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received: 2023-05-15           DOI 10.19233/ASHS.2023.16
THE BEGINNINGS OF SLOVENE GERMANIC PHILOLOGY: THE FIRST 
PROFESSORS AND THE SOCIAL PROFILE OF THE FIRST STUDENTS 
FROM THE LITTORAL
Irena SAMIDE
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of German, Dutch and Swedish, Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
e-mail: irena.samide@ff.uni-lj.si
Petra KRAMBERGER
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of German, Dutch and Swedish, Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
e-mail: petra.kramberger@ff.uni-lj.si
ABSTRACT
This article seeks to shed light on the beginnings of Germanic philology in the Slovene lands, concentrating 
both on the leading figure of Dr Jakob Kelemina (1882–1957), who established Germanic philology in the Slovene 
academic space and dominated it for many years, and on the profile of his students from the Slovene, Italian, and 
Croatian littoral. The findings, which are based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of archive sources, lecture 
lists and student records, and on Bourdieu’s classification of education opportunities by economic and cultural 
capital, show that students from the coastal regions made up 17% of the 916 students of both sexes who attended 
lectures on Germanic philology up until the end of the Second World War; of these, 54% were women. The students’ 
social origin was found to have had considerable influence on their decision to take up such studies, as the large 
majority came from the middle and upper strata of the population.
Keywords: Germanic philology, Jakob Kelemina, student profile, students from the Littoral, history of Germanic 
philology 1919–1945, cultural capital
GLI INIZI DELLA GERMANISTICA IN SLOVENIA: I PRIMI PROFESSORI E LA STRUTTURA 
SOCIALE DEI PRIMI STUDENTI DEL LITORALE
SINTESI
Lo scopo del presente contributo è di far luce sugli inizi degli studi di germanistica nel territorio sloveno, con 
particolare attenzione sia al pluriennale direttore di dipartimento, il prof. Jakob Kelemina (1882–1957), il quale ha 
introdotto la filologia tedesca nel mondo accademico sloveno, sia alla struttura degli studenti e delle studentesse 
provenienti dalle regioni litoranee slovena, italiana e croata. I risultati del contributo, basato sull’analisi quantitativa 
e qualitativa di fonti d’archivio, liste di corsi e documenti personali, nonché sulla classificazione di Bourdieu delle 
opportunità educative in base al capitale economico e culturale, mostrano che tra i 916 studenti iscritti ai corsi di 
filologia tedesca fino alla fine della seconda guerra mondiale, la quota di quelli provenienti dal Litorale è del 17%, e 
tra di essi il 54% sono donne. È emerso inoltre che la decisione riguardo agli studi è soggetta soprattutto all’influsso 
del contesto sociale dei futuri studenti, poiché la maggior parte proviene dalle classi medie e alte della popolazione, 
soprattutto da ambienti con un alto capitale culturale.
Parole chiave: studi di germanistica, Jakob Kelemina, struttura degli studenti, studenti del Litorale, storia della 
germanistica 1919–1945, capitale culturale
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INTRODUCTION
Providing a detailed study of the first phase of 
development of Germanic philology as a scientific 
discipline in the Slovene lands, this article first 
situates the Ljubljana Germanists in their broader 
European context, with particular attention to Ger-
manic philology in Graz, which produced Dr Jakob 
Kelemina (1882–1957), the leading Germanist in the 
Slovene lands.1 The first part of the article is devoted 
to Kelemina: as the holder of the chair and for years 
the only faculty member, he laid the foundations for 
the development of Germanic philology and left his 
mark on the entire field, from its establishment to 
the Second World War. The second part concentrates 
on the profile of the students of Germanic philology 
in Ljubljana. The empirical research focuses on stu-
dents from the Littoral (Slovene: Primorska),2 Istria, 
Dalmatia, and the Montenegrin Littoral. Here we 
explore the share of such students in the total, the 
gender ratio, their social origins and (self-declared) 
nationality. We employed a quantitative research 
method, utilizing student records obtained from 
the university archives. Specifically, we focused on 
students who indicated Littoral as their birthplace 
and pursued German studies as either their main, 
subsidiary, or elective subject. Subsequently, the 
collected data underwent qualitative evaluation 
and analysis, drawing upon the theses of Bourdieu 
& Passeron (1979), that the chances of accessing 
higher education can be viewed as the outcome of a 
selection process characterized by varying levels of 
stringency, depending on the student ’s social origin. 
In our study, the social origin of the students, as far 
as this can be deduced from the father’ s profession, 
proved to be of significant importance, albeit not to 
the same extent as observed in France. Finally, we 
trace the career paths of some students of interest 
from this area.
The beginnings of institutionalized Germanic 
philology in the Slovene lands coincide with the 
1919 establishment of the University of Ljubljana. 
As was customary for modern institutions of higher 
education at the time, it started with five faculties: 
Law, Medicine, Theology, Engineering, and Arts. 
The latter was initially composed of three chairs: 
1 This article was produced within the framework of the research programme »Intercultural Literary Studies (Medkulturne literarnovedne 
študije)« (ARIS P6-0265), co-funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency.
2 In this context, it is important to note that since the beginning of the 19th century, the lands along the north-eastern shores of the Adriatic 
Sea and their immediate hinterland, Gorizia with Gradisca, Istria, and Trieste, have been referred to by various names. The most common 
names used include Primorje (Littoral in English, Küstenland in German, Litorale in Italian), Austrian Primorje, or Primorska. However, it 
should be noted that these names do not indicate a unified territory in terms of administration, ethnicity, or historical context (Marušič, 
1995, 343). Following the First World War, during the period covered by this study, the term Primorska was employed by the Slovene 
public “to denote locations in Italy, including those that were annexed to Italy from the former Carniola Region such as Idrija, the upper 
Vipava Valley, parts of the Karst, the Pivka region, and the Bistrica region. It is important to mention that Istria was not encompassed 
within this designation” (Marušič, 1995, 346).
3 The first professorship in German language and literature (1810) went to Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen (1780–1856) at the then 
recently established University of Berlin.
of mathematics, Slavic philology, and Slovene 
language. In the following months, the founding 
chairs were joined by others, including the chair 
in Germanic philology (Smolej, 2019, 89). Slovenes 
thus set up Germanic philology a little more than a 
100 years after it became established as a science in 
Germany (Sparnaay, 1948, 19)3 and 17 years after 
Germanist chairs started to appear in the larger cities 
of the Habsburg Monarchy: first in Vienna, Prague, 
and Krakow, and in 1851 also at the University of 
Graz (Kramberger & Samide, 2021, 161–162). On 
the one hand, these were to meet the national and 
political interests of the multi-national state; on the 
other, to meet the need for adequate teachers in 
secondary education (Michler & Schmidt-Dengler, 
2003, 193–228), which was a concern all over 
Europe at the time. After the great reform of second-
ary schools and universities based on Wilhelm von 
Humboldt’s model – in Germany at the beginning 
of the 19th century, in the Habsburg Monarchy in 
1848/49 – the need arose for qualified teachers 
of German in the reformed secondary school for 
humanities (the Gymnasium), and at the beginning 
this was not at all an easy task. In the first phase of 
the development of Germanic philology, the phase 
of consolidation, many European universities, faced 
with a lack of academically trained scholars of Ger-
man, filled university chairs with assistant profes-
sors (Privatdozenten) or with scholars from other 
academic fields: for example, on the initiative of 
Count Leo Thun-Hohenstein (1811–1888), the min-
ister of education and religion, Germanic philology 
in Vienna came in 1850 to be headed by the phi-
losopher, self-taught Germanist and Viennese court 
librarian Theodor Georg von Karajan (1810–1873) 
(Samide, 2019, 131–132). The first real Germanist 
scholars, Karl Tomaschek (1828–1878) and Wil-
helm Scherer (1841–1886), would only obtain their 
chairs in Germanic philology in 1868, and only 
from then on can we talk about “the first generation 
of professional Germanists” (Michler & Schmidt-
Dengler, 2003, 199). In this regard, Germanic 
philology at the University of Graz had a privileged 
position, even though it counted as one of the less 
important universities in the German-speaking 
area in the mid-19th century (Leitner, 1973, 3) and 
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was also geographically remote from the centres 
of German intellectual life (Müller-Kampel), since 
academically trained Germanists had taught there 
from its inception in 1851. At the start of the 
summer semester on 17 April 1851, and again on 
minister Thun-Hohenstein’s initiative, the university 
of the Styrian capital officially hired the Silesian 
medievalist Karl Weinhold (1823–1901) (Leitner, 
1973, 8–12). In Weinhold, the University of Graz 
undoubtedly gained “the most important scholar 
of the German language and literature at Austrian 
universities of that era” (Höflechner, 2006, 277). He 
held the chair in Germanic philology until 1861, 
when he accepted an invitation from the University 
of Kiel. His seat was taken by the Germanist Karl 
Tomaschek, who not only devoted himself to Old 
German philology like his predecessor, but made 
sure that the curriculum also included recent liter-
ary history in equal measure (Höflechner, 2006, 
277; Leitner, 1973, 26–28, 35). After Tomaschek 
was called to Vienna in 1868, he was succeeded by 
Richard Heinzel (1838–1905), who again brought 
Old German philology to the fore, and then re-
turned to Vienna in 1873. In Graz, the discipline 
first flowered under the Germanist and medieval-
ist Anton Emanuel Schönbach (1848–1911), who 
hailed from northern Czechia and is considered 
the true father of the chair in Germanic philology 
at the University of Graz (Müller-Kampel). Schön-
bach, who would hold the chair in Old German 
until he died, was a well-versed lecturer in many 
fields who demanded much of his students. With 
his rhetorical abilities and lively lectures, however, 
he also knew how to excite their enthusiasm for 
science and motivate them for their own scientific 
production. Apart from being a talented speaker, he 
was also an excellent organizer and the author of 
quite a few important contributions to the field (cf. 
Leitner, 1973, 53–67, 233–234). In 1886, he was 
joined in Graz by Bernhard Seuffert (1853–1938), 
who taught modern German language and literature 
and made a name for himself as an expert on the 
Enlightenment writer Christoph Martin Wieland 
(1733–1813), and his work as an editor is still 
4 Private archive of Doris Križaj, school report card.
5 SI-PAM 739, TE 230, Maribor Classical Secondary School, registration form 1895/96. The authors thank Jure Maček for his kind and 
professional help with locating the materials.
6 Private archive of Doris Križaj, secondary-school report card; UAG, DA, 671, Doktoratsakt Jakob Kelemina, Vita.
7 Private archive of Doris Križaj, matura exam report card, Pula, July 8, 1904. 
8 The reason no doubt lies in the fact that he came from the Slovene peasant countryside and was therefore ill-placed to compete with 
his urban schoolmates, who spoke German at home as well. Most years, therefore, he only received a “satisfactory” (befriedigend) 
grade in German; in eighth grade and later at the matura exam, his knowledge of German language and literature earned him a “pra-
iseworthy” (lobenswert), but he never got the highest grade for excellence in this subject, vorzüglich (private archive of Doris Križaj, 
secondary-school report card).
9 As related by his daughter Doris Križaj, he first wished to study chemistry, but soon realized that this study was reserved for students from 
wealthy families, as the students had to buy all the equipment themselves. Kelemina, who made his living mostly by tutoring, could not 
afford to do so (Križaj, 2008, 10). The financial situation of families naturally played a significant role in the decision to pursue university 
studies. Urška Bratož (2022) explores the available social transfer options in Istria and Trieste during the Habsburg era.
highly regarded (Höflechner, 2006, 279). During 
the harmonious 25-year collaboration and vigorous 
interaction of these two leading Germanists, Graz 
gained a position in Germanic philology on the 
European level. Indeed, under Seuffert’s leadership 
the chair in modern German philology became the 
centre of modern German literature for the entire 
Habsburg Monarchy (Leitner, 1973, 234).
From the Graz school of Germanists also sprung 
the first – and long the only – professor of Germanic 
philology in Ljubljana, Dr Jakob Kelemina. The two 
Germanists discussed above left their mark not only 
on Kelemina’s studies, but also on his further aca-
demic career and life.
GERMANIC PHILOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF 
LJUBLJANA
Jakob Kelemina: education and academic career
Jakob Kelemina, born 19 July 1882 in humble 
Slovene provincial surroundings, in the small vil-
lage of Vinski Vrh near Ormož, came from a poor 
winegrower’s home (Križaj, 2008, 10). As we can 
see from the archival materials, from 1889 to 1894 
he attended the four-year primary school at Sv. 
Miklavž near Ormož;4 in 1895 he enrolled at the 
Imperial & Royal (I&R) Maribor State Secondary 
School (Gymnasium), where he attended the first 
five years and first encountered German.5 After 
a one-year hiatus (1900/01), he continued his 
education at the I&R First Ljubljana Secondary 
School (sixth grade).6 Hoping to support himself 
more easily by tutoring in Pula, which was then 
the main harbour of the Austro-Hungarian navy, 
he spent his last two school years at the I&R State 
Secondary School there, and graduated with dis-
tinction (mit Auszeichnung) on 8  July 1904.7 It is 
clear from Kelemina’s preserved report cards that 
he had considerable difficulty with German at the 
beginning of his schooling.8 His decision to pursue 
the study of Germanic philology, at a time of peak 
national differentiation in the Habsburg Monarchy, 
was thus hardly an obvious one.9 
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Figure 1: Jakob Kelemina’s matura report card, Pula, 8 July 1904 (private archive of Doris Križaj).
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Jakob Kelemina enrolled at the Faculty of Arts of the 
University of Charles and Francis in Graz on 8 October 
1904 and devoted himself to the study of languages. The 
lists of lectures and seminars he attended in the course of 
his studies,10 as recorded in his sign-up forms, testify to 
his curiosity and devotion to literature. Central through-
out his eight semesters were the seminars and lectures 
on Old German and German literature that he attended 
under professors Anton Emanuel Schönbach and Bern-
hard Seuffert. His interests also extended to other fields, 
and he registered for individual lectures and seminars in 
philosophy, pedagogy, and classical and English philol-
ogy. He followed lectures on historical English grammar 
and English literature, another field to which he devoted 
part of his academic career, by the noted Viennese-born 
scholar of English, Karl Luick (1865–1935), who also 
held the chair in English philology.
Kelemina’s dissertation, titled Zur Quelle von Eilharts 
Tristrant, which was written under Schönbach’s super-
vision and dealt with the sources of Eilhart’s Tristrant, 
was assessed by Seuffert as well as by his supervisor. In 
their assessments, which seen through today’s eyes were 
surprisingly critical, they concluded that the dissertation 
was not fit to publish, although it contained some good 
conclusions. This enabled Kelemina to take his Rigorosum 
doctoral exam (Kramberger & Samide, 2021, 184–186). 
He thus became a Doctor of Philosophy on 1 May 1909 
at the Faculty of Arts, University of Graz. On 28 January 
1911 he went on to pass the state (teacher) exam with 
German as his main subject and classical philology as 
a side subject, which allowed him to teach these two 
subjects in secondary schools with German and Slovene 
as the languages of instruction, with the restriction that 
he could only teach German in those schools where the 
language of instruction was not exclusively German.11 
This kind of provision was probably one of the reasons – 
though certainly not the only one – why so few Slovenes 
decided to study German. It is not surprising, then, that 
the nationally conscious Jakob Kelemina was directed 
to a school on the periphery: on July 3, 1911, he was 
appointed assistant teacher at the general secondary 
school in Novo Mesto (Jahresbericht, 1912), where he 
taught German, Latin, and an introduction to philoso-
phy. Kelemina advanced rapidly and became a so-called 
10 UAG, Phil. Nat., 1811– SS 1967, Sign up forms of Faculty of Arts, Jakob Kelemina, winter semester 1904/05 – summer semester 1908.
11 UAW, Lehramtsprüfungsakte: Jakob Kelemina.
12 UAL IV, 86/1149, personal folder: Jakob Kelemina. 
13 Beside Murko, Bezjak, and Kelemina, Viennese German philology in 1903 also produced another doctor, the later noted scholar of dia-
lects, historical linguistics and onomastics Primus Lessiak (1878–1937); though his parents were of Slovene descent and Slovenes reco-
gnize him as an important fellow national from Carinthia (Jakopin, 1992, 148), he consistently indicated German as his mother tongue on 
his registration forms each semester (UAW, Phil. Nat. 177, 906, Sign-up forms of Faculty of Arts, Primus Lessiak, winter semester 1898/99); 
in addition, he clearly accepted the so-called Windisch theory (Kramberger & Samide, 2022, 46–47), making him quite unacceptable at 
the University of Ljubljana.
14 The title of the dissertation, which was highly praised by his supervisor Richard Heinzl, a respected Viennese professor of ancient German 
language and literature, was Das Adam-Glossar. Bruchstücke eines Beitrages zur Kenntnis der altdeutschen Glossographie [The Adam 
glossary: fragments of a contribution to knowledge of Old German glossography]. 
15 “He was an exceptionally hard-working and neat person. I remember him spending whole days at work at his desk, which was always 
kept tidy” (Križaj, 2008, 9).
proper teacher on 1 September 1912; only two years 
later, in 1914, he was appointed Professor (here mean-
ing secondary-school teacher; Jahresbericht, 1915). In 
the summer semester of 1915, he was conscripted to the 
Austrian army, where he did clerical work, but already 
the next academic year saw him return to the school. 
The fact that he was officially transferred to the First 
State Secondary School in Ljubljana on 1 September 
1919 was an indication of his rising career. Then, on 29 
January 1920, Kelemina was appointed assistant profes-
sor (docent) in Germanic philology at the Faculty of Arts 
of the University of Ljubljana.12 
The main orientations and development of Germanic 
philology
The appointment of Dr Jakob Kelemina to the 
chair of Germanic philology was not a surprising 
move. There were in fact only three Slovenes in 
1919 who could boast a doctorate in Germanic phi-
lology, and since nationality was such an important 
factor at the time, the only theoretically available 
candidates beside Kelemina were Matija Murko 
(1861–1952), who had completed his German 
and Slavic studies at the Faculty of Arts in Vienna 
in 1886, and Janko Bezjak (1862–1935), who had 
obtained his doctorate in 1888 at the Faculty of 
Arts of Charles and Francis University in Graz.13 In 
1919, Janko Bezjak was a commissary in the Educa-
tion Department of the Provincial Administration 
in Ljubljana and a senior school supervisor (Žižić, 
2013), whereas Murko – although his extensive 
dissertation had dealt intensively with Old German 
(Samide, 2019, 139)14 – had already established 
himself as a Slavicist of international repute. While 
he too had been one of the candidates for the lit-
erary-studies chair in Slavic philology in Ljubljana 
in 1919 (Pogačnik, 1994, 356), he preferred to stay 
out of the competitive domestic scene and instead 
accepted an invitation from Charles University in 
Prague, where he became one of the founders of 
the chair in South Slavic languages and literatures.
Kelemina devoted himself to his task with great zeal 
and commitment.15 His rapid career rise – he was ap-
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pointed associate professor on 14 August 1923 and full 
professor on 2 August 1928 – testifies to his academic 
ambitions and dedication to research and teaching.
Kelemina’s teaching of Germanic philology started in 
the second part of the 1919/20 winter semester, probably 
immediately following his habilitation as assistant pro-
fessor. As was typical for recently established Germanic 
philology chairs, in Ljubljana the first years and decades 
were focused primarily on the Old German language 
and literature. In the 1919/20 summer semester, German 
historical grammar made up a full five hours a week, but 
in the following years Kelemina limited himself to three 
hours a week, covering each chapter (e.g. verbs, mor-
phology, syntax) separately. In this first phase (as well 
as a few decades later) both Germanists and students of 
other subjects who audited lectures in Germanic philol-
ogy – particularly Slavicists and students of comparative 
literature16 – attended all the lectures together, so the 
material was never repeated. This does not mean that 
the Germanists learned too little, since they had to dem-
onstrate their knowledge in wide-ranging graduation 
exams that covered all German historical grammar, Ger-
man language, phonetics, and literature, and translation 
too played an important role.17 
During the first decade, Germanic philology as 
a rule offered seven contact hours a week.18 Beside 
historical grammar, Kelemina very soon began to 
include other topics and materials. In choosing the 
topics for his lectures and seminars, he followed three 
basic guidelines: beside offering a solid foundation 
in historical grammar, he and his students would go 
over various periods and authors from the entire his-
tory of German literature, including relatively modern 
ones, as well as several chapters of literary theory, 
partly in order to prepare them for the profession of a 
secondary-school German teacher. The importance he 
placed on this task is also clear from the graduation 
records, where the tasks for the final written exam as 
16 The system of studies – the categorization of different studies, i.e. the grouping of the sciences, the possibilities for combining dif-
ferent courses of study, and the classification of the various disciplines into main discipline A, discipline B and auxiliary subjects 
– changed several times during the first quarter-century of the University of Ljubljana, so it is sometimes hard to determine which 
subjects within German philology could be audited by – or were even required for – students of other scientific disciplines, but it 
is a fact that Kelemina’s lectures were always open to more than one study programme. Although a chair in general literature and 
literary theory had already been envisaged when the university was founded, comparative literature became a separate course 
of study only in 1930; until then, lectures on comparative literature had taken place within the framework of Slavic philology 
(as they partly continue to do), and had been held by Jakob Kelemina as well as by the Slavicists France Kidrič in Ivan Prijatelj 
(Dolinar, 2013, 273; Šlibar, 2020, 15–27).
17 Red za državni diplomski izpit na Filozofski fakulteti v Ljubljani (1920). Ljubljana, University of Ljubljana.
18 The exceptions are the 1921/22 summer semester, when professor Kelemina had nine hours of lectures, and the 1925/26 winter semester, 
when he only had five hours.
19 A complete bibliography of Kelemina’s works was published by Bezlaj in a contribution celebrating Kelemina on his 70th anniversary 
(Bezlaj, 1954). 
20 Cf. Seznam predavanj na univerzi Kraljevine Srbov, Hrvatov in Slovencev v Ljubljani (List of lectures at the university of the Kingdom of 
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Ljubljana). Ljubljana, University of Ljubljana, for each semester.
21 Jakob Kelemina dedicated himself to English literature not only in his lectures but also in his publishing endeavours. One of his notable 
areas of expertise was Shakespeare (Jurak, 2007). 
22 Fanny Susannah Copeland-Barkworth, born in Ireland in 1872, was a highly educated cosmopolitan, translator, musician, linguist, writer, 
alpinist, and for twenty years, a teacher of English language and literature at the University of Ljubljana. On her life and work, cf. Mikša 
& Vehar, 2013; Batagelj, 2007, 125–128. 
well as oral examination often involved topics from 
19th-century literature, especially from German Wei-
mar Classicism. At the same time, however, Kelemina 
also adhered to Wilhelm von Humboldt’s principle 
that university professors should bring their research 
work into their teaching. His monograph on the study 
of literature (Literarna veda), which appeared in 1927, 
is a product both of his reflections on literary studies, 
which he intensively developed and published piece-
meal in Ljubljanski zvon and Dom in svet,19 and of the 
lectures and seminars he held in Germanic philology in 
Ljubljana. He held his first seminar on a topic from lit-
erary studies – the theory of the novel – in the 1921/22 
winter semester; a year later, in the 1922/23 summer 
semester, he held a seminar on the study of literature, 
which he developed in the 1925/26 summer semester 
with a lecture and seminar titled “Introduction to the 
Study of Literature”.20
Although the students knew German very well dur-
ing the first years of Kelemina’s employment, thanks 
to their Austro-Hungarian high-school education, this 
would change over time. In the following decades, 
therefore, practical language teachers who taught 
the students modern German played an important 
role. These were Henrik Baerent, Franz Hille, and 
Oton Drüner. Apart from German philology in the 
narrow sense, English was also slowly developing. 
In the 1922/23 winter semester, Kelemina offered 
his first lectures on English philology, under the title 
“Introduction to Anglo-Saxon”, followed by literary 
seminars in which the students read old English texts, 
especially Beowulf (WS 1922/23).21 The first teaching 
hours in English had in fact started a year earlier, 
when the English language teacher Fanny Copeland 
(1872–1970) started teaching at the Faculty of Arts;22 
she played a very important role not only by teaching 
English, but also as the long-time driving force behind 
the Društvo za proučevanje angleškega jezika (Society 
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for Study of the English Language, est. 1922), and as an 
indefatigable translator and cultural mediator (about 
the role of cultural mediators in cultural diplomacy 
cf. Udovič et al., 2023). Beside her mother tongue, 
Copeland had excellent knowledge of Slovene, Serbo-
Croat, German, and Italian, and also communicated 
in French, Russian, Bulgarian, Norwegian, and Dan-
ish. In 1941 she was “forcibly dismissed from work by 
the Italian occupiers” and placed “in confinement”.23
THE FIRST STUDENTS
In the first semester, the 1919/20 winter semester, 
which only started on 3 December 1919 with an intro-
ductory lecture by the linguist Dr Fran Ramovš (1890–
1952) and lasted until April 1920, six male students and 
one female student signed up for Kelemina’s lectures on 
the historical grammar of the German language. Anyone 
who had passed their secondary-school matura exam 
could enrol at the university, and the first year also saw 
the enrolment of many students who had previously 
studied at other universities. This was also the case for 
the Germanists: six of them had already completed 
their first semesters of study in Vienna, Graz, Zagreb or 
Belgrade, and only one completed the entire course of 
study in Ljubljana. It was the faculty council that de-
cided on the recognition of their previously completed 
requirements.24 
23 Certificate of employment for Fanny S. Copeland dated 24th May 1954 (UAL IV, 6/92, personal folder: Fanny S. Copeland). 
24 Guide to inscription in the University of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Ljubljana. In: Seznam predavanj na univerzi kra-
ljestva Srbov, Hrvatov in Slovencev v Ljubljani za letni semester 1920 (1920). Ljubljana, University of Ljubljana.
Enrolment figures
In the 1920 summer semester, the number of 
Germanic philology students grew from the initial 
seven to 10, and the next year to 12. Despite our 
systematic review of all personal records, the inad-
equate, inconsistent, and even arbitrary recording of 
the main discipline and the wide freedom of choice 
make it practically impossible to determine how many 
students actually signed up for Germanic philology 
as their main subject. It is only after the amended 
examination rules (Izpitni predpisi) in 1928, which 
drew up a stricter plan for the organization of studies, 
that the information in the student records becomes 
more reliable and tangible. These figures still cannot 
be taken at face value, since some students did not 
record their field of study or failed to record it prop-
erly; moreover, it would be unfair to distinguish strictly 
between the main and subsidiary subject, since the 
number of hours spent attending one or the other was 
often quite similar. The only truly exact information, 
therefore, comes from the so-called inscriptions, i.e. 
the professors’ signatures, which the students collected 
in their personal records and which clearly show who 
attended a particular subject in a given semester. The 
figures in the following chart, which include all the 
records in the winter semesters from 1919 to 1945, are 
informative in this regard. 
Chart 1: The number of students of Germanic philology (main subject) and all persons attending Germanist 
subjects (main, subsidiary and elective subject C) in the winter semesters 1919–1945.
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Irena SAMIDE & Petra KRAMBERGER: THE BEGINNINGS OF SLOVENE GERMANIC PHILOLOGY: THE FIRST PROFESSORS AND THE SOCIAL PROFILE ..., 315–330
In the 1922/23 winter semester, more than 30 
students signed up for Germanist subjects.25 With 
minor fluctuations, their number kept growing until 
the mid-1930s. At the beginning of the 1930s we 
see a pronounced jump in the numbers auditing 
seminars, lectures, and exercises in German-
ist subjects as a subsidiary or elective subject C 
(usually alongside Romance or Slavic philology, 
pedagogics, and philosophy; on the organization 
of the lectures cf. Šlibar, 2020, 19–28), after Jakob 
Kelemina was joined by Henrik Baerent, a contract 
teacher of modern German. This talented Russian 
of German descent had studied in St Petersburg for 
four semesters, and then continued his Germanist 
studies in Ljubljana, graduating in 1926 and obtain-
ing Yugoslav citizenship in 1928. Employed by the 
University of Ljubljana, he held exercises in Ger-
man grammar and translation (German–Slovene and 
Slovene–German) and in German style and com-
position. At the beginning of the 1941/42 winter 
semester, he suddenly quit and joined the Deutsche 
Wehrmacht, after which all trace of him is lost 
(Maslo, 2021, 39–40). With his arrival, the number 
of students signed up for Germanist subjects grew 
from 57 in 1929/30 to 86 in 1930/31, and as many 
as 125 in 1930/31. The 1930s can therefore rightly 
be called “the golden age of Germanic philology” 
(Šlibar, 2020, 28). Towards the end of the 1930s 
attendance declined, and in 1939/49 the Germanist 
subjects were audited only by 61 students; only 29 
students chose Germanic philology, or German, as 
their main subject. The reason for the astounding 
75% leap to 107 participants in 1940/41 is unclear: 
some may have wanted to finish their studies 
as soon as possible, but it may also be a sign of 
stronger German national tendencies. On 3  May 
1941, in accordance with the agreement between 
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the whole Province 
of Ljubljana was annexed by Italy. Hence it is not 
surprising that enrolment in Germanic philology 
25 UAL I, 235, personal records for winter semester 1922/23.
26 UAL I, 234 and UAL I, 269, personal records for winter semester 1921/22 and winter semester 1942/43.
27 UAL IV, 217, Regulation on the Abolition of Lectures at the University of Ljubljana, 1943. 
28 After the war, it was understandably challenging to reestablish German studies as a scientific discipline focusing on the German langu-
age and literature. There was a shortage of qualified teachers, particularly after 1957 when Jakob Kelemina passed away. Therefore, it 
proved to be particularly valuable that both German states, both the FRG and the GDR, sent a lecturer to Ljubljana. The lecturers made 
a significant contribution to the development of German studies in Ljubljana and served as a paradigmatic example of the importance of 
the relations between Germany and Slovenia throughout the decades leading up to Slovenia’s independence. For more information on 
German-Slovenian relations, see the article by Boštjan Udovič (2022).
29 In the past five academic years (from 2018/19 to 2022/23) 241 students have enrolled in German Studies at the Faculty of Arts in Ljublja-
na; of these, only 22 come from the Littoral (a little over 9%). The gender ratio among all students from the coastal region was 16 female 
and six male students, with female students thus accounting for nearly 73% of the total (VIS FF UL). 
30 Here we may mention, for example, the activities of the Kulturhaus Görz Society, whose promotion of a multi-cultural and multi-lingual 
town (Gorizia, Görz, Gorica, Gurize) is also bringing German to the fore again (https://www.kulturhaus-go.it/). A comprehensive overvi-
ew of association’s activities in this region during the Habsburg Monarchy is given by Branko Marušič (1999). 
31 Additionally, Koper had the renowned I&R Upper Secondary School, where Italian became the language of instruction in all subjects in 
1868, whereas German and Slovene were only obligatory for pupils of German and Slovene nationality. The state secondary school in 
Gorica introduced a parallel class with Slovene as the language of instruction in 1910, and in 1913/14 the school was officially divided 
in three: Slovene, German, and Italian. However, it ceased activities due to the First World War.
dwindled: in the 1942/43 winter semester, only 30 
students continued to attend Germanist subjects, 
which is nearly equivalent to the number of stu-
dents two years after the start of university studies.26 
After Italy capitulated, in November 1943, on the 
order of General Rupnik, the head of the provincial 
administration, the university abolished the lectures 
entirely and only continued to carry out exams and 
doctoral exams27, hence there is no data for those 
two years. After the liberation, the university re-
sumed activities and in the 1945/46 winter semester 
Kelemina held his last lecture on historical gram-
mar, attended mainly by a large number of English 
students, a subject undergoing intensive growth at 
the time. As Kelemina was also an English scholar 
and never neglected this field in research or teach-
ing (Kramberger & Samide, 2022, 39–40, 50–51), 
he was able to shift his entire teaching to English 
subjects over time. From 1946 to 1950 there was 
thus not a single subject taught in German at the 
Faculty of Arts.28
Students from the coastal regions
Students from the coastal regions make up a marginal 
share of the present-day German students,29 and German 
as a foreign language is also less widespread in schools 
in the Gorizia, Coastal–Karst, and Littoral–Inner Car-
niola region than other foreign languages, particularly 
Italian and Spanish. It is only in the last ten years that the 
role of German has grown in these regions, partly due 
to various initiatives that promote multi-linguality and 
draw on memories of Austro-Hungarian times.30 As there 
were three important high schools with humanities or 
classics programmes and German as the language of in-
struction in the Littoral–Istrian area under the Habsburg 
Monarchy, in Trieste, Gorica, and Pula,31 it is certainly a 
very relevant question how many pupils from this area 
went on to the University of Ljubljana to advance their 
knowledge of German language and literature.
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Out of the 916 students who signed up for at least 
one Germanist subject in the 1919–1945 period, 154 
came from the Littoral, Istria, Dalmatia, and the Monte-
negrin Littoral, making up nearly 17% of the total.
The fact that nearly half of these students came 
from Trieste, Gorica and their surroundings is not sur-
prising: After the dissolution of Austria–Hungary and 
the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo in 1920, many Slo-
venes left Trieste due to the political conditions, forced 
Italianization, and rise of Fascism. It was thus probably 
a natural choice for them to opt for the University of 
Ljubljana. It should be mentioned that a University of 
Trieste was established in 1924, but it started out with 
only two faculties, Law and Economics, and the fac-
ulty of Philology and Philosophy was established only 
in 1943. That nearly all these students were Slovenes 
is clear not only from their Slovene-sounding names, 
but also from their national self-identification, for eve-
ryone declared their own nationality in their student 
records, and except for two female students (whose 
names were unambiguously Italian), they all declared 
themselves Slovenes or Yugoslavs. 
The gender ratio among students from the coastal 
regions is similar to the full picture: out of a total of 154 
students there were 83 female and 71 male students, 
or 54% women. Looking at the full population, in the 
university’s first 25 years lectures in Germanic philology 
were attended by 519 female students and 397 males, 
or 57% women.
The preponderance of women may at first glance 
seem surprising, considering that we are exploring the 
first quarter-century of the university’s activities, so let 
us explain two points. First, we should stress that the 
gender ratio was highly unbalanced during the first 
years, mainly due to the fact that in Austro-Hungarian 
times it was very difficult for women to attend secondary 
school or complete their matura school-leaving exam, 
which was a precondition for going to university. The 
first female matura graduate in the Slovene lands was 
the Trieste-born Medea Norsa (1877–1952), who took 
the exam in 1900 at the Koper Upper Secondary School. 
It was only after 1910 – and still subject to restrictions 
– that girls could begin to attend the general secondary 
and technical secondary schools (gimnazije, realke) in 
Chart 2: Regional origin of students signed up for Germanist subjects, 1919–1945.
Chart 3: Share of male and female students enrolled in Germanist subjects, 1919–1945.
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full (for more on the education of women in the Slovene 
lands cf. Demšar, 2021). As shown in Chart 4, until 
1925 the share of female students of Germanist subjects 
ranged between 10 and 20%, and then began to grow 
continuously. In the first decade, then, women made up 
between a third and at most half of the student total, 
while after 1930 they formed the majority, and up to the 
end of the Second World War they made up about two 
thirds of all those studying.
Second, already in the 1960s empirical studies 
of the French education system (Bourdieu & Pas-
seron, 1979) found that gender did not play the 
decisive role in access to university education, but 
social origin did. There was merciless selection 
throughout the education system, and among the 
most underprivileged classes – industrial workers 
with no financial or cultural capital – one could 
even speak of elimination, they asserted (Bourdieu 
& Passeron, 1979, 2). They calculated that the son of 
a senior executive was 80 times more likely to go to 
university than a farm worker’s son, 40 times more 
than the son of an industrial worker, and still twice 
more than the son of a lower-rank executive. In the 
1960s, on this account, children of the most under-
privileged classes still had only a symbolic chance 
that their parents might send them to university, and 
only 5% went. The share of children from certain 
segments of the middle class (clerical workers, 
proprietors, artisans, and shopkeepers) that went to 
university was 10–15%, while nearly 60% of chil-
dren of senior executives did so, and nearly 80% 
of children of parents in artistic, intellectual, and 
liberal professions entered university studies. The 
difference reflected not only the traditional division 
into social classes (upper, middle and lower class), 
but also divisions within the upper stratum itself: 
those endowed with financial capital rated lower in 
this regard than those with cultural capital, i.e., the 
intellectuals. Decisive factors in the decision to go 
to university included their childhood environment; 
the social bonds, including those outside the family, 
that they naturally formed; and the social practices 
characteristic of everyday life in a given milieu 
(theatre-going, cultural events, newspaper-reading, 
flexibility, etc.). Working-class children had to 
scrape together all their cultural capital themselves, 
and were thus subtly underprivileged compared 
with the children of intellectuals, who showed their 
knowledge with a certain off-hand ease as a matter 
of course (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979, 12). That is 
why, of all the differentiating factors, “social origin 
is doubtless the one whose influence bears most 
strongly on the student world, more strongly, at 
any rate, that sex or age […]” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 
1979, 8).
We have taken the data for our study from the 
personal records in which students in the 1930s 
started entering their father’s profession, and in 
part we have also relied on the biographies of some 
of the more prominent students. We find that we 
can draw similar, if less radical conclusions for 
Germanist students as well. We should note that 
our findings are merely indicative, since the period 
under study is relatively short (10 years) because 
the recording of the father’s profession started only 
in the 1933/34 winter semester, and the number of 
students processed in this way (77) makes up less 
than 10% of all students of Germanic philology in 
the interwar period and cannot be considered repre-
sentative. It is also often hard to determine from the 
recorded professions what status a person enjoyed 
or what social class they could be placed in (for 
example, a “merchant” could be a businessman, a 
wholesaler, or just a small shopkeeper). However, 
we do find that the father’s profession was listed as 
farm worker or farmer only four times out of 77, and 
in two of these cases we may conclude that they 
were large landowners. The largest share of profes-
Chart 4: Gender ratio among students auditing Germanist subjects, 1919–1945 (for all regions).
325
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sions (about 50%) was made up of so-called “lower 
managerial” positions (primary teachers, public 
servants, clerical workers, lower-rank executives); 
a large share (about 20%) was also made up of the 
professions that Bourdieu and Passeron classed as 
possessing the most cultural capital, i.e., senior 
executives or professionals (supervisors, adminis-
trators, school administrators, university professors, 
liberal professions, and lawyers). Some 25% were 
industrial workers and lower ranked clerical work-
ers (railway conductors, ticket collectors, guards, 
etc.), and 5% were farmers or farm workers. Based 
on these figures, we find that the childhood social 
environment played a large role for students from 
the Littoral, too, as most of the students came from 
the upper strata of society. Still, a relatively high 
25% share was also made up of members of the 
lower middle class, whom the French research 
accorded considerably lower chances of entering 
academia. The reasons why the difference is less 
pronounced than in France can probably be found 
in the narrower stratification of Slovene society in 
the interwar period: since the first university in the 
Slovene lands was established only in 1919, the 
parents of students from this period would have had 
significantly less access to education than later gen-
erations. The picture we get of the students’ social 
origin based on their fathers’ fields of work is quite 
telling, as seen in the following table.
Since we have data on the father’s profession 
only for the decade 1933–1943, the considerably 
larger share of women (63%) is notable. This only 
confirms the well-known thesis that women opted 
primarily for the humanities and men for natural 
sciences and engineering, clearly reflecting the 
influence of the traditional model of the division 
of labour (and the distribution of “gifts”, “ability”) 
between the genders (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979, 
6). We also find that male students were signifi-
cantly more likely to be the sons of fathers from the 
categories “farmers, crafts and industry”, whereas 
female students were to a much greater extent the 
daughters of fathers from the categories “public ad-
ministration and education”. We may thus conclude 
that the female students from the Littoral stood a 
better chance that their families would support their 
decision to study German at the university when the 
fathers also came from an educational background. 
On the other hand, this finding confirms the thesis 
that “females are more often consigned to the Arts 
or Science faculties, which train them for a career 
in teaching” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979, 6). Many 
female Germanist graduates did indeed find employ-
ment in education, most successfully Ada or Adela 
Žgur (1909–1992), though she did not come from 
a teacher’s family. She was born in Komen in the 
family of a non-commissioned officer in the gen-
darmes, went to the classical secondary school in 
Kranj, and studied Germanic philology in Ljubljana 
from 1928 to 1932. She graduated in German and 
English on 30  June 1932 and went on to teach in 
several secondary schools, and during the war she 
Field Men Women Total
Farm workers and farmers 4 0 4
Crafts and industry 3 1 4
Railways 5 8 13
Trade 3 3 6
Public administration, finance, banking, clerical workers 4 13 17
Military, police, customs 4 9 13
Mail and telegram services 1 1 2
Law 0 3 3
Healthcare (pharmacist) 0 1 1
Education 4 9 13
Culture and media (editor) 0 1 1
The profession of the father not given 77
Table 1: Social origin of students from Littoral, Istria, and Dalmatia.
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also worked as a translator during the preparations 
for the Paris Peace Conference. She thus kept using 
her foreign-language competences very actively, 
and for a while (from 1949 to 1950) she was also 
inspector for foreign languages at the Ministry of 
Education. In the autumn of 1950, she took a posi-
tion as practical German teacher at the Department 
of Germanic Languages and Literatures, where she 
would impart practical knowledge of German to 
the students as the only teacher for nearly a decade 
(Stanonik, 2013). She published several textbooks 
for both English and German, compiled a selec-
tion of modern German literary texts together with 
the Idria-born Melita Počkar (1909–1984),32 and 
remains appreciated by today’s German students 
for her Nemška slovnica or Deutsche Grammatik 
(German grammar), which has been reprinted many 
times since it first appeared in 1958. Five years after 
Ada Žgur, another Germanist graduate from the Lit-
toral was Valter Braz (1914–1988), who worked as 
a practical German teacher at the Faculty of Arts in 
Ljubljana. Braz was born in Trieste, went to techni-
cal secondary school in Celje and then enrolled 
in the study of German language and literature in 
Ljubljana (Krevs Birk, 2013). Until his appoint-
ment at the Faculty of Arts in 1961, he worked as 
a secondary-school teacher and headmaster, so it 
is not surprising that he is best known for his very 
successful secondary-school German textbooks. 
Among the university professors, the most eminent 
was the literary theorist, comparativist, critic, es-
sayist, and editor Anton Ocvirk (1907–1980), who 
was born in Gorica and studied Slavic philology 
and comparative literature, and who also attended 
Kelemina’s lectures on German historical grammar 
in 1928/29 and 1929/30 (Jan, 2013). Among the 
well-known students from the Littoral who attended 
lectures in Germanic philology we should also 
mention Ferdo Delak (1905–1968), who made a 
name for himself in theatre and film, but was also 
a translator and publicist (Šlibar, 2020, 46); Branka 
Jurca (1914–1999), a popular author of books 
for children and young adults; Silvira Tomasini 
(1913–1942) from Trieste, who graduated in 1938 
and is considered a national heroine: active in 
social and cultural work, she organized women in 
the national liberation struggle (Šlibar, 2020, 47); 
and the poet, thinker and publicist Srečko Kosovel 
(1904–1926), who attended Kelemina’s lectures in 
the 1925/26 summer semester. Despite studying 
Slavic and Romance philology and attending only 
one of Kelemina’ s lectures, German held great sig-
nificance for Kosovel and served various purposes, 
32 Melita Počkar (born Pirc) completed her studies in German language and literature and Old German, comparative literature with literary 
theory, and the history of South Slavic literature and Slovene language at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana in 1933. From 1958 on (until her 
retirement in 1978), she was employed by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures of the Faculty of Arts first as a practical 
language teacher and later as instructor in German (Šlibar, 2020, 57).
including as a language of mediation. As noted by 
Vanda Srebotnjak in her study (2021, 166), he even 
read Benedetto Croce in German.
CONCLUSION
The period from the establishment of the Uni-
versity of Ljubljana in 1919 to the Second World 
War was the pioneering phase in the development 
of Slovene Germanic philology. In content, struc-
ture, and main activities, it was entirely in line 
with Germanic philology in Europe at the time. 
Jakob Kelemina, who was the first to head the De-
partment of German Studies and for a long time its 
only academic member of staff, also put it on the 
European map by cleaving to Humboldt’s principle 
of bringing scientific research together with uni-
versity teaching. Humboldt, as we know, not only 
discovered the formula for the modern research 
and teaching university, but has also remained an 
uncontested authority in matters concerning the 
ideal relationship between the university and the 
state: academic production in his view goes far 
better if the state does not meddle with it, but only 
ensures adequate working conditions in academic 
institutions. Pierre Bourdieu, on whom we have 
relied several times in this article, took a similar 
view 150 years later; in Homo academicus he 
explains why resistance is not only legitimate but 
necessary when academic autonomy faces pressure 
from industry, trade, or politics: “As authorities, 
whose position in social space depends principally 
on the possession of cultural capital, a subordinate 
form of capital, university professors are situated 
rather on the side of the subordinate pole of the 
field of power and are clearly opposed in this 
respect to the managers of industry and business” 
(Bourdieu, 1988, 36). Jakob Kelemina was no ex-
ception in this regard. Although he clearly sided 
with the national liberation movement during the 
Second World War, he always remained faithful 
to his autonomous, sovereign academic stance, 
and for this reason – as the long-time president of 
the English club in Ljubljana – he was imprisoned 
just after the war (Mole, 1970, 506). At the same 
time, he was always aware of the social respon-
sibility that came with the professorship, and did 
not lock himself in the ivory tower of a university 
professor focusing on his narrow scientific field 
of Old German language and literature, but rather 
acted as a homo academicus in the true sense of 
the term: he engaged in the most varied cultural-
historical, literary, ethnographic, etymological, 
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and linguistic questions, published scientific and 
professional articles in numerous journals, was a 
prolific translator, and was socially engaged. How 
different and how socially appreciated the role of 
university professors once was can also be seen 
from the Prešeren Prize Kelemina was awarded in 
1954 for his life’s work in literary studies. 
Much the same went for the students as for the 
professors: going to university was not at all an 
obvious choice in the 1920s and 1930s, and these 
decisions were not only connected with intellec-
tual abilities, but depended on a range of other 
factors. As we have shown, based on Bourdieu’s 
classification of education opportunities by eco-
nomic and cultural capital, and on empirical stud-
ies of data on the students in the first generation of 
Slovene Germanists, one of the main factors was 
the social origin of the potential students: children 
from environments rich in cultural capital had, and 
probably still have, far better chances of entering 
academia than those from families with a low level 
of such capital. This study has shown that there 
were far more students enrolling in Germanic phi-
lology from the whole area of the Littoral, Istria, 
and Dalmatia than today. Predominantly, they 
were the children of public servants, teachers, 
lawyers, and other professions that can be classed 
as possessing a high level of cultural capital. There 
can be no doubt that German had considerably 
more of a presence in this area – in part due to 
its historical role, of course – than it has today. 
Moreover, numerous students who either enrolled 
in the study of German language and literature or 
only attended individual lectures in the field of 
Germanic philology went on to leave their mark 
on Slovene society.
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ZAČETKI SLOVENSKE GERMANISTIKE: PRVI PROFESORJI IN DRUŽBENA STRUKTURA 
PRVIH ŠTUDENTOV S PRIMORSKE
Irena SAMIDE
Univerza v Ljubljani, Filozofska fakulteta, Oddelek za germanistiko z nederlandistiko in skandinavistiko
Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija
e-mail: irena.samide@ff.uni-lj.si
Petra KRAMBERGER
Univerza v Ljubljani, Filozofska fakulteta, Oddelek za germanistiko z nederlandistiko in skandinavistiko
Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija
e-mail: petra.kramberger@ff.uni-lj.si
POVZETEK
Prispevek osvetljuje začetke germanistike na Slovenskem, ki sovpadajo z ustanovitvijo Univerze v Ljubljani, 
in se pri tem osredinja zlasti na strukturo študentov in študentk s slovenskega, italijanskega in hrvaškega primor-
ja. Germanistika na ljubljanski Filozofski fakulteti, katere dolgoletni predstojnik je bil prof. dr. Jakob Kelemina 
(1882–1957), se je kot ena od ustanovnih ved hitro uveljavila in pridobivala na ugledu: do konca druge svetovne 
vojne je predavanja na germanski filologiji obiskovalo skupno 916 študentov in študentk. S kvantitativno in 
kvalitativno analizo arhivskih virov, seznamov predavanj in osebnih izkazov ter na podlagi Bourdieujeve kla-
sifikacije izobraževalnih možnosti glede na ekonomski in kulturni kapital prispevek ugotavlja, kolikšen delež 
zavzemajo študentje z mediteranskega območja, kakšno je razmerje med spoloma, kakšna je korelacija med 
družbeno-socialnim okoljem, iz katerega izvirajo, ter izbiro študija, kako se nacionalno (samo)opredeljujejo in 
kako je izbira študijskih vsebin vplivala na njihovo karierno pot: med njimi najdemo tako univerzitetne profesorje 
kot uveljavljene pisatelje, prevajalce, kulturne delavce, umetnike, pravnike, publiciste in številne druge, ki so 
pomembno sooblikovali slovensko družbo. Izsledki kažejo, da predstavljajo študentje s Primorske 17-odstotni 
delež vseh študentov, od tega je 54 odstotkov žensk, kar je primerljivo s povprečjem za celotno populacijo. 
Ob tem se je tudi izkazalo, da družbeno-socialno okolje pomembno vpliva na odločitev za študij, saj večina 
študentov izhaja iz srednjega in višjega sloja prebivalstva, ki je izobraževanju bolj naklonjeno. 
Ključne besede: študij germanistike, Jakob Kelemina, struktura študentov, primorski študentje, zgodovina 
germanistike 1919–1945, kulturni kapital
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ANNALES · Ser. hist. sociol. · 33 · 2023 · 2
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