Boris Golec (Ljubljana)
The ethnic structure of Slovenia's towns has not been adequately dealt with in historiography. Although the assertions of nineteenth and twentieth century German publicists about the Germanic character of the towns built on Classical ruins have rightly been refuted, it seems as if Slovenian historians have lacked the strength and the will to proceed with analytical and comparative studies. The main obstacle lies no doubt in the sources which are all written in foreign languages, the older ones mostly in Latin, and a great majority of the others in German. It was in these languages that even the Slovenian first names (as well as the surnames, which began to appear in the late Middle Ages) were usually recorded.
This research comprises all continental towns (civitates, Städte) of today's Slovenia, 20 in number, which at the time in question belonged to the German Empire. (The three Romance language-speaking towns on the Bay of Trieste, in the Middle Ages part of the Venetian Republic, are not included.) This study is based on the analysis of the rare contemporary reports about the languages spoken in those towns and the townspeople's names, traced in the original documents, especially in the tax registers from about 1500. Findings relative to the linguistic situation in modern times are likewise taken into consideration.
This research has shown that that the ethnic-linguistic structure prevalent throughout modern times originated in the Middle Ages. All but two of the thirteen towns in Carniola were then distinctively Slovenian, whereas seven towns in the Slovenian part of Styria were much more heterogeneous (from predominantly Slovenian to distinctively German).
The third significant ethnic group, the Jews, disappeared from the Slovenian regions for several centuries just at the break from the Middle Ages to modern times. In 1496, Emperor Maximilian I expelled the already declining Jewish community from Styria and Carinthia, and in 1515 from Ljubljana (Carniola). The expulsion was simultaneous with a more extensive settlement of the Italians, i.e. the Italian merchants.