Unit under III Germ. PzKorps - looking for city in Croatia?

[Jebir]

Hello there

In some papers about a unit under III Germ. Panzerkorps I have come across a note saying that they were in "Monkedorf/Monkendorf/Save" in Croatia for training.

I have been looking around and found the river Sava in Croatia (running through Zagreb) - but I can't seem to find anything related to Monkedorf/Monkendorf - perhaps it is renamed?

Can anyone help me out here?

Thanks in advance,
- Jebir

[fridgeman]

Hello, according to a very few sources, Monkendorf is the german name for a monastery
of the holy saint claire in the save area, established around 1300.
Could not find much more information about this monastery, but it was located next to
the town Kranj (slowenian)/Krainburg (german). Krainburg is next to the save/sava river aswell,
and it was part of the (german) holy roman empire, the austrian empire and later Austria-Hungary.
After WW1 it became the "state of serbs, croatians and slowenians", was occupied in ww2
by the germans again, to become the country Yugoslavia after ww2, and become the
country Slowenia in 1991 after the fall of Yugoslavia (former protege of soviet union).

You see, it could be hard to track down the exact location, the monastery was probably
destroyed and never built up again, possibly in war or later during communist command.
The towns around changed from one hand to the other very often, and most rulers gave
a crap about a old monastery.
Also, even if your german source might speak about "Kroatien"- croatia, it does not guarantee
its located in the nowadays country Croatia. Germans in ww2 favored the croatian people over slowenians
and others, so they naturally called the half of south east europe croatian territory. A serb would have
said its Serbia, a slowenian would have said its Slowenia of course. And 1945 the despot leader Josip Tito said,
shut up all, its Yugoslavia :P

You see, the south east europe area is very complicated for alot of reasons, still i hope i could help a
bit with your research.

[Jebir]

Hello Fridgeman

Thank you VERY much for the answer, fits perfectly

I have asked the same question on a couple of messageboards, and so far I have been centered around Mekinje, also in modern day Slovenia, and less than 20 km from Kranj as the crow flies. So definitely the right area.

Thank you again,
Jebir

[fridgeman]

As you mention it, i came across this line of text during google check
"Monkendorf, Mekii\je, wś kra."

Seems to be a bad digitalization of an old slovenian geography book, here is the full text:
http://www.archive.org/stream/geografic ... g_djvu.txt

I think you are on the right path, 99,9% its the location mentioned in your german source.

Edit: I just saw, thats probably the link the guy on AHF found aswell

[Jebir]

Hi Fridgeman

Again, thank you very much.

Through the tourist-information in Kranj I have managed to contact the monastery, which is still active today. They apparantly have an archive of the area, so that could be very interesting.
I will post a followup if anything interesting shows up :-)