National Cohabitation in the ("Slovenian") Carinthia during the Austrian Constitutional Period

Abstract

In the following contribution the author analyses the "Slovenian part" of Carinthia after the restoration of the constitutional life, when nationalism kept asserting itself increasingly in the political life. The author demonstrates that a large group of (Slovenian) intellectuals distanced itself from the Slovenian national movement or even opposed it, as it felt endangered. In many aspects the Slovenian national development in Carinthia was inferior to Carniola or Styria. Democratic thought, which manifested itself in the two aforementioned provinces also as the pluralisation of the Slovenian political space, was almost non-existent in Carinthia. If the Carniolan and Styrian Slovenians "transformed" their initial unification policy into a modern pluralist political party life, the Carinthian Slovenians (also due to their electoral system) failed to develop this element of a modern society until as late as the dissolution of the Double Monarchy.