Princess Doris Mayer – a Slovenian who lost her homeland twice
In an extremely harrowing episode of the documentary series Pričevalci, which under the direction of Dr. Jože Možina can be seen on RTV Slovenija, Princess Doris Mayer von Samassa speaks out. Her life story intertwines human dignity and refinement with historical turning points and deep disappointments that, sadly, extend to the present day.
Doris was born in 1926 in Bled into a distinguished Slovene-Austrian family that belonged to the higher entrepreneurial class of pre-war Slovenia. Her father, Emerik Mayer, a lawyer and intellectual, helped partisan families during World War II and protected them from the occupier, but that did not protect him after the war from the brutal repression of the communist authorities.
After the end of the war he was arrested, brutally tortured, and became one of the many victims of mass post-war executions. The family home in Ljubljana was looted and the family dispossessed. Doris, her sister and her mother were also imprisoned, tortured, raped and later forcibly expelled across the border.
Exile led Doris to Italy, where she married into the Italian noble family Pignatelli della Leonessa, which dates back to the ninth century. Yet despite a life among the Italian elite, the princess never severed her spiritual and emotional ties with Slovenia. Her life was always intertwined with the hope that her native homeland would one day acknowledge the injustices done to her and to the thousands of others who were erased, exiled and silenced.
However, in the last years of her life she was deeply hurt once again, as her homeland, even as a post-communist independent state, betrayed her once more. In her testimony she reveals that she was a victim of an abuse of trust by her representative, lawyer Tjaše Andree Prosenc, who is said to have deceived and robbed her. This personal betrayal, which she experienced in old age, meant yet another painful slap from the state she nevertheless wished well.
The disappointment was not only legal and personal—it was moral. This is a case that goes beyond the legal framework. We witness a bitter paradox: that a person who believed in justice all her life and strove for reconciliation experienced, at the end of her life, betrayal in the very name of the justice she had fought for.
Princess Doris Mayer von Samassa died in 2024 in Italy at the advanced age of 98. Her testimony is not only historically important but is the voice of those who were pushed to the margins despite having once helped shape Slovenian progress. It is a story of loss, dignity, faith in justice and of how deeply betrayal can hurt.
You can watch the full testimony of Princess Doris Mayer von Samassa on the RTV 365 platform at the interview link available on the RTV Slovenija website.
This is not just an interview. This is a historical testimony that every Slovenian should hear.