For the former Austrian enclave with this name, see Gottschee. For the hamlet of Črnomelj with this name, see Črnomelj.
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The town is located at the foot of the Kočevski Rog karst plateau on the Rinža River in the historic Lower Carniola region. It is now part of the Southeast Slovenia Statistical Region.[4] The Rinža River flows through the town. Lake Kočejve, a former open-pit coal mine, lies northeast of the town center.
Source: National Meteorological Service of Slovenia – Archive[5]
Historical population
Year
Pop.
±%
1948
2,991
—
1953
4,447
+48.7%
1961
5,891
+32.5%
1971
7,382
+25.3%
1981
9,598
+30.0%
1991
9,363
−2.4%
2002
9,027
−3.6%
2011
8,672
−3.9%
2021
8,113
−6.4%
Population size may be affected by changes in administrative divisions.
Name
Kočevje was attested in written sources in 1363 as Gotsche (and as Gotsew in 1386, Kotsche in 1425, and propre Koczeuiam in 1478). The name is derived from *Hvojčevje (from hvoja 'fir, spruce'), referring to the local vegetation. The initial hv- changed to k- under the influence of German phonology. Older discredited explanations include derivation from the hypothetical common noun *kočevje 'nomadic settlement' and Slovene koča 'shack'.[6] The former German name was Gottschee.[3]
History
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 had received further estates in 1336 on the wooded plateau down to Kostel on the Kolpa River from the hands of Patriarch Bertram, they called for German-speaking settlers from Carinthia and Tyrol. In the following decades they established the town of Gottschee, which was first mentioned in a 1363 deed. The settlement received market rights in 1377 and town privileges in 1471.
They first settled in Carniola around 1330 from the German lands of Tyrol and Carinthia and maintained their German identity and language during their 600 years of isolation. They cleared the vast forests of the region and established villages and towns. In 1809, they resisted French occupation in the 1809 Gottscheer Rebellion. With the end of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918, Gottschee became a part of the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Gottscheer thus went from being part of the ruling ethnicity of Austria-Hungary (and the ruling group in the estates of the province of Carniola itself) to an ethnic minority in a large Slavic state. With the onset of the Second World War and the Invasion of Yugoslavia their situation was worsened further.
Gauß, Karl-Markus (2001). Die sterbenden Europäer. Unterwegs zu den Sepharden von Sarajevo, Gottscheer Deutschen, Arbëreshe, Sorben und Aromunen (in German). Vienna: Zsolnay. ISBN3-552-05158-9.
^ abLeksikon občin kraljestev in dežel zastopanih v državnem zboru (in Slovenian). Vol. 6: Kranjsko. Vienna: C. Kr. Dvorna in Državna Tiskarna. 1906. p. 36.
