Hauerland

Arisen from medieval Ostsiedlung population movements, it belonged to three German language islands within a greater Slovakian-speaking area.

The area laid within the forested Western Carpathians mountain range around the towns of Kremnica (German: Kremnitz) in the south and Nitrianske Pravno (German: Deutschproben) in the north.

In the Middle Ages, the Kremnica Mountains (German: Kremnitzer Berge) were an important gold mining area within Upper Hungary (German: Oberungarn) and directly subordinate to the Hungarian monarch.

Numerous villages, mostly spread out in the mountainous and hilly areas, were agricultural and developed a special kind of German subculture.

Over the centuries, the German-speaking population of these areas gradually diminished, decimated already in the Hussite Wars of the 1420s and 1430s respectively, in the 16th century Ottoman–Habsburg wars, and again by insurgent Hungarian troops under Stephen Bocskay in 1605/06, succeeded by the forces of Gabriel Bethlen and George I Rákóczi.