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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