In our paper we will compare the position of prewar elite of Ljubljana before and after the
First World War. Before World War I, Ljubljana was the capital of the Austrian province of
Carniola and the Slovene cultural and national center. However, economically speaking, it
lagged behind other developed parts of the monarchy. ...
(Show more)In our paper we will compare the position of prewar elite of Ljubljana before and after the
First World War. Before World War I, Ljubljana was the capital of the Austrian province of
Carniola and the Slovene cultural and national center. However, economically speaking, it
lagged behind other developed parts of the monarchy. Its provincial, peripheral status and
slow pace of modernization was reflected also in the composition of its elite. According to a
list of taxpayers with crossectional analysis of several different quantitative data reveal that
Ljubljana's richest inhabitants from 1900 were mainly small “working proprietors”
(innkeepers, salesmen, craftsmen) and individuals that worked in the public sector
(government or municipal officials). At least a two thirds of them were strongly Slovene
nationally oriented, a third of them were German nationally oriented, while others were
probably more or less nationally indifferent (or we do not have data for determine their
national orientation). As Slovenes’ political and economic capital within the Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Ljubljana gained more prominence after the war. Moreover the
process of Slovenisation took over the city. The paper therefore addresses the question how
the position of its prewar elite was changed from the perspective of postwar years when such
changes of political system, national borders, social rights took place together with national
homogenization and migration. We will there for investigate which categories of elite
(administrational or economic) were most affected by postwar changes in central Europe, who
were people who migrated and if gender had any role to play in this decision? How social
mobility changed? Did prewar identification with Slovene or German nation movement
influenced thein decision of staying in Ljubljana? What happened with political orientation of
families in the city? We will try to answer these questions with an analysis of the
(longitudinal) development of the lives/situation of the families (people and their direct
decendats) from the »development of the situation of the prewar elite«.
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