Location: Sv. Duh na Ostrem Vrhu 53 (Slovenia)
The church is in Slovenia, the gorge in Austria. Sveti Duh is representative of the problem of the “dual owners” that arose with the end of the Habsburg monarchy. On December 24, 1944, partisans celebrated mass in the church together with local believers. Fighting between partisans and German units also took place in this area.
The parish of Heiligengeist (Sveti Duh), located south of Leutschach, was divided up between the newly formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Austria in 1919 following the peace treaty of St. Germain. The final exact border was not drawn until 1921 after a meeting of the Austrian-Yugoslavian border commission. The border demarcation refers to the resulting problem of dual ownership, i.e. owners who owned land on both sides of the border and agricultural workers who had to cross the border to work.
On February 23, 1922, an agreement was reached between the Republic of Austria and the South Slavic state, according to which a simple identity card issued by the district administration was to suffice for “minor border traffic”. In the political district of Leibnitz, 147 owners were to benefit from this; conversely, there were 47 Yugoslav owners who owned land on Austrian territory. Despite this agreement, problems arose. In some cases, Yugoslav border guards did not recognize the identity cards, which could lead to diplomatic interventions, and in others, double owners were prevented from bringing their crops across the border.
With the establishment of the CdZ area of Lower Styria on April 6, 1941, after the German attack on Yugoslavia, such difficulties were alleviated. In the fall of 1944, the area around Sveti Duh became an operational area for the Yugoslav “Lacko odred” unit and also for “Kampfgruppe Steiermark”. On December 18, 1944, “Kampfgruppe Steiermark” and a Slovenian unit arrived in Sveti Duh and spent a night there. Despite the fighting in the area, partisans celebrated mass together with local believers in the church on December 24, 1944.
Afterwards, a feast was organized and an ox was slaughtered in front of the church. Friedrich Tränkler, a staff leader of the “Kampfgruppe”, recalled in 1984: “At Christmas or New Year, I can no longer remember, we were in a very small village high up in the mountains, Sveti Duh, which was actually Slovenian, but there were also Austrians living there, in German the place was called Heiliger [!] Geist. There was a church there, it must have been a pilgrimage church. The priest was so progressive and so courageous that he condemned the Hitler regime in his sermon and told the people: ‘Help the partisans!”
In Sveti Duh there is a memorial stone to the partisans of the “Lacko odret”. Today, the church is a popular excursion destination for visitors on both sides of the border.
Literature: Gert Christian (eg.), Hl. Geist am Osterberg: Kirche ohne Grenze. Festschrift zum 100jährigen Jubiläum der Pfarrerhebung Sv. Duh na Ostrem vrhu. Leibnitz 1992.
Heinz P. Wassermann, Die Grenze seit 1918, in: Wilhelm Alexander (eg.), Die Rebenland-Chronik. Eichberg-Trautenburg, Glanz an der Weinstraße, Leutschach, Schloßberg. Graz/Leutschach 2004, 311–348. Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes DÖW (eg.), Widerstand und Verfolgung in der Steiermark. ArbeiterInnenbewegung und PartisanInnen 1938–1945. Graz 2019, 472.
Sources: Der Verlauf der Grenze zwischen Heiligengeist und der Mur, in: Grazer Volksblatt, 25.1.1921 (Morgenblatt), 3. Tod des Pfarrers Jakob Roschmann von Heiligengeist, in: Grazer Volksblatt, 14.6.1934 (Morgenblatt), 3.
Text: Markus Rieger-Roschitz / Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consequences
