Page 132 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Aleksander Panjek and Miha Zobec

reality, as is best illustrated by the cold shower he experienced when con-
fronted by locals and voters in a Sežana tavern. People were so angry at
the time, Kjuder recalled, that Černe was chased around the building with
pitchforks. The Karstic bigwig was apparently unaware of the change of
mood, and probably had in his eyes the praise for the public usage of Slove-
nian he had received from the voters a decade earlier.
It might be that the underlying cause of Černe’s blurred conception of
social reality lay in his social status which made his life drift away from the
experiences of the average villager. Unlike the majority of villagers, Černe
pursued a political career in Vienna and Gorizia. Still, though he managed
to enter high politics and urban surroundings, at the same time he inces-
santly looked to magnify his social standing in his native Karst. Needless
to say, his Karst did not resemble the one of many peasants – it was the
social distance, not the physical one, which brought him away from the
fellow villagers. The political trajectory and family strategies, as evident
in the daughters’ marriage contracts and family members’ wills, stress the
divergence between social strata. Simply, Černe lived in a different stra-
tum than the majority of the Karst people. Moreover, the fact that at their
home German was spoken exclusively further emphasizes the social dis-
tance between him and others. That this was not merely a symbolic indica-
tor (the use of a different language), but a reflection of the material situa-
tion, is demonstrated by the many contracts with which Černe acquired a
huge amount of territory, often at the expense of simple peasants. Social
distinction earned him status of a ‘renegade’: given that most of the cap-
ital on the soil of the ‘Slovene’ lands was in the hands of foreign owners,
it was easy to draw an equivalence between the ‘reputables’ and the hated
‘alien-born’ (Agneletto 1914, 374; Lazarević 2015, 34; Gestrin 1969, 136). At
the same time, Černe had no problem moving in the upper, predominant-
ly German- (or Italian-) speaking social circles, as he had enough cultural
capital to enter them.
The social distance present in Tomaj and the Karst countryside in gen-
eral is corroborated also by the rumours, reflecting the popular sentiment
at the time. Even though often untrue – especially those concerning his
political activities – gossip is nevertheless an indicator of one’s position in
the community. Unpleasant rumours may thus indicate that one has fallen
from grace (Ramšak 2006). In addition to the rumours about the exorbi-
tant amount of money Anton Černe supposedly received from the Hun-
garian government, there was a widespread belief among the Karst people
that in Vienna, Černe was presenting the situation in the Karst in a com-

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