Karel Mauser (August 11, 1918 – January 21, 1977) was a Slovene poet, author, and playwright. He is ranked among the best writers of Slovene postwar prose.

Life

Karel Mauser was born in

Bled Bled (; ,''Leksikon občin kraljestev in dežel zastopanih v državnem zboru,'' vol. 6: ''Kranjsko''. 1906. Vienna: C. Kr. Dvorna in Državna Tiskarna, p. 146. in older sources also ''Feldes'') is a town on Lake Bled in the Upper Carniolan regio ...

to Franc and Helena Mauser. In 1939 he started studying theology in

Ljubljana {{Infobox settlement , name = Ljubljana , official_name = , settlement_type = Capital city , image_skyline = {{multiple image , border = infobox , perrow = 1/2/2/1 , total_widt ...

, but he did not graduate because he left the seminary in 1944. While serving as an assistant medic with the Village Guard (), he was captured at Turjak Castle and taken to the prisons in

Kočevje Kočevje (; ; ''Göttscheab'' or ''Gətscheab'' in the local Gottscheerish dialect; ) is a town and the seat of Municipality of Kočevje in southern Slovenia. Geography The town is located at the foot of the Kočevski Rog karst plateau on t ...

and then held at

Stična Abbey Stična Abbey (, also ; , Latin: ''Sitticum'') is the oldest monastery in Slovenia. It is the only Cistercian order, Cistercian monastery in the country still operating (the other was Kostanjevica Abbey in Kostanjevica na Krki). Its mother house ...

, from where he fled to Ljubljana and worked there as a co-editor of the book series ''Slovenčeva knjižnica'' (The Slovene Library). After fleeing Slovenia twice (at the end of 1945 and in early 1946), he made his way to the United States through the

Carinthia Carinthia ( ; ; ) is the southernmost and least densely populated States of Austria, Austrian state, in the Eastern Alps, and is noted for its mountains and lakes. The Lake Wolayer is a mountain lake on the Carinthian side of the Carnic Main ...

n refugee camps in 1950, and he worked until 1976 at a factory in Cleveland producing drill bits.

Literary work

Mauser began to publish his first prose and poems in 1938 in the newspapers '' Dom in svet'', ''Mentor'', ''Mlada setev'', and ''Vrtec'', and after his exile mostly with the Hermagoras Society in Klagenfurt and Slovene Cultural Action in Buenos Aires, as well as in the domestic and expatriate press in the United States and Canada. He continued the Slovene tradition of the local story with stories from village life with typically emotionally colored narratives and morally defined literary characters. Mauser's best works are the novella ''Sin mrtvega'' (Son of the Dead) and the novel ''Ljudje pod bičem'' (People under the Scourge). Both works deal with the subject of World War II and the first years after it. Along with the historical image of the time, they mainly show the moral and emotional upheavals that accompany the destinies of the characters in the story. Mauser also relates to traditional Slovenian prose with the theme of the clerical profession, which is presented in the play '' Kaplan Klemen'' (Chaplain Klemen), and in his unfinished biography of Bishop Frederic Baraga, ''Le eno je potrebno'' (Only One is Necessary). Mauser's prose has been translated into French, German, and Spanish. His posthumous poetry collection ''Zemlja sem in večnost'' (I Am the Earth and Eternity) contains religious poetry and reflective poems about nature, as well as philosophical, hymn-like, and reflective poems.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mauser, Karel 1918 births 1977 deaths Slovenian male poets Slovenian dramatists and playwrights Prisoners and detainees of Yugoslavia People from Bled Ethnic Slovene people 20th-century Slovenian poets Slovenian emigrants to the United States