This master's thesis examines separations from bed and board, divorces, annulments of marriage, and marriage contracts in Carniola from the second quarter of the nineteenth century to the First World War. It proceeds from the legal framework of the Austrian General Civil Code, which defined marriage as a civil-law contract while at the same time preserving the principle of its indissolubility among the Chatolic population. For this reason, most spouses could primarily obtain a separation from bed and board, but not a complete divorce with the right to remarry. The thesis combines legal-historical, social-historical, and microhistorical approaches and is based on official Austrian statistical reports, preserved divorce files of the District or Provincial Court in Ljubljana, and marriage contracts from notarial fonds. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, the thesis presents the frequency and characteristics of separation and divorce proceedings, the social and occupational structure of spouses, the duration of marriages, the grounds for separation, and the role of the court in determining fault, maintenance, and the property consequences of the breakdown of marital life. Marriage contracts further reveal the economic dimension of marriage and the importance of arranging property agreements in advance. The thesis shows that divorce files are an important source for understanding everyday life, marital conflicts, gender roles, and the social strategies of spouses, while also shedding light on the relationship between legal norms, judicial practice, and lived reality.
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