Ljudje ob Muri. Népek a Mura Mentén 1. kötet (Zalaegerszeg, 1996)

Metka Fujs (Murska Sobota): The Formation of National Identity of the Prekmurje Slovenians

Metka FUJS THE FORMATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY OF THE PREKMURJE SLOVENIANS The national identity can already be found in the combination of ethnic features assigned by birth, and of numerous influences, mostly cultural ones, which tend to define any cultural unit, irrespective of the way it has been determined. Thus a nation is formed as a cultural and linguistic community irrespective of political and state borders and it is exactly in this way that the Slovenian Panonnia space of today has been established. Like any other cultural space the said cultural space is the combination of various identities, interwined according to various elements of interdependence and the national identity is just one such identity. The region to the North of the Mura river, populated by Slovenians, has through history been named differently. Due to its geographical position the name Districtus Transmuranus is used in the documents of the Zagreb diocese, which is to say the region beyond the Mura river, the name Prekmurje comes to be widely used after World War One. In accordance with national affiliation the Hungarian administrative terminology uses the names Tótság or Vendvidék, after the Slovenian people who live here; on the other hand, the Slovenians living here call it Slovenska krajina or Slovenska okroglina. Along with various names of the Prekmurje today and in accordance with the ethnic structure of its population, various theories have been developed as to its national origins, among them the so-colled Vend or Vandal theory. For the most part, however, these theories have been developed out of ignorance as regards the cultural, historical and ethnic development of the region and quite often they have become the instrument of current policy to achieve its goals. From the 11th Century and up to 1919 Prekmurje has been under the jurisdiction of the Hungarian secular and ecclesiastical administration, divided between the Vas and Zala counties and between the Zagreb and Győr dioceses, until it was united in the Szombathely diocese in 1777. The Reformation and the favourable inclination of the protestants to the literature in mother tongue has played an important role in the formation of the national identity of the Slovenians of the region. Still, the first books came to be published in the time period of the recatholisation, the first protestant writers of the Prekmurje literary language being Franc Temlin, Mihael Sever and Štefan Kiizmič, who have always called themselves Slovenians and their language Slovenian. At the end of the 18th Century they were joined by the catholic writer Miklós Küzmic and through him and his books the initiative as regards the national, cultural and political formation of the Slovenians have been taken over by catholic priests. Apart from home and family Church has been the only institution, which, through its writers of religious and school books, has promoted and preserved the language of the Slovenian nation, thereby preserving the nation itself, which was of grave importance at the time of centralistic reforms of Kaiser Josefand later at the time of the Hungarian nationalistic revival movement and the introduction of the Hungarian language as official and obligatory school language. At the time of the most severe Hungarian assimilation endeavors the contacts between the Prekmurje and Styria scholars and the Mohor books have been of utmost importance, especially the activity on the part of Dr. Franc Ivanocy and his collaborators who were the first to form a kind of a political programme for Prekmurje, based upon the religion in public life, 220