STA, 13 November 2018 - The first edition of a database of the military victims of the First World War coming from the territory of present-day Slovenia has been finalised, featuring the names of 26,224 people who were either killed or went missing in the WWI campaigns.
The project, launched in the spring of 2015 and coordinated by the Institute of Contemporary History, involved 16 organisations and individuals from entire Slovenia.
The database was presented on Tuesday, with President Borut Pahor saying at the presentation that it was not a final list, as a number of relevant documents have not been examined yet and or were not available any more.
Historians have estimated that once the project is finalised, the number of victims in the database could approach the current general estimate of between 36,000 and 40,000 soldiers from the territory of present-day Slovenia.
The database, which will continue to be updated, is a product of the extensive volunteer work by researchers, museologists and others who had collected, prepared and processed the data for the period between 28 July 1914 and 4 November 1918.
The database is available here, although only in Slovene at the moment, and an analysis of certain data will also be published soon.
According to Mihael Ojsteršek of the Institute of Contemporary History, the biggest number of victims were born in 1895 or 1896. The youngest victims were born in 1902, and the oldest in 1858. The bloodiest year of the war was 1915.
The database, which was launched to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, also looks to promote the sources of data from the war and encourage research work about the period.
On the anniversary, commemorative coins with the nominal value of three euro was also issued in Slovenia, available in the units of the DBS and NKBM banks and the Banka Slovenije central bank.
