KOROŠEC, ANTON. – Slovenian priest and politician, b. at Sv. Jurij na Ščavnici in Styria in 1872, d. at Belgrade on 14 Dec. 1940. In 1906 he was elected as a representative of the Slovenian People’s Party in the Austrian Parliament, where he remained until the fall of the Habsburg monarchy.
He was responsible for the famous “May Declaration” (30 May 1917), in which he advocated the union of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs into a free and democratic state community, recognizing only the personal sovereignty of the Habsburgs. President of the National Council of Ljubljana and Zagreb, after the fall of the monarchy he concluded with Pašić the “Geneva Pact,” which gave birth to the new Serb-Croat-Slovene State (SHS). He served repeatedly in the government and in 1928 became its president. Later, following the dissolution of the Slovenian People’s Party due to growing tensions between Serbs-Croats on one side and Slovenes on the other, he went into opposition and in 1932 was sentenced to internal exile by the dictatorial regime established by the Serbs and Croats. He returned to public life after the assassination of King Alexander, associating himself with national mourning, and in 1935 regained the Ministry of the Interior along with the presidency of the Senate.