Maister and native Kamnik

Maister had a special relationship with his hometown, even though he spent some of his earliest childhood years here. At the Ljubljana high school, he became friends with people from Kamnik who attended the school at the time, such as the brothers Josip and Alojzij Benkovič, and Anton Koželj. And even later he befriended and worked with many people from Kamnik. Maister visited Kamnik only twice, in 1908 and 1922. On the third, after celebrating his 60th anniversary in 1934, he was overtaken by death.

The city of Kamnik is always proud of an important compatriot. On the occasion of Maister’s 50th birthday in 1924, he was one of the first to be awarded honorary citizenship and at the same time one of the oldest streets in Kamnik was named after him. On his 60th birthday in 1934, the mayor and the municipal councillors handed him a document with good wishes, for which Maister personally thanked him and wanted to visit his beloved Kamnik, but on July 26, 1934, he was overtaken by death. In 1938, a commemorative plaque was unveiled at his birthplace.

On October 25, 1970, the first public full-length monument to Rudolf Maister in Slovenia was unveiled in Kamnik, the work of the academic sculptor Anton Sigulin. On this occasion, there was a big celebration in Kamnik, including a 600-strong delegation of Maister’s fighters. At that time, the Kamnik high school was also named after the general and poet Rudolf Maister.

At the end of 1995, the Municipality of Kamnik declared Maister’s birthday a Kamnik municipal holiday. In 1999, the Maister Bridge was opened, connecting the ring road with the city center, in 2003 a branch of the General Maister Association was founded. Since 2002, however, the birthplace of Rudolf Maister has been renovated. In 2004, the exterior was statically restored, and then the arrangement of the memorial room began to be considered. Restoration work began at the end of 2012, and the first part with a permanent exhibition on the life and work of Rudolf Maister was ceremoniously opened on Rudolf Maister’s Day, November 23, 2013. In 2017, the Municipality of Kamnik bought the remaining part of the ground floor, where renovated the main hall, the exhibition space for occasional exhibitions and the teaching room. The entire ground floor was ceremoniously opened as a museum unit Rudolf Maister’s Birthplace during events on the municipal holiday, i.e. March 28, 2018. In more than ten years of operation, Rudolf Maister’s Birthplace has gained recognition on a local, national and international scale, as an institution, which always takes care of the Master’s legacy and the legacy of his contemporaries and fighters, presenting his diverse creativity.