Ciril Kotnik

Ciril Kotnik (20 December 1895 – 29 June 1948) was a Yugoslav diplomat of Slovene ethnicity.

He was born in Ljubljana, then part the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Carinthian Slovene parents. He attended the Ljubljana Classical Gymnasium, where he became a member of the radical student association Preporod ("Rebirth"), which advocated the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and the creation of a common state for all South Slavic peoples. At the outbreak of the First Balkan War in 1912, Kotnik volunteered in the Serbian army. After the war, he was awarded the Karadjordje's star, one of the highest military awards in the Kingdom of Serbia.

After the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, Kotnik was included in the diplomatic service of the new state. He was sent to Rome, where he worked at the Yugoslav embassy to the Kingdom of Italy. He lived and worked in Rome for more than two decades and married a local woman, Maria Tommassetti.

After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Yugoslav embassy was closed down and its personnel dismissed. Kotnik was put into house arrest in his home in Rome. At the end of 1941, the Royal Yugoslav Government-in-Exile decided to include Kotnik in the Yugoslav diplomatic delegation to the Holy See. He maintained close contacts with the Yugoslav government in London, the monarchist resistance movement of general Draža Mihajlović, but was hostile to the Communist-led Yugoslav partisans of Josip Broz Tito.

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