From a place of residence to a crime scene, from a place of remembrance to a place of learning. Just before the end of the war, the mountain farm of the Sadovnik family became the scene of one of the last National Socialist war crimes committed against Carinthian Slovenian civilians. Today, the Peršmanhof is not only one of the most important places of remembrance and commemoration of the Carinthian Slovenes, but also an internationally renowned museum of learning.
Memorial
After the Association of Carinthian Partisans had placed a memorial plaque on the former home of the Sadovnik family in 1965, the Association initiated the establishment of a small museum dedicated to the history of resistance and persecution at Peršmanhof in 1982. A year later, on the forecourt of the museum, the resistance monument, which had been blown up and destroyed in its original location in Völkermarkt/Velikovec in 1953, was reerected. This laid the most important foundation for the significance of Peršmanhof as a museum and place of remembrance.
Museum
At the initiative of the Društvo/Verein Peršman, Peršmanhof was expanded and redesigned into a modern, contemporary history museum in 2012. More than 100 m² of exhibition space are now dedicated to the main topics of persecution and resistance of the Carinthian Slovenes with a special focus on the Peršman family, their murder on April 25, 1945, as well as the judicial history of the crime. The entire exhibition is bilingual in the Carinthian languages (German and Slovene).
The permanent exhibition at Peršmanhof provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the Carinthian Slovenes in the past century. The modern exhibition architecture invites visitors to linger and to delve into individual topics. Audiovisual media as well as numerous biographical examples focus on the experiences of contemporary witnesses and make regional history vivid and comprehensible.