Slovene Independence & Multi-Tradition Revival

The post-war European integration project binding contemporary member regions across borders.

1 chapter

1945 - 1991

Postwar Yugoslavia brought industrialization, secularization, and cultural standardization. Printing in Prekmurje Slovene was banned; only standard Slovene and Serbo-Croatian were permitted in education and administration, thinning the ritual vocabulary that distinguished local from national practice. In Hungary, the Rákosi regime deported Slovenes and banned minority languages. Yet Hungarian-minority institutions in Prekmurje proved resilient: Hodoš and Dobrovnik maintained bilingual schools and co-official Hungarian language status under constitutional protections unique to this border region—safeguarding bilingual festival naming (Szent Márton/Martinovo, Szent Katalin/Katarin). The Lendava-Lendva Gallery and Museum (established 1972) began collecting archaeological and ethnographic material, often in partnership with Hungarian institutions. The Pomurski Muzej at Murska Sobota Castle preserved folk pottery, textiles, and agricultural tools—artifacts of the seasonal calendar that communist secularism was muting in live practice.

1941 - 1945

Hungary annexed Prekmurje in April 1941, reuniting it with Hungary under Axis authority. On April 26, 1944, the remaining Jews of Murska Sobota were locked overnight in their synagogue without food or water, then deported via Čakovec and Nagykanizsa to Auschwitz. The Lendava Jewish community met the same fate. Two-thirds of all Slovenian Jews had lived in Prekmurje—this was the largest Jewish community in interwar Slovenia. After 1944, an entire calendar layer—Sabbath, High Holidays, Passover—vanished from the landscape. The Lendava Synagogue (built 1866) fell silent. The Dolga Vas Jewish Cemetery, in use since 1850, is the only intact Jewish burial ground remaining in Prekmurje. A small monument at the demolished Murska Sobota Jewish cemetery marks where the community once lived. The Red Army and partisan Prekmurje Company liberated the region by April 4, 1945.

1919 - 1941

The 1919 collapse of Austria-Hungary produced a brief Republic of Prekmurje before the region's incorporation into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on August 12, 1919—an event framed differently by Slovene, Hungarian, and local narratives. The new border cut Prekmurje from Hungary, stranding the Hungarian minority (concentrated in Lendava, Hodoš, Dobrovnik) inside a South-Slav state. The 1920 ecumenical stroll—in which Catholic and Lutheran priests walked together through Murska Sobota (a Jewish rabbi joined in 1926)—embodied Prekmurje's distinctive inter-confessional culture. Murska Sobota Castle became the administrative center for the new Yugoslav district. The Evangelical seniorat, established 1922 with its seat in Murska Sobota, organized ten Lutheran parishes into a body that would endure decades of pressure. The Hungarian language lost its administrative primacy, but bilingual municipalities preserved minority institutions that still sustain dual-calendar festival life.

1781 - 1919

Joseph II's 1781 Patent of Toleration ended clandestine Protestantism: the first Lutheran church in Prekmurje rose in Puconci (1783), followed by Gornji Petrovci (1804) and Križevci. This opening enabled a remarkable literary tradition in Prekmurje Slovene (prekmurščina)—a written language distinct from standard Slovene, shaped by Hungarian contact and Protestant liturgical need. From Ferenc Temlin's first printed book (1715) through István Küzmics's Nouvi Zákon (1771) and the Kalendar Srca Jezušovoga (1904–1944), this corpus of ~500 works preserved feast-day vocabulary and ritual terms (bujiti, žegnanje, krst musta) that standard Slovene later displaced. The Jewish community built Lendava Synagogue (1866), adding a third religious calendar to the landscape. The Catholic St. Catherine's Parish anchored the Katarin fair tradition, while Murska Sobota's Neo-Romanesque cathedral (1912) replaced its medieval predecessor. Filovci pottery supplied the bograč pots and baking dishes that still define festive cooking.