Regional History (Styria

V prispevku so na podlagi relevantnih virov in literature predstavljeni lastniki falskega zemljiškega gospostva skozi 19. stoletje. Potem ko je bilo obsežno falsko gospostvo v rokah šentpavelskega samostana z jožefinskimi reformami po letu 1782 podržavljeno in je pripadlo Verskemu skladu, je bilo leta 1824 na dražbi prodano zasebniku. Bogati trgovec Ferdinand Martin Liebmann, od leta 1831 baron Rast, naj bi zanj odštel 123.500 goldinarjev. Po opisu s konca 18. stoletja je falski dvorec imel dvanajst stanovanjskih sob, kuhinjo, štiri obokane prostore in žitno kaščo. Tam so mdr. bili še hiša za služabnike, vrtna hiša in steklenjak. Glavna stavba je bila krita deloma z opeko in deloma s skodlami. V njeni bližnji okolici sta bili opekarna in pristava (majerija), medtem ko je bila večja klet z uporabnimi stanovanjskimi prostori nad njo na levem dravskem bregu v Selnici. Baron Rast je bil falski lastnik do leta 1860, ko je našel primernega kupca v Kunu Avgustu Petru vitezu (od 1863 baronu) Kettenburgu. V zgodnjem obdobju njegovega lastništva se je na ozemlju falskega gospostva od Maribora do Celovca gradila Koroška železnica. Kettenburg je za posek dela falskega gozda v občinah Ruta in Rdeči Breg ter za neke gozdarske in druge hiše na tem odseku železniške proge prejel odškodnino v višini 11.000 goldinarjev. Leta 1867 je baron Kettenburg na dražbi kupil papirnico v Rušah, šest let pozneje pa še nekdanjo Vivatovo steklarno Benediktov dol na Smolniku. Leta 1875 je Falo skupaj s steklarno na Smolniku prodal grofovskima zakoncema Giovanniju in Karolini Zabeo. V rokah rodbine Zabeo je Fala ostala vse do leta 1932, ko je umrl njun najstarejši sin Alfons, oziroma do leta 1936, ko je njegova mlajša hči Francesca svoj delež prodala sestri Marii Karolini, od leta 1927 poročeni s Pavlom Glančnikom iz Maribora.

Priest Adolf Hytrek and the Legend of the Grail Castle
on Boč

In 1914, the Austrian writer Hans von Thal published a feuilleton in the Reichspost newspaper, describing his meeting with Adolf Hytrek (1853–1899), an educated priest from
Studenice Monastery. During their conversation, it soon became clear that the priest had
been intensively studying the medieval poem Parzival and its links to the historically wellknown places in Southern Styria. The first part of this paper summarizes the story as told
by Thal in his feuilleton. In the second part, the paper will concentrate on the dynamic
life-story of Adolf Hytrek, who has, before coming to Studenice in 1885, gathered rich
experience as a field archaeologist in North Africa, Rome, Pompeii, and Sirmium. The
third part will serve as a brief overview of the paragraphs in Wolfram’s epic poem Parzival,
which are explicitly related to the region of Slovenian Styria. In the fourth section of this
paper, we shall focus in further detail on the theories, which Thal ascribes to Hytrek in
his romantic feuilleton. Hytrek’s main hypothesis turns out to be that the legendary Grail
Castle, Wolfram’s Munsalvaesche, lies on the top of mountain Boč. The final part discusses
the claims on the Grail legends, which Hytrek included in his monograph on the Studenice
Monastery. Through analysis of Hytrek’s theories it will become clear that the hypothesis
of the Grail Castle on Boč is in fact not his own. Instead, he cites a certain “Professor
Schmidt from Ljubljana” as his primary source. Schmidt and Hytrek were thus the key
personalities in establishing and spreading the Grail legends in Southern Styria. With the
indirect help of Thal’s feuilleton, their theories triggered a wave of further interpretations.

The article, by way of a complete transcription and commentary of the manuscript "Brevis Descriptio inclytae Provinciae Styriae et Carinthiae Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Conventualium" presents the history of the Conventual Franciscan Province of Styria and Carinthia. The manuscript's account of the history of this province begins with the foundation of the Franciscan Order in the 13th century and its rapid growth throughout Europe leading to the erection of an independent province during the 16th century in the territory of present day southern Austria, Slovenia and northeast Italy. The account of the province's history ends in 1766, the year the manuscript was edited by Fr. Arsenius Platner of Graz, theologian and master (1710-1781).
The manuscript presents the important starting points for the knowledge of the Order in an area where not many first hand sources of information exist. It gives a description of Protestantism that shook not only the social classes in the region but also the Conventual communities found there. There are precious information about the conflict between the Observant and the Conventual friars, as the former were often forced to leave their own communities. It also touches on the jurisdiction issues between the House of the Habsburgs and Venice whose boundaries cut across the territory of the province.
After a general introduction the manuscript gives a description of the individual friaries of the province and groups them into three custodies: Styria, Carinthia and Carniola-Friuli. In all there were 12 communities and 225 friars in 1766.

The presentation aims​ to describe the circumstances in the months after the collapse of the Habsburg empire in the region that had until 1918 been known as Untersteiermark or Spodnja Štajerska. Since 1918, the southernmost part of the former crownland Styria has been recognized as Štajerska or Slovenska Štajerska, in English as Slovene Styria, and formed a part of the newly founded Yugoslav state.
The political agenda of Slovene national activists from imperial period conditioned the partition of the crownland. The Slovene nationalist narrative dominated the regional political or public discourse since the late 1860s onwards. The idea of southern Styria being a part of the Slovene national space was propagated since 1848, and especially since the constitution from December 1867, which gave citizens the right to assemble and form associations. However, despite decades-long national struggles, the actual territorial delimitation between what belongs to the Slovenes, that is to Yugoslav state, and what to Austrians, was established only in autumn 1918 by creating facts on the ground. As such, it was a result of contingency and (un)favorable political circumstances.

The paper presents the area between two towns, Maribor and Ptuj, located on the right bank of the river Drava during the (late) 17th century until the end of the 18th century. Data obtained from the oldest preserved parish registers of the Dravsko polje area (i.e. parishes Hoče, Slivnica, Hajdina and Spodnja Polskava) and Maribor town parish give the paper an added value. All registers are from the 17th century. The paper addresses (the beginnings of) rafting on the Drava river and also the (interrelated?) number of illegitimate children in the area. This part of the Drava stream used to represent the boundary between the dominions Vurberk (on the left bank) and Ravno polje (on the right bank). Drava’s stream was a lot wilder in the past. After it reached the village of Zlatoličje, its stream gradually slowed down and began to accumulate gravel and sand. However, the river frequently flooded the area up to Zlatoličje, which caused the constant change of its stream, formation of lethargies and new small islands of land. Arrangements between the dominions, concluded in a certain period, soon became invalid due to the constant changes of the riverbed. Cultivation of the soil near the river required special agreements on both sides. The lack of proper arrangements among the owners of the land soon led to the increasing disputes. These are particularly reflected in the murder of the Vurberk landowner count Georg Günther Herberstein. The peasants of dominion Ravno polje killed him on 31 May 1677. The murder happened after count Georg and his subjects wanted to remove the dyke of Loka creek because it supposedly limited his rights for fishing and hunting.

Keywords:  Drava river, Drava field, parish registers, rafting, Herberstein(s), Styria, Habsburg Monarchy, early modern period.

THE TOTTINGS OF PTUJ AND MAJŠPERK: THE RISE AND DEMISE OF A BURGHER FAMILY IN EARLY MODERNITY

The Totting family from the Lower Styrian town of Ptuj and nearby Majšperk castle is not unknown to Slovene and Austrian historiography, yet knowledge of the family has until now been very fragmentary. Only known were the head of the family, Benedict Totting, a Protestant and wealthy Ptuj burgher, who in the late sixteenth century rose to lower nobility and acquired the Lordship of Majšperk, and his widow Anna Strusniger, who in the early seventeenth century ran a clandestine Protestant school for girls. Recent research on Medieval and early modern Ptuj burghers by Dejan Zadravec has expanded on this, introducing to us Benedict's position as Ptuj town judge, his father Hans and first wife Ursula Fintz, as well as some of Benedict's purchases and leases of various smaller estates: vineyards, fishing ponds, etc. Children were only speculated to have been born in either marriage. New research by the author of this paper not only fills many gaps of the Totting family history, which is generally only of interest to local historians, but also sheds more light on the survival strategies of early modern burgher families, both economic and social. While the Tottings' origins remain unknown, Benedict's social ascent may have started in 1556 at the latest, when the merchant was already married to the daughter of the burgher Blasius Fintz from the Upper Styrian market town of Eisenerz. The exact details of Benedict's early rise as a Ptuj burgher are obscure due to the lack of documents, yet when he emerges again in 1572, he does so as the town judge, i.e. holding the highest office of the autonomous town authorities in the Princely town. The social prestige required to be a part of and to rise within the burgher elite was generally predicated on one's ability to make profit. While Benedict had plenty of this, it was not enough; his family needed a stronger social safety net in order to make it through life's incertitude; he needed staunch allies. Ensuring the social (and physical) survival of any premodern family was best secured by diversifying income and by multiplying alliances, especially by wedlock. Benedict made sure that his and Ursula's daughters were married to rich and influential men: Anna in 1575 to the Ptuj burgher and merchant Hieronymus Zunggo, who later became town judge, grew very rich by leasing one of the largest European copper mines near the Croatian town of Samobor for two decades and consequently managed to rise to lower nobility; Margaretha in 1585 to the lawyer Magister Ulrich Holzer from a (presumably) Graz burgher family and (later) an official of the Styrian court for nobility or Landschrannengericht; and Katharina in 1588 to the affluent and influential Carinthian Toman Zipnikh, the chief toll collector in Croatia and Slavonia and well connected to the Styrian Land Estates. Aside from social and economic, Benedict's family alliances were also inter-confessional: Zunggo was a Catholic and Holzer a Protestant as was his father-in-law, at least by the time of Katharina's wedding. Following Ursula's death, Benedict wed Anna Strusniger, most likely from the Carinthian town of Wolfsberg and with relatives in the Carniolan capital Ljubljana and the town Novo mesto. If not before, Benedict certainly accepted the "Pure Gospel" from Anna. She bore him the sons Andreas and Adam, on whom Benedict began to focus his inheritance strategies; the lease of the valuable Lordship of (Upper) Majšperk and the request for a title of nobility to the Hungarian King Rudolph II (also Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia), which he was granted in 1590 (but remained a burgher in the Empire), are to be regarded within this context. However, turning the focus to his sons, especially as he may have already had a grandson by Hieronymus and Anna Zunggo, appears to have led to intrafamilial conflict, which erupted following Anna Totting's death. Andreas and Adam were still minors when their father died on 24 June 1591. It seems that thereafter the Catholic Zunggo became the head of the family and, following his own rise to Hungarian lower nobility in 1599 (he remained a burgher in the Empire), helped Anna Totting secure Majšperk as a fief. Furthermore, it was certainly the inter-confessional familial as well as neighbourly solidarity that enabled Anna to run a not-so-secret Protestant school in Ptuj, even under the pressure and scrutiny of the Princely Counter-Reformation in the early seventeenth century. However, both Andreas, once a student at the University of Tübingen, and Adam died without heirs, although Adam, born in 1589, managed to get married before his death in 1614. Some rift must have erupted within the extended family following Hieronymus' death, sometime between 1612 and 1617, since in her will Anna left everything to her sister Maria Gritscher from Novo mesto and niece Susanna Grübner, leaving nothing to Benedict's grandsons, mostly Zunggos, when she died in 1617. Due to her sister's disinterest in Majšperk, in 1624 the castle and estate were sold to an old ally of the Tottings, Maximillian von Plösch, an erstwhile Ptuj burgher.

http://shs.zgodovinsko-drustvo-kovacic.si/

Errata:

P. 659, N. 33 & P. 691: Andrej Hozjan in Tone Ravnikar, "Deželni knez notranje Avstrije Karel II. Habsburžan na Ptuju poleti 1578", Acta Histriae 26, št. 1 (2018), str. 86–87.

P. 667: Ti imaſh tvojga blishniga lubiti, kakòr ſam ſebe (Mr 12,31).

P. 677, N. 127: /.../ vnd vest herr Benedic Thoting ƨg welic /.../ ewigen gedachtnvs ƨg.

Database, co-authored with Gunther Reisinger and students from Graz University. Digital archive for the artistic and cultural topography of Styria and Carinthia based on the institute's collection of historical photographs. Part of database GINKO - Grazer Institut für Kunstgeschichte Onlinearchiv. About 428 entries, created 2007-2013. Link: http://gams.uni-graz.at/context:ginko

Die Handelstätigkeit der Schwarzhafner aus dem Lavanttal, beziehungsweise der für sie arbeitenden "Kraxenträger" im 16. und 17 Jahrhundert, ist in Graz durch Funde und Befunde eindeutig nachgewiesen. Dieser Warenverkehr ist auch durch schriftliche Quellen belegt.

THE MARIBOR PROTESTANT COMMUNITY UNTIL 1587: FROM THE FIRST MENTIONS OF REFORMATION IDEAS TO THE EXPULSION FROM THE STRUCTURES OF THE TOWN PARISH

The development of the Protestant religious community in Maribor largely followed the development of Reformation in Styria. The new ideas were first attested in the
princely visitation protocol of 1528. A part of Maribor burghers and the local clergy showed at least an interest in them. A decade later, Protestants, as it seems,
already had the majority in town authorities, as the town judge of Maribor – together with the Land Estates – petitioned the prince for freedom of religion. More than the Land Estates' declaration of Styria for a Land of the Augsburg Confession, it was the new vicar Georg Siechel who enabled the rise of the Maribor Protestants and strenghtened the community from the mid-16th century . During his thirty-year period as vicar, the Maribor Protestants were thoroughly integrated into the town Catholic parish; therefore, they had no interest to establish their own church organization. The supremacy of the Protestants in town authorities reflected the development at the Land level. In the run-up to the Land Estates in Graz in 1572, the town authorities declared Maribor a town of the Augsburg Confession. Six years later, at the General Estates in Bruck an der Mur, the Maribor town judge signed the “Brucker-Libell” as the second representative from among Styrian towns. The following princely (and church) countermeasures failed to bring any real changes in Maribor.  These started to occur only following the vicar’s death and the changes at the Land level in the late 1580s.

REFORMATION IN PTUJ. A CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF EARLY MODERN PROTESTANT COMMUNITIES IN THE SLOVENIAN DRAVA REGION. This article sheds light on the Reformation period and the early modern Protestant community in Ptuj (Pettau), although the insight it provides is rather cursory due to the highly fragmented archival sources. Nonetheless, even the scant sources attest to the fact that the Ptuj community of the Augsburg Confession was not insignificant, at least not during the final decades of the sixteenth century. The community also managed to withstand the Counter-Reformation well into the first decades of the seventeenth century, despite Ptuj being the first Styrian town targeted by it in 1587. Furthermore, several town councillors and other town officials, as well as a number of students enrolled at Protestant universities, came from the community’s ranks. Concurrently, the community’s spiritual needs were provided for by the Lords of Stubenberg from Vurberk (Wurmberg) or, rather, at least by their final preacher Georg Lautenschlager.

Denkt man an Archäologie und Groß St. Florian, dann fallen einem bald die römische Villa Grünau und der dort gefundene Silberbecher ein. Dass der Ort archäologisch aber durchaus mehr zu bieten hat, soll im Vortrag gezeigt werden.
Im ersten Teil wird das Gemeindegebiet näher unter die Lupe genommen: Die hier gemachten Funde decken einen Zeitraum von über 5500 Jahren Besiedlungsgeschichte ab - bis zurück in die Jungsteinzeit. Gerade der Bau der Koralmbahn hat in den letzten Jahren zu einer Fülle neuer Fundstellen geführt.
Der zweite Teil des Vortrages behandelt die vor 25 Jahren entdeckte römische Villa Grünau. Nicht nur wegen des berühmten Silberbechers stellt dieser Landsitz einen bedeutenden und überregional wichtigen Fundort dar: Hinweise auf Handwerk und Landwirtschaft erlauben einen eindrücklichen Blick auf antikes Leben in der Weststeiermark.