A Youth Spent in Maribor

The Diary of the Zoologist Karl Heider 1870-1873

Abstract

The diary of Karl Heider about his youth in Maribor is an extensive and authentic source of information about socialization in a family of barons that had acquired the status of nobility by education. These families were scattered across the Hapsburg Monarchy in the 1870s; however, they maintained close ties. The young were introduced to the social elite by the local petit-bourgeois approximations of salon life. In addition, they could choose from an entire palette of other entertainment and educational possibilities, both at home and outside of it that helped them develop not only in a social but also in a cultural sense. The professional growth of this prospective natural sciences scholar was also stimulated by his social environment, on the one hand, and equally so by encouragement he received at school, on the other. This tendency and early political manifestations in the liberal German-national camp resulted in a conflict with the Roman Catholic cornerstone of the family (and, likewise, statehood) tradition