Maister's evening: ddr. Damir Globočnik: Hinko Smrekar and his Protocomic Črnovojnik

Caricaturist, illustrator, draftsman, graphic artist and painter Henrik (Hinko) Smrekar (1883–1942) published a lithographed, handwritten, richly illustrated booklet Henrik Smrekar – Črnovojnik in 1919. In the booklet, which aroused great interest, he describes his own adventures from 1915 and 1916. At the beginning of 1915, he was conscripted into the army. He decided to try to get rid of his military uniform. In the end, he was lucky. By November 1915, he was granted a leave of absence. But an anonymous complaint by a patriot devoted to the emperor marked him as a Serbophile and a Russophile. On August 4, 1915, he was arrested. He was first interned in the prisons of the Ljubljana Police and the Ljubljana Castle, and from there he was sent to various camps. From the hospital convalescence in Žajfling/Scheifling near Judenburg, he was sent to the garrison hospital in Graz. He successfully pretended to be a lunatic at the mental hospital there, so that he was eventually struck off the military rolls. He returned to Ljubljana in mid-April 1916.

Damir Globočnik is a doctor of art history and history, museum councilor and art critic. He studies the artistic depictions of the poet dr. France Prešeren and illustrations of his poems, Slovenian caricatures and satirical illustrations, the connection between cultural and political history and fine arts in the 19th and 20th centuries in Slovenia. He published several books, Prešeren and fine art (2006), Cultural historical studies (2009), Art satire (2013), Fine and symbolic (2017), Hinko Smrekar (2021), Jakob Alešovec Brencelj – the first Slovenian satirical paper (2023). In 2023, he arranged the publication of Hinko Smrekar’s records.