“Overnight Gassner became an Englishman and Glanzmann a Swiss Italian.”

Sequestration of the Cotton Spinning and Weaving Mill of Tržič in 1919

Abstract

The article presents the conditions that in 1919 faced the owners of the Cotton Spinning and Weaving Mill of Tržič Edmund Glanzmann and Andre Gassner, Jr. On 30 April 1919, the Ministry of Trade and Industry issued a decree stipulating that all companies owned by subjects of “unfriendly states” should be placed under special supervision and sequestration. In order to demonstrate that they were not citizens of hostile states, Glanzmann and Gassner started a comprehensive campaign, turning to the embassies of their respective home countries Switzerland and Great Britain, and they also asked the preeminent Slovenian politician of that time, Anton Korošec, to intercede on their behalf.