Robbers

The hero of the story, brigand chief Groga – a nobleman who was wronged in the past – takes over a brigand gang during Napoleon's occupation of Slovenia. Although he claims he's fighting for the rights of the common man, his fight in the end turns into personal revenge. In this Slovenian version of Robin Hood, who takes from the rich and gives to the poor, we can see a beginning of a revolutionary who could establish a new, just social order, but meets a miserable end; passion wins over the ratio, an individual over society, past over the future.

When Josip Jurčič conceived his Brigands he didn't want his work to be labelled a social drama. Even more, he considered brigands “a common gang of thieves”. But in the work where the fight between the high society and the common man, and a fight against economic, political and cultural occupation in the time of the Illyrian provinces are intertwined, we can and must recognise it as such: a sketch of social climate on Slovenian soil, born from historic circumstances that in the last instance hurt everyone and all; and the lowest classes the hardest.