In Navje Memorial Park still stands the well-preserved, more than three-meter-high tombstone of Dr. Janez Bleiweis Ritter von Trsteniški (1808–1881). The tonalite tombstone was originally erected near the Baumgartner Mausoleum, surrounded by cast-iron railings, in a highly visible spot along the path through Ljubljana’s oldest Saint Christopher’s Cemetery. The upper part of the tombstone features Bleiweis’s worn-out and hardly recognizable noble coat of arms and the lower part displays a lengthy text carved in Slovenian below the deceased’s name. The monument was once flanked by a pair of marble scrolls, one for Bleiweis’s wife Karolina (now located under the arcades) and the other for their four granddaughters, who had all died at a tender age (the scroll no longer exists).

The Bleiweis lineage most probably has its roots somewhere around Wörthersee (Sln. Vrbsko jezero) in Austrian Carinthia; however, the surname Pleybes can also be traced to Upper Carniola as early as the sixteenth century. In the village of Trstenik at the foot of Mount Storžič, on the ridge next to the parish Church of St. Martin, there still stands a modest farmhouse, locally known as “at Frjanc’s.” The unusual family name resembles the word “plajbez,” formerly used in the rural area to denote a pencil. The homestead was the birthplace of Nikolaj Playbes (died in 1806), who became the townsman of Kranj and built himself a decent fortune as a merchant and weaver. His grandson Valentin (1785–1866) already used the family name Pleiweis, which was preserved by the Kranj family branch, whereas the Ljubljana branch subsequently adopted the form Bleiweis. Valentin Pleiweis grew from a humble weaver and traveling peddler into a successful merchant and entrepreneur, with business contacts reaching as far as Vienna, Trieste, and Graz. He married Terezija Smrekar (1783–1826) and in 1808 awaited the birth of their oldest son Janez, later Ritter von Trsteniški.

In Vienna, Janez Bleiweis first studied general medicine and obstetrics, and subsequently also veterinary medicine. He was a distinguished physician and veterinarian, professor and politician, writer, journalist as well as a longstanding editor of the Slovenian-language newspaper Kmetijske in rokodelske novice (Agricultural and Artisan News). In 1881, he was awarded the third-class Imperial Order of the Iron Crown conferring on him the rank of Ritter (knight) with the predicate Trsteniški, which he himself had selected in memory of his ancestors’ native village, with the following justification: “… out of respect for my great-grandfather’s house name of the Bleiweis farming stock.”

His marriage to the Vienna-native Karolina (Lotti) Fellner only produced one son, Karel, who followed his father’s footsteps and became a physician himself. Through his descendants, the Bleiweis lineage has survived to present day.

Sources:
Rugále, Mariano & Preinfalk, Miha: Blagoslovljeni in prekleti. 1. del: Plemiške rodbine 19. in 20. stoletja na Slovenskem. Ljubljana: Viharnik, 2010, pp. 21–28.