Deindustrialization & Heritage Reimagining

The post-war European integration project binding contemporary member regions across borders.

1 chapter

1945 - 1986

The socialist industrialization and workers' culture macro-thread reshaped festival life through new institutions. The Ravne ironworks was nationalized and intensively developed under director Gregor Klančnik (1946–1969), merged into Slovenian Steelworks (1969). Guštanj was renamed Ravne na Koroškem in 1952 to remove German toponymy. Two museums anchored collective memory: the Okrajni muzej NOB (1951, Slovenj Gradec) and the Delavski muzej (1953, Ravne) — later merged into Koroški Pokrajinski Muzej (KPM). The Forma Viva steel sculpture symposia (1964–1989) embedded the steelworker identity in public space across four towns, producing 34 large steel works still visible today. The Mining and Ethnographic Collection at Črna (opened 1978/1980) preserved peasant-life objects alongside mining heritage. The Jesenska srečanja festival began in Prevalje around 1988, the first of the modern civic festivals. This era's institutions — the museum, the sculpture collection, the factory cultural programs — created the framework within which today's heritage festivals operate. Walk the Forma Viva trail through Ravne and read steel as a cultural medium; step into the Črna ethnographic collection and read the peasant world that industrialization displaced but the museum preserved.

1918 - 1945

The post-imperial partition and occupation macro-thread ruptured the valley community twice in one generation. In December 1918, General Rudolf Maister's volunteer forces seized Dravograd for the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The 1920 Carinthian Plebiscite divided the region: the Meža Valley was allocated to the SHS Kingdom without a vote, while Zone A voted 59% for Austria. In 1922, Libeliče was exchanged — its people's determination to join the 'mother nation' is documented in the Plebiscite Museum. Then in April 1941, Nazi Germany annexed the Meža Valley into Reichsgau Carinthia under Gauleiter Friedrich Rainer; the Slovene language was prohibited, organizations abolished, and an underground resistance cell organized by Franjo Golob in Dravograd from July 1941. The majority of Slovene WW2 victims came from northern Slovenia including this area. The Battle of Poljana near Prevalje (May 14–15, 1945) was one of the last armed engagements of WWII in Europe. Festival traditions that continued through occupation — religious feast days, folk music — carry memory of both accommodation and resistance. Stand at the Libeliče museum and read the complexity of a community split by a border it never voted on; stand at Poljana and read the last shots of a war that re-annexed this valley to the very state the border was supposed to separate it from.

1809 - 1918

The Industrial Revolution and imperial modernization macro-thread transformed the Meža Valley from a manorial iron district into a modern industrial zone. Napoleon's annexation of Koroška to the Illyrian Provinces (1809) briefly interrupted Habsburg rule; after 1813, Austrian modernization accelerated. Count Thurn purchased the Ravne ironworks (1807), modernized it with fine forged steel (1853–54), and introduced Siemens-Martin furnaces (1881). The Rosthorn brothers established a zinc factory at Prevalje (1822) and pioneered puddle steel (1835–40). The Southern Railway through Dravograd (1863) connected the valley to Vienna and Trieste. The Bleiberger Bergwerks Union took over the Mežica lead-zinc mine (1889), making it one of Europe's largest. German was the administrative language of the ironworks, the mine, and the railway — a bilingual reality that the Slovene national revival simultaneously resisted. The flosarji rafting culture peaked, with trips lasting weeks down the Drava to Belgrade and the Black Sea. Stand at the Ravne ironworks gate or the Dravograd railway station and read the scale of imperial industrial integration — the infrastructure that employed the communities who later created the Ravenski dnevi and Jesenska srečanja festivals.

1602 - 1809

The Counter-Reformation and manorial ironworks macro-thread fused religious identity with industrial development. In 1602, Carinthian peasants consecrated the Church of sv. Uršula (St. Ursula) atop Uršlja gora at 1,699m — the highest church in Slovenia — explicitly as an act of resistance against 'corrupted faith' (Protestantism) in Windischgrätz. This pilgrimage site, still active each summer, encodes confessional identity in the landscape. Simultaneously, the manorial iron economy took shape: Melhior Putz transferred ironworks to Črna na Koroškem from the Labot valley in 1620, and lead mining was formally permitted in 1665. The Counts of Thurn became the dominant industrial and seigneurial family, controlling both ironworks and mining concessions. Joseph II's dissolution of monasteries in 1782 (including the Dominican house at Radlje, founded 1251) reshaped the religious landscape. Climb Uršlja gora and read the Counter-Reformation in the act of building a church at the summit; walk through the Old Ironworks at Črna and read the manorial production system that gave the Meža Valley its occupational calendar of saints' days and workplace rituals.