Karel Destovnik
Karel Destovnik (partisan name Kajuh ; born December 13, 1922 in Šoštanj ; died February 22, 1944 at the Žlebnik homestead in Šentvid near Zavodnje ) was a Slovenian poet , translator and national hero .
Life
Karel Destovnik was born on December 13, 1922 as the illegitimate son of Marija Vasle into a wealthy middle-class family in Šoštanj. After the Second World War , December 19, 1922 was incorrectly entered as the date of birth. At that time Marija had a relationship with Jože Destovnik, who came from a rural-proletarian family. Since Marija's family could not come to terms with this relationship, the two moved to Maribor and later to Gorizia, Slovenia . On August 14, 1923, they married in Ljubljana , moved for a short time to Jože Destovnik's parents in Šoštanj, then in Vassle's hometown, to the Hotel Yugoslavia. Their son Jože was born on October 18, 1924.
After five years of elementary school, Karol Destovnik moved to the Celje grammar school in 1933. He lived in Celje for two years . His literary beginnings and collaboration with various magazines go back to 1938. He published in the following magazines: Mladi Prekmurec, Srednješolec, Novi Srednješolec, Mlada Slovenija, Slovenski poročevalec, Slovenska mladina, Sodobnost, Naša žena. Drago Jeran, Peter Kalin, Blaž Burjevestnik, Matevž Pečnik, Jernej Puntar u. a. are stage names under which Destovnik wrote. During his cultural activities in his birthplace, he met Marija Medved, his first great love.
Towards the end of his sixth year of school at the grammar school, a letter with illegal content was found on a train ride, which is why he was expelled from all grammar schools in Celje on April 29, 1940 for “spreading communist ideas”. He managed to enroll at the Maribor grammar school, where he stayed until 1941.
As a national enemy, he was called to arms training in the course of political persecution and was sent to the Medjurećje camp near Ivanjica in Serbia for two weeks on January 20, 1941 , together with about a thousand Slovenes, Bosnians and Macedonians.
On April 6, 1941, during the attack on Yugoslavia , he and a group of sympathizers went to the mountains around Zasavje to join the rebels of the Yugoslav army. The group was broken up in a police operation and Kajuh returned to Šoštanj sick and injured. On April 28, he was discovered by the Gestapo and arrested. After numerous interrogations and torture in the prison in Šmartno near Slovenj Gradec, he was released a few weeks later. Because he no longer felt safe in Šoštanj, he went to Ljubljana in mid-September with the help of his father.
In Ljubljana he joined the underground movement VOS, a security and intelligence service, where he carried out reporting duties, and also took part in the cultural life of the occupied city. On New Year's Eve 1941 he met Silva Ponikvar. He processed his love for his country and the love for Silva in a cycle of love songs (Nur ein Blume ...), which he sent to prison for his lover and her never-born child during their imprisonment under the Italian occupation. Kajuh was convinced that love only has meaning in a liberated and "newly renovated" country. During this time he created his best poetry. Even then, these poems were copied and distributed in Ljubljana, the other occupied territories and in the partisan units.
Under the pseudonym Kajuhov Tonc he began to write in the magazine Naša žena at the end of 1942. Life in Ljubljana became too dangerous for Kajuh; therefore he joined the partisans in the Lower Carniola in August 1943. He was head of the XIV cultural group, which prepared numerous events in the liberated area of the Lower Carniola. As a communist he believed in the victory over the occupiers and in justice, not least because he was one of the few poets who gave his life for these ideals.
During his partisan days he wrote only two or three songs, including the song of the fourteenth division. He published his first collection of poems on November 18, 1943 in an old hut in Inner Ogenci. This collection contained 28 poems and was published in 38 copies. His fellow campaigner, the dancer Marta Paulin-Brina, typed the poems for him. In the last months of his life he had a particularly deep relationship with Paulin-Brina.
At the beginning of January 1944, the XIV. Division marched from Bela Krajina (Weißland) via Croatia to Styria to recruit new territories, sympathizers and fighters. An unusually harsh winter and a strong enemy made the march of the XIV. Division the greatest epoch of the Slovenian people's liberation struggle. After long days of fighting and breakthroughs in the harsh winter, the members of the cultural department of the XIV Division came exhausted to the Žlebnik farm in Zavodnje, less than three hours away from Kajuh's birthplace Šoštanj. The house was attacked by a large group of German soldiers and gendarmes. Karel Destovnik also fell under fire from the gendarmerie of the Slovene nationality Franc Černe. In July 1953 he was declared a national hero.
Honors
Karel Destovnik was posthumously awarded the Order of the National Hero in 1953 .
Designations
The primary school in Šoštanj, in the settlement of Štepanje and the 1st grammar school in Celje are named after Karel Destovnik, and in the Belgrade settlement of Kotež there is a Kahjuh street named after his partisan name.
Selected Works
- Slovenska pesem
- V Srbijo ... v Šlezijo
- Pesem talcev
- Kje si, mati
- Partizanovo slovo
- Jesenska
- Pesem XIV. Divizije
- Žalostna
- Samo en cvet
- Naša pesem
- Ne klonimo tovariši
- Borec dekletu
- Dekle v zaporu
- Materi padlega partizana
- Zaplenjeno pismo s fronte
literature
- Cesar, Emil (1979). Karel Destovnik Kajuh. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga. COBISS 561182.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Destovnik, Karel |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Destovnik, Kajuh |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Slovenian poet, translator and national hero |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 13, 1922 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Šoštanj |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 22, 1944 |
| Place of death | Šentvid near Zavodnje |