Ivan Hribar

Hribar's aim was to transform Ljubljana into a prestigious centre of all Slovene Lands and thus create a cultural and economic capital for the Slovenian people.

He remained in office until 1910, when the Emperor Franz Joseph I refused to confirm his reelection, because of his alleged role in anti-German riots two years earlier, in which two Slovenian students were shot by the Austro-Hungarian Army.

Between April 1915 and June 1917, he was placed in house arrest in an estate in Land Salzburg, far from his homeland, in order to isolate him from his potential political allies.

After the end of World War I and the establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, he withdrew from party politics, although he remained active in public life.

In 1940, after Hitler's Invasion of France, he became one of the founders of the "Association of Friends of the Soviet Union," which served as one of the rallying grounds for the later development of the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People.

On 18 April, after returning home from a meeting with the Fascist Italian authorities, which had just offered him the mayorship of the city, he jumped into the Ljubljanica River, wrapped in the Yugoslav flag.

He left a note with verses from France Prešeren's poem The Baptism on the Savica:[4] Manj strašna noč je v črne zemlje krili, kot so pod svetlim soncem sužnji dnovi.