Austria–Slovenia border

A fight for Carinthia

In November 1918 the new German-Austrian republic claimed all of Carinthia up to the Karawanken, arguing from geography and economics rather than language. The new South Slav state, soon the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SHS), claimed southern Carinthia and Styria because Slovenes lived there, and its troops moved in after the armistice. Carinthia’s provincial assembly decided in December 1918 to resist, and fighting continued until SHS troops occupied Klagenfurt on 6 June 1919.^[2]

The Treaty of Saint-Germain, signed on 10 September 1919, gave the Mežica valley and Dravograd to the SHS state and ordered a plebiscite in two zones of southern Carinthia. The northern zone around Klagenfurt would vote only if the southern zone, where Slovenes were the majority, chose the SHS state.^[2]

The 1920 vote

On 10 October 1920 the southern zone voted 59% for Austria and 41% for the SHS state. Even most of the Slovenes there voted for Austria, probably for political rather than national reasons, and the northern vote was never held. After the war Carinthia had lost 128 square miles to Yugoslavia and 172 to Italy.^[2][3]

Along much of its length the border now follows the Karawanken, a limestone range between the Drava and the upper Sava crossed by the Wurzen, Loibl and Seeberg passes and by a road tunnel between Villach and Jesenice.^[1]

“…a ‘compromise by the minority with the majority’.”^[2]