Engelbert Besednjak

Engelbert Besednjak (1894–1968) was a Slovene Christian Democrat politician, lawyer and journalist. In the 1920s, he was one of the foremost leaders of the Slovene and Croat minority in the Italian-administered Julian March. In the 1930s, he was one of the leaders of Slovene anti-Fascist émigrés from the Slovenian Littoral, together with Josip Vilfan, Ivan Marija Čok and Lavo Čermelj. He is considered one of the best Slovene public speakers of the 20th century.

He was born to a Slovene-speaking lower-middle-class family in Gorizia, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Italy). After finishing the German language State Gymnasium in Gorizia, he enrolled at the University of Vienna, where he studied law, graduating in 1920.

In the years before World War I, he joined the young generation of Christian Socialist activists around the Carniolan priest Janez Evangelist Krek who challenged the conservative leadership of the Slovene People's Party. Together with the priest Virgil Šček, Besednjak became one of the leaders of the Slovene Christian Socialist youth in the Austrian Littoral. Between 1913 and 1914, he was the president of the Christian Social Association (Krščansko-socialna zveza) in Gorizia and Gradisca, and between 1917 and 1919, he was a personal secretary of the chairman of the Slovene People's Party Anton Korošec.

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