!!!Minderheitenschulwesen

Schools for Minorities: the right to have their own schools was 
expressly granted to the "nations" ("Volksstaemme") of Austria by 
Article 19 of the Fundamental Law of 1867. Since the end of the 
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy this right has only applied (on the 
territory of present-day Austria) to Carinthia (with a Slovene 
minority), Burgenland (Croat minority) and Vienna (Czech minority). At 
the time of the Monarchy schools for minorities in areas in Carinthia 
with a Slovene or linguistically mixed population were "utraquist" 
(=bilingual) in nature: Slovene as a language of instruction was only 
used in classes for beginners and in some subjects of the curriculum 
and was gradually superseded by German in the higher classes. 
"Nationality schools" (in which Slovene was the language of 
instruction throughout) were rare. In Burgenland, which at that time 
belonged to the Hungarian part of the Monarchy, native speakers of 
German or Croat had by and large to dispense with the use of their 
mother tongue at school, in particular after 1907 when the "Lex 
Apponyi" stipulated that, by the end of their fourth year of 
schooling, all pupils had to be able to speak and write Hungarian. In 
spite of the massive influx of Czechs during the period of 
industrialisation, Vienna refused to establish public schools for 
their children. However, owing to the efforts of the  Komensky-Verein 
the Czech minority in Vienna established their own private schools.

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After World War I, Austria undertook in the State Treaty of 
Saint-Germain (Articles 62-69) to establish adequate schools for 
minorities, but Carinthia still remained rather negative in its 
attitude towards minorities. In 1937 uniform legislation was passed 
which is at least partly still in force today: In all areas where 
70 % of the population belong to an ethnic minority the schools 
use the language of that minority as language of instruction; if less 
than 70% of the population belong to an ethnic minority, schools are 
to be bilingual; in areas with a minority of less than 30% of the 
population the language of instruction is German but the language of 
the minority can be taught as an elective subject. In Vienna the Czech 
minority were given a generously developed public school system, 
particularly under the Treaty of Brno (1920), which entitled the 
German-speaking minority in Czechoslovakia to German-language schools 
and stipulated reciprocity in favour of the Czeck minority in Austria.

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In the Second Republic, the State Treaty of Vienna (1955) again 
referred to the obligation to establish minority schools for Slovenes 
and Croats (Article 7); the Ethnic Minorities Act of 1976 and its 
subsequent amendments extended this obligation to schools for the 
Czech, Slovak and Hungarian minorities. After 1945, bilingual primary 
schools were generally introduced in all mixed-language areas in 
Carinthia, with each of the languages being assigned half of the time 
during the first three years and a gradual reduction of the minority 
language in favour of German in subsequent years. However, the 
Minorities' Schools Act for Carinthia of 1959 provided that pupils 
could only use Slovene as their language of instruction or be forced 
to learn Slovene as a compulsory subject if their parents or guardians 
approved. This regulation resulted in the creation of two different 
sections in most bilingual schools, with employment of additional 
teachers, repeated conflicts and various attempts to improve the 
situation by amending the law (1988, 1990). The Slovene minority were 
granted their first  Gymnasium for Slovenes and a bilingual 
Handelsakademie commercial school in Klagenfurt in 1957and 1990, 
respectively. In Burgenland, where opinion was long divided among the 
Croats, the provisions adopted in 1937 remained in force until 1992, 
when a bilingual federal Gymnasium secondary school with a 
German-Croat and a German-Hungarian department was established at 
Oberwart. In Vienna the Komensky-Schulverein had to close all but one 
school (with approx. 150 pupils) for lack of demand.


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