Marija Švegelj: A Journey Through Gottschee to America

Sometimes a person carries a whole world inside them—memories of language, land, loss, hope. One of those people in our family was my 2nd great-grandmother, Marija Švegelj, known in the U.S. as Mary Swegel. Her life bridges two worlds: the rugged past of Gottschee and the new land she came to love.

Roots in Gottschee, Childhood in Change

Marija was born on November 19, 1867, in Stari Trg ob Kolpi, Slovenia. Her dad, Jožef Švegelj, was about 20; her mother, Marija Koce, was 27. She wasn’t alone for long—she had a younger sister, Katarina, born in 1870, and brothers Jožef and Peter.

When Marija was nine, tragedy struck: her mother died in June 1877. Little Katarina had already died earlier. Her father, just 30, was left with three children under the age of ten. Only two months later, he married again—to another Marija (Marija Sterk)—and together they had seven more children. Change came early in Marija’s life; responsibility, too.

Both sides of Marija’s family were Gottscheers—her mother’s Koce and Fugina families; her father’s second wife’s Sterk line; her grandmother’s Ilić line. Gottschee wasn’t just a place; it was a patchwork of culture, dialect, and a sense of identity folded into every conversation at home.

Crossing Borders, Holding Identity

Though several of Marija’s siblings immigrated in the late 1890s, she stayed. She came over in 1914, after her children were already in America. By then, the world she was born into had twisted: Austria became something else; political crises bubbled; states shifted. Identity was being reshaped fast—not always by choice.

Gottschee was German-speaking, settled long ago under the Habsburgs, but with the fall of empires and the rise of new nations, what “home” meant got complicated. Borders changed; citizenship changed. But family stories, language at the dinner table, the tastes of childhood—those are harder to change.

Hard Times, Strong Roots

World events were anything but kind to Gottscheers. As years passed, political pressure increased, language laws shifted, national boundaries wobbled, and finally, during World War II, the community was forced to uproot in ways no one should have to. Homes were lost, families scattered.

For Marija, it meant she never saw her homeland—or many of her family—again after leaving. But she carried the smells, the songs, the family recipes, the whisper of Gottscheer German dialects, deep inside her. She carried community and faith and family, even when geography said “you are far.”

What Marija’s Journey Gives Us

Heritage is not just a place of birth—it’s what you carry across oceans. The stories, the lullabies, the names.
Change isn’t sudden. It builds gradually: loss, shifting borders, new languages. But identity can survive that, thrive even.
Love and belonging are powerful. Even though she couldn’t return, Marija helped us remember. She helped bridge “there” and “here.”

Looking Back, Moving Forward
Marija’s life is a reminder: roots matter, even when they’re hidden beneath the surface. Hers reminds us that though borders change and homes can be lost, what we pass down—our family values, our memory, our voice—are ours forever. We are living proof of persistence, love, and the invisible threads that keep families whole.

Gottschee refers to a former German-speaking region in Carniola, now in Slovenia. The original German settlers of the region are called Gottschee Germans or Gottscheers, and they also developed a distinct German dialect called Gottschee German or Gottscheerish. It is like comparing Old English to our current English. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschee)

Seal of the City of Gottschee

The city of Gottschee was granted
city status in 1471. The seal of
the city shows Saint Bartholomew,
the patron saint of the parish church.

The inscription on the old seal,
Sigilum Civitatis in Kotschew 1471,
is translated,
Seal of the City of Gottschee 1471.

From some Gottscheer’s : In school, Belay had to learn three alphabets: Cyrillic, Roman, and Old German—a sign of the many cultures that shared the lands around Gottschee. In high school, he had to learn Slovenian in just one year, because it became the language of instruction.

Teachers who spoke German were removed and replaced by teachers who would only speak Slovenian to the school children. This presented a huge difficulty for the Gottscheers since most of them did not speak Slovenian. Problems arose and a feeling of ill will was created.

Edward Eppich lived on his father’s farm in Gottschee until he was 11. “You had only maybe one or two horses and a pig, and that’s what you lived on,” Eppich recalls. When Austrians first settled Gottschee in the 1300s, they found the land rocky and difficult to sow. “It was not that easy,” he says.

A camp for displaced Gottcheers in Austria after World War II

From the time of their arrival until the end of the war, Gottschee farmers were harassed and sometimes killed by partisans who saw them as an instrument of the occupying regime. (Source: http://alpineclub.ca/our-story/history-of-the-gottscheers/

The horrible things that happened during Hitler and Tito’s reigns are unimaginable. Some say that Tito was worse than Hitler, but evil is evil. Many could not return to their country for fear of Tito’s “purge”. The Kočevski Rog massacre and killings continued after the war, through 1945.

It is no wonder that Marija would never again see her homeland or her family again. Her country was torn apart. The once privileged Gottscheers were now a minority in a war-ravaged country.

Adolf Eppich says in his memoir, Memories of a Gottscheer Refugee “Gottscheers are blessed to have been part of a heritage that focuses on God and neighbor and strong family values.” They carried this heritage and faith to America for their descendants to carry on.

Want to dive deeper? I’m here for it. Because family history isn’t just about knowing who came before — it’s about seeing ourselves in them, feeling their triumphs and struggles, and finding what they left that’s still alive in us.

External links
www.gottschee.at Website of Gottscheer societies
www.gottschee.de Information on history and culture of the Gottscheer Germans.
www.gottschee.com Website with audio folklore samples from Gottscheers in the United States.
Gottscheer Heritage and Genealogy Association (GHGA) website “founded in 1992 to preserve the culture, history, and genealogical records of Gottscheers and Gottschee (1330-1941)”

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