Blame It All on Buffalo Bill

On the History of Bohemian Life in Ljubljana before the First World War

Authors

  • Janez Cvirn

Keywords:

Ljubljana, bohemian life, 1900-1914

Abstract

In the years before the First World War a number of Slovenian artists (the painters Hinko Smrekar and Fran Tratnik, and the writer Vladimir Levstik) led a truly bohemian life in Ljubljana. They brazenly disregared the conventional norms of middle class society and therefore often came into conflict with the authorities. On May 16, 1906, when the famous Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show visited Ljubljana, the artists, accompanied by a student of the law, Vladimir Svetek, got blind drunk and were subsequently arrested by the Ljubljana police for excessive behaviour and gaoled for five days. In their appeal against this "excessively harsh sentence", they laid the blame for their drunkeness and their behaviour on the general atmosphere that had enveloped Ljubljana in expectation of Cody's Wild West Show, and at the same time, made fun of the municipal authorities.

Published

2025-06-24

Issue

Section

Prispevki