30/09/2019
The story of the poet and the house
The house was rebuilt from 3 houses in mid 17' hundreds, and is a late baroque house, inside was designed by architect Candido Zulliani, whos all other creations in ljubljana were destroyed, as such the house is considered one of the great still standing works of the architect.
Before that it is said that one of the front houses was a brothel - number 13 was usually used for brothels in old european towns (this is where the superstiton about the number 13 originates)
The owner at the time of the redesign by Zulliani was a man named Schweiger - meaning The quiet one in german - he had a statue built above the doorway that depicts a man holding a finger to his mouth - signifying his name. He was also annoyed by the evercoming guest of the brothel, and has changed the house number to 11a to get some peace. To this day, this is the only house on Stari trg that has a letter in its house number.
The house came into posesion of our family in the time of Lili's grandfather's wedding - he bought the house and with it changed the life of his granddaughter Lili -
Lili grew up in 2 separate worlds - in the baroque palace at Stari Trg - an aristocratic Habsburg royalty style living, with strict german discipline and only german language and a totally different world -simple and relaxed when she was at the homestead in Vikrce, where she communicated with the local kids in broken Slovene.
This duality is what defined her development, creativity and progress as a writer/poet.
She started writing her poetry in the time between the wars, in a turbulent time in a turbulent enviroment- in a time of the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, when german language was despised and anything german was met with resistance.
her breakthru came with her husband Edvard Novy, persuading her to show her translations of the famous Oton Zupancic's poems to the author himself; To Lili's surprise he liked them.
With that she was accepted in the Slovenian literary elite, but was still always met with prejudice about posh german monarchs.
She never really cared for nationality, quite the contrary, she considered herself an European, not bound and trapped by boarders or nationality. She always felt like she fitted in with Hasburg grand balls in Vienna mixing with the monarchy as with the Relaxed and simple Slovenian friends in Vikrce.
She grew up in the house on stari trg 11a, and was brought there by her grandfather Karl Ahacic on the day of her father's death.
She was lonely and was daydreaming in the second floor of the house, in nicely decorated rooms and rooms decorated with grandfathers hunting trophies- this was her world, from which she was running and spending most of her time one the back courtyard looking towards the castle- at the age of 10 she lived thru the ljubljana earthquake. After a failed attempt at public schooling she was granted homeschooling - with a strong emphasis on learning languages- latin, french, english, old greek.
She went thru the books with energy and interes, reading about culture, poetry...
She met her husband Eduard Novy von Wallersberg when she was 26, he was a son of noble Eduard the first von Wallersberg - a decorated knight of the iron crown for his achivements at the battle of Sulferin and Custoza.
As his father, Eduard junior was also a general, where he contracted a uncurable disease - for that Lili left him and they lived seperately for 25 years- lili in the house on Stri Trg, and Eduard Novy junior Von Wallersberg in the faility for sick Austro-Hungarian officers.
In the years after the WW2, she had two daugters- Nives and Fides (my grandmother).
in older days, she lived in Stari Trg, taking care of her grandsons, and died in year 1958.
