Bakovnik Konrad

Konrad Bakovnik (5 June 1902, Klanec pri Kranju – 15 August, Celje)

Mechanical Engineering Sergeant in the Navy of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

Konrad Bakovnik, a petty officer in the Navy and a hostage of the German occupying forces, was born on 5 June 1902 at Klanec near Kranj. According to the Baptismal Register, his father Konrad was a railway guard as well as a landowner, while his mother Franca, née Šorn, was a housewife. The family had three children: Konrad, Franc and Marička.

 

Young Konrad most probably volunteered to join the Navy, where he acquired the position of   mechanical engineering noncommissioned officer and a signalman. According to the existing photos, he was a mechanical engineering petty officer in 1925, and a sergeant in 1929, when he took part in the first overseas voyage by the Royal Yugoslav Navy as a member of the crew of the T5 torpedo boat. During the voyage, which lasted from 12 May to 18 June, the fleet visited ports of the Allied countries: Bizerte and Tunis in Tunisia, which were parts of the French colony at that time, Malta, where the British Navy had its bases, and Corfu and Argostoli in Greece.

 

The T5 torpedo boat was built in 1915 in Rijeka for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Its crew numbered 52 men, including 4 officers, 29 noncommissioned officers and 16 sailors. The  torpedo boat was then under the command of Dr Vili A. Bačić – commander and commissar of the 2nd torpedo group; his subordinate was Sub Lieutenant Stanislav Abram from Šentjernej. The torpedo boat's home port was Tivat in the Bay of Kotor, where 80% of the fleet of the Navy of the Kingdom of SHS, later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, had its home port.

 

Upon returning from the Navy, Konrad Bakovnik decided to opt for a civilian job. In 1931, he worked as an official at the state railways and lived as a subtenant in Ljubljana. According to his daughter's story, he later got a job in a private company. On 5 June 1933, he married a teacher, Ljudmila Zaplatil, from Stranska vas near Kočevje, and had a daughter with her, but they soon divorced. Konrad moved to Šentjur, where he later set up a home with Vera Petek, a teacher. He also financially supported his illegitimate daughter Felicita, who was during his absence raised by his parents at Klanec.

 

Konrad, Vera and her father were in 1942 arrested by the Nazis. Vera was soon released, whereas her father was taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Germany, from where he returned after the war. On 15 August 1942, Konrad was shot as a hostage with no trial whatsoever in the courtyard of Stari Pisker in Celje – a prison operating on the premises of the former Minorite monastery. The bodies of the hostages were transferred to Graz, where they were cremated. Konrad Bakovnik is also among the names of the victims engraved on the monument to the mass grave.

 

Before executed, Konrad wrote a farewell letter to his family, which is now kept by his daughter Felicita Petek. In it, he expressed his love for all close to him and asked them to pray for him and care for his daughter, who will be left without a mother and father.

 

Many years later, Felicita Petek found her father's pith helmet in a chest in the family home, as well as letters he sent from a voyage across the Mediterranean, from Argostoli on the Greek island of Cephalonia on 14 July 1929, and some photos from the Navy with Konrad Bakovnik wearing a summer or winter naval uniforms. In one of the photographs in the summer uniform, which was taken in the studio, he is wearing a pith helmet instead of a sailor's cap, which his daughter Felicita Petek in 2025 donated to the Maritime Museum in Piran. Considering that pith helmets were intended to be worn in the tropics, Konrad Bakovnik could have worn it in Africa that he visited during his voyage across the Mediterranean, but according to the regulations of the Navy of the Kingdom of SHS, it could not be appropriated by him.

 

The tropical helmet is found in the uniform regulations of the Navy of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1924 and 1936, although prescribed for officers only. They could wear it when specifically ordered to do so, but like other uniforms they were liable to buy it. On the white pith helmet, they had to wear the emblem of the Navy of the Kingdom of SHS, later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and a white leather chinstrap. Konrad Bakovnik's helmet has neither the emblem not the chinstrap. There are also no traces on it that would prove that they were once on it. That Konrad Bakovnik did not wear a helmet as part of his uniform also speaks the fact that helmet was not prescribed for noncommissioned officers. Considering that the photos in the voyage booklet Spomenica prvog putovanja Kr. mornarice u inostrane vode / Krf Malta Bizerta / maj 1929, published by the Adriatic Sentinel in Split in 1930, the pith helmet was not worn even by Yugoslav officers in those times. In one of the photos, it is worn together with a white officer's naval uniform in Bizerta by only one of the representatives of the French and consular authorities. On this basis we can conclude that Konrad Bakovnik bought the helmet without markings that had possibly made also for members of foreign Navies, as a souvenir or received it as a gift, most probably in Bizerte or Tunis.

 

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia: pith helmet

 

Item No. P23759 / EP4511 

 

Description: The pith helmet is of a conventional shape, white on the outside and red, green and brown on the inside. It contains no manufacturer's markings. There are no officers' emblem and the white leather chinstrap on the helmet.

 

The pith helmet was prescribed in the uniform regulation from 1924 and the regulation of 1936 for naval officers in the Kingdom of SHS, later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Material: canvas, leather

width: 29.5 cm, length: 34.3 cm, height: 15 cm

 

Previous owner: The pith helmet belonged to Mechanical Engineering Sergeant Konrad Bakovnik. According to the regulations, it could not be appropriated by him.

 

 

Bogdana Marinac

 

 

Sources and literature

Bogdana Marinac: V modrem in belem, Mornariške uniforme iz zbirke Pomorskega muzeja Piran, Piran: Pomorski muzej »Sergej Mašera« Piran, 2003.

Arhiv Pomorskega muzeja »Sergej Mašera« Piran, Vojna mornarica Kraljevine Jugoslavije.

Intervju s Felicito Petek, opravila Bogdana Marinac, 17. 6. 1925.