1920 Carinthian plebiscite

It determined the final border between the Republic of Austria and the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) after World War I.

The principle of self-determination, championed by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, was taken up by both Slovenes and German-Austrians in the Carinthian, Styrian and Carniolan lands of the defunct Habsburg empire.

The rising tensions culminated in clashes of arms, as on Marburg's Bloody Sunday in Lower Styria and the continued fighting of paramilitary groups in southeastern Carinthia.

In particular the "Carinthian question" had become an issue in the closing days of World War I, when events developed rapidly, beginning with territorial claims by the Slovenian National Assembly on October 17, 1918.

From November 5, Yugoslav forces moved into the settlement area of the Carinthian Slovenes from the Karawanks mountain range down to the Drava River and beyond.

Sherman Miles scouted the disputed region in January and February 1919 and made the crucial recommendation that the Karawanks frontier should be retained, thus opening the possibility of a plebiscite.

This was to a large extent a consequence of rising romantic nationalism under the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy and the idea of an autonomy of the "Slovene lands", referring to the early medieval Slavic principality of Carantania, which had perished in the ninth century.

the Meža Valley (German: Mießtal) with the town of Dravograd (Unterdrauburg) and the Jezersko (Seeland) municipal area—should be incorporated into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, while the fate of wider southeastern Carinthia area down to the Klagenfurt basin was to be determined by a plebiscite.

Wanting to resolve the conflict peacefully, the Allied victors in World War I divided southeastern Carinthia into two zones, "A" in the south and "B" in the north.

While a majority in the remote Alpine villages on the slopes of the Karawanks range voted for Yugoslavia, the inhabitants of the densely settled Klagenfurt Basin were motivated by their evolved social and cultural, not least economic ties to the central Carinthian region.

[2] After it became clear that the residents had voted in favor of Austria, Yugoslavia moved troops into the zone and occupied several towns; the military commanders stated that they did not recognize the authority of the plebiscite commission.

Regular rallies in the village and its surroundings encouraged increasingly more people to join the rebellion, deliberately ignoring any Austrian law passed after the plebiscite.

Finally, the governments of Austria and Yugoslavia managed to agree on a territorial exchange: Austria ceded to Yugoslavia the territory of Libeliče and received in compensation an equally sized area on the left bank of the Drava, consisting of the predominantly German-speaking settlements of Rabenstein (Slovene: Rabštajn pri Labotu) and Lorenzenberg (Slovene: Šentlovrenc), which are today cadastral communities within the market town of Lavamünd.