In recent years, Žalec has rekindled the memory of the Beck family, which owned Plevna Mansion (Pliuna) in Gotovlje at the turn of the twentieth century. Originally from Bohemia, the members of this ramified family held high positions in the Habsburg Monarchy. One of them was the lawyer Anton Beck, who was born in 1812 in the Moravian town of Budeč u Dačic (Germ. Butsch) and became the director of the central Viennese newspaper Wiener Zeitung in 1860. Six years afterward, he gained his greatest recognition by assuming directorship of the Imperial-Royal Court and State Printers in Vienna, a position he held for more than twenty-five years. During his term, the printing works underwent a series of modernizations.
In 1877, his accomplishments earned him the Knight’s Cross of the Imperial Austrian Order of Leopold, based on which he also requested knighthood. His coat of arms combined an element that represented his affiliation with the printing industry—a griffin holding a pair of printer’s balls (Germ. Buchdruckerball) in its claws—and elements that associated him with other homonymous but unrelated noble families. In this vein, he adopted a fire steel (Germ. Feuerstahl) from the coat of arms of the Beck-Leopoldsdorf family and violets from the armorial bearings of Johann Baron von Beck (1588–1648), Major-General in the Thirty Years’ War. Twenty years later, following Anton’s death in 1898, his widow Hersilie also accomplished that the emperor elevated her and her children to baronial rank based on the Imperial Order of the Iron Crown (second class), granted to her husband on his retirement in 1892. Although the order entailed the elevation to baronial rank, the procedure was only brought to completion by his widow three years after his death. The only change introduced in the family coat of arms on that occasion was the insertion of a seven-pointed coronet above the escutcheon as an emblem of baronial status.
For several decades, the Becks also had ties to Slovenian territory. Searching for his own peaceful retreat from Vienna’s bustle after retiring, Anton Beck stumbled across Plevna Mansion near Žalec and purchased it in 1890 (or, according to some sources, as early as 1885). Because the mansion was in poor condition, he invested all his resources in its reworking and restoration, the memory of which is still maintained by the coat of arms carved in the pediment. However, the only part of the coat of arms that belonged to Beck is the escutcheon, whereas the crest (helmets) is entirely different from his. It most likely represented one of the previous owners of the mansion (perhaps Count Bobrowski, who expanded it by an additional floor and sold it to the Becks). The Beck family later used the heraldic escutcheon for their coat of arms, leaving the crest intact.
Anton Ritter von Beck had grown genuinely attached to his new home in Lower Styria —so much so that he erected a family tomb near Plevna, next to St. Gertrude’s Church in Gotovlje. He was the first to be laid to rest in the tomb in 1895, followed by all members of his family until 1918. Bearing the inscription SEPVLCRVM FAMILIAE EQITVM DE BECK, the tomb has been recently restored, and it still stands there today.
After Anton’s death, Plevna was inherited by his widow Hersilie, who found its remote location not in the least appealing. At the time, the mansion also served as a summer residence for her son Max Wladimir (1854–1943), who as a diplomat maintained regular contact with Vienna. To this end, he installed the telephone system in the building and thus bringing the first telephone service to the wider Žalec area. Plevna was subsequently inherited by his nephew Max Baron von Allmayer-Beck, who remained its castellan until 1923 and then sold the mansion to Oskar Reiner von Brestovac from Alaginci, Slavonia.

Sources:
Allmayer-Beck, Johann Christoph: Vom Gastwirtssohn zum Ministermacher: Anton Beck und seine Brüder. Wien/Köln/Weimar: Böhlau, 2008.
Preinfalk, Miha: Plemiške rodbine na Slovenskem, 19. in 20. stoletje, 3. del: Od Aljančičev do Žolgerjev. Ljubljana: Viharnik, 2017, pp. ***
Zimmermann, Peter: Dvorec Plevna. Savinjski zbornik VII (gl. urednik Branko Goropevšek). Žalec: Občina Žalec, 1998, pp. 269–279.