Pirjevec was born in a
Slovene-speaking family in
Gorizia, a town in the
Austrian Littoral (now part of
Italy). He studied Slavic philology at the
University of Vienna. He graduated in 1913 with a thesis on
Fran Levstik. During
World War I he served in the
Austro-Hungarian Army. After the
demobilization in 1917, he taught Slovene and
German language at a Slovene-language high school in
Trieste. In 1920, he was fired by the new
Italian authorities in the
Julian March. In 1921, he moved to
Ljubljana, in what was then the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and became the chief librarian of the
National Research Library. Between 1925 and 1927 he shortly worked at the Library of the
National Museum. In the 1920s and 1930s, Pirjevec published several treatises on
Slovene literature in the 19th century, especially the Romantic circle of
France Prešeren and
Matija Čop. Together with
Ivan Prijatelj and
France Kidrič, Pirjevec was the main exponent of the
positivist group of Slovenian literary historians of the interwar period. He was also important as a theoretician librarian; publishing numerous articles and monographs on the function and organization of libraries and library systems in modern societies. In addition, he wrote a cataloguing instruction manual for use by academic libraries. During the interwar period, Pirjevec maintained a position of a progressive and
national liberal intellectual. He was critical of the absolute monarchy of
King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and supported the idea of an autonomous
United Slovenia within the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During World War II, his son
Dušan Pirjevec became an important resistance leader of the
Yugoslav partisans in
Slovenia; his daughter
Ivica Pirjevec was active in the
Liberation Front of the Slovenian People and was killed by the Nazis in 1944. Because of the anti-Fascist activities of his children, Pirjevec was arrested by the
Nazi authorities of the
Province of Ljubljana and sent to the
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in autumn 1943. He died in the
Gusen concentration camp in December 1944. After the war, a bust of Pirjevec was erected in the main entrance hall of the
National and University Library of Slovenia. == References ==