The article deals with insult to honour before, during and after
the Second World War. It is restricted to the court circuits of Kranjska
gora and Radovljica and the court circuit of Jesenice that was
(temporarily) united after the war; the article is based on the files of
the competent courts.
The high number of lawsuits shows that litigation because of
honour was common in the pre-war period. During the war, as expected,
people had less time for these issues; immediately after the
war, however, the percentage of litigations because of injured honour
rose once again. The majority of the charges regarding insult to honour
were connected with sexuality; among the defamation charges,
larceny was the most common.
Insult of the authorities and the state soon grew from insult and
defamation to violation of public law and order, which is why the
article only features “milder” cases. The cases with a political background
represent a special category because they provide evidence
of the most current contemporary issues. Before the war, for example,
“political” insults commonly occurred during overheated electoral
campaign events. After the war, when political life gradually
died away, insults with a political basis turned into a direct attack
on the authorities.
The war period and the events related to it left many traces on
people and their mutual relationships, which also manifested itself
in reproaches and insults. Insults and defamations on the basis of
wartime loyalties became an important category of accusations. In
this respect it needs to be pointed out that, in the first few years after
the war, court verdicts were often obviously in line with the “spirit
of the time”.
Comparison between the sexes shows us that men sued more
often than women before the war; men were sued many more times
because of insult to honour. After the war, unlike in the pre-war
times, women defended their honour before the court more often;
at the same time, the number of women who were sued because of
insult to honour and defamation became similar to that of men.