“Erased from the Face of God”

Abstract

The paper looks into how influential the ideology of economic nationalism was in Slovene lands and in what contexts it appeared. This is explored through a case study of an entrepreneur and landowner, Anton Kajfež, and his sons, owners of one of the largest Slovene companies in Kočevje (Gottschee) before World War I and in the interwar period. The company focused primarily on timber trade and became a significant shareholder in many regional companies and banks. Kajfež was a promoter of the local Slovene economy and used his wealth to strengthen it with a series of projects designed to attract Slovene labour, with the goal of overtaking the influence of the Gottscheers, a local group of German origin. The Kajfež family ran up a deficit of several million dinars, so bankruptcy had to be declared in 1928. Because of the close ties the Kajfež company established in the region, the collapse was a major blow to the entire local Slovene economy and politics. The Gottscheers celebrated the company’s demise and its negative impact on Slovenes. The affair is an example of a late interwar national struggle between Slovenes and Germans, much more common in the Austro–Hungarian period.