Rudolf Maister

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Rudolf Maister (also: Rudolf Majster ; pseudonym: Vojanov ; born March 29, 1874 in Stein in Oberkrain , Austria-Hungary ; † July 26, 1934 in Unec , Kingdom of Yugoslavia , today the municipality of Cerknica , Slovenia ) was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army or of the SHS state and Slovenian poet.

Rudolf Maister

Military career

Rudolf Maister came from a German-speaking family, his father was a tax officer in Pettau / Ptuj . As a young adult he turned to Slovenian nationalism and from then on wrote his name Majster . He made an officer career in the Austro-Hungarian army . During the First World War he was in command of the Landsturm regiment in Marburg an der Drau ( Styria , now Slovenia). After the city council of Marburg had declared the city to belong to German Austria on October 30, 1918, towards the end of the First World War , Major Rudolf Maister took over the command of the city of Marburg on November 1, 1918. For this he was raised to general by the Slovenian National Council in Ljubljana . On November 3, the city council of Marburg set up a defense of German Styrians to defend the city and Lower Styria , which Maister's troops forced to surrender on November 23. With the help of 4,000 local Slovenian volunteers, he marched to the later Yugoslav-Austrian (now Slovenian-Austrian) border, occupied Marenberg , Spielfeld , Mureck and Bad Radkersburg at the end of November and thus secured Lower Styria for the newly founded Kingdom of the Serbs and Croats and Slovenes (SHS, later Yugoslavia). In addition, Slovenian units occupied large parts of the partly Slovenian-speaking Lower Carinthia, which they had to vacate again due to the resistance of the population (see Carinthian defensive battle ).

On January 27, 1919, General Maister received a US delegation under Lieutenant Colonel Sherman Miles in occupied Marburg , with whom he negotiated the future Yugoslav northern border. On the same day, Maister had a demonstration of more than 10,000 German Lower Styrians on the main square in Marburg forcibly broken up before the arrival of the US military delegation ( Marburg Blood Sunday ), with 13 demonstrators shot and 60 wounded. While according to German information the soldiers opened fire without warning, according to the Slovenian perspective, the first shots were fired by Germans. The significance of the negotiations and the Marburg Blood Sunday for the later decision of the Entente to assign a large part of the territories occupied by Rudolf Maister to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes without a referendum is not clearly clarified .

Master's grave

On May 28, 1919, Rudolf Maister again marched into Carinthia , this time together with Serbian units, and occupied Klagenfurt on June 6 , which he had to vacate again on September 18, 1919 at the request of the Allied Supreme Council in Paris . For the embattled Southern Carinthia, the Treaty of Saint Germain of September 10, 1919, much to General Maister's bitterness, provided for a referendum . Southern Carinthia ("Zone A") was initially occupied by SHS troops. The referendum on October 10, 1920 went in favor of Austria . After that, international diplomatic protests were required in order to achieve the withdrawal of all SHS troops from Austria within its newly established (and still valid) borders by November 22, 1920.

From 1921 to 1923 General Maister was chairman of the Yugoslav commission for regulating the border with Italy . The new SHS state was in an advantageous position vis-à-vis Austria, as it consisted to a considerable extent of Serbia, which was allied with the Entente . Italy, which in twelve battles of Isonzo a . a. Had fought against the Slovenes and Croats, on the other hand, insisted on generous spoils of war and therefore annexed not only all of Istria , the northernmost part of which today belongs to Slovenia, but also the Karst and the Slovenian Isonzo Valley with a wide strip of Slovenian populated areas. In the negotiations with Italy, therefore, there was next to nothing to gain for Maister. In 1923 he was retired against his will as a Brigadier General and was awarded the Order of the White Eagle with Sword III. Level excellent.

Honors from the end of the 20th century

In Slovenia, Maister is counted among the fathers of the state to this day, because according to the prevailing view, today's Slovenian northern border and thus the fact that Lower Styria and the Carinthian Mießen Valley belong to Slovenia are due to him. In Ljubljana there is an equestrian statue on a large square in the historic city center , the Trg Generala Maistra square is named after him. In Marburg / Maribor a street and a square are named after him and a bronze statue was set up next to the grammar school. A school center bears his name in his hometown Kamnik (Šolski Center Rudolfa Maistra) .

Works

Poems

  • Poezije (1904)
  • Kitica mojih (1929)

Complete edition

literature

  • Nada Gspan, Anton Adalbert Klein:  Maister Rudolf. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 6, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1975, ISBN 3-7001-0128-7 , p. 22 f. (Direct links on p. 22 , p. 23 ).
  • Bruno Hartman: Rudolf Maister . Partizanska Knjiga, Ljubljana 1989. 215 pp. (Slovenian)
  • Aleš Arih: Spomenik Maistru - velikanu naše zgodovine in prelomni čas 1990 (Monument to Maister - the giant of our history and the time of upheaval 1990), Slovenska vojska, št. 15 (Organ of the Slovenian Army, No. 15), 2000 (Slovenian)
  • Nora Urban: We old Austrians , XXIII. Chapter p. 189 ff., ISBN 978-3-99029-352-2 .

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Maister  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erwin Steinböck: The battles for Radkersburg and in the Styrian border area 1919 . Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1983 ISBN 978-3-2150-5165-4 p. 46f.
  2. ↑ Michael John / Oto Luthar: Un-Understanding of Cultures: Multiculturalism in Central Europe in a Historical Perspective . Hermagoras Verlag, Klagenfurt 1997 ISBN 978-3-85013-51-08 p. 23
  3. ↑ a b Information board next to the monument to Maister in Maribor (Slovenian, English, German). Viewed and updated on May 10, 2017 by user: 44Penguins .
  4. ↑ see website of the school - Šolski Center Rudolfa Maistra
personal data
SURNAME Maister, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vojanov
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Yugoslav general and poet
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Stein in Upper Carniola , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1934
Place of death Cerknica