Andrej Einspieler

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Andrej Einspieler (13 November 1813 - 16 January 1888) was a Slovene politician, Roman Catholic priest and publicist, and one of the early leaders of the Slovene national movement in the 19th century. He was known as the "father of the Carinthian Slovenes".

Einspieler was born in the village of Sveče (German: Suetschach) near Bistrica v Rožu in the Duchy of Carinthia. He frequented the lyceum and later the theological seminary in Klagenfurt. He served as a priest throughout the Slovene-inhabited areas of southern Carinthia. During the spring of nations in 1848, he collaborated with the fellow Carinthian Slovene priest and political activist Matija Majar, and became a fervent advocate of the political program of United Slovenia. In 1851, Einspieler founded the Hermagoras Society, the oldest Slovene publishing house, together with Anton Janežič and Anton Martin Slomšek. Due to Einspieler's restless cultural and publicist activity, Klagenfurt emerged as the major center of the Slovene national revival in the 1850s.

With the beginning of the constitutional period in the Austrian Empire in 1860, Einspieler gradually abandoned the ideal of United Slovenia as unachieveble. He wrote numerous articles in the German language, in which he called for a collaboration between Slovene and German speakers in Carinthia. In 1865, he was the initiator of the Maribor Program, in which a group of so-called Old Slovenes (a conservative fraction within the Slovene national movement) proposed the re-establishment of Inner Austria, a largely autonomous and federative political unit within the Austrian Empire into which the traditional provinces of Carinthia, Styria, Carniola, and Austrian Littoral would be merged. He launched the journal Stimmen aus Innerösterreich ("News from Inner Austria"), written mainly in the German language, in order to convince the German-speaking public to accept this idea. The program was however rejected by both Slovene and ethnic German nationalists. At the beginning of the 1870s, Einspieler was marginalized from the mainstream in Slovene politics, although he continued his political actvity. In 1876, he was elected in the Klagenfurt municipal council.

He died in Klagenfurt in 1888.

[edit] Legacy

During all his active life, Einspieler fought for the linguistic and political rights of the Carinthian Slovenes. He became known as "the father of Carinthian Slovenes".

In 1979, the Slovene Christian Cultural Association from Carinthia Einspieler Prize established the Einspieler Award, which is given to individuals who have rendered outstanding services to the cause of co-existence among different peoples or nationalities. The prize has been awarded to, among others, the governor of Bolzano-Bozen Luis Durnwalder, scholar and professor at the Central European University Anton Pelinka, Roman Catholic prelate Egon Kapellari, and Austrian politician Rudolf Kirchschläger.

[edit] Sources