A smouldering fire: the national, political and gender adaptations of volunteer firefighters in interwar Yugoslavia

Abstract

The popularity and importance of Volunteer Fire Departments (VFD) lay not just in their role as rescue associations, but also in their social and potential political roles in the local community. This article looks at how VFDs as institutions of patriotically engaged citizens played an important role in nation- and state-building during the transition from the Habsburg Empire to the new state of South Slavs. The new state faced difficulties in how to organize and unify the regulations for firefighters. The year 1933 proved very important, as this was the year when King Alexander issued a National Firefighting Law, which united all VFDs in the state into a common Firefighting Association of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Firefighting Association of Drava Governorate lost some of its competences to the Royal Ministry, although the new law helped to unify the departments and make the compulsory language of command Slovenian. As well, the new Law allowed all citizens, male and female, to enter the VFD. Interwar VFDs prevailed as a male domain although women, especially from the medical services (samaritanke), were able to enter the departments.