Gottscheer Public Blog

Hi everyone, the Gottscheer Blog software was upgraded to address some security issues.  Please let me know if you experience any problems using the blog.

Thanks to Ridy Hoegler Skyrme for this information.

PERZ, Stephanie (nee Lukan) – Passed away peacefully after a long and inspiring life on Friday, July 31, 2009 at 100 years of age. She was born in Gottschee, Austria, where she was predeceased by her first husband, Englebert and an infant son, Antony. She came to Canada in 1949 where she met and married Joseph Perz who predeceased her in 1984. She was the last surviving member of her family. She is survived by one nephew in Germany, as well as one niece and six nephews in the United States. Stephanie was the eldest member of the Senior’s group at St. Mary’s Church as well as a member of the Ladies group Edelweiss of the Alpine Club. She was a longtime parishioner of St. Joseph’s Church as well as a member of the Ladies Auxilliary. Her working life included being a member of the 25-year club of Forsyth Shirts. Stephanie will be sadly missed by her adopted grandchildren, Wanda Goodwin, John Fracz, Christine Karwowski, her husband Stan and Oma’s special girls, Karlee and Kaycee Karwowski. Relatives and friends will be received at Schreiter-Sandrock Funeral Home and Chapel (51 Benton St., at Church, Kitchener) today (Tuesday) from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Prayers will be recited at 8:30 p.m. Mass of Christian Burial Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 10 a.m. at St. Joseph’s RC Church. Father Brian Quigley officiating. Interment Woodland Cemetery. As expressions of sympathy donations may be made to St. Joseph’s Church or the Canadian Cancer Society by calling the funeral home at 519-742-4481. You are invited to share your memories of Stephanie by visiting www.MeM.com

Received the following request via email, if anyone can help Eva out, please respond to her at eh@wilfingerbau.at.
HI, my name is eva högler. my father was an original gottscheen man . he was
a medical named prof.dr franz högler. he was the son of franz högler and
maria (osterman),who leads the primary school in stalzern.He had 11
children. The oldest one was my father franz, the youngest one, i think her
name was maria, died on tbc. i am looking
for relatives an d more information about them.
my email eh@wilfingerbau.at i`m living in vienna

Congratulations to Ridy Hoegler and Arnold Rom for their online publication of “Memories of Childhood”, a wonderful memoir of life in Gottschee.

Follow this link to read their book online.

Following comes to us from Sophia Staltzer-Wyant (wyants@frontiernet.net):

It is my great pleasure to send you some details on the latest publication by the Altsiedler Gottscheer Verein in Krapflern (Obcice), under the leadership of August Gril, Prof. Doris Debenjak and others. It is beautifully done, has many lovely photos and a very attractive format. It contains 605 pages.

Unfortunately for me, it is in the Slovenian language. But, if sufficient funds can be raised there is a good possibility it will be translated into either German or English. What would your preference be?

The book contains 38 life stories by members of the Gottscheer Altsiedler Verein, Slovenians in the Gottschee and two individuals from the United States who have connections to the former Gottschee.  They are Fred Muschler of Walden NY (born in New York but spent 16 years of his early life in the home village of his parents – Schalkendorf by Gottschee and Sophia Stalzer Wyant, born in Gottschee, resettled with my family to Untersteiermark (Lower Styria) in 1941; survived the Flucht to nearby Austria in 1945 and eventually immigrated to Minnesota in 1952.
During my first visit to my former homeland in 1984, accompanied by my husband Clint and daughter Maria, I was overwhelmed by the deep connection and bond that I felt to my homeland. This connection opened the door for my active participation in the preservation of the history, culture and family records of Gottschee and the Gottscheers. I deeply honored to have been invited as one of the contributors to this publication.

The members of the Altsiedler Gottscheer Verein can be very, very proud of their continued efforts and contributions to the *preservation of the history and culture of Gottschee and the Gottscheers*, who lived, worked and loved their homeland from 1330 to 1941.

The books sell for 30 EURO plus postage. I do not know as yet how to order copies, should you be interested, but I am gathering information on the same.

Title of the book:

Resnice Posameznikov
or
Wahrheiten von Einzelnen
or
Individual Truths.

(click on thumbnail for larger image)

The words in smaller print:

Life stories of the Gottscheer Altsiedlers (originalsettlers) and from Slovenes from the Gottscheer land)

The photo above is of the village of Moos.
Sophia Stalzer – Wyant
born near Tschermoschnitz in 1936
Immigrated to Minnesota in April of 1952

We appreciate these contributions from Felix Kofler.  He describes life in Katzendorf, Gottschee during the 1930’s and ’40’s.  He also provides a family tree.  Thank you, Mr. Kofler for your contribution.

From Sophia Staltzer-Wyant (wyants@frontiernet.net)

Good Morning from a very chilly Waukenabo in Minnesota. We have 7° Fahrenheit but a nice log in the wood stove makes life great.

I have received numerous inquiries as to where a person could write to obtain information on the famous concentration camp Sterntal. I am interest in the list of its prisinors, particularly Gottscheers who were housed there during WWII. Would one have to look at both Slovenia and or Grmany?

Your help will be greatly appreciated. Please write to me at: wyants@frontiernet.net

Thank you all.

Best wishes for a wonderful Christmas and a healthy and peaceful 2009. Remember the 500 year celebration scheduled for Tschermoschnitz in September 2009. Details coming soon.

Al Schmuck of Whistler, BC has passed away.  Al was the younger brother of Frank Schmuck who contributes regularly on this site.

Sincere condolences to everyone in the family.  Here is a link to the Whistler Q magazine with Al Schmuck’s obituary.

http://www.whistlerquestion.com/article/20080730/WHISTLER01/859806752

Our friend from Germany, Mr. Ted Meditz continues to amaze with his collection of videos he so graciously shares. This video is called “Die Deutsche Sprachinsel in Sudosteurope”.

Sharing from his letter to me, this video was written and produced in the early ’60’s by Joseph Rubner and was sponsored by Bund der Vertriebenen (Organization of Refugees). Ted found this 16 mm black and white film in the Sudeten Deutschen Archive in Munich in 1993. He then obtained permission from the Sudetendeutschen Landmannschaft to transfer the film to S-VHS. Ted then transferred this to DVD, sent it to me, and I further transferred to MPG format. The quality is remarkable. Some of the sequences were filmed in the 1930’s during the 600th anniversary of Gottschee.

Bravo Mr. Meditz for your hard work to maintain our heritage.

http://hwk.best.vwh.net/binaries/deutsche_sprachinsel.mpg

Once again, allow time for the download (111 mb).

Once again, we thank Mr. Ted Meditz of Germany for another great video, this one produced by local regional television (ARF), of the 2005 Gottscheer Treffen in Bad Aussee, Austria.
http://hwk.best.vwh.net/binaries/treffen.mpg

Allow time for the video to download (about 100 Mb.) Running time is slightly over ten minutes.

Mr. Ted Meditz brings us another great video in German. This one is a report from Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Broadcasting) on the last remaining Gottscheer inhabitants of the homeland. Fascinating piece and thank you once again Ted for bringing it to us.

http://hwk.best.vwh.net/binaries/Die%20Letzten%20Gottscheer%20in%20Slowenien.mpg

(Note, the video is 90mb, so it may take a while to download. Running time is about ten minutes).

Barcelona, 17th January 2008

Dear Sir, Madame,

My name is Begoña Martinez Cruz. Me and my colleagues are contacting you in our capacity as Group Leaders for the Western and Central Europe division of the Genographic Project (www.genographic.com). The Objective of the Genographic project, launched jointly by The National Geographic Society and IBM, is to collect samples representative of human population diversity from all around the world in order to describe with accuracy the movement of  humankind since their origin in addition to gathering more information on the expansion and colonisation of habitable continents. The ultimate aim in other words is to unravel our migration history as species. Within Genographic, the Western and Central European team has as its goal the collection of at least 10,000 samples from around Europe (100 male individuals per population selected) to ensure adequate coverage of the genetic diversity in our continent, with special attention given to particular populations such as the Aromums, Gottcheers or Roma.

With this aim in mind, we are interested in using genetics to answer questions related to the history of your population, the Gottscheers. At this point, and as you can read in the Genographic web page, genetic tools can help in disentangling the past demographic history of populations and ethnic groups. Our objective would be to collaborate in reconstructing that history, of course with the help of historical records or even oral tradition that would be very interesting for us. For such purpose, we would need your collaboration. In fact, what we would need is a small sample of DNA from non related males, pure Gottscheers (i.e. with Gottscheer ancestors). For this, in case you accept, we would send you a commercial kit with a swab with which you would need to scrub your mouth and keep it in the provided recipient, following the manufacturer indications. Of course, we would pay for all the fees for sending and getting the kits back to Barcelona. The results obtained from those samples would be published in specialized scientific publications, were you will be specifically acknowledged. In any case, the study would be anonymous, that is, each individual would be assigned a number and no name or personal information would be published or even kept. We would only keep each individual and its ancestors origins and sex of the individual associated with the number assigned.

If you are interested, we would be also very happy to go to give you a talk about our work about your population, and discuss on them with you, which would be undoubtedly very useful.

Of course, the sampling must be in conform with the ethical framework established in the Genographic project that includes a signed consent by every donor and the complete information about what would be done with the sample, that would never been used with a medical purpose. If you agree we would send you this ethical protocol for you to be completely informed.

We would be very grateful if you could transmit our interests and the information to any other member of the population.

We expect you would be happy to join our project and please feel free to ask us about any doubt you can have. We expect your answer to your earliest convenience. Please, send your answers to my mail addres and the one of my colleagues’, written below in the signature.

Sincerely,

The Western-Central European Genographic team
Dr. Jaume Bertranpetit     e-mail: jaume.bertranpetit@upf.edu
Dr. David Comas  e-mail: david.comas@upf.edu
Dr. Begoña Martinez-Cruz  e-mail: begonya.martinez@upf.edu

Evolutionary Biology Unit
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Doctor Aiguader 88, 08003 Barcelona, Spain

This was sent to me by Herr Theobald Meditz, a longtime friend of this web site. According to him this was professionally made on German TV in 1993. The title, “Film Richard Lackner Pflegt das Gottscheer Kulturerbe auf Schloss”, translates to “Richard Lackner maintains and secures the Gottscheer cultural heritage.”

Here’s the link to the movie.
http://hwk.best.vwh.net/binaries/Film Richard Lackner Pflegt das Gottscheer Kulturerbe auf Schloss.wmv

Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia that is written by contributors. I found it interesting that Wiki has a page on Gottschee that is actually redirected to “Kocevje”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschee

However there’s also another one on “Gottschee County” (?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschee_county

If you haven’t read them yet, you might find it interesting to see what someone doing online research might read about Gottschee.