Municipality of Kočevje

In 1247 Berthold, Patriarch of Aquileia granted the area around Ribnica within the imperial March of Carniola to the Carinthian counts of Ortenburg. When the counts received further estates on the wooded plateau down to Kostel on the Kolpa River in 1336 from the hands of Patriarch Bertram, they called for German-speaking settlers from Carinthia and Tyrol. These Germanic people became known as the Gottscheers, and their dialect, Gottscheerish.

Thousands of Gottscheers, and others, were accused of sympathy for or collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II (such as the Slovene Home Guard), after the war. They, and typically their entire families, were summarily executed, thrown into various pits and caves, which were then sealed with explosives.

In addition to the municipal seat of Kočevje, the municipality also includes the following settlements:

Flag of Kočevje

The municipal flag of Kočevje is a tricolor consisting of three equal horizontal bands displaying the colors of Kočevje: blue and white, defaced with the coat of arms.[2] The association with the colors blue and white dates to the 1470s, when Emperor Frederick III approved the design of the coat of arms, along with civic rights, on 19 April 1471. The flag during that time varies from the one seen today. The old flag was a bicolor of blue and white, defaced with the coat of arms, which was also different at the time.

Notable people that were born or lived in the Municipality of Kočevje include:

• Matej Bor (1913–1993), poet and author
• Milan Butina (1923–1999), academy-trained painter, art teacher, art theorist
• Ivan Jurkovič (born 1952), apostolic nuncio to Russia
• Zofka Kveder (1878–1926), writer
• Alois Loy (1860–1923), longtime mayor
• Viktor Parma (1858–1924), composer
• Roman Erich Petsche (1907–1993), teacher, painter, and Righteous Among the Nations
• Jože Šeško (1908–1942), secondary-school professor, social revolutionary, communist resistance fighter
• Franjo Uršič (1898–?), geologist, taught at the secondary school before the Second World War

• Karl-Markus Gauß: Die sterbenden Europäer. Unterwegs zu den Sepharden von Sarajevo, Gottscheer Deutschen, Arbëreshe, Sorben und Aromunen. Zsolnay, Wien 2001, ISBN 3-552-05158-9 (Taschenbuchausgabe: dtv, München, ISBN 3-423-30854-0)
• Mitja Ferenc: Kočevska, Bleak And Empty

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Municipality of Kočevje.

• Website of the Municipality of Kočevje
• Municipality of Kočevje: Map. Geopedia.si. (in Slovene)