Early studies of the arms and armour collection in the National Museum of Slovenia

Abstract

The study of historical arms and armour has no firmly established tradition in Slovenian scholarship. This may be attributed to various factors – on the one hand, the widely entrenched notions of Slovenia’s past reduced to a mythologised nation of peace-loving country folk, and on the other hand, the lack of representative arms and armour collections belonging to noble elites, such as may be found in the neighbouring political centres. A rather unreflective approach to military historical heritage could be observed during the formative period of the Carniolan Provincial Museum in Ljubljana, the precursor to the later National Museum, where this particular field remained largely uncharted until the end of World War II. Ljubljana’s museum experts ultimately recognised the true value of their arms and armour collection only towards the end of the 1950s, to a considerable extent or even mainly thanks to the interest of outside observers and foreign connoisseurs like the Viennese curator Dr Bruno Thomas. Within the National Museum, this shift finally stimulated the creation of a curatorial post devoted to arms and armour. Its tasks were entrusted to Ferdinand Tancik, Slovenia’s first specialist in the military heritage of the premodern era and, despite his brief career, a surprisingly influential local pioneer in arms and armour studies.