This volume presents thirty-seven families and individuals from Slovenian territory that were granted noble titles in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. Most of these were officers’ families, meaning that their founders were ennobled Austrian officers. Inquiry into their ethnic identity has revealed a variety of patterns ranging from disinterest to engaged concern for ethnic issues, from insisting on Slovenian identity to overtly rejecting it and embracing German-Austrian identity. Such processes were strongly affected not only by the personal preferences of the ennobled individuals, but also by the selection of their wives and the decision to pursue their lives in Slovenian territory. Slovenian identity was, as a rule, retained by younger generations of ennobled families in which the wife or mother was of Slovenian descent and provided that the family remained in Slovenian territory after 1918. The book also describes the developments that took place after 1918; that is, when most successor states of the former Austria-Hungary formally abolished the granting of noble titles. However, unable to fully internalize this status during its brief presence, most descendants of ennobled individuals gradually lost their noble identity.
COBISS.SI-ID: 292390144
This volume draws on a family chronicle: genealogical and biographical records written by members of the last generations of the Dienersperg baronial family, the only one in Slovenian territory to have left behind a family historical outline from its mythological origins in the thirteenth century to its extinction in the early twentieth century. The Dienersperg family chronicle, which from its very conception was dedicated to future generations, is significant not only as a historical source, but above all as a presentation of the authors’ self-perception and the perception of the noble family’s past through the eyes of its protagonists. The rise and fall of the Dienerspergs was connected with a host of other noble families, including the Valvasors. Particular value is assigned to the part of the chronicle that contains personal accounts.
COBISS.SI-ID: 93398273
The contribution discusses special types of local self-government in towns and especially market towns in Slovenian territory from the end of the Middle Ages through to the abolition of town and market-town self-governments in the first half of the 19th century. It delves into cases where the level of self-government was lower than usual and also its origin was specific. Just two of such towns are known, both emerging only in the Early Modern Age, whereas the genesis of limited self-government in market towns was multifarious and independent from the time of the market town’s occurrence or the recognition of its market-town title. Although some market towns have the same or similar traits in common, every case has its own story.
COBISS.SI-ID: 44072749
Within the Inner Austrian territories, groups of covert Protestants succeeded in remaining in Upper Styria and what are now Austrian parts of Carinthia. Although Carniola did not cause any such concern for Maria Theresa and her court, various decrees, also those regarding non-Catholics, applied to Carniola as well. In other words, Carniola, as well as Lower Styria and the County of Gorizia, experienced the arrival of people following the Augsburg Confession and reformed religion, which could influence the often poorly educated Catholics. At the focus of the contribution is the administrative discourse at the state, territorial, and county levels, conveyed in normative sources and official correspondence. The question regarding the mental basis of repressive and preventive measures is posed comparatively; that is, in light of the policy toward non-Catholics as pursued, above all, by Charles VI and Joseph II.
COBISS.SI-ID: 43306029
In the early thirteenth century, the Counts of Weixelburg snatched White Carniola from Hungary. By the end of the same century, White Carniola and part of Lower Carniola came into the hands of the Counts of Gorizia, who formed an independent territory separate from Carniola (the County in March and Metlika, with territorial privileges in 1365) by the mid-fourteenth century. The leading Gorizia nobility comprised a line of old Carniolan ministerial families. The most important representatives of the lower nobility were the Mindorffers, as well as the Semič, Semenič, Hofstetter, Plösl, Luger, and Abprecher families. In 1374, the territory was inherited by the Habsburgs, who gave it in pledge, primarily to the Counts of Celje. The first decades of the fifteenth century were marked by an intense immigration of the new nobility in the service of the Counts of Celje. Following the extinction of the Celje dynasty in 1456, the territory fell back into Habsburg hands. Before the mid-century, old families of the members of the territorial estates began to die out and were replaced by the Lords of Auersperg and Črnomelj. Losing its political sway, the county’s scant nobility succumbed to Carniola’s annexation tendencies by 1518. By the mid-sixteenth century, the small territory merged with the Duchy of Carniola into a unified territorial entity.
COBISS.SI-ID: 43043117