| Introduction Maribor (German: Marburg an der Drau) is the second largest city in Slovenia with 95,787 inhabitants as of 2010.Maribor lies on the river Drava at the meeting point of the Pohorje mountain, the Drava Valley, the Drava Plain, and the Kozjak and Slovenske gorice hill ranges. Maribor's coat of arms features a white dove flying downwards above a white castle with two towers and a portcullis on a red shield.
Maribor is also the seat of the Municipality of Maribor, which has 112,364 inhabitants As of January 2010 , and the center of the Slovenian region of Lower Styria and its largest city. Maribor Airport is the second largest international airport in Slovenia.
In 1164 a castle known as the Marchburch (Middle High German for "March Castle") was documented in Styria. It was first built on Piramida Hill, just above the city. Maribor was first mentioned as a market near the castle in 1204, and received town privileges in 1254. It began to grow rapidly after the victory of Rudolf I of Habsburg over Otakar II of Bohemia in 1278. Maribor withstood sieges by Matthias Corvinus in 1480 and 1481 and by the Ottoman Empire in 1532 and 1683, and the city remained under the control of the Habsburg Monarchy until 1918.
Maribor, previously in the Catholic Diocese of Graz-Seckau, became part of the Diocese of Lavant on 1 June 1859, and the seat of its Prince-Bishop. The name of the diocese (the name of a river in Carinthia flowing into the Drava at the Slovenian village of Dravograd) was changed to the Diocese of Maribor on 5 March 1962. It was elevated to an archdiocese by Pope Benedict XVI on 7 April 2006.
Before the First World War, the city had a population that was 80% Austrian Germans and 20% Slovenes; most of the city's capital and public life was in Austrian German hands. Thus, it was mainly known by its Austrian name Marburg an der Drau. According to the last Austro-Hungarian census in 1910, the city of Maribor and the suburbs Studenci (Brunndorf), Pobrežje (Pobersch), Tezno (Thesen), Radvanje (Rothwein), Krčevina (Kartschowin), and Košaki (Leitersberg) consisted of 31,995 Austrian Germans (including German-speaking Jews) and just 6,151 ethnic Slovenes. The surrounding area however was populated almost entirely by Slovenes, although many Austrian Germans lived in smaller towns like Ptuj.
During World War I, many Slovenes in Carinthia and Styria were detained on suspicion of being enemies of the Austrian Empire, which led to distrust between Austrian Germans and Slovenes. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, Maribor was claimed by both the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and by German Austria. On 1 November 1918, a meeting was held by Colonel Anton Holik in Melje's barracks, where it was decided the German speaking city should be part of German Austria. Ethnic Slovene Major Rudolf Maister, who was present at the meeting, denounced the decision. That same day he was awarded the rank of general by the National Council for (Slovenian) Styria and organized Slovenian military units which successfully siezed control of the city.
All Austrian officers and soldiers were disarmed and demobilized and to new German Austria. The city council then held a secret meeting, where it was decided to do whatever possible to regain Maribor for German Austria. They organized a military unit, called the Green Guard (Schutzwehr), and approximately 400 well-armed soldiers of this unit opposed the pro-Slovenian and pro-Yugoslav Major Maister. Slovenian troops surprised and disarmed the GreenGuard early in the morning of 23 November. Thereafter, there was no threat to the authority of Rudolf Maister in the city.
On 27 January 1919, Austrian Germans gathered to await the United States peace delegation at the city's marketplace were fired on by Slovenian troops, who apparently feared the crowd of thousands of ethnic German citizens. Nine citizens were killed and more than eighteen were seriously wounded; who ordered the shooting has never been conclusively established. German sources accused Maister's troops of shooting without cause; Slovene witnesses, such as Dr. Maks Pohar, claimed that the Austrian Germans attacked the Slovenian soldiers guarding the Maribor city hall. Regardless of the reason, the Austrian German victims had all been unarmed.[citation needed] German language media named the incident Marburg's Bloody Sunday.
As Maribor was now firmly in the hands of the Slovenian forces and encircled completely by Slovenian territory, the city was recognized as part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes without a plebiscite in the Treaty of Saint-Germain of September 1919 between the victors and German Austria.
After 1918, most of Maribor's Austrian Germans left the Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs for Austria, including the German-speaking officials who did not originate from the region. Austrian German schools, clubs, and organisations were ordered closed by the new state of Yugoslavia, even though ethnic Germans still made up more than 25% of the city's total population as late as the 1930s. A policy of cultural assimilation was pursued in Yugoslavia against the Austrian German minority similar to the Germanization policy followed by Austria against its Slovene minority in Carinthia. However, in the late 1930s the policy was abandoned and the Austrian German minority's position improved significantly in an attempt to gain better diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany. |
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий