her own ethnographic descriptions of the community and her experiences getting to know them.