Ljubljana

In 1890, Rudolf Maister and his mother Frančiška moved from Kranj to Židovska steza 6 in Ljubljana. Here he enrolled in the 1st Higher State Grammar School of Ljubljana. The period of guardianship of the Maister children, which Lovrenc Sebeniker had officialy taken over with their Aunt Matilda, slowly came to an end. Rudolf’s older brother got a job as a railway official and became self-sufficient. Frančiška Maister made a living from a modest pension she had inherited from her late husband and renting out rooms to secondary school students. During this period, Rudolf completed the fifth and sixth years of grammar school. His biographers assume that due to his modest financial situation and the influence of close relatives employed in military and official services, he decided on 17 August 1892 to enrol at the two-year Landwehr-Kadettenschule in Vienna. In two years, he graduated with good grades and started down the life path of a professional emperor’s and king’s officer.

On 1 October 1894, he was posted to the 4th Landwehr Infantry Regiment in Klagenfurt, and a little over a year later, on 1 November 1895, he became a lieutenant. He served as an officer in Klagenfurt and Ljubljana, where he successfully completed riding school. In 1903 he attended shooting school in Bruck an der Leitha and in 1907 the army officers school in Graz. As a young officer he became well acquainted with Carniola, Carinthia, Gorizia and the Austro-Hungarian coast with its ports of Trieste and Pula – From cadet to general. An important turning point in his private life was his marriage to Marija Sterger in 1905 and the birth of his sons Hrvoje and Borut – Family. On 1 November 1908, Maister was transferred to the north-eastern edge of Austria-Hungary, to Przemyśl, Galicia. This was the end of his Ljubljana period.

There are two statues of General Rudolf Maister in Ljubljana. The first, an equestrian statue created by the sculptor Jakov Brdar, was unveiled in 1999 on Trg Osvobodilne fronte, opposite the Ljubljana railway station. The second statue of the general, also on horseback, was sculpted by Boštjan Putrih and stands in front of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Slovenia on Vojkova cesta.