Avgust Pavel med Slovenci, Madžari in Avstrijci

August Pavel Among the Slovenians, Hungarians and Austrians. 2016 was marked by the first Prekmurje scientist, linguist and important Slovenian poet, a writer, ethnologist and museologist August Pavel – we celebrated the 130th anniversary of his birth (August 28, 1886, Cankova), and remembered the 70th anniversary of his death (January 2, 1946, Szombathely). Fifteen experts on Pavel’s life and work from Slovenia, Hungary and Austria have contributed their research to the monography, including his daughter Judita Pavel. These are the latest analyses of Pavel’s work, which (re)evaluate his significance in the first half of the 20th century in the Slovenian-Hungarian- Austrian region, especially in terms of literature and culture. The monography raises the question of Slovene-Hungarian-Austrian language contacts and linguistic, literary and cultural mediation between three members of the European Union. It relates to the proper way of addressing and understanding language policy and language planning in the region, the question of Slovene border dialects and language convergence. In the global language, cultural and political space, we need mediators who will “take care” of a reasonable co-existence of neighbouring peoples and plan language development, which assures the long-term existence of small languages in a global world. Avgust Pavel tried for a special status of Slovene and linguistic relations different from the Austrian-Hungarian-Slovenian language relations implemented by the mid-20th century. If we are able to comprehend Pavel, we are able to comprehend the past and plan the future. In order to comprehend it, we have to understand borders in general, understand their influence and their shifting. Above all, we need to overcome and abolish them. The border is an imaginary line that man needs. Unfortunately, there are too many of them. A state border restricts the people, determines them as citizens, sets limitations and causes trouble by forcing them to choose a side. Pavel exposed this pain in his poetry. The linguistic and ethnical border is defined by the level of linguistic presumptuousness of the nation in majority that does not want to accept the fact that the rights of the rights of the majority are limited by the rights of the minority, and that the liberty of the minority as well as compassion for their needs mean the liberty of the majority. The majority will become truly grand only when they are prepared to listen to the minority (even if we talk only about Phonology of Slovene dialect of Cankova). In his scientific works, Pavel was the one who gave us a lecture on how to overcome these borders; a lecture we were not able to realize and comprehend in its entirety. Our society needs famous, important Slovenians – Avgust Pavel was certainly one of them; it therefore seems right to evaluate his work, and present it to the professional and general public.