“Bankruptcies, Suicide – The Situation in the Commercial Sector Is Dire.” Economic Failure as a Reason for Suicide in the Slovenian Territory Under Austria-Hungary and During the First Yugoslavia

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51663/pnz.63.1.02

Keywords:

suicide, bankruptcy, stigma, economic crisis, Austria-Hungary, Kingdom of SCS/Yugoslavia

Abstract

Material security is one of the basic conditions of human existence. Its absence can lead to many problems and is accompanied by a social stigma that used to be stronger in the past than today. A difficult situation can lead to suicide. In the Slovenian territory, suicides of merchants and entrepreneurs were a well-known phenomenon as early as the 19th century, while people who merely found themselves in financial difficulties or lived in poverty committed suicide even more frequently. Accurate statistics regarding the number of suicides due to economic reasons are not available for the Slovenian territory, which is why newspapers represent the primary source for researching this issue. However, the press was inaccurate, sensationalistic, and amateurish in its suicide reports and psychological descriptions of the deceased. Over time, the descriptions of suicides and injuries also became more graphic. During the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Kingdom of SHS, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, several economic scandals broke out that resulted in suicides, which were widely reported in the press. Suicides for economic reasons increased especially during times of economic adversity, such as the crisis during the Vienna stock market crash in 1873, the monetary crisis before World War I, the deflationary crisis of the mid-1920s, and the Great Depression of the 1930s

Author Biography

  • Ivan Smiljanić, Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino

    Ivan Smiljanić has graduated from history and Russian studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, in 2016 and acquired a MSc in history at the same university in 2019. In the same year, he became a junior researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana. The topic of his dissertation is bankruptcies in Slovenia between 1868 and 1941. He is publishing articles on monuments, public memory nd economic hitsory in Slovene history magazines. He coauthored a comic book on the burning of Trieste National Hall (2020) and published a book on the cult of poet France Prešeren in socialist Yugoslavia (2021).

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Published

2023-05-03

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