Gregor Žerjav

Gregor Žerjav, sometimes spelled Žerjal (14 November 1882 – 27 June 1929), was a Slovene and Yugoslav lawyer and liberal politician. Together with Albert Kramer, he was the leader of the Slovenian liberals in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Gregor Zerjav was born in Lož in Inner Carniola, Austria-Hungary (now in Slovenia). He studied law at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1906.

In 1908, Gregor Zerjav became the chief coordinator of the National Progressive Party in Carniola. Despite his young age, he became one of the main financial advisors of the Slovene national liberal political establishment. In 1910, he became notorious for his involvement in the bankruptcy of the Agro Merkur credit bank, established a few years earlier as a financial institution supporting the National Progressive Party. In 1911, he was elected to the Austrian parliament, where he became the leader of the 'Yugoslav Club', a caucus of South Slav national liberal representatives from the Slovene Lands, Istria, and Dalmatia.

After the outbreak of World War I, Žerjav launched an underground network which was working against the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in favour of the creation of a unified Yugoslav state. Among his closest collaborators in this endeavour were two other radical liberal nationalists from the younger generation, Albert Kramer and Bogumil Vošnjak. The Austro-Hungarian authorities never disclosed the network. However, already in the first moths of the war, Žerjav was preventively arrested and imprisoned in Ljubljana Castle for his "notorious pro-Serbian attitudes". He was released after less than a month. In May 1915, when his colleague Bogumil Vošnjak fled to the west in order to join the Yugoslav Committee, Žerjav was again arrested and put into custody in the town of Gmund and later in Graz, where he spent most of the war.

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