The dimensions of revitalization of ethnic minority in Slovakia: Interdisciplinary salvage research of disappearing ethnic group of Huncokári

The project focuses on the study of life of huncokári, a name given to an ethnic group of german woodsmen. This ethnic group has not yet been subject to any systematic scioentific interest. Mountain woodsmen came to the malé and Biele karpaty mountains mostly from lower austria and styria in the 18th century as a result of an invitation from Pálfi, the head of Bratislava county. Thanks to their isolation and specific socio-professional status they preserved unique expressions of material, spiritual and social culture up to the mid-20th century (such as endogamy, specific dialect, bilingualism, strong tehnic feeling). Huncokári formed a specific, linguistically and socially closed group which was after War War II largerly dispersed and has survived up to this day either via collective memory of a few descendants or as a part of collective memory of present-day local communities living in the vicicnity of their past settlements. Using selected ethnographic, linguistic, pedagogic and historical methodologiocal approaches we intend to completely document and analyse selected spheres of life and the formatáion of ethnic identuty of this group. We will focus on the circumstances of their arrival, specific way of life determined above all by the isolation of their settlements, as well as on theri own dialect and forced acculturation. From the ethnologic and linguistic point of viwe we will conduct a rescue research among the last living descendants of this minority. The outcomes of the project will be of material, analytic and application character.