Andrej Einspieler

With the beginning of the constitutional period in the Austrian Empire in 1860, Einspieler gradually abandoned the ideal of United Slovenia as unachievable.

In 1865, he pushed through initiator the so-called Maribor Program, in which a group of Old Slovenes (a conservative fraction within the Slovene national movement) proposed the re-establishment of Inner Austria, a largely autonomous and federative political unit within the Austrian Empire into which the traditional provinces of Carinthia, Styria, Carniola, and Austrian Littoral would be merged.

He launched the newspaper Stimmen aus Innerösterreich (News from Inner Austria), written mainly in German, in order to convince the German-speaking public to accept this idea.

During all his active life, Einspieler fought for the linguistic and political rights of the Carinthian Slovenes.

The prize has been awarded to, among others, the governor of South Tyrol, Luis Durnwalder; scholar and professor at the Central European University, Anton Pelinka; Roman Catholic prelate, Egon Kapellari; and Austrian politician, Rudolf Kirchschläger.