Page 130 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Aleksander Panjek and Miha Zobec

without having children. By persuading or offering money to legitimate
heirs, Černe eventually managed to acquire the greater portion of Lazar’s
property (pang 939, b. 1, b. 3). The extent of Anton’s money lending busi-
ness and other operations in his financial benefit stretch far wider than the
enumerated cases. The vast amount of purchase and sale contracts where
Anton was registered as buyer testify to the assumption that he was able to
turn the socio-economic situation in his favour. The tycoon of Tomaj even-
tually extended his ‘territory’ to the point where the villagers considered
much of the Karst to be in his hands (Kjuder 1972, 150).
Much of Anton’s financial transactions were carried out during and af-
ter his political career in Vienna and Gorizia. Therefore, the link between
Černe’s movement on the political stage and his social positioning should
be examined. In other words, we are interested in the ways in which his po-
litical activities served his enrichment but eventually redefined the posi-
tion he enjoyed in the community of origin. Despite gaining wealth serving
as an mp, political failures ultimately shattered Anton’s reputation.
Anton Černe⁸ was first elected to the National Assembly in 1848, when
all ‘independent men’ (i.e. those who were not in a serving relationship) in
Austria had the right to vote under the provisional constitution, so that all
classes were eligible to vote. Despite joining the parliamentary right, like
most Slovenian and Slavic mps at the time, he advocated the abolition of
serfdom without compensation, and his speeches earned him a reputation
as one of Slovenia’s most recognizable politicians.
With the introduction of the curial electoral system on the basis of the
February patent in 1861, he was elected to the Gorizia Regional Assembly
in the curium of the large landowners. Through the Provincial Assembly –
as the electoral law of the time dictated – he was again elected to the Na-
tional Assembly, where he received praise, also from the Goriška region, for
his advocacy of the right to the public use of the Slovene language (‘Govori
v državnem zboru o narodnih zadevah slovanskih v seji 14. in 17. maja t. l.’
1862, 172–7).
Černe’s reputation seemed steadfast at that time. As a result, during the
regional elections in 1867, the Gorizia newspaper Domovina (the Mother-
land) wrote: ‘You people of the Karst! We have nothing to advise you, be-
cause youalreadyknowwhattodo. [...]It istoyourcreditthatyou have
already sent us a unique man, who is now famous all over Austria, and who
does you and all the Slovenes honour. Send us again the noble Črne [...]’

⁸ For a complete overview of Černe’s political trajectory see Marušič (2013); Gabršček (1932).

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