Sodelujoči

On the Trail of Returns. For a Study of Veterans in the Long Post-War Period in Italy (1945–1960): Potentiality and Challenges

The paper aims to present a methodological reflection of prosopographic interest around a specific case study: Italian veterans of the Second World War in the post-war period. The most important source was a group of diaries and memoirs (differing in terms of writing style and timing), which reconstruct the biographies of around fifty Italian veterans who, following military defeats, experienced war imprisonment. These biographies were compared with other types of sources, from printed sources to documents from institutional and political party archives.

The group of veterans analyzed came from different prison camps, namely, those held by British or Russian forces. The following study intertwines the twenty-year Fascist period, the years of conflict and imprisonment, and above all the years following the end of the conflict, particularly the first decade of the Italian Republic.

The sources used were interrogated through the following questions: Who were these veterans? What was their geographical origin, social background and level of education? What was their relationship with Italian Fascism and the violence of war? These questions aim to reconstruct the first part of veterans’ biographies. At this point, the next questions were: what was the return like for these former prisoners? How did they adapt to their new life of peace and how did they respond to the birth of the Republic? To what extent did their geographical origin, social class, and level of education influence the different political orientations adopted during the post-Second World War reconstruction years? What “paths” did their memories follow over time? And what measures were adopted and what memory policies were developed by the Italian Republic in subsequent years around the veterans?

The study of Italian veterans brings with it both potentialities and challenges. The analysis of this collective biography highlights several long-period historiographical issues. Furthermore, the comparative study of different profiles allows to reconstruct a broad and complex picture of the group as well as to identify common characteristics, general lines and internal connection networks. The methodological potential is closely intertwined with the challenges, as the extreme variety of subjects makes immediate attempts at synthesis and universalization difficult. The use and cross-referencing of different types of sources – from the ”ego documents” to the classic administrative and statistical sources – appears to be the most fruitful way for a prosopographic investigation, combining essential quantitative analysis with thoughtful qualitative analysis.

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Francesca Luigia Massaro is a PhD student in Historical Studies at the University of Milan, Department of Historical Studies “Federico Chabod”. The title of her research project is: From captivity to return: Italian veterans between history, representations and memory (1945–1960), Supervisor: Prof. Claudia Baldoli, Co-Supervisor: Prof. Irene Piazzoni. Her research interests focus on the political, social and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention to the periods of the First World War, the twenty years of Fascism, the Second World War and the second Italian post-war period.

E-mail: francesca.massaro@unimi.it

Visualizing Data Uncertainty in the PZSBL

Historical databases, by their very nature, contain information that is incomplete, ambiguous, imprecise, or internally inconsistent. The Database of the Slovenian Biographical Lexicon (PZSBL) discussed here brings together data on individuals, including biographical events such as births and deaths, name variants, occupations and activities, related persons, and the sources from which this information was obtained. A more in-depth consideration of uncertainty in such a database not only contributes to a better understanding of historical events, but can also facilitate the generation of new knowledge and data through auxiliary tools such as visualisations.

Previous research on uncertainty in cultural-historical collections (Windhager et al., 2019) has shown that uncertainty can occur across various data dimensions, including temporal, relational, spatial, and provenance dimensions. Building on this approach, we propose a two-level model for defining uncertainty in the PZSBL database: provenance uncertainty and data uncertainty.

Provenance uncertainty describes uncertainty associated with the characteristics of data sources. We consider whether a source is primary or secondary, as well as its type, such as a manuscript, interview, questionnaire, lexicon, etc. We also record uncertainty at the level of the individual source, focusing on the quality of the data obtained from that source and assessed to date. This makes it possible to adjust uncertainty estimates interactively.

Data uncertainty describes uncertainty arising from the characteristics of the data themselves. At the level of an individual person, it takes into account factors such as the completeness of the record, the amount of available biographical information, missing attributes, and similarities or ambiguities between different entries. This enables us to identify individuals who are more difficult to identify with confidence due to the limited amount of information available about them. It also allows us to define uncertainty arising from a high degree of similarity between the data associated with two or more individuals, where it cannot be established with certainty whether the records refer to the same person or to several different people.

We also consider data uncertainty at the level of individual attributes. In the case of names, we distinguish less certain forms of representation, such as abbreviations and pseudonyms. For locations, uncertainty may arise from ambiguous historical place names or from the specification of a broader region rather than a precise location. Dates may be represented only by a year, a time span, or an approximate temporal designation. Attributes such as occupation or activity may likewise be less certain due to non-standardised or inconsistent definitions. A particular case of data uncertainty arises when multiple sources provide conflicting information. Its assessment therefore depends on the provenance certainty of the sources, the number of sources, and the degree of agreement between them, while also accounting for the possibility that inaccurate information may be repeated across the majority of identified sources.

The two dimensions are complementary: provenance uncertainty describes the reliability of individual sources, while data uncertainty describes how comprehensively and unambiguously an individual is represented in the database. Together, they provide a basis for the structured assessment of uncertainty at the level of individual persons and for the further development of computational and visualisation methods for quantifying and representing uncertainty.

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Ahac Meden is a researcher at the Institute of Cultural History (IKZ) at ZRC SAZU, the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. He serves as subject editor for popular culture, media arts, and new media, as well as technical editor of the online edition of The New Slovenian Biographical Lexicon. He graduated in Cultural Studies from the University of Ljubljana in 2007 and obtained a master’s degree in Social Communication from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona in 2009. His doctoral research in anthropology focuses on the phenomenology of data in the context of digital humanities and open science.

E-mail: ahac.meden@zrc-sazu.si

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Uroš Šmajdek is a doctoral student, early-stage researcher, and teaching assistant at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana. He received his bachelor’s degree in Computer and Information Science in 2020 and his master’s degree in 2023, with a thesis on interactive physically based rendering. His current research focuses primarily on visualisation, digital humanities, and language technologies, while his broader interests include history, computer graphics, and game technology.

E-mail: uros.smajdek@fri.uni-lj.si

Digital Analysis of the 1897 Imperial Census: Educational Patterns in the Governorates of Elisavetpol and Baku

The Russian Imperial Census of 1897 remains one of the most comprehensive demographic resources for the study of the South Caucasus in the late nineteenth century. The census data of the Elisavetpol and Baku governorates, despite their considerable scholarly potential, have seldom been the subject of systematic digital analysis, and the educational dimensions of this source have received particularly limited attention. The present paper is a prosopographic and quantitative study of literacy and educational data recorded in the 1897 census in the two governorates under consideration. The study is based on the original published volumes stored in the Presidential Library of Russia.

The census recorded a variety of educationally relevant variables, including literacy in different languages, the language of instruction and attendance at confessional and secular schools. The paper reconstructs collective educational profiles of the population by ethnic, religious, gender and administrative categories by digitizing and structuring this data. The resulting data set permits a comparative analysis of literacy rates between the urban and rural population, as well as between the two governorates as different administrative and socio-economic units.

The paper raises several important questions: What was the educational level of the different communities of the Baku and Elisavetpol governorates? What can we learn about social stratification, access to imperial institutions and the role of confessional networks in education from patterns of literacy and schooling? And how does the 1897 census, when approached through the digital prosopographical methods, become a tool for reconstructing collective social identities, not just a collection of individual statistics?

Methodologically, the paper draws on the framework of digital prosopography, conceptualising census entries not as individual data points but as structured biographical traces which, when aggregated, trace out the contours of social groups. Through the use of relational data modelling and visualisation techniques, the analysis maps educational geographies across the two governorates, revealing patterns that have been largely overlooked by traditional narrative historiographies. The paper also reflects on the methodological challenges inherent in working with imperial census data: questions of categorisation, the politics of enumeration, linguistic complexity and the limitations of self-reported data. In so doing, it engages with broader discussions in the field of digital prosopography on source criticism and the epistemological stakes of quantitative approaches to historical populations.

The study situates the 1897 census in the broader history of education in the South Caucasus and provides a model for the application of digitized imperial statistical sources for prosopographical research of regions that are still underrepresented in digital humanities scholarship.

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Aykhan Mehdizade is a researcher at the Institute of History and Ethnology of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS). His research interests are centred on the social and educational history of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Azerbaijan, with a focus on imperial census sources and digital methods in historical demography.

E-mail: ayxan.mehdizade@gmail.com

The Collector’s Canon: Ivan Ulčnik and Amateur Prosopography in Zagreb (1934–1955)

Ivan Ulčnik (1880–1963) was not a professional historian, but a municipal tax official in the municipality of Zagreb, the founder and long-serving president of the Society of Zagreb Citizens and a tireless collector. His archive, comprising seventeen boxes of newspaper clippings, photographs, postcards, and notes, has been described as a “small encyclopedia of Zagreb”. Between 1934 and 1955, he published approximately seventy biographical and thematic articles in the journal Zagreb (Review of the Society of Zagreb Citizens), devoted to mayors, parliamentary representatives, entrepreneurs, artists, noble families.

This paper examines Ulčnik’s contributions as a form of amateur prosopography and as a practice of shaping Zagreb’s urban collective memory. The corpus is analysed on two levels: first, through the individuals and themes that Ulčnik considered worthy of remembrance, and second, through the ways in which he represented them. The individuals are classified according to the social and professional category, geographical origin, gender, period of activity, and type of entry. The articles themselves are analysed with regard to Ulčnik’s criteria of selection, narrative strategies, and use of sources. The paper thus seeks to demonstrate how Ulčnik’s choices contributed to the formation of a Zagreb-based collector’s canon and to explore how he understood and evaluated the urban and national elites of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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Veronika Novoselac is Teaching Assistant at the Department of History of the Catholic University of Croatia in Zagreb. She graduated in History at the Catholic University of Croatia and in Communication Studies. She is currently enrolled in the postgraduate (doctoral) program in History.

E-mail: veronika.novoselac@unicath.hr

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Ines Sabotič is Full Professor at the University Department of History – Catholic University of Croatia. She graduated, obtained her master’s and PhD at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She has been employed since 2012 at the University, where she served as Vice-rector for Academic Affairs, Head of the Department of History, Head of the Doctoral Programme in History and has taken on other responsibilities.

E-mail: ines.sabotic@unicath.hr

Mapping the Networks of the Counts of Cilli: A Prosopographical Approach

The Free Lords of Sanneck (Žovneški), who were elevated to counts in 1341 and acquired the title of princes in 1436, rose meteorically within just one hundred years to become one of the leading, most influential, and elite noble dynasties of the late Middle Ages in Central Europe and, to some extent, beyond. Through diplomacy and an exceptionally well-conceived marriage policy, they established a powerful and carefully structured social network that extended across Europe, from the courts of the Iberian Peninsula in the west to Poland, Lithuania, and Prussia in the north, from Dubrovnik in the south to the Ottoman court in the east. The family achieved great success in 1405 with the marriage of Barbara of Celje to Sigismund of Luxembourg, who, at the height of his political career, was King of Hungary, King of Germany, King of Bohemia, and later Holy Roman Emperor. However, this was not their only triumph. Barbara and Sigismund’s daughter, Elizabeth, married Albert II of Habsburg, King of Hungary, Bohemia, and Germany, thus becoming Queen of Hungary, Bohemia, and Germany herself. In the 15th century, the Celje family was also linked by marriage to the Polish Jagiellonian rulers, the Hungarian palatines, the leading Croatian noble dynasty of the Frankopans, the Bavarian Dukes of Wittelsbach, the Silesian Princes of Teschen-Glogau, the Saxon House of Wettin, the Serbian despots of the Branković family, the Hungarian barons of the Hunyadi family, and even the Ottoman court, as the sister-in-law of the last Count of Celje was the sultan’s wife. Despite their remarkable rise and influence on contemporary European politics, their artistic heritage has never been systematically studied, nor has the potential of prosopographical research been fully exploited for the interpretation and understanding of their artistic commissions. This paper therefore presents an approach to investigating the social network of the Counts of Celje and assessing its influence on their decisions regarding artistic patronage and the conception of their commissions.

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Mija Oter Gorenčič is Head of the France Stele Institute of Art History at ZRC SAZU and Chair of the ZRC SAZU Scientific Council. Her research focuses on medieval art, particularly medieval iconography, monastic art and artistic patronage by medieval noble families. She is also Associate Professor at the Department of Art History, University of Maribor. She has led five national research projects and one bilateral Slovenia–Austria project. Among several awards and scholarships, she received the Joint Excellence in Science and Humanities scholarship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She is currently leading the research project Artistic Heritage of the Counts of Celje.

E-mail: mija.oter@zrc-sazu.si

Scipio’s Cronies: A Prosopographical Attempt at (Re-)Constructing the Numantine Connection

The Jugurthine War (112–105 BC) presented Rome with a surprisingly persistent military and political problem. What might have been expected to constitute a relatively short campaign against the Numidian king instead lasted six years, saw a succession of Roman commanders, and became closely associated in the Roman historical tradition with corruption, aristocratic competition, and the growing political tensions of the late Republic. The obvious question is: how did Jugurtha do it? How did he manage to hold out against Rome for so long? This paper approaches the problem from a somewhat different direction; through the personal connections he may have established during his earlier service with the Roman army in Spain.

Before becoming Rome’s enemy, Jugurtha had fought alongside Roman troops at the siege of Numantia in 134–133 BC, commanding a contingent of Numidian cavalry in the army of Scipio Aemilianus. The Numantine campaign was itself an important point of convergence for a generation of Romans who would subsequently and – given their lineage – inevitably play prominent roles in the political and military history of the Republic. Among those connected with the Celtiberian and Numantine wars were Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Marius, members of the Metelli, and Scipio Aemilianus and his wider political circle. Jugurtha’s participation therefore placed the future Numidian king within a particularly significant Roman military and aristocratic environment. But these prominent names are only the most visible part of a much larger group of men whose careers and connections are considerably more difficult to trace.

Taking this shared Spanish experience as its starting point, the paper offers a prosopographic schizzo of the individuals and networks (possibly) surrounding the Numantine and Jugurthine wars. It asks whether Jugurtha’s later dealings with Roman commanders, senators, envoys, and political intermediaries can be better understood by reconstructing connections originating during the Spanish campaigns. Particular attention is paid to the less conspicuous figures who appear at the margins of our sources, but who may have provided precisely the sort of personal connections through which Jugurtha could navigate Roman political and military circles.

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Gregor Pobežin is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Cultural History, ZRC SAZU, which he has headed since 2017, and at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Primorska. His principal research interests include Greek and Roman historiography, particularly Sallust, ancient history, classical philology, narratology and the use of sources by ancient historians. His research also extends to the reception of classical culture, Neo-Latin historiography and literature, epigraphy, and the intellectual and cultural history of the northern Adriatic and Slovenian historical space. He is the author and co-author of several monographs and numerous scholarly articles, as well as translations and critical editions of Greek and Latin texts.

Since 2023 he has headed the ZRC SAZU research programme (New) Cultural History of Intellectual Heritage: The Slovenian Historical Space in a European Context (P6-0440). At the University of Primorska he coordinates the humanities component of AID HCH – Advancement in the Development of Humanities and Cultural Heritage through Artificial Intelligence (J7-60128). He is also the initiator and organiser of Divina – Days of Andreas Divus of Justinopolis, an annual international symposium devoted to Neo-Latin culture and the classical tradition.

E-mail: gregor.pobezin@zrc-sazu.si

Friends or Foes? Spain and the American Revolution

In recent years, the key role of Spain in the American Revolution, and more specifically the crucial support the Spanish Empire provided throughout the events, starting as early as 1775, has received increasing attention in academia and society. In both Spain and the United States, this interest has led to a series of publications, conferences, lectures, and exhibitions that have brought these topics to a broader audience. This effort has been necessary to correct the long-standing silencing of the various ways Spain supported the Patriots and to explain its motives for doing so.

The reasons for the creation of a narrative that, for much of the time since the American Revolution, has focused solely on France’s support are obvious: a considerable part of Spain’s crucial aid was sent through secret channels, so it received less public awareness and credit; the post-war rivalry between Spain and the United States contributed significantly to an intentional “downplaying” of Spain’s role during the Revolution; and from the beginning, the very idea of receiving support from the Spanish Empire, with its strongly Catholic orientation, was not well received by all patriots. A combination of persisting historical prejudices, negative stereotypes, and biases against Spain’s colonial empire, along with general resentments against Catholicism, were important factors in this context.

This lecture uses the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence as an ideal platform to address this historical inaccuracy and shed light on Spain’s role in the American Revolution from a global perspective (1775-1883). It does so by using a prosopographical approach, given that Spanish involvement in the War was not simply a matter of state policy but rather a network of individuals – ministers, diplomats, military officers, merchants, financiers, governors, administrators, translators, intermediaries, and intellectuals – who connected Spain with the Viceroyalty of New Spain, particularly Cuba and Louisiana, with France and the emerging United States.

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Sandra Rebok is a historian and cultural scientist specializing in 18th- and 19th-century intellectual networks and transnational cooperation, imperial expansion and exploration voyages, with a particular focus on the connection between the Spanish Empire and the U.S. nation-building process. She has spent 16 years at the Spanish National Research Council, worked for the German Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, and served as a 3-year Marie Curie Fellow at the Huntington Library, awarded by the European Commission. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for US-Mexican Studies within the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, and a Research Associate in the History Department at the University of San Diego. Dr. Rebok has over twenty years of scholarship on Alexander von Humboldt, Thomas Jefferson, and other leading minds of the Enlightenment. Through her two current book projects, which analyze Jefferson’s strategic pursuits in the Spanish and Mexican Southwest and the role of the Viceroyalty of New Spain in the American Revolution, she continues her research in global and interconnected history.

E-mail: sarebok@gmx.net

“Acerrimus belli concitator”: A Prosopographical Study of Antonius Primus’ Military Network in 69 AD

The paper aims to conduct a prosopographical study of a group of military and political actors who emerged during the events of 69 AD, the time of the so-called Year of the Four Emperors. Through a prosopographical analysis of the political and military figures associated with Marcus Antonius Primus, the legionary legate of the Seventh Galbian legion, the paper examines the formation, composition and development of his military network. Antonius Primus, whom Tacitus famously characterized as the most ardent instigator of war (acerrimus belli concitator), played a decisive role in securing the Flavian victory during the civil wars of 69 AD. The origins of Antonius Primus’ network may be traced to the military council held at Poetovio in August 69 AD, where support for Vespasian’s cause was consolidated among the Danubian legions. The paper follows the subsequent evolution of his military network throughout the Flavian offensive in Italy, led by military forces from the Danubian and Balkan provinces, culminating in Primus’ capture of Rome and the death of Vitellius in December 69 AD. Particular attention is devoted to the commanders and military officers who formed Primus’ circle of associates and accompanied him on the march towards Rome. By reconstructing their careers, roles in the campaign, and connections with Primus, the study traces the development of the military network that emerged around him during the Flavian campaign. By reconstructing Primus’ military network, the paper aims to explore how personal and military relationships facilitated the concentration of military authority in the hands of Antonius Primus – a senator whose career had previously been marked by political setbacks and who was later able to emerge as the leading military commander of the Flavian war effort in Italy. Through a prosopographical examination of the key military actors involved in the campaign and their connections with Primus, the study seeks to provide a clearer understanding of the dynamics that shaped the Flavian offensive, its course, its outcome, and its contribution to Vespasian’s accession to power. More broadly, it aims to contribute to a nuanced understanding of military leadership, personal networks, and the exercise of power during one of the most turbulent periods of Roman imperial history.

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Rok Ribič is an MA student of History and Classical Philology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. His research focuses on the political and military history of the early Roman imperial period, with particular emphasis on the provinces of Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Noricum. He is currently completing two master’s theses: the first examines the role of military units from the wider Illyrian region during the civil wars of 68–70 AD, while the second employs a prosopographical approach to investigate political and military networks in 68–69 AD. His broader research interests include Roman imperial prosopography, and ancient historiography, particularly the works of Tacitus.

E-mail: rok.ribic050@gmail.com

Bridging Prosopographical Research Through Pragmatic Digital Integration – The Prosopographical Research Platform Austria (PFP)

The Prosopographical Research Platform Austria (PFP) offers a novel, non-invasive approach to integrating heterogeneous prosopographical datasets without requiring projects to abandon their existing tools or data models. PFP addresses a core challenge in digital prosopography: how to connect dispersed, often incompatible datasets while preserving their autonomy, provenance, and scholarly value. Rather than imposing a monolithic system, PFP embraces a pragmatic, modular architecture that harmonizes data through open standards – particularly CIDOC CRM, RDF, and SHACL – while leaving source datasets untouched in their original formats.

At its heart, PFP functions as a knowledge graph that aggregates and links entities across projects. Each dataset is stored in a versioned, named graph, ensuring traceability and non-destructive updates. A provenance layer records the origin of every statement, while a consolidation layer resolves the problem of duplicate entities (e.g., the same historical person described in multiple datasets under different identifiers). Using “owl:sameAs” relations and shared authority files (such as GND identifiers), PFP generates unified UUIDs for entities, allowing the platform to expose a single, aggregated view of an entity while retaining links to the original records. For example, the writer Arthur Schnitzler appears in both the Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon (ÖBL) and Personen der Moderne (PMB) datasets; PFP recognizes these as the same individual and merges their data into a single, queryable entity.

The platform’s technical design reflects lessons learned from prior digital humanities projects (most notably InTaVia: https://intavia.eu): (1) reuse established tools (e.g., GitLab for versioning, Prefect for ETL workflows), (2) validate rigorously (via SHACL shapes to enforce data consistency), and (3) minimize disruption to running systems. The only custom component, RDFProxy, bridges the gap between the SPARQL endpoint and user-friendly interfaces by mapping query results to structured, nested data models. This modular design allows for independent component replacement while supporting key standards: RDF for the database backend and JSON APIs for the frontend.

PFP is still heavily under development, but nonetheless already integrates data from 11 datasets created at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW). The data is accessible via GIT (https://gitlab.oeaw.ac.at/acdh-ch/pfp/pfp-source-data), SPARQL (https://qlever-ui.acdh-dev.oeaw.ac.at/pfp), and a beta version of the API (https://pfp-api.acdh-dev.oeaw.ac.at/docs). The PFP knowledge graph currently contains well over 140,000 person proxies, about 12,000 institution proxies, and nearly 60,000 place proxies.

The presentation will give a brief overview of the technical setup and focus on application in humanities research and future development.

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Matthias Schlögl is a lead research software engineer at the ACDH. He has more than 10 years of experience in using and developing digital tools for social sciences and humanities research. He received a diploma in International Development from the University of Vienna and worked at various national and international institutions, including the University of Bath and the Berlin Social Science Center, before joining the ACDH in 2015. At the ACDH he is currently coordinating the Prosopography and Networks team within the research unit DH Research & Infrastructure.

E-mail: matthias.schloegl@oeaw.ac.at

Edvard Kocbek and the Magazine Esprit: Anatomy of an Encounter

Edvard Kocbek (1904–1981) was a distinguished poet, storyteller, essayist, diarist, translator, and politician. He is well-known for his views on Christian socialism and the active role he played in the Slovenian Liberation Front (Osvobodilna fronta, OF) during the Second World War, as well as in post-war, socialist Yugoslavia. Kocbek was also at the centre of political controversies when, in the late 1930s, he came into conflict with the leading Catholic circles in Slovenia, as well as in the early 1950s, when he fell out of favor with the Yugoslav communists. At the root of these disputes were some of the key issues of his intellectual biography, as well as the fact that in the actions of this left-wing Catholic, one can also discern elements of existentialist poetics, rooted in a philosophy of freedom and responsibility, authentic life and constant rebellion, which shaped the intricate interplay between this intellectual’s engagement with politics, literature, and history. In this regard, Kocbek’s connection with the French intellectual scene, which nevertheless played a formative role in his development, has remained insufficiently explored.

The aim of my presentation is to use a prosopographical approach to examine a kind of collective portrait of the intellectual group surrounding the French magazine Esprit, and, in particular, Edvard Kocbek’s place within it. What influenced the young Slovenian poet to associate himself with this influential publication and to remain loyal to it throughout his life? How does his intellectual biography appear to us in light of this “French connection”, and how was he and his work perceived by his French contemporaries? On what foundations did the enduring relationship between Christian existentialism, personalism, and socialism rest? How did these decades-long contacts and cultural exchanges shape Kocbek’s political fate, as well as his literary and intellectual work?

This paper is based on extensive source material, including Kocbek’s diaries and articles, beginning with his stay in France and the founding of the magazine in 1932, continuing through his first personal contacts with the group in 1937, and then the wartime and post-war correspondence he maintained with Emmanuel Mounier, Jean-Marie Domenach, Albert Béguin, Pierre Emmanuel, Pierre-Aimé Touchard, and others. The materials are preserved as part of Kocbek’s personal papers at the National and University Library in Ljubljana, as well as in the archives of the journal Esprit and those of its principal protagonists at the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (Abbaye d’Ardenne) near Caen, France.

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Veljko Stanić is historian and translator from Belgrade. He studied history at the University of Belgrade and then pursued a Ph.D. thesis on French-Yugoslav cultural relations in the interwar period at Sorbonne University (Paris IV). His fields of interest are cultural and intellectual history of the Balkans in the 19th and 20th century, French-Yugoslav relations, dissident movement in communist Yugoslavia including figures such as Milovan Djilas and Edvard Kocbek, and also women’s intellectual history.

E-mail: veljko.stanic1984@gmail.com