The young count embarks on a journey

1In October 1734 the twenty-year-old Count Ignaz Maria Attems left his native city of Graz in the watchful company of his tutor Hoffmaister Westerhold and set out on the ‘gentleman’s journey’ (the so-called Grand Tour) that was the compulsory practical part of every young nobleman’s education. The itinerary led him first to Würzburg and other German cities, then to Prague, the Dutch city of Leiden and France, and finally to Italy. The main objective of such journeys was to educate young noblemen and broaden their horizons, which was seen as a necessary task for the heir to a hereditary landed property and future active steward of the territorial estates. On his journey the young count learned about the culture, art, politics and society of each territory visited, and he wrote extensively about everything to his family back in Graz (thirty-four letters to his father have been located to date). After four years, in October 1738, Ignaz Maria, enriched by a bounty of new experiences, impressions and knowledge, finally returned to his native Styria. ¹

2Who was Ignaz Maria; what family did he belong to; who were his relatives; and what was the fate of his descendants?

The origin and rise of the Attems family

1The Attems were an old noble family named after the Attems Castle in Friuli (Attimis by Nimis; in Slovenian, Ahten pri Nemah), situated on the Slavic–Romance linguistic boundary north-east of Udine and south-east of Gemona. ² Although the first written mention of the castle dates back to the early twelfth century, its actual origins reach back further. Whereas some historians link the first Attems with the German Counts of Montfort, the family left its earliest, more tangible traces in the thirteenth century after it divided into the branches of Attems-Orso and Attems-Trident. An important place in Slovenian history was held by the latter, which produced family lines that lived and worked in the territory of the Habsburg Monarchy until the twentieth century, and have survived in Italy and Austria up to modern times. Their coat of arms features a three-point argent on a red escutcheon.

2The rise of the Attems family is closely related to the evolution of the County of Gorizia under Habsburg rule after 1500. The Attems started to forge a close affiliation with the Habsburg territories when, shortly before his death, the new territorial prince of Gorizia, Emperor Maximilian I, offered the post of court counsellor to Friedrich Attems (1447–1517), who had already held the high office of court chancellor under Leonard, the last Count of Gorizia. In the first half of the sixteenth century, the Attems still mostly lived in their Friuli and Gorizia estates, where they held important positions as chancellors, counsellors and territorial governors. The central Attems estate in Gorizia was Heiligenkreuz (in Slovenian, Sveti Križ, today Vipavski Križ) in the Vipava valley, which Friedrich’s great-grandson Hermann Attems (1564–1611) bought from the Counts of Thurn-Valsassina in 1605. That same year Hermann was promoted to the rank of baron and given the predicate of nobility Heiligenkreuz (twenty-five years later his widow Ursula and their children were further elevated to the rank of counts). This marked the establishment of the family line that still bears the official name of Attems- Heiligenkreuz and distinguishes itself from the other, likewise still existing, line of Attems-Petzenstein, whose origins date to the sixteenth century, when Hermann’s second uncle Andreas Attems (1527–1597) built a palace at Peci in Friuli (in Slovenian, Peč; in German, Petzenstein: today in Italy, close to Miren in Slovenia) on the Italian side of the present-day border. Archduke Karl granted that palace the right to asylum and bestowed upon Andreas Attems the predicate of Attems-Petzenstein. The castles that gave their names to the two distinct branches of the Attems family have both become ruins, whereas the Capuchin monastery that the Attems built in the 1630s still stands today in Vipavski Križ.

3In 1582 Friedrich’s grandson Jakob Adam Attems (1526–1590) moved to Graz at the behest of Archduke Karl, thereby introducing his successors to a new living environment—that of Styria. The family went on to flourish in this Habsburg territory under Jakob Adam’s great-grandson Ignaz Maria (1652–1732), who is considered the founder of the Styrian branch of the Attems family.

Grandfather Ignaz Maria the Elder—“the establisher of material and family foundations”

1Although he was born on 15 August 1652 in Ljubljana and had no early ties with Styria,³ the wealthy landowner and patron of the arts Ignaz Maria Count Attems became a central figure for Styrian history at the turn of the eighteenth century.⁴ His father Johann Friedrich (1593–1663), the vidame of Carniola, remarried for the third time a few years before Ignaz’s birth. After burying two wives who had given him five children, he married Marquise Franziska Strozzi, who bore him six more, including Ignaz Maria as the penultimate child. However, the happy family’s life would soon be shattered: at the age of eleven Ignaz Maria lost his father, and three years later his mother died as well. Whereas almost nothing is known about his early childhood, a few further, albeit not completely reliable, details have been preserved with regard to the boy’s education. He undoubtedly attended school in Graz, and probably before that also in Gorizia, whereas claims that he attended the high school in Ruše are probably erroneous or fabricated.⁵ There is likewise no doubt regarding his ‘gentleman’s journey’ through Italy, and some indirect indications further suggest that Ignaz Maria may have also travelled to other lands (e.g. France). On returning from his journey, he made a short stop in Ljubljana and ultimately settled down in Styria after being named a councillor of the Inner Austrian Court Chamber in Graz. ⁶

2While his elder brother Johann Franz Anton continued the so-called Heiligenkreuz branch of the Attems family, Ignaz Maria founded a new family branch that was later named after Slovenska Bistrica, one of his numerous estates. Well-known for his prudent investment in landed property and its diligent management, Ignaz Maria became one of the wealthiest noblemen in Styria. Thus at the end of the seventeenth century and during the first decades of the eighteenth century (leaving aside his main residence, the palace in Graz), his estates comprised the seigniories (demesnes) and castles of Štatenberg (Stattenberg), Podčetrtek (Windisch Landsberg), Slovenska Bistrica (Windisch Feistriz), Hartenštajn (Hartenstein), Pilštanj (Peilenstein) and Brežice (Rann), plus Rajhenburg (Reichenburg), which he merged with Turn below the castle; all these estates lie today in Slovenia. Ignaz Maria also bought the seigniory of Gösting near Graz with its office in Aigen. By hiring distinguished architects and painters, Ignaz Maria converted his buildings into architectural artworks (one of his most magnificent commissions was the painting of the Knights’ Hall in Brežice Castle). His commissions set a trend and standard for Baroque-style building in Styria. ⁷

3Ignaz Maria was married twice; first in 1685 to Countess Maria Regina Wurmbrand-Stuppach,⁸ who bore him seven children: a daughter Karolina (who later married Count Sigmund Trauttmansdorff)⁹ and six sons, two of whom died at a tender age. Only the two eldest sons created their own families, with material foundations provided by their father Ignaz Maria, who had to this end formed two family trusts out of his vast estate. The eldest son, Franz Dismas, obtained an inheritance comprising the family palace in Graz as well as the seignories of Brežice, Gösting, Slovenska Bistrica, and Štatenberg. His younger brother, Thaddäus Kajetan, inherited Podčetrtek, Hartenštajn, and Rajhenburg from his father and later also came into the possession of other landed properties, including Dornava, which his brother Franz Dismas purchased for him. ¹⁰ The family branch initiated by Thaddäus Kajetan died out in its male line already in the next generation, whereas the line descending from Franz Dismas continues today.

4The two younger sons of Ignaz Maria never married and devoted their lives to the Church. Ernst Gottlieb (1694–1757) was the Prince-Bishop of Ljubljana in the period between 1743 and 1757 and demonstrated his architectural fervour by the renovation of the episcopal palace in Ljubljana as well as an extensive restoration of the mansion in Goričane (Görtschach, a few kilometres Nord form Ljubljana). Although he himself spoke poor Slovenian, Ernst Gottlieb encouraged his clergy to learn and use what was the predominant language in Carniola. ¹¹ The youngest son, Ferdinand Hyacinth, joined the Jesuit Order and died in Parma at the early age of twenty-eight years.

5A few months after the death of his first wife in 1715 Ignaz Maria was wedded again,¹² this time to the twice-widowed Countess Christiana Herberstein, who brought the Vurberk (Wurmberg) seigniory into the marriage. Both unions, especially the second, were of strategic value to Ignaz Maria, since both wives were members of the Styrian nobility, thereby consolidating his status among the territorial elite. He died in 1732 at the relatively old age of eighty and was buried in the Franciscan church in Graz. ¹³ Christiana died five years later.¹⁴

Father Franz Dismas—the prolific head of family

1After the death of Ignaz Maria the Attems family branch based in Slovenska Bistrica was continued by his eldest son Franz Dismas, born in 1688.¹⁵ More on his life too becomes revealed only after his transition into adulthood. He received his education at the archducal collegium in Graz and then, accompanied by his first tutor, he travelled to the Dutch city of Leiden, where he studied at the local university for two years. Upon his return (1712) he was appointed chamberlain and Inner Austrian councillor. A few years later he was promoted to the position of vice-president of the Styrian territorial estates, and he was part of the delegation that in 1728 welcomed the imperial family—more specifically, in July of that year Emperor Karl VI received in Graz the hereditary homage of the Styrian territorial estates.

2After his father’s death in 1732 Franz Dismas inherited vast estates and proved himself to be a good administrator. In 1736 he bought for his brother the Dornava seigniory from Count Josef Saurau. That same year he was made a privy counsellor to the emperor and vice-president of the Inner Austrian Court Chamber; two years later he assumed its presidency. After he had held this office for over a decade, the Court Chamber was abolished in 1748 as part of the Theresian reforms. In March 1750 Empress Maria Theresa chose Franz Dismas in compensation to become president of the highest Inner Austrian auditing body (its Court). However, his tenure was brief, since he died that same year. ¹⁶

3Franz Dismas inherited his father’s flair for art and architecture. It was at his father’s behest that he too summoned to Styria the Italian architect Camesini to build him the Štatenberg mansion. Father Ignaz Maria then designated the mansion as the seat of a new majorat (a property inheritable where possible through primogeniture) and left it to the children from Franz Dismas’ second marriage.

4Just like his father before him, Franz Dismas married twice. In 1713, he tied the knot for the first time to Countess Sophia Herberstein,¹⁷ whose mother Christiana would later become his stepmother. Sophia bore him two sons—one of whom, Ignaz Maria the younger, would later become the founder of the Slovenska Bistrica family branch—before dying in 1715 at the young age of twenty-one.¹⁸ Two years later the widowed Franz Dismas married again, his new bride being Countess Juliana Wildenstein.¹⁹ This marriage produced seventeen more children, eleven of whom never reached adulthood.²⁰ Two sons were unable to hear or speak. This evidently genetic disorder was probably a result of so-called cousin marriage, since the wife of Franz Dismas was the daughter of his cousin; in other words, his cousin was at the same time his mother-in-law.

5With the eldest son from his first marriage, Ignaz Maria the Younger, inheriting the property of the family trust set up by his grandfather plus Vurberk seigniory, Franz Dismas concerned himself mainly with providing for his younger sons. He removed the seigniory of Gösting and its office in Aigen from his father’s trust and converted them into allodial (freehold) estates, which he then left to his son Franz Anton (1729–1788), whom he also named as his principal heir in his last will and testiment (1749). The so-called Gösting family branch of the Attems family continued in existence right up to the twentieth century. Franz Dismas’ eldest son from his second marriage, named Dismas for short (1718–1765), established a family as well and took over Štatenberg after his father’s death in 1750. However, having produced seven daughters and no sons, his family branch died out already in the next generation.

6Three of Franz Dismas’ sons devoted their lives to the Church: particularly the two who suffered from deafness and speech impediments, conditions that prevented them from living a normal life. Sigmund (1720–1754) joined the Cistercian Order in Rein, while the younger son, Friedrich (1739–1818), joined the Augustinian Order in Vorau. Although a third brother, Josef (1734–1820), was born without any physical or mental disability, he too embarked on an ecclesiastical career at the request of his old uncle (or, rather, his grandfather’s brother), Ernst Gottlieb, bishop of Ljubljana, who smoothed the boy’s way up the ecclesiastical ladder. Josef accordingly became a canon at Olomouc Cathedral at the age of fifteen. A few years later he was also given a canonry in Salzburg, which his aged uncle renounced in his favour. One year after Ernst’s death Josef was admitted in addition to the cathedral chapter in Passau, thereby becoming at the young age of twenty-four a canon in three of the most important cathedral chapters of the Empire. In 1777 the archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymus Colloredo, appointed him president of the Court Council. The final years of Josef’s life were disturbed by the tumultuous Napoleonic Wars. Salzburg initially became a secular princedom in 1803; a few years later it fell under Austrian rule, then Bavarian rule, and finally Austrian rule again. During that period Josef Attems resided variously in Salzburg and Passau, but once a peace treaty had been concluded he remained in Salzburg, where he died at a very old age in 1820.

Ignaz Maria the Younger—a ‘travelling gentleman’

1On his death in 1750 Franz Dismas, at that time the head of the Slovenska Bistrica branch of the Attems family, was succeeded by his eldest son Ignaz Maria (1714–1762),²¹ born on 27 February 1714 in the Attems palace located in the Sackstrasse in Graz. At his christening he was given the name Ignaz Maria after his father’s father (who was also his godfather) plus the names Maximilian, Dismas, Josef and Leander. ²² To avoid confusion with his grandfather he was—at least until his namesake’s death—known by his first and last Christian names, i.e. as Ignaz Leander. Since he lost his mother at a very tender age and his father did not remarry quickly, Ignaz Leander was placed in foster care, as was customary during that period. His foster mother was a commoner named Anna Maria Popp. It was only after his father married again and gave him a stepmother that the boy was taken from his foster home and returned to his family.

2After his father’s death Ignaz Maria inherited most of his property, and even before that he had come into possession of Vurberk via Christiana Herberstein, the second wife of his grandfather—or, rather, his father’s stepmother (and mother-in-law). At the age of twenty he set out on a four-year-long ‘gentleman’s journey’ across Europe (Bohemia, German states, the Netherlands and Italy). ²³ On his return he immediately offered his services to his native Styria and was appointed as a councillor of the Inner Austrian government in Graz. He also held the offices of chamberlain and a privy counsellor at the court of Charles VI, and later that of his daughter Maria Theresa. Apart from being renowned as an excellent horse rider, Ignaz Maria was also a passionate hunter. Therefore, it is not surprising that in Slovenska Bistrica, where he also renovated the local castle, he ran a riding school founded by his father. Following his father’s death Ignaz Maria also established a stud farm at Brežice, which around 1760 boasted 160 mares and foals. Though famous far and wide, this stud farm was an extremely expensive enterprise.

3Before long Ignaz Maria also ensured the continuation of his lineage. On returning from his ‘gentleman’s journey’, he met his future wife: a noblewoman from the Tyrol, Josefa Countess Khuen-Belasi, who reportedly distinguished herself “more for her sparkle and authenticity than her beauty.” At the end of October 1739 Ignaz Maria led her to the altar in the castle chapel of the Liechtenstein Castle in Guntramsdorf near Vienna.²⁴ The wedding ceremony was conducted by Ignaz Maria’s uncle Ernst Gottlieb Attems, then still the Bishop of Dragovitia (Thrace). Prince Emmanuel of Liechtenstein and Count Sigismund Friedrich Khevenhüller, a deputy in Lower Austria, acted as best men.²⁵ During the next two decades the young couple produced a dozen children, among whom only a single son died at a tender age.

4For most of the time Ignaz Maria resided with his wife and children in the Attems family palace in the Sackstrasse in Graz. He died in 1762, still relatively young, at the age of forty-eight. Having suffered from illness since early childhood, he often donated generous sums of money to honour the Madonna, including that of Vurberk, as his protectress against hardships. During the 1760s his health rapidly plummeted after he contracted pneumonia, which developed into pulmonary edema. In the spring of 1762 Ignaz Maria travelled for medical consultations to Vienna, from where he never returned. He died at 8 p.m. on 15 June “am hohen Markt im Albrechtsburgischen Haus” and found his final resting place in the crypt of the Church of Our Dear Lady of the Scots in Vienna. ²⁶

5In his last will Ignaz Maria named his eldest son Ferdinand as his principal heir, while apportioning the residue of his estate among his other children and instructing his wife to provide them all with education befitting their rank. At his request Requiems were recited in the Franciscan monastery at Graz as well as in Slovenska Bistrica, Brežice, Krško and Ptuj.

6Although she became a widow with eleven children to support at the age of only forty, his wife Josefa proved to be a decisive, energetic and capable woman who managed to preserve the family property after her husband’s early death. She rented out the palace in Graz and moved into a smaller apartment as well as renouncing her widow’s allowance. Empress Maria Theresa, to whom Josefa was very close, offered help and invited several of her children to the imperial court. Josefa herself, apart from being a Dame of the Order of the Starry Cross, also became the grand mistress of the empress’s daughter, Archduchess Maria Elisabeth. Like her husband before her, Josefa died, in the spring of 1784, in Vienna. She was buried in the local Augustinian church situated a stone’s throw away from her husband’s final resting place.

Ill-fated: the children of Ignaz Maria the Younger

1Destiny scattered Ignaz Maria’s children all over Europe.²⁷ The two eldest daughters Josefa (1740–1802) and Juliana (1741–1802) became ladies-in-waiting in Vienna and never married. They lived most of their lives in a shared apartment in the centre of Vienna as well as finally bidding farewell to this world together—ten days apart from each other—in May 1802.²⁸ All their younger sisters likewise remained unmarried. The third-born, Anna (1743–1789), was a member of the monastic chapter (Kapitularin) at the Imperial-and-Royal Institution of Noble Ladies (Damenstift) in Hradčany, while the fourth-born, Amalia (1744–1818), returned to her mother’s Tyrolean roots by becoming a member of the Imperial-and-Royal Institution of Noble Ladies in Innsbruck, where she lived through the tumultuous period that the Tyrol underwent at the turn of the nineteenth century. After witnessing both the dissolution and reestablishment of the Institution of Noble Ladies, she became its first grand dean at the end of 1816 and died soon afterwards, in the early part of 1818. The youngest of the daughters, Theresia (1748–1804), was admitted to an institution of noble ladies as well, but one further away from home, since Empress Maria Theresa secured her a place in the secular Institution of Noble Ladies at Sainte Waudru in the Southern Netherlandish city of Mons. She, too, was caught up in a turbulent turn of events that were sparked by the French Revolution and which forced the noble ladies to leave the institution in Mons. Because the war prevented Theresia from returning to her native Styria, a noble lady from the d’Argentau family came to her aid and provided her with shelter in nearby Ochain Castle, which belonged to her family. Theresia spent more than a decade there before dying in September 1804.

2Of Ignaz Maria the Younger’s sons, Ferdinand, as the eldest, inherited the family property and remained in Styria, whereas all the other sons devoted themselves to military careers or the priesthood, dispersing all over the globe; Alois (1751–1753) died in childhood. The first to embark on a military career was the second-born, Ernst, who was promoted to the rank of colonel and lost his life in 1796 in a battle against the French army at Lodi, Italy. His younger brother Ignaz (1750–1802), who had nurtured a passion for weapons since boyhood, enlisted in the army at the age of nineteen. A few years later he also became a member of the Teutonic Order, in which he served as a commander in Metlika and Črnomelj, and subsequently in Velika Nedelja, all of these localities lying within the territory of present-day Slovenia. He particularly distinguished himself in the war against the Turks in Hungary but was ultimately compelled to leave the army due to failing health. Ignaz died at a relatively young age in 1802.

3A similar fate could have been in store for the youngest of the children, Leopold (1758–1815), who donned a military uniform at a young age and was initially expected to join the Teutonic Order but ultimately decided against doing so. As an officer, he took part in Emperor Joseph II’s military campaigns and served later in the war against the French, for which he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. During his service in Hungary he met the almost three decades younger Countess Maria Anna Gavre (1785–1856) from Flanders and married her in 1803 despite their difference in age. In the following twelve years the couple produced six children—the last born after Leopold’s death—all of whom died very young. When, in 1809, a new war broke out with France, Leopold came out of retirement to take part in the battles in Tyrol, obtaining in 1811 the rank of general ad honores. He died from ill-health in early 1815.

4The fourth brother, Franz (1754–after 1820), became a soldier and just like Ignaz took part in the war against the Turks in Hungary and Croatia. Fighting at his side was his maternal cousin Count Anton Khuen, who lost his life in the campaign. Franz left the army and married his cousin’s widow Josefa (née Countess Sándor; 1758–1803), who already had a daughter, Esther, and a son, Anton. To Franz Attems she bore two more children: a daughter, Juliana, and a son, Anton. Both children died young, condemning this branch of the Attems family to early extinction. In 1814 Franz successfully married his stepdaughter Esther, who inherited from her father vast estates in Bohemia and Hungary, to his nephew Franz Attems (1783–1847).

5While four sons of Ignaz Maria the Younger devoted themselves to military careers, the second-youngest, Hermann (1756–1809), joined the clergy. While still a boy he was sent to his uncle Josef Attems, a canon of the cathedral chapter in Salzburg, who secured him one of the local canonries. Hermann himself later became a canon of Salzburg Cathedral as well as the dean and cathedral canon of Olomouc. He was universally popular, and his sudden death in March 1809 was mourned by many.

6Of the twelve children of Ignaz Maria the Younger, only three sons married. The lines of two of them died out already in the generation of their children. Therefore, the sole person to continue the family line became by right the principal heir of the Slovenska Bistrica branch: the eldest son, Ferdinand (1746–1820). ²⁹ As the main heir, he received a better education than his siblings, and his mother went to enormous, even self-sacrificial, lengths to secure her eldest son everything befitting his rank. Ferdinand completed his law studies at the University of Padua and then obtained permission to embark on an educational tour, which, unlike his father’s, lasted merely a year and a half. On returning to Styria, he immediately offered his services to his homeland and became a member of the Styrian territorial estates. When his uncle Josef Bernhard Attems died in 1772, Ferdinand inherited his extensive estates—Podčetrtek, Rajhenburg with Turn and Dornava –and absorbed them into his majorat. The following year he also found a wife: Baroness Maria Anna Gall of Gallenstein.³⁰ Although she was of Carniolan descent, after the disastrously failed marriage of her parents and her mother’s death Maria Anna had spent several years with the Ursuline Order in Graz.³¹

7As a politician, Ferdinand was highly conservative and one of those who, following the death of Emperor Joseph II, forced his successor Leopold II to rescind certain reforms and restore the old order. This ultimately cost him his office of territorial governor in 1791, when—even though he received a majority vote in the estates’ election—the emperor replaced him with the runner-up, Karl Thomas Count Breuner. Despite his endeavours to attain the greatest possible independence from the central government in Vienna, when, in 1793, war broke out with France, Ferdinand unhesitatingly promised the young Emperor Franz II 100,000 guldens of assistance from Styria. His gesture did not go unnoticed, and the emperor reappointed him Styrian territorial governor in 1801; after Breuner’s death. Ferdinand continued to occupy this office until he died almost two decades later.

8As a man of culture and refinement, Ferdinand Attems was the founder and trustee of the Joanneum Museum in Graz, and it is to his credit that the Styrian territorial estates bought the mineral springs in Rogaška Slatina in 1803. Thus Ferdinand ensured the revival of the local health resort and enabled the development of spa tourism. ³² One of the local mineral springs, the so-called Ferdinand Spring, bore his name for a long time (until its closure in 1952), and Ferdinand’s memory is still kept alive in Rogaška Slatina by a bronze bust and a portrait in this spa resort’s Crystal Hall.

9Ferdinand died suddenly of a stroke during the night of 23 and 24 May 1820,³³ as (almost certainly) the last of the siblings. He found his eternal resting place at the Graz cemetery of Steinfeld, where his successors built a family tomb. His widow Maria Anna joined him a little under two decades later, in 1839.³⁴

The last hundred and twenty years of the Attems Bistrica family branch

1After the death of Ferdinand Attems in 1820, another four generations of his successors continued the lineage until the end of the Second World War, when the family was expelled from Slovenian territory. The first head of the Bistrica family branch was Ferdinand’s eldest son Ignaz (1774–1861).³⁵ Although, like his father before him, Ignaz held the office of Styrian territorial governor and acted as the trustee of the Joanneum Museum in Graz, one of his most important achievements was to redirect the Southern Railway line across the Semmering Mountain Pass to Graz and Maribor. Despite his reputation among biographers as a capable and diligent administrator as well as being a member of the Styrian estates, he spent the first half of his life in the shadow of his father, who also chose for him his first wife, Countess Antonia Chorinsky, a stepdaughter of his close friend Franz Josef, Count of Saurau. The wedding took place in early 1807, ³⁶ but the young wife died a little under three years later, at the end of 1809, after she had given birth to his son and heir Ferdinand and, exhausted by the wartime conditions that prevailed at that time in Graz, had become terminally ill.³⁷

2After spending five years as a widower, Ignaz tied the knot again,³⁸ this time to a wife of his own choosing: Countess Aloisia Inzaghi (1793–1879), who belonged to his extended family, being the stepdaughter of his father’s cousin Rosalia Inzaghi, née Attems (1761–1841). Among his seven children produced by the two marriages his daughter Maria (1816–1880), an amateur painter who produced magnificent still-life paintings with flowers and fruit, left a particularly noticeable mark on art history. She was married to Count Anton Alexander Auersperg, a poet better known by the pseudonym of Anastasius Grün. ³⁹

3Ignaz reached the very old age of eighty-seven. In his will, drawn up in 1855 in Brežice, he predictably named his eldest son Ferdinand as his heir, bequeathed Dornava to his daughter Maria (under her married name of Auersperg), and the manor in Ptuj to his youngest son, Friedrich. He died at the end of 1861 and found his final resting place within the family tomb in the Steinfeld cemetery. ⁴⁰

4After Ignaz the reins of the Bistrica branch of the Attems family were taken over by his eldest son, Ferdinand (1809–1879),⁴¹ who continued his father’s and grandfather’s tradition of holding important offices, but never with the same success. As a district commissary he served in Maribor, Bruck an der Mur and Celje, ending his career as a government adviser in Linz. After his father’s death in 1861 he returned to Graz and took charge of the family inheritance. His marriage to Countess Gabriela Wurmbrand-Stuppach brought him children, as well as the castle and estate of Gornja Radgona. He died in 1878 in Graz. ⁴²

5Ferdinand was initially succeeded by his eldest son Ignaz (1844–1915), a doctor of laws working in financial administration. ⁴³ Although this Ignaz inherited the family property after his father’s death, he entrusted it to administrators who, according to his relatives, took selfish advantage of this privilege. Ignaz married his relative Countess Rosa Attems from Gösting and spent much time with her in Slovenska Bistrica. After their marriage remained childless Rosa started to exhibit increasingly strange behaviour. She refused to let anyone near her except her husband and maid. She slept throughout the day and became active only during the evening hours. After Ignaz’s death in early 1915 the family property passed down to his younger brother Edmund (1847–1929) in accordance with the principle of primogeniture.

6Unlike Ignaz, Edmund took greatly after their father and even more after their uncle Ferdinand.⁴⁴ Although he initially studied agriculture and forestry in Graz, his path eventually led him to administration, in which he forged an illustrious career. Following the example of his predecessors, he was, among other things, also a long-standing Styrian territorial governor, the last such before the disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy. In the territorial realm he was the most meritorious for the construction of hospitals, e.g. in Graz, Mürzzuschlag, and Rottenmann. Edmund was known for his modest, even Spartan, lifestyle, which many likened to that of Emperor Franz Joseph. A man of many obligations, he remained a bachelor and devoted his time to his nephews, the children of his younger brother Emilian.

7As the second-born, Edmund initially had little say in administering the family estate, even though his elder brother’s childless marriage clearly meant that the property would one day pass down to him. On the other hand, he came to inherit Gornja Radgona after his mother’s death as well as the Inzaghi trust property of Ober-Kindberg near Bruck an der Mur (in secundogeniture) after the death of his uncle Friedrich Attems in 1901. However, the place he held closest to his heart was the seat of the family estate—Slovenska Bistrica, where he would spend most of his spare time. Notwithstanding this, he refused ever to go back to it after 1918, when this part of Styria fell under Yugoslav rule. A catalyst for this decision was his strained relations with the Slovenes, which dated from a time when he served as the Styrian territorial governor and, for example, opposed the establishment of a Slovenian lower gymnasium in Celje, which, as he maintained, would be detrimental to the interests of the German majority. Because of his attitude, the Slovenes continued to obstruct the operations of the territorial government for a long time afterwards. ⁴⁵

8After the First World War Edmund came to terms with the republican reorganization of ‘German’ Austria and did not reminisce about the old days with nostalgia. He retained his mental and physical vigour into an extreme old age until in the winter of 1928/29 he came down with a bad cold that turned deadly. He died in May 1929 in a spa resort at Bad Hofgastein.

9Since, as already stated, both Edmund and his elder brother Ignaz remained childless, the family property passed down to the sons of their younger brother Emilian (1857–1921): Emilian’s eldest son Ferdinand (1885–1946) took over the central estate he obtained in primogeniture along with Slovenska Bistrica, Podčetrtek, Brežice, Olimje, and the palace in Graz, while his younger brother Edmund (1891–1972) received in secundogeniture the Inzaghi estate in Ober-Kindberg. ⁴⁶

10The last lord of Slovenska Bistrica was therefore Ferdinand Attems, who assumed Yugoslav citizenship after the First World War and maintained regular contact with the Yugoslav royal family. During the Second World War he was drafted into the German Army. Sitting on the recruiting board, he helped many Slovenian conscripts, which ultimately cost him his position. Nevertheless, immediately after the war he and his wife, as well as their two sons, were arrested, found guilty of high treason and sentenced to forced labour, expulsion from Yugoslavia, and the confiscation of all their property. Ferdinand and his wife were detained for a while in the penal camp of Brestrenica, from where all trace was lost of them in early 1946. It is highly likely that they were executed, along with their son Emil-Hans. ⁴⁷

11Although the decision to dispossess and criminalize the Slovenska Bistrica branch of the Attems family was finally repealed in 1993, the centuries-long bond between the Attems family and the territory of Slovenia was irrevocably broken.

12Today, the Attems live mostly in Italy and Austria, although the Denationalization Act gave them back some of their former estates in Slovenian Styria.

Sources

1NŠAL—Nadškofijski arhiv Ljubljana, ŽA, Matične knjige, Ljubljana-Sv. Nikolaj, R 1643–1653

2DGS—Diözese Graz Seckau, Pfarre Graz-Hl. Blut: TB 1707–1720, 1806–1812; TrB 1675–1700, 1700–1714, 1715–1726, 1772–1782, 1813–1828; SB 1705–1722, 1723–1742, 1742–1754, 1808–1829, 1830–1861; and Pfarre Graz-Dom: TrB 1807–1815

3EW—Erzdiözese Wien, Pfarre Guntramsdorf, Tauf-, Trauungs- und Sterbebuch 1732–1760; Pfarre Wien-St. Stephan: SB 1761–1764; Pfarre Wien-Unsere Liebe Frau zu den Schotten: SB 1792–1806

4The literature is cited in footnotes.