Karel Lavrič, also spelled Laurič or Lauritsch (1 November 1818 – 3 March 1876), was a Carniolan liberal politician and lawyer from the Austrian Littoral. He was of Slovene descent and was one of the most prominent activists of the Young Slovene movement. Together with the conservative Lovro Toman, he was considered among the most popular Slovene politicians of the 19th century. He was also called the 'tribune of Goriška'. Early life Born Karel Edvard Lavrič to an upper-middle-class family in the southern Carniola town of Prem (now part of the Municipality of Ilirska Bistrica), his father worked as an Austrian district judge. Karel attended elementary school in Postojna. In 1827, after his father's death, the family moved to Ljubljana, where Karel attended the classical lyceum. In 1835, they moved to Graz. There, he joined the circle of young Slovene intellectuals, organized by Davorin Trstenjak and Stanko Vraz. Between 1839 and 1843, he studied law at the University of Graz. He continued his studies at the University of Padua. Between 1845 and 1848, he travelled extensively around Europe, settling in Trieste shortly before the outbreak of the 1848 revolution. He rose to public prominence in late April 1848, when he published the article in the Laibacher Zeitung, the influential German-language newspaper from Ljubljana, supporting the maintenance of Styria and the Kingdom of Illyria, where the vast majority of Slovenes lived, in the German Confederation, and the participation of Slovenes in the elections for the Frankfurt Parliament. These positions were close to the ideas of Carniolan pro-German liberals such as Anastasius Grün, but were at odds with the project of an autonomous United Slovenia within the Austrian Empire, supported by most Slovenian liberal nationalists. At the end of 1848, Lavrič settled in the small town of Sežana near Trieste, where he worked in the Austrian public administration. During this period, he engaged in several successful projects to improve the position of the economically backward Karst region, including a large-scale afforestation program. In 1852, he moved to Tolmin, where he opened a successful law firm. He was active in the cultural life of the local German-speaking elite. In Tolmin, he converted to Lutheranism to please his fiancée Marie Schimpf, daughter of a wealthy German merchant from Trieste. Her rejection pushed Lavrič into a state of deep depression, which culminated with an attempted suicide in early 1860. Rise to public prominence After the