Anton Novačan

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Anton Novačan (July 7, 1887 – March 22, 1951) was a Slovene politician, diplomat, writer, and playwright.

He was born in Zadobrova near Celje into a peasant family. He studied law at Charles University in Prague and spent time in Paris, Munich, and Moscow. During World War I he was imprisoned by Austro-Hungarian authorities for suspected political radicalism.

After Slovenia joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Novačan became politically active. In 1921 he founded the Slovenian section of the Agrarian Party, which in 1922 became the Slovenian Republican Party, and he led it. The party called for an autonomous Slovenian Free State within a South Slavic confederation and stressed agrarian, Catholic-peasant values while opposing clericalism and social conservatism. In 1923 the party suffered a heavy election defeat and dissolved. Novačan later claimed that he promised King Alexander I to dissolve the party and become a monarchist if he could join the royal diplomatic service.

He then served as a consul in several cities: Warsaw, Brăila, Cairo, Bari, and Klagenfurt. He kept writing, with poems and prose appearing in Ljubljanski zvon. In the late 1920s he published the play Herman Celjski, based on a Styrian noble figure, which he framed as a Nietzschean hero in conflict with his surroundings.

In the 1930s he lived in Belgrade as a freelance writer and journalist, making friends with Slovenes and others. After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, he escaped to Jerusalem and later joined the Yugoslav government in exile in Cairo, working as a clerk.

After World War II he moved to Trieste and published Peti evangelij, a cycle of 240 sonnets. He refused to accept the Titoist regime and in 1948 emigrated to Argentina, settling first in Buenos Aires and later in Posadas, where he died in 1951.