STA, 1 July 2019 - A life-size, wooden sculpture of US First Lady Melania Trump has been erected near her hometown Sevnica in south-east Slovenia. The intriguing sculpture will be presented on Friday as part of the Ta Eho exhibition by US artist Brad Downey, who aims to explore the extent of Melania Trump's roots and the reaction of the locals.

The exhibition will open in the Ljubljana Vžigalica gallery on Thursday, while the sculpture, portraying the Slovenian-born first lady and bearing her name, will be showcased near the area where she grew up.

According to the gallery, the artist based the exhibition on the myth of Echo and Narcissus as a way to address and reflect on the issues he raised when he first visited Slovenia - where do the roots of the current US first lady lead to as well as the opinions of the locals or Slovenians in general on the issue.

The mountain nymph Echo was punished for trying to cover up Zeus's infidelity. His wife Hera condemned her to the life of being able to utter only echoes, to speak merely the last words spoken to her. When the nymph met self-centred Narcissus, she was thus unable to inform him of his love.

Taking into account the lack of a specific local or public response and restrictions related to the first lady status, the Kentucky-based artist ordered and funded the wooden sculpture, which was created by a local craftsman and sculptor using a chain saw.

The sculpture "portrays the first lady, who is greeting her hometown Sevnica" in her inaugural gown and is considered the first public sculpture of the first lady, said the gallery.

Apart from focusing on the story of the sculpture's creation process, the exhibition will also display a copy of former US president Ronald Reagan's press briefing room.

Sevnica, a town of some 5,000 inhabitants in the Posavje region, has capitalised on Melania Trump's rise to fame by coming up with its own First Lady brand, including local wine, pastry, chocolate, tea as well as pottery and cosmetic products. Visitors can also indulge in the Melania cake or pie.

All out stories about Melania Trump are here

February 22, 2019

In a public appearance in Miami last Monday aiming to support USA foreign policy on Venezuela, Melania Trump introduced her husband’s speech with the following words:

“I am proud to be here with you in the United States of America as your First Lady. Many of you in the room know what it feels like to be blessed with freedom after living under the oppression of socialism and communism.”

Various Slovenian media reported on her statement from different angles, and the comments on social media exploded, especially among those who felt that she was also claiming first-hand experience of such oppression.

A tweet from POP TV’s news programme, 24UR, decided to avoid the issue, leaving Mrs Trump’s personal experience out of the story’s headline and just giving a general idea of Melania’s concern for the victims of Venezuela’s socialist regime.

Translation: She expressed hope that Venezuelans will soon be freed from socialism.

Melania condemned “oppressive” socialism in Venezuela. The First Lady of the USA Melania Trump introduced her husband in Miami and condemned oppressive socialism and communism. She expressed hope that Venezuelans will soon start living their lives in freedom….

Some online commentators joined the Sevnica native’s condemnation of oppressive socialist regimes, claiming that Melania had some personal experience of such systems.

Translation: Melania knows what socialism is and empowers Venezuelans.

Translation of the retweeted summary of the right-leaning weekly Reporter’s article: Melania enthuses the Venezuelan diaspora in Miami: You have tasted freedom after the oppression of socialism and communism. The First Lady of the USA Melania Trump in Miami first visited child patients and then at the rally with her husband Donald encouraged Venezuelans to persist since freedom is close.

The left-leaning Mladina, however focused mainly on Melania’s implication of first-hand experience of socialist oppression.

Translation: Melania Trump on oppression in socialism and communism. The American media presented the First Lady’s performance with the comment that she was born in “communist” Slovenia, while she herself stressed that many in the audience know how it is to be blessed with freedom after living under the oppression of socialism and communism.

Since many in Slovenia interpreted the First Lady’s words as suggesting that she had lived under similar conditions in Yugoslavia, commentators, both professional and amateur, weighed in with their opinions.

Some focused on technical issues, such as the improper use of “communism” when talking about such regimes and the functional nature of political rhetoric.

Translation: Do you find this statement abnormal ? It is crystal clear to her that this is what she is supposed to say. After all, she is married to an ultra-capitalist and there’s no room there for socialism and similar matters…

Translation: No system so far practised communism. We lived in socialism, thank God.

The fact that the Yugoslavian regime was socialist (a planned economy with private property) not communist (no private property rights) should be pretty clear to Melania, as Marxist historic materialism was once part of the elementary school history classes.

Most of the social media comments, however seemed to be inspired by an attempt to visualise Melania’s alleged personal experience of the hardship of oppression on her way to the freedom she eventually found in her marriage to Donald Trump and the US citizenship which followed.

Translation: She survived socialism.

Translation:

- I hope she writes a book about her thorny path to freedom

- Yes, the title: On the catwalk to freedom

- … and beyond without the Iron Curtain

- Jokes are just writing themselves: How I came out of dissidence and ended up on a catwalk, which was the only way out from oppression and poverty

- Comment under some of her pictures: Communism stripped me naked

Translation: Poor girl. After her dramatically illegal life [meaning the life of a dissident] she managed pass deadly traps and spies and leave communist Slovenia in secret. The story of this escape to freedom, full of tragic twists, loss of memory to trauma and immense efforts will be immortalised by action movies. The word is out there that she will be played by Angelina J.. She is now sending her regards from a place of freedom to the Slovenian people, who continues to live in trauma.

Several of the commentators also made reference to the variety of goods on offer in earlier days, with a focus on yogurt.

Translation: She might also have found the range of yogurts insufficient.

Translation: Actually, she is right – it really was difficult living in a country with such a poor choice of (artificial) yogurts.

The last two comments come in a reference to a failed attempt at criticism of the former Yugoslav regime by the Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarović. Her statement on the lack of yogurts under Tito prompted some in the Croatian media to even pull out of the archives a 1975 study titled “Organoleptic quality of Yugoslavian yogurts and other fermented milk products”, proving that there were over 300 varied items of this kind on the Yugoslav market at the time.

You can see all our stories on Slovenia and Venezuela here, and all our stories on Melania Trump here

As a professional watcher of all things Slovene, engaged in the task of shining a light on this part of the world and keeping an eye on how it’s seen from outside, I approach foreign documentaries about the country with some trepidation. In general these turn out to be travel shows and shallow looks at Slovenia – Ljubljana and Bled, the human fish and kremšnita, hard to pronounce place names and references to “hidden gems” – with last year’s Travel Man being a particularly poor example of a team helicoptering in, making a mess, and hoping no one will notice (as seen here).

Still, content is content, and this website serves a broad audience, with broader tastes than my own. So I loaded up First Ladyland, a documentary directed by David Freid in late 2016. Mr Freid was in Croatia when Trump was elected, and took the chance to come to Slovenia and film various people looking ahead to what might be possible, in terms of greater visibility and tourist appeal, with Sevnica’s own Melanija Knavs in the White House.

Lightly satirical and beautifully shot and put together overall, the film presents a view of Slovenia not shown in the travel shows and tourist promos, but just adjacent to it. The people we meet talk in their professional guises, as a mayor, castle manager, souvenir store operator, tour guide, prankster, balloon artist, Slovenologist, slipper designer, curator and lawyer, intercut with footage from US news shows drawn from the start of Melania’s career as Mrs Trump, scenes of the inauguration and related protests, as well of life in Sevnica, the small town that was previously best known for its castle and annual salami festival (Sevniška salamiada). Take a look below and see what, and who, you recognise.

First Ladyland from MEL Films on Vimeo.

If you wonder why we don’t write much about Melania Trump then there are a number of reasons, but first and foremost is the strength of her Slovenian lawyer (the highly qualified, competent and respected Nataša Pirc Musar) and the fact that almost anything interesting or amusing we’d write would require legal support that’s beyond our means. A reminder to tread carefully in this regard comes today from The Daily Telegraph (UK), which published an apology for what it says are mistakes in an earlier story, “The Mystery of Melania Trump”, written as a review of a new book, Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump's Women, and now scrubbed from the Internet.

The newspaper has thus apologised unreservedly, as well as paying Mrs Trump’s legal fees and “substantial damages”, and made the following corrections and clarifications:

Mrs Trump’s father was not an overbearing and controlling man

Mrs Trump did not leave her Design and Architecture course at the University of Ljubljana in relation to the completion of an exam, but rather to pursue her career as a professional model.

Mrs Trump was not an unsuccessful model before meeting Mr Trump, nor did Mr Trump help her career.

Mrs Trump’s mother, father and sister did not move to New York in 2005 in order to live in buildings owned by her husband.

Mrs Trump did not cry on election night.

The full apology can be found here.

STA, 7 January 2019 - US First Lady Melania Trump tops the list of the 100 most influential Slovenians compiled by the right-leaning magazine Reporter, followed by UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin, and the three most influential politicians - Prime Minister Marjan Šarec, President Borut Pahor and parliamentary Speaker Dejan Židan.

The top five are followed by Slovenia's first President Milan Kučan, former boss of pharma company Lek Mojmir Urlep, now a state secretary in the prime minister's office.

The top ten are rounded off by Stojan Petrič of the Idrija-based industrial conglomerate Kolektor, Gregor Golobič, the founder of the now defunct Zares party and aide to late Slovenian leader Janez Drnovšek, and the head of the opposition Democrats (SDS) Janez Janša.

After Melania Trump, the most influential Slovenian woman is Alenka Bratušek, Slovenia's first female prime minister who now serves as the infrastructure minister in the minority government of Marjan Šarec and leads the party bearing her name.

The only athlete on the list is the teen basketball sensation Luka Dončić of the Dallas Mavericks of the NBA, who rounds off the entire list in 100th place.

In an accompanying commentary, editor-in-chief Silvester Šurla notes that there are only 15 persons who found themselves on the list of 100 most influential Slovenians compiled by Mag, the predecessor of Reporter, twenty years ago.

In 1998, the second most influential Slovenian was Kučan, who was still the head of state then. Kučan, who ended his presidency in 2002, is still very high on this year's list, in sixth spot.

Kučan is still among the top ten but his influence has diminished somewhat since, but he still has a strong informal influence, also maintained through his left-leaning Forum 21 organisation.

Šurla says that Forum 21 is a network built around the former Communist Party and its younger supporters which has survived three decades of transition. Kučan will soon celebrate his 78th birthday, but he is still very active, Šurla says.

The most influential politicians are unsuprisingly the prime minister, president and parliamentary speaker, who have a strong formal influence by default, regardless of who actually holds the post.

Although he is a political novice, Prime Minister Marjan Šarec is the most influential politician, who has the opportunity to increase influence on a daily basis in addition to gaining political experience, Šurla says.

Although he has not been at the helm of the government since 2013, the head of the opposition Democrats (SDS) Janez Janša remains rather influential, rounding off the top ten.

The fact that Janša is not able to form a government despite being relative election winner diminishes his political power, while he is still trying to keep the role of political hegemon right from the centre, the commentator says.

The most influential business executive is Petrič, who is not only controlling a group which includes the newspaper publisher Delo, he is also quite wealthy and his informal connections lead to the very top of Slovenian politics.

The top two persons on the list are nevertheless Slovenians who are influential on the global and European scale, Šurla notes

The influence of Melania Trump at the global level is incomparably stronger than of any politician or business executive in her native country, as she can have a considerable influence on the decisions by President Donald Trump.

Since football is still the most popular sport in the world, right behind Melania Trump is Aleksander Čeferin, the president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).

Speaking about the importance and influence of the post is the fact that the organisation's budget in a four-year term of an UEFA president stands at a whopping EUR 12.3bn.

"Slovenians are actually not very well aware yet how important posts these two compatriots hold," Šurla finds.

Related: Who were the richest Slovenians in 2018?

The town offers more than memories of the First Lady. 

Sandi Gorišek is a mechanical engineer by training and profession, working on projects that often take him out of the country. By chance he was working in America just as Melania Trump was entering public consciousness there, and soon grew tired of being asked the same questions again and again.

While others may have just waved off all inquiries, Mr Gorišek, who fizzes with energy and ideas, decided to do something more. So he wrote and published a short book on the woman who was born Melanija Knavs – in Novo mesto, not Sevnica – and the world she grew up in. Having purchased and read a copy I got in touch with the author and arranged to meet him for a drink, record our conversation and type it up to share with you, lightly edited for concision and clarity.

STA, 25 April 2018 – Basketball player Goran Dragić tops the list of the 100 most influential Slovenians in 2017 as compiled by media professionals, and is followed by another five figures from the world of sports. US First Lady Melania Trump placed seventh and President Borut Pahor, as the highest rated politician, eighth.

Here’s the little we learned about the Riddle of the Sphinx.