“The Bad People of These Accursed Times!”. Deutsche Wacht, a German Newspaper in Celje, about Ivan Dečko

Abstract

At the turn of the 19^th to the 20^th century, insults and attacks on Slovenian citizens were a regular feature of the Celje German newspaper Deutsche Wacht. Also in this respect, one of the most prominent individuals was the lawyer Ivan Dečko. The article highlights two characteristic events in which he played a major role. The first example took place during the 1901 national elections, when he successfully opposed the German candidate Josef Pommer in the urban curia, while the second was the so-called “Kosem Affair”, which involved damages to the coffers of the district representation and coincided with the pre-election campaign for the 1904 district representation elections. Sometimes, the Deutsche Wacht even mercilessly mocked Dečko’s unfortunate illness.