Carinthia marks 1920 vote that kept it in Austria

Carinthia is commemorating the 1920 referendum that kept the region in Austria, with many Slovenian-speaking residents voting to remain, ORF reports. The vote also shaped the border between Austria and the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

The state’s official ceremonies on Saturday begin at 9.30 a.m. with a wreath-laying at Klagenfurt-Annabichl cemetery. A memorial event follows at 11 a.m. in the courtyard of the Landhaus, the seat of the state government, with political representatives, the military command and veterans’ associations. Speeches and songs will be in two languages, and pupils from the European School in St Michael ob Bleiburg will perform.

Historian Wilhelm Wadl, of the Historical Society for Carinthia, identified a bridge over the Sattnitz River on Rosentaler Straße in Klagenfurt as a landmark of the demarcation line established during the referendum period. The line, which followed waterways including the Sattnitz, Glan and Gurk rivers, separated the voting zones. A commission overseeing the plebiscite ordered the border opened in July 1920, shortly before the vote.

In 1919, a peace conference in Paris initially decided that the Klagenfurt basin would vote as one area. Southern Carinthia was later divided into zones A and B. Yugoslav troops, who had occupied the southern part of Carinthia as far as the Gail Valley, withdrew behind the demarcation line at the end of July 1919.

The restricted crossing caused economic hardship, Wadl said. People who wanted to bring goods to the Klagenfurt market could not cross the border safely. Many communities in southern and eastern areas, whose residents relied on the city’s market, therefore voted overwhelmingly to remain with Austria. Overall, 59 percent voted for Austria, surprising the Allied powers, which had expected the predominantly Slovenian-speaking southern zone to join Yugoslavia.

The referendum followed an armed conflict between forces of Carinthia’s provisional government and troops of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The troops entered Carinthia on November 5, 1918, as competing claims over the region’s borders were being debated. More than 200 people died on the Carinthian side, according to the article.