Belec Leopold

Leopold (Polde) Belec, carpenter, modeller, restorer, worker and associate of the Maritime Museum Piran – Gorenje Jelenje (Dole pri Litiji), 26 November 1933 *– Piran, 8 March 2018)

Leopold (Polde) Belec was a long-serving employee and eventually external associate of the Maritime Museum Piran. He was born on 26 November 1933 at Gorenje Jelenje near Litija. He grew up in a large family on a farm as the seventh of eight children. His mother was a farmer, the same as his father who was a very good carpenter on top of it. The farm provided them with a decent life, for it incorporated a residential house with an outbuilding and land including forests, meadows and fields. During World War II (early December 1941), they were expelled from their home and sent to German camps, where Polde spent the delicate years of his childhood. Initially, they were taken to Raihenburg, and eventually to Wirtenberg and Schettlingen. They did not return home until September 1945, only a couple of months before his 12th birthday. He learned carpentry skills from his father, the same as his older brothers.

 

In 1953, he began to serve three-year military enlistment. Upon returning home, he decided to look for work outside his birthplace.

 

First of all, he worked for a short time at the Sečovlje Black Coal Mine, while in 1956 he got a job at the Piran shipyard. In 1960, he began training as a carpenter-modeller and on 11 December 1960 successfully passed the exam.

 

When Miroslav Pahor, historian and head of the Maritime Museum in Piran, embarked on diverting the museum's vocation towards researching and presenting Slovenian maritime history, he invited Leopold Belec to join them in the making of ship models.

 

With ship models, the museum wished to present the maritime past of coastal towns and their hinterland as well as to accentuate the significance of ship transport, maritime traffic, shipbuilding, trade, salt-working, fishing, contacts with the world, etc. Towards the end of the 1960s, the museum also founded a model workshop that systematically and regularly created a series of models of barques, brigs, brig schooners, Austrian warships and other vessels. Apart from "new structures", other acquired models were also conserved, and the so-called "conservation first aid" was carried out, thus preserving them to this day.

 

At the end of 1969 (16 December 1969), Belec was invited to join the Maritime Museum Piran as a modeller and restorer. With his experience, knowledge, exceptional technical solutions, skill of working with wood, he took part in field research as well as in setting up permanent museum collections and periodical exhibitions. He made several ship models.

 

His model creations, replicas and other technical products and exceptional technical solutions are still on display in the Maritime Museum Piran and its dislocated units: in the museum complex of the Museum of Salt-making at the Sečovlje Nature Park, in Tona's House at Sveti Peter, in the Monfort Exhibition Centre and in Izolana - the House of the Sea in Izola (formerly the Ship Modelling Collection). Together with other modellers and engineer Armand Klančnik, he also took part in the making of ship models of the shipping company Splošna plovba Piran and in its Navigation Museum in Portorož which, unfortunately, is no longer open today.

 

After his retirement on 27 January 1984, he continued to work with the employees of the Maritime Museum Piran for quite a number of years. In 2003, he led restoration workshops within the Piran Anbot association. He also cooperated with several commercial companies and social communities in Slovenian Istria and created a large number of models for them.

 

Belec resided with his wife Ivanka and family until his death. He was fond of beekeeping and sang in the Portorož choir. Still, he particularly loved to return to his birthplace of Gorenje Jelenje, where he also took a touch of the sea and part of the Maritime Museum. At home, he also restored a fairly large ship model, which is currently on display in Izolana in Izola.

 

He died on 8 March 2018 in Piran. But his legacy remains.

 

On 15 September 2025, his granddaughter Anastazija Belec wrote: "My father’s works and heritage are just a memory of what he created from what he in fact was. Kind, loyal, modest, positive, in love with life, devoted to his family and community, to Piran and what he created, repaired, restored. One of the things that defined him was that EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE. And he lived that way, too. He suffered from asthma, for which he was liable to use used medicaments which, however, caused tremors in both hands. But when you looked at the intarsia, a model of the boat, a replica, the parquet floor that he created... you didn't see that inside. You saw a masterpiece. What the power of love does for what you do and, above all, live.

 

What still accompanies me these days and what has remained through the years of growing up along him is, when I observed him, that the most important things in life are the relationships with people, tolerance, hard work, honesty, compassion and love. And if you know how to cultivate and appreciate this, you have the greatest wealth possible. The traces you leave behind are the legacy in them, as objects do not give a soul – it is given by the person himself. Just like the memory of every person who had an interaction or experience with him. This is what he left behind. «

 

* Although his date of birth is stated as 28 November in official documents and publications, he was actually born on 26 November.

 

 

 

Prepared by Nadja Terčon

 

 

 

SOURCES:

 

Museum documentation

 

Archives of the Maritime Museum Piran

 

Anastazija Belec, Zapis o dedku, 15. 9. 2025

 

Karmen Kodarin. BELEC, Leopold (Polde). (1933-2018). Obrazi slovenskih pokrajin. Mestna knjižnica Kranj, 2020. (cited: 4. 8. 2025), https://www.obrazislovenskihpokrajin.si/oseba/belec-leopold-polde/ , Dostop 31. 7. 2025

 

TERČON, Nadja. Miroslav Pahor. V Tvorci slovenske pomorske identitete. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, ZRC SAZU, 2010. Str. 173-187, portret, ilustr. Zbirka Življenja in dela, 6, Biografske in bibliografske študije, 4.