The book analyzes the phenomenon of Church paintings as subversive visual representations of Fascism and as an act of systematic rebellion against Fascist “ideological marking of space.” Slovene expressionist painter and sculptor Tone Kralj’s (1900-75) paintings functioned as ideological markers of national territory. He painted almost 50 churches along the ethnic border as it was imagined by the Slovene community, delineating it with visual symbols of anti-Fascism and anti-Nazism. Kralj’s undertaking can thus be interpreted as an instance of systematic “subversive coverage” of an ethnically exposed borderland with church paintings. Even today, his artistic “delineation” of the then disputed ethnic border is a marking phenomenon that cannot be found anywhere else in Europe.
COBISS.SI-ID: 285626880
The extensive monograph discusses the life and political career of the prewar communist, the leader of the resistance movement during World War II, and the postwar Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito in the context of European and global history of the 20th century. Besides the importance of his character within Yugoslav internal and foreign politics, the author defines the role of his comrades and key political figures Edvard Kardelj, Aleksandar Ranković and Milovan Đilas, and describes their complex relationships and the consequences of their political decisions that determined the history of Yugoslavia as well as the development of global socialist movement.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1540326852
In the scientific monograph, for which G. Mithans received best first book award in Slovenian historiography “Ervin Dolenc” (Historical Association of Slovenia), based on Vatican documents, one of the key issues of the first Yugoslavia – Yugoslav concordat – is explored. The thematic analysis opens original insights into basic issues of the new State, covering legal, national, interreligious, political and social aspects. After the theoretical introduction follows a part on concordat negotiations and the central part dealing with the circumstances and reasons why the concordat, signed in 1935 and confirmed in the parliament in 1937, never came into force. The opposition against the ratification of the concordat, which linked Serbian Orthodox Church with all opposing political parties, some societies and movements, incited the most serious interreligious and political conflict in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which sew long-lasting discord between the Catholic and Serbian Orthodox Church.
COBISS.SI-ID: 291160832
This monograph, which deals with the epidemic occurrence of cholera in some parts of the Austrian Littoral and their effects on society, also discusses the change in the traditional conception of peaceful death under the impact of the grave manifestations of this disease, in relation to which the elderly (who registered, in fact, the highest mortality rate) were a particularly vulnerable group. Under the influence of the medicalisation of death, when the locus of dying moved from the private, family environment into a health institution, and under the pressure of a mortality crisis, which required the concealment of the dying, the social representations of death and the related cultural practices changed as well. These changes were felt particularly among the senior population of rural or suburban environments and by those elderly who were, due to poverty, more likely to be subjected to preventive sequestration in temporary lazarets.
COBISS.SI-ID: 293142528
For the first time this book comprehensively explores the historical background of the construction of planned towns in the context of the 20th century totalitarian regimes by taking into account two newly built towns during fascism and socialism in the northern Adriatic area. Their modernist architecture, exhibiting ideological requirements of the regimes in which it was built, is addressed in the light of today’s attitude towards such heritage and its potential for the development of educational and cultural tourism. The afore-mentioned historical analysis takes into account not only the political circumstances in which the two towns were planned, constructed and developed, but also their social construction as two outstanding ideological and propagandist projects launched by the respective totalitarian regimes.
COBISS.SI-ID: 280652800
This article discusses the transformation of the urban space after World War I in the former Habsburg port city of Trieste. It reveals the key role played by the newly annexed northeastern Adriatic borderland in the national symbolism of postwar Italy, and it indicates how slogans and notions of Italian nationalism, irredentism, and fascism intertwined and became embodied in the local cultural landscape. The analysis is mostly concentrated on the era between the two world wars, but the aim of the article is to interpret the interwar years as part of longer term historical developments in the region rather than a break in its history. It argues that even if the cityscape had undergone drastic changes in its aesthetics after World War I, its ideological language was rooted in prewar nationalism and continued to support the local urban palimpsest in the Cold War.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1539443396
This article discusses local cultures of remembrance of Yugoslav partisans fallen during World War II in Trieste, now part of Italy, and investigates the role of memory activists in managing vernacular memory over time. The author analyses the interplay between memory and the production of space, something which has been neglected in other studies of memory formation. On the basis of local newspaper articles, archival material, and oral interviews, the essay examines the ideological imprint on the local cultural landscape, contributing to a more complex understanding of memory engagement. This article argues that memory initiatives are not solely the outcome of national narratives and top–down ideological impositions. It shows that official narratives have to negotiate with vernacular forms of memory engagement in the production of a local mnemonic landscape.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1539281860
The author discusses the controversy concerning the rights of believers which developed among younger theologians, some laymen and some representatives of the faithful on the one hand, and communist politicians and Marxist theorists on the other, in Slovenia in the 1970s. The controversy opened key questions about the relationship between Marxism and atheism under Yugoslav self-management socialism and touched some of the basic ideological postulates on which the League of Communists built its social engagement. Demands for greater equality for believers, based on examples from Western and Eastern Europe, were rejected as unfounded in the vast majority of cases and did not trigger a change in the established understanding of religion by the ruling communist party. However, the awareness of everyday discrimination against believers in their public life spread amongst the younger generation of more liberal-oriented communist leaders.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1537662660
This papers sheds light on the main characteristics of the relations between the Catholic Church and the state in the Slovenian territory in the following three consecutive periods: from the end of World War Two to the beginning of democratization (1945–1989), the period marked by the process of attaining political independence for the Republic of Slovenia (1989–1991), and from the declaration of independence in 1991 until today. It discusses different hoped-for development of political Catholicism and the Church in the period after the independence and democratization of the Republic of Slovenia. It also describes the position, status and material conditions in which the Catholic Church in the Republic of Slovenia operates today.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1536256452
In this article, author presents two case-studies of ecclesiastical paintings created by the Slovene expressionist painter Tone Kralj in the Julian March during the interwar period. If one of the most important authorities on Fascist ideology in Italy, Emilio Gentile, considers Fascist ideology to be a form of political religion and a modern manifestation of the sacralization of politics, then Tone Kralj’s church paintings could be regarded as an instance of systematic introduction of the political and ideological into the religious context. Perhaps the most ingenious feature of Kralj’s ecclesiastical art is his fusion of Catholicism with the Slovene national idea for the purpose of ideologically marking and promoting anti-Fascism and anti-Nazism as well as Slovene nationalism and Slovene irredentism in the Julian March.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1540295108