69Meta Remec: Suicide as a Historical Phenomenon: Introduction to the Thematic Section
There are probably not many things that mark people more than the fact that they 
are transient. The division between life and death, between Eros and Thanatos, is as old 
as humanity itself, and while dying and death are exceedingly common themes, suicide 
has nevertheless been given a particular place and has had different connotations in 
various cultural contexts over the centuries. The thematic section at hand presents 
the studies from the project titled Sin, shame, symptom: suicide and its perceptions 
in Slovenia (1850–2000), financed by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency 
(research core funding No. J6-3123), covering the period from the second half of the 
19th century to the modern period, when suicide victims became viewed as patients 
and were no longer perceived as criminals and sinners. In the period starting with the 
formal decriminalisation of suicide and coinciding with the birth of modern statistics 
– which, for the first time in history, calculated statistically verifiable, demonstrable, 
and, within specific environments, constant rates of suicide – the perception of suicide 
changed. No longer deemed a sin, a rebellion against the Creator, and a criminal act, it 
initially became regarded as “the most intimate act” until it started to primarily repre-
sent a reflection of crises and societal circumstances. Suicide was perceived as an issue 
at the intersection of the sacred and the secular, of the philosophical, sociological, and 
medical spheres, of the urban and rural domains, while lawyers, doctors, sociologists, 
theologians, and others dealt with it from their perspectives.
In Slovenia, suicide has received a lot of attention, mainly because the suicide 
rate in the territory of today’s Slovenia has increased enormously in just a single cen-
tury – from three suicides per 100,000 inhabitants, as recorded in the 1873 statistics, 
to more than 35 (and even more than 60 in some parts of the country) in the final 
decades of the 20th century. However, it has so far been treated mainly from the medi-
cal (especially psychiatric), forensic, psychological, and suicidological points of view, 
while the historical aspects of the issue have not yet been examined more thoroughly. 
In contemporary interdisciplinary research that seeks to reveal the origins of today’s 
Suicide as a Historical 
Phenomenon: Introduction  
to the Thematic Section / 
Samomor kot historični  
fenomen: uvod v tematski sklop
70 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
truths about the suicide phenomenon, analyse how these truths have been shaped over 
time, and demonstrate how these truths and beliefs have been reflected in everyday 
life, society, legislation, and people’s behaviour, the historical perspective has never-
theless proved indispensable.
The contributions by Irena Selišnik, Urška Bratož, Jelena Seferović, and Meta 
Remec focus – each from its own perspective – on the period between the end of the 
19th century and the first half of the 20th century when suicide stopped being per-
ceived as a sin and became a symptom of degeneration that undermined the vitality of 
the nation and its power to resist the challenges of the historical moment. In addition 
to the multitude of the infirm, “the blind, the deaf, the idiots, the insane, the epileptics”, 
and the declining birth rates, suicide was perceived as a symptom of the deteriorating 
health of the nation and a harbinger of its imminent demise.1 Suicide was seen as a 
sign of the deficient self-control and moral character of the deceased. Irena Selišnik 
focuses on the question of how suicide was perceived by Slovenian society during the 
second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, drawing on autobiographi-
cal sources of the suicide victims as well as their family members, friends, and family, 
whose world was irreparably affected by these deaths. The issues of the contextualisa-
tion of suicide and the interpretations of its causes and triggers were also addressed 
by Urška Bratož and Jelena Seferović, whose studies allow for a comparison between 
the Slovenian situation and the neighbouring countries. Urška Bratož focuses on the 
media discourse and the social image of suicide at the end of the 19th and the begin-
ning of the 20th centuries, especially in the case of Trieste as a prominent Austrian 
urban centre, where the increasing suicidality trend became more notable at least from 
the 1870s, while Jelena Seferović’s article analyses the media and medical discourse 
as well as the medical records of psychiatric patients. Seferović, Bratož, and Selišnik 
have successfully assembled various fragments to present life stories that cannot be 
captured by statistics alone, demonstrating how the statements about the causes of 
suicide provided by the family members, eyewitnesses, media, and doctors differed 
according to the gender, social status, and even political affiliation of the deceased. In 
that period, the majority of the population was poorly literate, which is why they rarely 
left behind any written records of their lives and even less about their deaths. As only 
a few farewell letters were written, the interpretation of the causes was left to others. 
Meta Remec analysed suicide cases from the judicial records of the Celje and Maribor 
District Courts and a few specific examples from the Trbovlje Local Court in the first 
half of the 20th century. Her analysis reveals that court materials, police reports, and 
statements of witnesses and relatives represent previously filtered sources that express 
the pain, hurt, and anger of the witnesses, who most often tried to clear their names or 
point at potential culprits for the tragic death. By relying on such sources, we can learn 
more about the witness than the person who committed suicide, which is a significant 
drawback at first sight. However, these sources can also prove extremely valuable, as 
1 Samuel Alexander Kenny Strahan, Suicide and Insanity: A Physiological and Sociological Study (London: S. 
Sonnenschein&Co., 1984), 72.
71Meta Remec: Suicide as a Historical Phenomenon: Introduction to the Thematic Section
they reflect the attitudes towards suicide and the cultural climate in different periods 
and settings, along with the tabooisation and stigmatisation that still accompanied 
suicide. Moreover, as these authors’ analyses have revealed, these sources can also shed 
light on the social, economic, religious, and regional specificities and indirectly point 
to related themes such as women’s position in the family and society, the prevalence 
of domestic and sexual violence, etc.
Historiography, which can thus shed light on the origins of today’s beliefs and 
practices, can also provide another perspective on a phenomenon under consider-
ation – for example, the prevailing Western view of suicide as a tragic accident and a 
tragedy that could and should be prevented by all means. The fact that the phenom-
enon of suicide used to be perceived in various ways in different societies – that it was 
not always seen as a shame and a tragedy but also an act of honour and courage – is 
often overlooked.2 This can be gleaned from Ivan Smiljanić’s analysis dealing with the 
concept of heroic suicide among Yugoslav and especially Slovenian Partisans during 
World War II and with the attitude towards these deaths after the war when they were 
formally recognised and consequently glorified and celebrated as heroic acts and the 
ultimate self-sacrifice. His analysis also reveals the embarrassment involved, as this 
concept raised difficult moral questions, such as the unacceptability of suicide from 
the point of view of Marxist ethics, the (in)appropriateness of one’s actions during 
crises, and the limits of personal freedom.
According to the analyses, the people who, for whatever reason, “took their fate into 
their own hands” were granted only partial autonomy throughout the period under 
consideration, as it was deemed that unambiguous correlations existed between public 
and intimate crises. Each time, poor social conditions, recurrent economic crises, fre-
quent changes in the state and ideological frameworks, feelings of insecurity associated 
with these factors, and, in particular, seminal events such as the two World Wars and 
the 1991 Slovenian Independence War, supposedly led to inevitable “suicide epidem-
ics”. However, according to the studies in this thematic section, when crises were real 
and tangible, their perceptions were often artificially created and fuelled, especially 
by sensationalist newspapers and various political actors. In line with the thesis of 
William I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas3 that “if men define situations as real, 
they are real in their consequences”, society perceived the crisis regarding the alleged 
increase in the number of suicides as a real and threatening situation and a sign of an 
impending catastrophe. This is evident both from the analyses of Matteo Perissinotto, 
who focused on female suicide in Trieste in the period immediately after World War 
I, characterised by political, social, and economic insecurity, and Marko Zajc, who 
focused on the period from the 1960s until the collapse of Yugoslavia. During that 
time, the idea of Slovenians as a “suicide nation” formed in the intellectual and politi-
cal discourse, and it seemed that the authorities repeatedly used the sense of crisis 
2 Cf. Maurice Pinguet, Voluntary Death in Japan (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).
3 William I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs (New York: 
Knopf, 1928), 571, 572.
72 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
associated with the phenomenon of suicide to call for closing the ranks, disciplining 
individuals, and reckoning with external and internal opponents, thus legitimising 
their regime. Zajc, who examines how intellectuals used or rejected this idea in their 
discussions and how they adapted expert debates and statistics to their political agen-
das, as well as the other authors, who analyse media discourse in different timeframes, 
reveal how changes in the general public’s attitudes towards suicide were reflected. 
In their contributions, Nuša Zadravec Šedivy, Polonca Borko, Vanja Gomboc, Vita 
Poštuvan, Jure Gračner, Asja Flamiš, and Adelisa Huskić focus mainly on the changes 
in the way the media reported on the phenomenon. These authors have demonstrated 
that the sensationalism revealed by Matteo Perissinotto, Jelena Seferović, and Urška 
Bratož in their analyses was, in the second half of the 20th century, finally joined by the 
first attempts to raise awareness and report on the necessity of suicide prevention, fol-
lowed by the development of public health paradigm. Their findings show that, despite 
the gradual shift from predominantly provocative to more preventive reporting on 
suicide, the public’s desire for “blood” and gruesome details of individual deaths never 
really subsided, while the democratisation and liberalisation of the media space during 
the 1990s also entailed tabloidisation and consequently brought about new challenges 
in asserting the public interest and social accountability in suicide reporting.
The completed studies have proven that suicide represents an excellent case study 
for the changes in values, thinking, discourses, and actions. The articles raise questions 
that require further in-depth reflection and a distinctly interdisciplinary approach in 
the future: to what extent was suicidality a self-fulfilling prophecy; to what extent did 
fears of a suicide epidemic generate the increase in suicidality; and were they, there-
fore, a contingency realised through people’s mindsets and expectations.4 In many 
ways, the articles in this thematic section contribute to the knowledge about the sui-
cide phenomenon and the structural changes in Slovenian society during the 20th cen-
tury while also comparing the development in Slovenia and the neighbouring regions. 
All these complex questions, which remain a research challenge for the future, include 
issues like the impact of the glorification and heroisation of certain suicides vs. the fear 
that suicidality might be “hereditary” (at the individual level, within families, and at 
the level of entire nations) and the influence of persistent negative and catastrophic 
discourses, e.g. that Slovenians are a suicidal nation.
Verjetno je le malo reči, ki človeka zaznamujejo močneje kot dejstvo, da je minljiv. 
Razpetost med življenjem in smrtjo, med erosom in tanatosom, je stara kot človeštvo 
samo, pri čemer je, ob siceršnjem zelo pogostem tematiziranju umiranja in smrti, samo-
mor vendarle imel prav poseben položaj in je skozi stoletja v različnih kulturnih okoljih 
4 Michael Biggs, “Prophecy, Self-Fulfilling/Self-Defeating,” in Byron Kaldis (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the 
Social Sciences, Vol 2 (London etc: SAGE Publications, 2013), 766. James Watson and Anne Hill, Dictionary of 
Media and Communication Studies (Self-fulfilling prophecy) (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 268. 
73Meta Remec: Suicide as a Historical Phenomenon: Introduction to the Thematic Section
imel različne konotacije. Tokratni tematski sklop prinaša študije, ki so nastale v okviru 
projekta Sin, shame, symptom: suicide and its perceptions in Slovenia (1850–2000) 
financed by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (research core funding 
No. J6-3123) in obsegajo čas od druge polovice 19. stoletja do sodobnosti, ko se je 
samomorilec spremenil iz kriminalca in grešnika v bolnika. V obdobju, ki se je začelo 
s formalno dekriminalizacijo samomora in je sovpadlo z rojstvom moderne statistike, 
ki je prvič v zgodovini izračunala statistično preverljive, dokazljive in znotraj določenih 
okolij konstantne stopnje samomorilnosti, je samomor iz greha, upora proti Stvarniku 
in kaznivega dejanja postal sprva »najbolj intimno dejanje«, nato pa predvsem odsev 
kriz in ogledalo razmer v družbi. Samomor je bil dojet kot problem na presečišču sve-
tega in posvetnega, filozofskega, sociološkega in medicinskega, urbanega in ruralnega, 
z njim pa so se vsak s svojega zornega kota ukvarjali pravniki, zdravniki, sociologi, 
teologi in še kdo.
Samomor je bil na Slovenskem deležen veliko pozornosti predvsem zaradi dejstva, 
da se je stopnja samomorilnosti na območju današnje Slovenije v dobrem stoletju 
izjemno povišala – s treh samomorov na 100.000 prebivalcev, kolikor je po statistikah 
znašala leta 1873, se je povzpela na več kot 35 (v posameznih delih države pa celo 
na več kot 60) v zadnjih desetletjih 20. stoletja, vendar je bil do sedaj obravnavan 
predvsem z vidika medicinske (zlasti psihiatrične), forenzične, psihološke in suici-
dološke stroke, historični vidik problematike pa še ni doživel temeljitejše obdelave. 
V sodobnih interdisciplinarnih raziskavah, ki želijo odkriti izvor današnjih resnic o 
fenomenu samomora, analizirati načine, s katerimi so se te oblikovale skozi čas, in 
pokazati, kako so se te resnice in prepričanja odražali v vsakdanjem življenju, družbi, 
zakonodaji in v vedenju ljudi, pa se je historična perspektiva izkazala za nepogrešljivo.
Prispevki Irene Selišnik, Urške Bratož, Jelene Seferović in Mete Remec se vsak 
s svoje perspektive osredotočajo na obrobje konca 19. in prve polovice 20. stoletja, 
ko je samomor iz greha postal znak degeneriranosti, ki spodkopava vitalnost naroda 
in njegovo odpornost proti izzivom, ki jih je prinašal zgodovinski trenutek – poleg 
množice betežnežev, »slepih, gluhih, idiotskih, norih, epileptikov« in padanja nata-
litete je bil samomor namreč dojet kot simptom slabšanja zdravja naroda in znanilec 
njegovega skorajšnjega propada.5 Samomor je bil pojmovan kot znak pomanjkanja 
samonadzora in nezadostnega moralnega značaja pokojnika. Irena Selišnik se osredo-
toča na vprašanje, kako je slovenska družba druge polovice 19. in prve polovice 20. sto-
letja dojemala samomor, pri čemer se naslanja na avtobiografske vire oseb, ki so umrle 
zaradi samomora, in pokojnikovih družinskih članov, prijateljev in družine, v katerih 
svet so te smrti nepopravljivo zarezale. Z vprašanjem kontekstualizacije samomora, 
interpretacijami vzrokov in povodov za ta korak sta se ukvarjali tudi Urška Bratož in 
Jelena Seferović, katerih študiji omogočata primerjavo slovenskih razmer z razme-
rami v sosednjih deželah. Urška Bratož se osredinja na medijski diskurz in družbeno 
podobo samomora ob koncu 19. in v začetku 20. stoletja, predvsem na primeru Trsta 
kot velikega avstrijskega urbanega centra, kjer je bil trend naraščanja samomorilnosti 
5 Strahan, Suicide and Insanity, 72.
74 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
opazneje viden vsaj od sedemdesetih let 19. stoletja, članek Jelene Seferović pa ponuja 
analizo medijskega in medicinskega diskurza ter zdravstvenih kartotek psihiatričnih 
pacientov. Seferović, Bratož in Selišnik so prikažejo razlike, ki so jih tako družinski 
člani in očividci kot mediji in zdravniki izražali pri navajanju vzrokov za samomor 
glede na spol, socialni status ter celo politično pripadnost pokojnika oziroma pokoj-
nice, in preko različnih drobcev stkejo življenjske zgodbe, ki jih zgolj statistike ne 
morejo zajeti. V času, ko je bil velik del populacije slabo pismen ter o svojem življenju, 
še manj pa o smrti, ni zapuščal pisnih dokumentov in ko so poslovilna pisma zapuščali 
le redki, so interpretacijo vzrokov prepustili drugim. Kot pokaže analiza Mete Remec, 
ki se ukvarja s primeri obravnave samomorov v sodnih spisih Okrožnega sodišča v 
Celju, Okrožnega sodišča v Mariboru ter posameznih primerov z Okrajnega sodišča v 
Trbovljah iz prve polovice 20. stoletja, opiranje na sodno gradivo, policijske zapisnike, 
izjave prič in sorodnikov pomeni opiranje na že filtrirane vire, v katerih se izražajo 
bolečina, prizadetost ter jeza priče in v katerih poskušajo največkrat oprati lastno ime 
ali pokazati na potencialnega krivca za tragično smrt. Tako lahko več izvemo o priči kot 
pa o osebi, ki je naredila samomor, kar je na prvi pogled pomembna pomanjkljivost, 
dejansko pa se tudi ti viri izkažejo za izjemno dragocene, saj odslikavajo odnos do 
samomora v različnih obdobjih in okoljih ter vsakokratno kulturno ozračje, tabuizacijo 
in stigmatizacijo, ki je še vedno spremljala samomor. Še več, kot pokažejo analize teh 
avtoric, lahko ti viri obenem osvetlijo tudi socialne, ekonomske, religiozne in regio-
nalne posebnosti ter posredno pokažejo tudi na povezane tematike, kot je na primer 
položaj ženske v družini in družbi, razširjenost družinskega in spolnega nasilja itd.
Zgodovinopisje, ki lahko tako osvetli izvor današnjih prepričanj in praks, pa lahko 
ponudi tudi drugo perspektivo na obravnavani fenomen: denimo na prevladujoč zahodni 
pogled na samomor kot tragično nesrečo in tragedijo, ki bi jo bilo mogoče in treba na 
vsak način preprečiti. Pogosto je spregledano dejstvo, da je bil (v preteklosti) fenomen 
samomora v različnih družbah različno dojeman, da ni bil vedno sramota in tragedija, 
ampak tudi dejanje časti in poguma.6 To je vidno iz analize Ivana Smiljanića, ki se ukvarja 
s konceptom herojskega samomora med jugoslovanskimi in zlasti slovenskimi partizani 
med drugo svetovno vojno ter odnosom do teh smrti po vojni, ko jim je bil formalno pri-
znan status herojskega dejanja in vrhovnega samožrtvovanja, ki je bil posledično poveli-
čevan in opevan, prikaže pa tudi s tem povezane zadrege, saj je odpiral zahtevna moralna 
vprašanja, kot je nesprejemljivost samomora z vidika marksistične etike, (ne)ustreznosti 
ravnanj posameznika v kriznih situacijah in mej osebne svobode.
Analize so pokazale, da so posamezniku, ki je iz takšnega ali drugačnega razloga »vzel 
usodo v svoje roke«, v vsem obravnavanem obdobju priznavali le delno avtonomijo, saj 
naj bi med javno in intimno krizo obstajale nedvoumne korelacije. Slabe socialne raz-
mere, ponavljajoče se ekonomske krize, pogoste spremembe v državnih in ideoloških 
okvirih in s temi dejavniki povezani občutki negotovosti, zlasti pa prelomni dogodki, kot 
so bile obe svetovni vojni ter osamosvojitvena vojna leta 1991, naj bi vsakokrat znova 
neizogibno vodili v »epidemije samomorov«. Kot nakazujejo študije v tem tematskem 
6 Cf. Pinguet, Voluntary Death in Japan.
75Meta Remec: Suicide as a Historical Phenomenon: Introduction to the Thematic Section
sklopu, pa so bile ob realnih in otipljivih krizah predstave o teh tudi pogosto umetno 
ustvarjene in so jih podpihovali predvsem senzacionalistični časopisi, pa tudi različni 
politični akterji. V skladu s tezo Williama I. Thomasa in Dorothy Swaine Thomas,7 da »če 
ljudje definirajo situacije kot resnične, so slednje resnične v svojih posledicah«, je družba 
zaznala krizo v zvezi z domnevno rastjo števila samomorov kot resnično in grozeče stanje 
ter znamenje bližajoče se katastrofe. To je očitno tako iz analiz Mattea Perissinotta, ki se 
je posvetil samomoru žensk v Trstu v obdobju neposredno po prvi svetovni vojni, zazna-
movanem s politično, socialno in ekonomsko negotovostjo, kot tudi Marka Zajca, ki se 
je posvetil obdobju od šestdesetih let do razpada Jugoslavije, ko se je v intelektualnem 
in političnem diskurzu oblikovala ideja o Slovencih kot »naciji samomorilcev«, ko se 
zdi, da je vsakokratna oblast občutek krize, povezan s fenomenom samomora, uporabila 
za pozive k strnjenju vrst, discipliniranju posameznikov, za obračunavanje z zunanjimi 
in notranjimi nasprotniki ter s tem legitimacijo lastnega režima. Tako Zajc, ki preučuje, 
kako so intelektualci to idejo uporabili ali zavrnili v svojih razpravah in kako so prilagodili 
strokovne razprave in statistične podatke svojim političnim agendam, kot drugi avtorji, 
ki ponujajo analize vsakokratnega medijskega diskurza, prikazujejo, kako so se izražale 
spremembe v stališčih splošne javnosti do samomora. Nuša Zadravec Šedivy, Polonca 
Borko, Vanja Gomboc, Vita Poštuvan, Jure Gračner, Asja Flamiš in Adelisa Huskić 
so v svojih prispevkih pozorni zlasti na spremembe v načinu medijskega poročanja. 
Omenjeni avtorji prikažejo, da se je senzacionalizem, ki je na primer razviden iz analiz 
Mattea Perissinotta, Jelene Seferović in Urške Bratož, v drugi polovici 20. stoletja ven-
darle začel prepletati s prvimi poskusi osveščanja in poročanja o nujnosti preprečevanja 
samomora ter posledično z razvojem javnozdravstvene paradigme. Njihove ugotovitve 
kažejo, da kljub postopnemu prehodu od pretežno provokativnega k bolj preventivnemu 
poročanju o samomorih želja javnosti »po krvi« in grozljivih podrobnostih posameznih 
smrti očitno ni nikoli zares izzvenela in da sta demokratizacija in liberalizacija medijskega 
prostora v devetdesetih letih prinesla tudi tabloidizacijo medijev in s tem nove izzive 
pri uveljavljanju javnega interesa in družbene odgovornosti pri poročanju o samomoru.
V izvedenih raziskavah se je samomor izkazal za odlično študijo primera za pre-
mike na področju vrednot, mišljenja, diskurzov, in ravnanj. Članki nedvomno odpirajo 
vprašanja, ki terjajo poglobljen premislek in izrazito interdisciplinaren pristop tudi 
v prihodnje: do kakšne mere je bila samomorilnost samouresničujoča se prerokba, 
do kakšne mere so strahovi o epidemiji samomora generirali rast samomorilnosti in 
so bili torej kontingenca, ki se je uresničevala z načinom razmišljanja in pričakovanji 
ljudi.8 Članki v tem tematskem sklopu v mnogočem prispevajo k vedenju tako o 
samem fenomenu samomora kot o strukturnih spremembah v slovenski družbi 20. 
stoletja in ponujajo primerjavo med razvojem na Slovenskem z razvojem v sosednjih 
regijah. Kompleksna vprašanja o tem, kakšen je bil po eni strani vpliv poveličevanja 
in heroizacije nekaterih samomorov ter po drugi strani strahu pred »dednostjo« 
7 Thomas and Swaine Thomas, The Child in America, 571, 572.
8 Biggs, »Prophecy, Self-Fulfilling/Self-Defeating,« in Kaldis (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences, 
766. Watson and Hill, Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies (Self-fulfilling prophecy), 268. 
76 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
samomorilnosti, na individualni ravni, znotraj posameznih družin in tudi na ravni 
celotnih narodov, ter kakšen vpliv je imelo ponavljanje negativnega in katastrofičnega 
diskurza, denimo da smo Slovenci samomorilni narod, vsekakor ostajajo raziskovalni 
izziv za prihodnost.
Meta Remec