Jože Javoršek

Joze Javoršek first married Nevenka, who died while he was in jail. Their only son, Svit, committed suicide at the age of 23.

Later, he got married to Marija, a translator, and the couple had two children together, George and Jan Jona.

He died on September 2, 1990, in Ljubljana and was buried in his hometown of Velike Lašče.

Jože Javoršek was born as Jože Brejc, on October 20, 1920, in the small Lower Carniolan town of Velike Lašče, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Slovenia.

After graduating from high school in 1940, he attended the University of Ljubljana where he studied comparative literature. He also became involved with Slovenian Christian Socialist groups and met the great author, Edvard Kocbek, who encouraged him to pursue a literary career.

During World War II, he joined the partisan resistance, and became involved in underground activities in the Italian-occupied Province of Ljubljana. At this time, he also adopted the pseudonym, Jože Javoršek.

After the war ended, he served as the personal secretary of the Minister for Slovenia in the Yugoslav government. He resumed his studies at the French Sorbonne and worked for a brief period as an assistant at the Yugoslav embassy in Paris.

In 1947, his collection of wartime poems, titled ‘Partizanska lirika’ (Partisan Lyrics) was published.

In 1948, he returned to Slovenia and was imprisoned the following year by the Communist authorities and sentenced to 12 years in jail. However, he was released in 1952. After his release he turned mostly towards writing plays, essays and prose.

He earned much recognition as a playwright and some of his acclaimed works include ‘Kriminalna zgodba’ (Criminal Story, 1955), ‘Povečevalno steklo’ (Amplifying Glass, 1956), and ‘Veselje do življenja’ (Joy of Life, 1958).

From 1961 to 1967, he served as an assistant at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Then he became the secretary in the office of the Academy's president, where he worked until 1982.

In 1965, he described his own role in the society through the essay ‘Shakespeare and Politics’, which was written for a volume titled ‘Shakespeare among the Slovenes’. The same year, he also published an essay titled ‘Vodnik po Ljubljani’ (A Guide to Ljubljana).

Joze Javoršek was one of the founders of the Stage '57, an alternative theatre created in 1957 by the younger generations of Slovene artists. The theatre played a decisive role in shaping their generation against the burdens of the repressive traditional rules of the Communist regime.

His 1980 book, ‘La Memoire Dangereuse’, is considered to be one of his most well-crafted works. It gained him widespread recognition beyond the Yugoslav borders and was later also translated into German and Serbo-Croatian.