History
Gradec, Slovene for 'little castle', was first mentioned in a 1091 deed, then part of the Imperial March of Styria. From 1180 until 1918 it belonged to the Duchy of Styria, since 1804 a crown land of the Austrian Empire. It was the ancestral seat of the Windisch-Graetz noble family first documented in 1220. Upon the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, with the rest of Lower Styria, it was included in the newly established Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
Between the mid-19th century and 1945, the town was a German-speaking island in a Slovene-speaking area. In a 1880 census, the town of Slovenj Gradec, or Windischgrätz (see: Wends) as it was called to distinguish it from the Styrian capital Graz, was 75 percent German-speaking and 25 percent Slovene-speaking, but among the German-speaking population there were allegedly those - like the family of the composer Hugo Wolf- of mixed ethnic origin.
After the end of World War I, many of the local German-speaking inhabitants emigrated to Austria; those that remained were gradually assimilated to or re-integrated into the Slovene-speaking majority. After World War II, all remaining ethnic Germans were expelled from Yugoslavia and Slovenj Gradec lost its traditional presence of German speakers.
Read more about this topic: Slovenj Gradec
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)
“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)