A war after war - Ambrož Malek’s fatherhood

Abstract

The cultural-historical study is the second part of the trilogy A war after the war (the first one was published in the Review for History and Ethnography) focusing on relationships among Styrian rural population after the First World War. In this study, the authoress describes the life stories of two young peasants, Ambrož Malek and Marija Brandsteter. Since their amorous relationship came to a tragic end in 1921, we can follow it in the prosecution file of the Maribor District Court, kept at the Maribor Regional Archives. The paper focuses, among others, on changed gender roles and free partnership relationships after the war. It concludes that in the war’s immediate aftermath life in local communities on the margins of Styrian society was profoundly marked by the circumstances of war, which delivered a painful blow to the deeply rooted patriarchal patterns in rural families.