Slovenians and Imperial Censorship from Joseph II to the First World War

25 May–25 November 2023

Censorship is an inexhaustible and eternally relevant topic. To this we could add that censorship always appears paired with dominion. It is the governing authorities that have the power to silence and sanction those who think and write differently, and real censorship is only that which can have a serious effect on an individual or his or her work. Forms of censorship change significantly over time; its laws are different in the era of manuscripts, in the epoch of the printed book and especially in the digital age. Slovenians became well acquainted with censorship within the framework of the Habsburg Monarchy: more than three centuries passed from the publication of the first Slovenian books to the end of the First World War, and the landscape of the printed word in the Slovenian lands was dominated by imperial censorship in one form or another throughout this time.

In the history of encounters between Slovenians and censorship, the period between the reign of Joseph II and the First World War, which brought about the end of the monarchy, was one of the most interesting and dynamic eras. During this period, which is almost symmetrically divided into two parts by the 1848 revolution, Slovenian secular literature was formed from the anthology Pisanice onwards, the first newspapers in Slovenian emerged, the national movement was established and strengthened, and international frictions intensified with the growing political differentiation. Imperial censorship had a significant role in the shaping of all of these processes: until 1848, in the form of the dominant pre-censorship, which was instrumentalised by the police-censorship network of the notorious Vormärz duo Metternich-Sedlnitzky; after the March Revolution, which for a brief but unforgettable moment widely opened the door to freedom of thought and expression, the dominant form was post-censorship, which mercilessly reined in problematic authors with the help of the judicial apparatus.

If one were to select representative (visual) images of clashes with censorship in the Slovenian lands, one of the first choices for the Vormärz period would be the first page of Zdravljica from the censored manuscript Poezije by France Prešeren, a poet who openly entered the fray with both local and Viennese censors. Repressive censorship in the second half of the century, however, is perhaps best illustrated by the photograph of Miroslav Vilhar, a writer and editor who spent six weeks in the Žabjak prison in Ljubljana in 1864, where he staged an unforgettable photo shoot behind bars. These may be the two emblematic figures of this long period, but there are at least four watershed figures, and it is by no means a coincidence that they are the leading Slovenian writers: Anton Tomaž Linhart, France Prešeren, Fran Levstik, and Ivan Cankar. These four great stories, which could frame the narrative on censorship during this period, are rounded off by a colourful collection of smaller but not necessarily less important stories: there is practically no important Slovenian literary figure in the nineteenth century who did not collide with censorship in one way or another.

The exhibition Slovenians and Imperial Censorship from Joseph II to the First World War with the accompanying catalogue was created within the framework of the research project Slovenian Writers and Imperial Censorship in the Long Nineteenth Century (J6-2583). It was carefully designed to present a complex set of the treated problems in an accessible, non-technical way while at the same time clearly demonstrating what an important, even decisive, role censorship had in the long nineteenth century in shaping the image of Slovenian literature and culture. If the exhibition and the catalogue are able convey this message, their purpose has been achieved.

This exhibition was produced as part of the project Slovenian Writers and Imperial Censorship in the Long Nineteenth Century (J6-2583), which was financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency, and as part of the annual programme of the National and University Library, financed by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia

Slovenians and Imperial Censorship from Joseph II to the First World War: Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by an excellent catalogue containing 27 contributions on the history of encounters between Slovenians and censorship in the period between the reign of Joseph II and the First World War. The catalogue is accompanied by a special supplement - an imagined edition of Slavinja, the newspaper that should never have been published.

The catalogue can be purchased in the NUK shop or ordered online.