The A to Z of Slovenia by Leopoldina Plut-Pregelj & Carole Rogel

Author:Leopoldina Plut-Pregelj & Carole Rogel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2007-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

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MAGYARIZATION. See MINORITIES, SLOVENES IN HUNGARY.

MAHNIČ, ANTON (1850–1920). Anton Mahnič, who held a doctorate in theology from Vienna, made his reputation as a writer, critic, and controversial editor in 1888–1896 of Rimski katolik (Roman Catholic). He derived his philosophy from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, often using it in a fundamentalist way to criticize Slovene writers, whose works, many of them now considered the nation’s literary classics, did not stand up to Catholic principles. Mahnič was appointed bishop of Krk in 1896. Politically, he was the Slovenes’ leading ultramontanist, demanding that all public life be tested by religious principles and loyalty to Rome. The first Slovene Catholic congress (1892) adopted Mahnič’s principles. Nationalism and individual rights as enunciated by the French Revolution were condemned; Catholicism as a fundamental principle of Slovene life was espoused. Mahnič generated a large following, particularly among Clericals (Slovene People’s Party), and is considered responsible for the sharp ideological division between clericals and freethinkers (liberals) in Slovene cultural and political life that developed in the 1890s. Its polarizing effects continue to be felt even today. See also PRESS BEFORE 1914.

MAISTER, RUDOLF (VOJANOV) (1872–1934). Born in Kamnik, Rudolf Maister was the rare Slovene who chose a military career. He was also a poet. At age 18 in 1892, he enrolled in a two-year national guard training program in Vienna and as a cadet trainee served in various ethnic Slovene areas, including Klagenfurt/Celovec, where he also engaged in local cultural activities. In 1908 he was transferred to Galicia, where he headed a military school. When World War I began, Maister was in Maribor in southern (Slovene) Styria, where in 1917 he was the commanding officer of his province’s unit. As such he established ties to the Slovene political leadership, and as the war was ending he worked with the National Council as a representative from Styria. See also SLOVENES, CROATS, AND SERBS, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF.

With Austria-Hungary’s demise imminent in late October 1918, the Maribor town council, heavily German in its composition, voted to join a German Austria. On 1 November 1918 Maister, sensing that the Slovene parts of Styria would be absorbed into an Austrian state to the north, took over command of Maribor and the southern Styrian region. Taking the initiative, he organized the Slovenes under his command, along with Slovenes returning from the eastern front, into a voluntary force that would secure southern Styria for Slovenia. His “Slovene” army, comprising 400 soldiers and 200 officers, disarmed German forces by 23 November and drove them from the area. Southern Styria came fully under Maister’s control, and when the final postwar treaties and settlements were completed, the territory Maister had fought for became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.

Maister attempted to do the same for southern Carinthia. He participated with four other Yugoslav units that staged successful offensives in that area. Maister’s military police controlled the territory that was designated Zone A in preparation for the Carinthian plebiscite (20 October 1920). He

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