German Paper Labels Slovenia "Cultural Nation"
A leading German daily has labelled Slovenia a "cultural nation" in its overview of the 25 EU member states and two accession countries published on Europe Day.
According to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's (FAZ) "Europe Journal" supplement, Slovenians "are the classic case of a people who were able to protect their autonomy over the centuries even though they had no control over their political fate".
To underscore the importance Slovenia places on culture, the paper points to the fact that the anniversary of the death of Slovenia's greatest cultural icon, poet France Preseren, on 8 February ranks alongside National Day on 25 June.
In addition to Preseren, the paper also mentions cultural figures Primoz Trubar, Jurij Dalmatin and Joze Plecnik. It credits the latter with using his architectural style to transform Ljubljana from a "provincial Austrian town into a showpiece city for the nation that would only emerge six decades later".
Even today few states have imposed such rigid linguistic-cultural programmes as Slovenia, the paper writes, adding that the Slovenian government also "pays particularly close attention to the situation of the Slovenian minorities in Austria and Italy".
FAZ also says that the Slovenian parliament "has adopted an unusually rigid language law to protect Slovenian" and that the Writers' Association has called on Slovenian officials in the European Parliament to strictly use Slovenian when possible.
"Irrespective of all other ideological and political differences, both the left and the right agree that their culture must be protected from market forces at any cost," the paper concludes in the overview of Slovenia.
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