**4. Conclusion**

The identity question of indigenous Gottscheers is an extremely interesting field of research and a challenge to existent ethnic and national identities, as it is a diachronic and synchronic intersection of (micro)local, regional, ethnic and national affiliations. This multi- and intercultural intersection may be at the root of its exceptional "elusiveness", ambiguity, fluidity, which is at the same time a consequence of the unidentifiability of the indigenous Gottscheer population both in the Slovenian and in the global context. In both cases, the difficulties begin with defining the indigenous Gottscheer population in terms of numbers: numbers of members of particular societies are not reliable data, as not all Gottscheers are enrolled in some sort of a society, and some are members of all of them. Furthermore, sympathizers with the Gottscheer issue who are not necessarily of Gottscheer origin themselves are also members of some of the societies. At least in the past, the Gottscheer dialect used to be the most certain identity indicator, but the dialect is disappearing today. According to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's languages in Danger, the Gottscheer language is defined as "critically endangered", which means that the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, who speak the language partially and infrequently. Even society meetings, as noted by Katarina Jaklitsch, mostly use the national tongue of the environment as their language of conversation. Therefore, she feels "the final truth is that once another generation of Gottscheers leaves, the Gottscheer language will have to be added to the list of dead languages" (Jaklitsch in [12], 107).

#### *Disappearing Community and Preserved Identity: Indigenous Gottscheers in Slovenia DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110382*

While indigenous Gottscheers and their descendants have formed autonomous organizations (societies) on the basis of their Gottscheer identity, there are, due to various reasons, notable intersocietal disagreements. The *Society of Native Gottschee Settlers* is explicitly striving to achieve official recognition of Gottscheers/Germans as an ethnic or national minority, believing that this is the only solution that will guarantee the realization of their cultural needs and rights and grant them protection within the majority Slovenian society. Therefore, the society became a member of the *Association of Cultural Societies of the German Speaking Ethnic Communities in Slovenia*. A part of the Gottscheer community perceived this move as an (extreme) politicization of (cultural) societies and distanced itself from this particular society. Another society, *Association Peter Kosler*, has no such explicit demands, although its members agree that the state will have to eventually grant the Gottscheers some sort of recognition if its interest is to preserve Gottscheer tradition, heritage, and history as part of Slovenian general collective memory, which indigenous Gottscheers are an important part of.

The *Institute for preservation of cultural heritage Nesseltal Koprivnik* sympathizes with this view and specifically underscores that in the case of indigenous Gottscheers, which are nearly non-existent in practice, an acknowledgement of minority status is neither a real nor a sensible possibility. However, in the institute they agree with the viewpoint that the indigenous Gottscheer community needs the state's collective recognition of its existence, significance, and the role it played in Slovenian history. The institute, as well as Gottscheer descendants that participated in the study, and are not members of any of the aforementioned societies, agree in principle that the state should grant some sort of recognition to the existence of indigenous Gottscheers and their descendants. While they understand the purpose of connecting with the wider German-speaking community in Slovenia, they warn that these kind of activities may in fact cause the forgetting of the particularity of the Gottscheer identity, which differs historically and culturally from the Styrian community, and eludes national definitions, being much closer to regional or local affiliations, i.e. an affiliation to the Gottschee region.

The second reason for intersocietal disagreements is therefore the issue of indigenous Gottscheers' ethnic or national identity. While the *Society of Native Gottschee Settlers* undoubtedly prefers the explanation based on (old)German identity, *Association Peter Kosler*, as well as the *Institute for preservation of cultural heritage Nesseltal Koprivnik*, and certain societally inactive interviewees insist on the particular indigenous Gottscheer identity. They are not denying its archaic German or archaic Austrian roots, but they do emphasize that these roots have been embedded into an ethnically dominantly Slovenian space, which marked Gottscheer identity in an important way. From this point of view, the Gottscheer community appears as a greater contributor to historical and contemporary multiculturalism and interculturality of this space, at the same time constituting a more comprehensive and more plural cultural and linguistic identity of the Republic of Slovenia, which should be its norm, value, and symbolic capital. This would, among other things, imply including indigenous Gottscheer-related issues into primary and secondary school curricula and textbooks, in order to achieve a more comprehensive presentation of cultural variety in the past, as well as in contemporary Slovenia, as well as an implementation of these topics, i.e. in the educational process. Existent and new common projects should encourage connecting existent and potential new societies within the community, as well as with other communities. Furthermore and most importantly, it would be sensible and necessary to consider spreading knowledge about constitutionally unacknowledged communities for the broader, especially majority population. This would not only reinforce popular knowledge about the existence of these communities in the state,

but also contribute towards a gradual deconstruction of historical fears, ethn(ocentr) ic prejudices and stereotypes, and perhaps towards the creation of a conscience about a heterogeneous, plural, and multi−/intercultural space as a value in itself.
