Political Activities of Ivan Dečko until the Beginning of the 1890s

Abstract

The author analyses the journalistic and political work of the lawyer (attorney) and politician Ivan Dečko (1859–1908) since his studies in Graz (1879) until the establishment of his own law firm in Celje (1891). Already as a student he demonstrated his political talent when he started publishing critical articles in the Slovenian newspapers in the beginning of the 1880s. When he started working in Maribor in 1883, he immediately joined the Slovenian political elite there. In 1885 he moved to Celje, got a job in Josip Sernec's law firm, and visibly accelerated the Slovenian »breakthrough« in the city by the river Savinja. With thoughtful tactics he also appeared at the level of the Provincial Assembly, when he became the member of the Styrian Provincial Assembly in 1890. In 1891 he opened his own law firm. With his appeals to various appeal bodies he caused enough disturbance to make the Germans close their ranks. Under his influence the clever Slovenian politics in the beginning of the 1890s won over the rural areas completely, restricting the Lower Styrian Germans to the cities and certain towns.