The first part of the historical and topographical survey of the Kočevje region entitled The Lost Villages of Gottschee is an update of the research and books which have been in the making for almost two decades. The care and energy devoted to this individual, resettled, and almost disappeared linguistic group in an area of about 800 km2 is unmatched in Slovenia or elsewhere in Europe.
The Gottschee Germans’ material remnants in the Kočevje region are scarce but expressive enough. Individual German explorers, and particularly Slovene researchers, proved that politically erased material memory galvanizes writers of memoirs and researchers either in the archives or on location.
This would not have been possible without the help of the Gottschee Germans’ societies in Slovenia, Austria, and the USA. Individual Slovene archives were of great use, particularly documents kept in the Kočevje Regional Museum.
