The Souvans and their park at Volčji Potok

2 The Souvans in Ljubljana

In the 19^th century the Souvan family was one of the most successful Slovene families in Ljubljana. Because of their highly developed national sense the family members were important in both the economic and cultural life of the town and the province.

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The progenitor of the Souvan family of Ljubljana was Franc Ksaver Souvan (1799-1885). He was born in the village of Prečna, finished lower gymnasium in the town of Novo mesto and gained employment in Ljubljana as a shop assistant. He progressed rapidly and after the owner’s death took over the business. He later opened his own shop at Mestni trg 22 (marked with an arrow on the photograph from 1922).

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He became friends with Janez Bleiweis (1808-1881) (photograph), a national politician and newspaper publisher, marrying his sister.

Under the influence of the “Father of the Nation” he became a board member of the Carniola Agricultural Society, a trustee of the Carniolan Savings Bank, and a town and provincial councillor.

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His sons were Franc Ksaver Jr. (left) and Ferdinand Souvan (right). Together they took over the running of their father’s company.

Franc Ksaver Jr. (1826-1903) was also a national politician in the Provincial Assembly, a co-founder and president of the Ljubljana Savings Bank, and a councillor of the Carniolan Chamber of Trade and Crafts.

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Ferdinand Suvan (1840-1915) was a co-founder of the National Reading Room in Ljubljana. The space for this was created in his house, which stood on the location of today’s Konzorcij bookshop (on the photograph left). It included a bowling alley, café and dance hall.

He was a supporter of national and trade organisations, but he was not a politician. He married the actor and singer Rozalija Frölich (1848-1919), who stopped appearing after her marriage.

3 The purchase of the estate in Volčji Potok

Ferdinand Souvan was an extremely successful wholesaler, who opened outlets across the monarchy, from Dalmatia to Vienna. He invested part of the profit in property.

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He and his wife had a number of children. Franc Ferdinand (1870-1932) became a lawyer, diplomat and banker. Leon Souvan (1877-1949) took over the running of the company. Of his daughters, the best known is Alma Souvan (1880-1964), who was worshipped from afar by poet Josip Murn Aleksandrov. She married Franc Urbanc, a clothing wholesaler from Ljubljana. The image is from the portrait painted by Ivan Vavpotič.

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In 1881 Ferdinand and Rozalija divorced, and she lived in Vienna until her death. The next year Ferdinand Souvan bought an estate of around a hundred hectares with a manor house in Volčji Potok. He spent his last years there, died there and was buried in the family grace in Homec.

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On this picture postcard from 1899 the manor house is completely renovated. The exterior of the Renaissance building acquired a Baroque image. On the photograph the garden in front of the house is still walled. The low building in the foreground is a stable – today, on this spot there is a restored pool with a fountain.

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Ferdinand Souvan reshaped the garden. On a photograph from 1911 the part of the garden in front of the building is formally planted with decorative plants. Within the walled part was a vegetable garden and orchard with noble varieties. According to tradition, there was also a greenhouse.

4 Businessman and artistic soul

Leon Souvan (1877-1949) was a third-generation businessman. He carried on the family entrepreneurial tradition, but was also a sensitive person who was very interested in art. He was a patron to artists, especially Impressionist painters, but he was also creative himself. His life work was the Souvan park at Volčji Potok.

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In 1894 Leon Souvan completed technical school in Ljubljana with distinction and then studied in Vienna.  In 1902 he became a partner in his father’s company. In contrast to his predecessors, he kept a low public profile. He was a talented pianist, who was taught by the composer and conductor Anton Foerster. Many of his pieces for piano and one for piano and orchestra have survived.

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In 1903 he married Helena Sponer (1885-1936). They had three children. The eldest was Elza (1905-1999), who in1933 married Anton Rudež from Ribnica and after his death Dr Ferdinand Majaron. The second child was Leo Jr. (1910-2001), who from 1932 onwards was a partner in the family company. The youngest, Ferdinand (Ferry) Souvan (1919-1974), made a name for himself as a musician.

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Helena Sponer was a German from Moravia. She was educated and spoke a number of languages. She learned Slovene from an instructor Oton Župančič, then a student but later to become well-known poet. She was the daughter of a factory owner. In Volčji Potok she confidently and successfully managed the estate farm. She liked spending time with dogs and horses, and her passion was hunting.

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In 1914 Leon Souvan was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army and until 1918 his wife led both the trading company and the farm. Among other things, she modernised the manor house: she had mains water and electricity installed, as well as a modern bathroom and kitchen.

During her husband’s absence, a number of the family shops were combined into the “Souvan Shopping Hall” at Mestni trg 24 in Ljubljana. It operated until July 1945.

5 Major changes in the park

Even before his father’s death Leon Souvan was thinking about a redesign of the manor house and park. The plan was presented by a model showing a new system of paths and relocation of buildings, ponds and plants. After returning from the war in 1919 he began work on this.

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Leon Souvan made a major intervention into the layout of the estate. He demolished the old stable and in 1923 he had a new outbuilding constructed (photograph), which could not be seen from the manor house. He demolished the wall around the garden and moved the utilitarian garden to beside the new outbuilding, while the decorative part of the garden was completely reshaped.

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As the cherry on cake of the Baroque exterior of the manor house he added a superstructure to the roof with a vertical oval window, a curved pediment and a wavy border.  The modernised manor house contained sixteen rooms. Pride of place went to a salon which looked out onto the parterre garden; beside it was a library and a dining room. On the second floor were bedrooms for the family, guests and female staff. On the ground floor was a kitchen, laundry, ironing room and other service areas.

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Leon Souvan carried out major earthworks in the park, digging a new lake and enlarging the existing one. He changed his father’s decorative planting design, creating new scenes from scratch. He placed various objects of brick and stone around the park for emphasis, including carved pineapples.

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A new system of paths was created, including a new access to the manor house. Leon Souvan had a path constructed round Volčji Hill and a path to the ruins on the summit.

The family travelled to Ljubljana by train. They were driven to and from the railway station in a phaeton or landau by their carriage man.

6 Life on the estate

During the week, Leon Souvan was not at Volčji Potok, because he was running the business in Ljubljana. He returned to his family for the weekend. He left the running of the estate in his wife’s hands. Quite a number of locals were employed permanently or temporarily by the Souvans and they remembered them as very good employers.

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Helena Souvan was an active woman with a strong sense of duty, who successfully managed the estate and the household. Locals say that she used to get up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows herself and when her work was finished she would get on her horse and ride round the area. As an aristocrat she could afford small extravagances, such as a room with songbirds on the second floor of the Meierhof. The photograph shows her with her youngest son Ferry.

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Helena thoroughly modernised animal husbandry on the estate. She introduced brown Montafon cattle (on an old Austrian lithograph), which are suitable both for dairy and for meat. In the modern stable all the cows had names. The estate had its own dairy. As well as horses for riding and carriage work, they bred heavy working horses.

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The estate had one or two full-time cooks and chamber maids (photograph), a washerwoman, a carriage man, a gardener, stable men and a gamekeeper. Seasonal staff included field workers, lumberjacks and woodcutters.

Helena Souvan was a kind-hearted woman, who was godmother to hundreds of local children.

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The Souvans had a lively social life at the manor house. Relatives and friends were frequent guests. One very welcome guest was painter Matija Jama.

Every year towards the end of the year a large hunting party was organised, to which neighbouring estate owners were invited. It ended with banquet in the woods.

7 Inside the manor house

The interior of the manor house was first changed by Ferdinand Souvan. After his death, during the war years, it was subject to technical modernisation. After 1918, Leon Souvan Sr. re-equipped and refurnished it. In keeping with its changed exterior, he sought out Baroque furniture from the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

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Leon Souvan had old fireplaces installed in the house, each one an impressive piece of artistic craftwork. One was purchased from the manor house at Zalog near Moravča and another in Kropa, while a third was transferred from the building at Mestni trg 24 where the new shop was set up.

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On display in the manor house was a collection of old masters, as well as paintings by the Slovene Impressionists Matija Jama, Matej Sternen and Rihard Jakopič. Visitors were also impressed by the valuable glass and porcelain items, as well as the chandeliers, curtains and carpets.

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When the arson they had been warned about occurred in 1944 the owners managed to save only part of the precious furniture and furnishings.

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Room furnished in Turkish style.

8 The parterre in front of the manor house

Leon Souvan carefully thought through each intervention in the park. In his room, he immersed himself in thought as he played the piano and many of his ideas were sketched on sheet music.

His idea for the rearrangement of the park placed the manor house in the centre, with everything subordinate to and emphasising it. The space in front of the house was thus destined to be a parterre garden.

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In seeking solutions, he was not bound by the existing state of things. So that he could arrange a parterre garden to his taste, he demolished the wall in front of the house, and moved the stable and the driveway. The old structure of the garden was completely erased. On the plan is the situation of the revised land registry entry from 1868.

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The axis of symmetry of the parterre is placed at right-angles to the manor house and centred on the main entrance. Souvan decided on box hedging and Lawson cypress for the vertical emphases.  The planting by the staircase emphasised the transition between the two levels of the land, which were also two worlds with harmoniously placed architecture and garden architecture.

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Souvan’s photograph from the salon towards Homec church reveal the original parterre patterns. He was influenced by French Baroque gardens, but came up with his own design for the park. His guiding principle was that nature does not know straight lines drawn with a ruler and so all the lines of the parterres and paths are gentle curves.

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Within box borders were flower beds with canna lilies and other annuals. Their colourfulness and free growth counteracted the rigidity of the box frame. A girl who used to visit the park in her later years remembered the owner: “I can still see him today, with what love he cared for the garden, bringing from all over exotic flowers, shrubs and trees to plant.”

9 The English Park

Beside the parterre, on the south and west slope of Volčji Hill, Leon Souvan created the part of the park that today we call the Lower and Upper English Park. There, on the level grassy areas he planted groups of trees that still form the framework of the two parks, designed in landscape style. Since there were no suitable saplings in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, most of them were ordered from Germany.

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The group of five white hornbeams in the middle of the lawn in the Lower English Park is still the central motif. The photograph is taken from beneath the Caucasian walnuts that border the park to the west.

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View from the manor house towards the Lower English Park. We still enter it through the rotunda of hornbeams. To the right, beside are the main driveway to the house, are two groups of spruces. When a visitor came from the Radomlje direction, after passing through the dark grove of spruces, a view opened up of the light manor house building.

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Leon Souvan used to say that water doubled what was beautiful in the park. And he acted in accordance with this. He newly dug out the small lake that we now call Red Maple Lake – after the fan-like red maple, which was the first in this part of the world. He also considerably widened the lake that we now refer to as Otočec, in which the manor house was then reflected (photograph).

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One of Souvan’s signatures in the park is groups of white birches. He planted them in the two English parks and elsewhere. Because of their short lifespan, these are now gradually dying off.

10 Regional identity

It is possible to find a parallel between Leon Souvan’s musical creativity and his gardening. He was a cosmopolitan, but deeply rooted in Slovene culture. In his compositions, national melodies prevail, while in the park there is an emphasis on views of the surrounding countryside and the features that he placed beside paths.

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The column that stands beneath the plane trees beside the path between the manor house and the Meierhof was bought by Leon Souvan somewhere near Kamnik. The opinion of an art historian is that it was carved sometime in the eighteenth century. Plague columns were a characteristic landscape element of Slovene and Alpine lands. Souvan used the column in the park to introduce spiritual content, as well as to emphasis the Alpine genius loci or guardian spirit.

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Leon Souvan had four columns reconstructed. Two were built out of brick and two were in bush-hammered concrete. The most beautiful is the plague column at the junction of paths beside what used to be the main driveway leading to the manor house. In the early 20th century concrete was a fashionable material here and the owner also used to it make benches in the park.

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The building which is now a gallery survived the fire of 1944. Because of its regular octagonal floorplan, visitors assume it used to be a chapel, but this is not the case. In 1938, Leon Souvan rebuilt some horse stables in this way. The building served as a garage and was also home to a tame horned owl.

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In the background of the first photograph of the Volčji Potok manor house can be seen the Kamnik Alps. Leon Souvan intentionally opened up the view towards the mountains, thus expanding the visitor’s aesthetic pleasure. With regard to emphasising regional identity, we could also mention the Alpine style in which the Meierhof was extended.

11 The arrangement of the ruins

The English landscape style involves large, open grassy areas and considered placement of trees and groups of trees, the tracing of paths as a scenario of how the park is to be experienced, capturing calm water in lakes and built elements. Leon Souvan took all of these into account, but modified the built elements in his own way. Instead of reproductions of Antique temples he put in place plague columns, instead of fake Gothic ruins he presented the original ruins of the old castle on top of Volčji Hill.

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Leon Souvan’s first step in arranging the ruins was to make a broad, gentle path to the top of the hill, which begins in a small valley with a source on the edge of the Lower English Park. This meant that visitors could make a leisurely walk or ride to the ruins – visitors were frequently offered the chance to tour the park on horseback.

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Souvan first had the completely overgrown ruins cleared of bushes and trees, and then he had the remnants of the walls partially excavated. The tops of the walls were reinforced with a concrete cap. He intervened in the ruins by building a new portal (in the picture, he is standing beside it). Originally the entrance to the castle was located elsewhere. By cutting down trees he opened up the view to the Kamnik-Domžale plain and the Kamnik Alps.

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The restoration carried out by Leon Souvan lasted until 2007. In the July of that year a hurricane blew down some beech trees which damaged the concrete caps on the walls. What was left was destroyed by trees that fell in an ice storm in 2014. An expert restoration of the ruins with a partial archaeological dig was carried out in 2015 and 2016.

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The image in Valvasor’s depiction of the ruins in no way matches their ground plan. This means that the copperplate engraving was done from memory or from rough sketches. It is possible that he deliberately dramatized the scene by adding to the castle a rectangular defence tower. The castle was certainly abandoned in the 17^th century, when the Renaissance manor house was built below the hill.

12 The war

With the start of World War II, the Germans occupied Carniola (Gorenjska), joined it to Carinthia (Koroška) and both to the Third Reich. The Province of Ljubljana was taken by the Italians. Between Volčji Potok and Ljubljana a state border appeared and the Souvans were now living and working in two different states. War was soon combined with revolution, which physically and symbolically settled scores with the old order.

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Leon Souvan found himself under pressure from the German authorities to declare himself as a German. The pressure was greater because his deceased wife had been an ethnic German. But he was a nationally conscious Slovene and did not wish to conceal his national pride. At the same time, he was aware of the possible sanctions, so he withdrew to Ljubljana, which was under Italian control. He did not return to his beloved park until the end of the war and he was never to see the manor house again.

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Following Souvan’s departure from Volčji Potok, the German authorities nationalised the estate and placed it administratively in the hands of the representative of the state SS-commission for reinforcing Germanhood.  The commissioner role was the “exclusion of the harmful influence … of foreign-born inhabitants on the country and the German national community”. It was decided that the manor house would be used for a German-language housekeeping school for farm girls.

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The veterinarian Anton Lampret, who was in Leon Souvan’s absence the manager of the estate, heard whispers that local Partisans were intending to burn down the Volčji Potok manor house. Before this, they had burned down castles at Brdo near Lukovica, Križ, Črnelo and Čemšenik. He organised the removal of valuable pieces of furniture, but most of the furnishings went up in flames on 14 April 1944. The motivation for the arson attack was primarily ideological.

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Leon Souvan was given back the estate in September 1945, but then in November the land was placed under the administration of the Ministry of Agriculture. The following year a decree was issued about the people’s property – the second nationalisation in five years.

13 The battle to preserve the park

After the war Leon Souvan moved back to Volčji Potok, where he made a home for himself in two rooms beneath the roof of the Meierhof. He took care of the park and strove as best he could to have it preserved, for the revolutionary authorities intended to change it back to agricultural land. In this he was successful.  In February 1946 Volčji Potok was visited by the head of the Institute for Monument Protection and his colleagues, as well as a gardening expert from the Ministry of Agriculture. The park and woodlands were recognised as an “important site” and it was recommended that they be excluded from the fund for agrarian reform.

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On the post-war aerial shot the site of the manor house has been erased, i.e. retouched. The new authorities had no intention of rebuilding the house and the traces of unnecessary destruction of cultural heritage needed to be concealed. Local people were then allowed to demolish the walls that were still standing and use them as building material to repair their own homes.

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To his dying day, Leon Souvan lived for his park in Volčji Potok. The view through the window of the room where he died on 31 December 1949, towards Homec church, where he is buried.

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Following the Souvans’ death the estate was managed by the company Gradis. There were suggestions that the park should be used for animal husbandry or as a resort for trade unionists, with catering and sporting activities. Gradis had close links with the state security apparatus. They built barracks on the estate (photograph) which housed returning exiles and prisoners of war, while they were vetted.

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On 21 November1950 in the Official Gazette of the People’s Republic of Slovenia there appeared “an order protecting the trees, flowers and woods of the park at Volčji Potok near Radomlje”. Only protecting the park as a natural feature ensured that its fundamental function would be preserved.

14 The Souvans’ heritage

On 24 June 1952 an order was issued establishing an arboretum in Volčji Potok. Its care was entrusted to the faculties of agronomy and forestry, the predecessors of today’s Biotechnical Faculty. The nationalised Souvan park thus passed into expert hands and the Arboretum, as an educational and research institution, opened to the public.

14-1 Souvan’s park in Volčji Potok Arboretum

Souvan’s flower and tree park that was protected as a natural feature covered 12 hectares. At the same time, 21 hectares of wooded hill was protected as the hinterland of the park. When it was established in 1952, the Arboretum managed 79 hectares of land, which was later expanded to 85 hectares through purchases. Souvan’s park remains a central and irreplaceable part of Arboretum.

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In the 1950s the Arboretum ordered a plan for an institutional building on the location of the ruined manor house. The monument protection service did not grant approval to the modern building. In 1961 politicians in Ljubljana made an empty proposal that Volčji Potok should be the location for the reconstruction of the Baroque Kosler Palace that was being demolished beside what is now Slovenska Road. The historic Souvan park is still waiting for an architectural anchor.

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It was Miha Ogorevc, long-time director of Volčji Potok Arboretum, in memory of the work carried out by Leon Souvan, who gave the name Souvan’s Meadow. That is the part of the Arboretum below the Big Lake, between the manor house and the French garden. The scene is marked particularly by the stream fed by the Big Lake and by the evergreen coat of ivy on the old alders.

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A monument to Leon Souvan was unveiled at Volčji Potok Arboretum in 1998 in recognition of his work. The bust is the work of sculptor Boštjan Putrih. Souvan’s heirs had to wait for compensation for the family’s seized property for another fifteen years. The denationalisation process led by the Ministry of Culture dragged on beyond all reasonable boundaries. Accounts are now settled.

15 Poems for Alma Souvan

Alma Souvan (1880-1964) was the youngest daughter of Ferdinand Souvan, who in 1882 bought the manor house and estate in Volčji Potok.

Daughters of wealthy traders were sought after brides. Alma had two sisters. Rozina Souvan married her cousin Demeter Bleiweis. Leonie, who was the twin sister of Leon Souvan, the creator of the park in Volčji Potok married Hubert Souvan, her first cousin. They had no children.

Alma Souvan entered Slovene literary history as the unrequited love of poet Josip Murn. The young poet was introduced to the salons of Ljubljana by the national lady Franja Tavčar. As a relaxed and talkative young man he successfully entertained the ladies, and as he did so he probably thought about marrying wealth to escape the poverty in which he grew up.

The young Alma Souvan was not part of Ljubljana society and did not know Murn personally. He fell in love with her at the theatre, from afar, and wrote poems to her. Via a friend he sent her a sheaf of his verses with a dedication and received a polite note of thanks for this for this “knightly gesture”. And that was how it stayed, since the feelings of love and interest were completely one-sided. The poet-s dreams of all-conquering romantic love evaporated.

Through the headphones you can hear the cycle of poems “Nights”, which Josip Murn dedicated to Alma Souvan.

In 1903 Alma, who was the most beautiful of the sisters, married Franc Urbanc, the heir to the second largest textile shop in Ljubljana. In 1912 Alma’s husband had her portrait painted by Ivan Vavpotič. When the portrait was painted Alma Urbanc was already the mother of three children. The picture is on display in the National Gallery.