Ivan Potrč

Ivan Potrč (January 1 1913 - June 12 1993) was a Slovene writer and playwright.

Biography

Ivan Potrč was born in a poor peasant family in Štuki near Ptuj. As a teenager living in difficult social circumstances and in the time of the rise of German nationalism, he became an enthusiastic communist. Due to his political activities he was sentenced to eleven months of prison and excluded from the high school even before he passed his final matura exam. From 1938 till 1941, he was employed as a journalist at Večernik in Maribor. In 1941 he was interned to Mathausen concentration camp, from where he returned in 1943 and joined the Yugoslav partisans. During and after the end of the World War II he worked as editor and journalist for the newspapers Domovina, Borba and Ljudska pravica. In 1947 he became the main editor and later the director of the Mladinska knjiga publishing company.

Work

Ivan Potrč was the pioneer of social realism in the northeastern Slovenia. He was influenced by his social environment and his avant-guarde political ideas to which he remained faithful all his life. His most influential works were the drama trilogy depicting the disintegration and the downfall of Krefels, a landowner family, and the novel "Na kmetih" ("The Land and the Flesh"), which has been translated to numerous languages.

For his work, Potrč received two Prešeren Awards. In 1947, he was awarded for his play "Kreflova kmetija" ("Krefel's Farm"), and in 1955, for his novel "Na kmetih". Since 1977, he was associate member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Since 1983, he was its full member.