Ivan Hribar (19 September 1851 – 18 April 1941) was a Slovene and Yugoslav banker, politician, diplomat and journalist. During the start of the 20th century, he was one of the leaders of the National Progressive Party, and one of the most important figures of Slovene liberal nationalism. Between 1896 and 1910, he was the mayor of Ljubljana (nowadays the capital of Slovenia),^[1] and greatly contributed to its rebuilding and modernisation after the 1895 earthquake.

Hribar was known as a passionate politician and a great Slovene and Yugoslav patriot. After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, Hribar committed suicide (at the age of ninety) as a protest against the Italian annexation of Ljubljana. On 18 April, after returning home from a meeting with the Fascist Italian authorities, which had just offered him the mayorship of the city, he jumped into the Ljubljanica River, wrapped in the Yugoslav flag. He left a note with the verses from France Prešeren’s poem The Baptism on the Savica:^[3]

Manj strašna noč je v črne zemlje krili,
kot so pod svetlim soncem sužnji dnovi.

Less fearful the long night of life’s denial
Than living ‘neath the sun in subjugation!