Matija Majar

Who was Matija Majar?

Matija Majar, also spelled Majer, pseudonym Ziljski, was a Carinthian Slovene Roman Catholic priest and political activist, best known as the creator of the idea of a United Slovenia.

Majar was born in the small village of Wittenig southwest of Hermagor in the Gail Valley in southern Carinthia, then part of the Austrian Empire. He grew up in a bilingual, Slovene-German environment and then attended the lyceum in Klagenfurt and in Graz. During his studies in Klagenfurt, he came under the influence of Anton Martin Slomšek, a Roman Catholic priest and author who propagated the use of Slovene in the public sphere.

Majar served as a priest in Slovene-speaking parishes in Carinthia, first in Rosegg and then in the settlement of Camporosso near Tarvisio in the Canale Valley. In 1837, he moved back to Klagenfurt, where he first worked in the administration of the Diocese of Gurk, and from 1843 as the chaplain of Klagenfurt Cathedral. During his Klagenfurt years, Majar came into contact with several Slovene ethnographers and authors who worked on the revival of the Slovene language and culture, such as Urban Jarnik, Anton Janežič, Matija Ahacel, and Davorin Trstenjak.