Cultural Centre and the Memorial Room of Dr. Lojz Kraigher
The memorial room
is situated on the first floor of the
Cultural Centre of Postojna. The
building with a pillared front was
built in 1930 as the centre of a fascist
youth group (Casa del Balilla),
but also housed a nursery school
for a while.
Lojz Kraigher (1877-1959), born
in a house at Tržaška Road in Postojna,
is part of the Slovenian literary history
as the author of naturalistic prose and
plays, as well as a companion, supporter and
chronicler of Slovenia's greatest writer Ivan
Cankar. Kraigher kept in touch with Cankar
both in Vienna, where they both studied, and
after their return to Slovenia. He provided
Cankar with a lot of moral, as well as financial
support, especially in the final years of
Cankar's life.
Dr. Lojz Kraigher, doctor and dentist, who
was among other things briefly in charge
of the Provincial Hospital in Ljubljana, is
considered one of the founders of the Faculty
of Medicine in Ljubljana. In fact, he
publicly supported its establishment in as
early as 1919, however, the initiative was not
realized in full until August 1945. At that
time, Dr. Lojz Kraigher was honoured with
the faculty's first honorary doctorate. He also became a faculty librarian and the first
editor of the updated Zdravstveni vestnik
(Medical Journal).
Throughout the period of his public activities,
Kraigher remained a proud and nationally
conscious Slovenian, as a result of which
he was faced with numerous problems – both
in the period of fascist terror, during which
he was living and working in the Primorska
region, and during his Ljubljana-based period,
when he was interned to Dachau due
to cooperation with the National Liberation
Movement. Kraigher's aforementioned advocacy
of the Faculty of Medicine is likewise
to be understood in the spirit of his aspirations
for national autonomy.
Visit the memorial room and see how the
workspace of an intellectual from the first
half of the 20th century looked like.
Tip: The Memorial Room of Dr. Lojz
Kraigher is part of the Notranjska Museum
Postojna, where you can make arrangements
to see it.