Trubar is forced to withdraw to Germany, where he publishes the first two books in Slovene.

Trubar was at the zenith of his ecclesiastical career in the Roman Catholic Church, at the age of 39, canon of the Ljubljana Cathedral, posted to Šentjernej na Dolenjskem, when he was arrested and imprisoned by imperial decree from Vienna, along with three other people who had also embraced new religious views.

Trubar avoided arrest by escaping to Nuremberg in Germany where he became evangelical pastor in the nearby town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. In 1549, he married Barbara Sitar, who had joined him in Germany from Kranj, and started a family; along with the birth of his first child, the first Slovene books, Catechismus (Catechism) and Abecedarium (Primer), were published in 1550 in Tübingen.

Exile – 'nigdirdom'

Trubar lived in the territory of present-day Germany from his 40th year until he was 78 years old. He returned to his homeland only for three years between 1562 and 1565;  he lived in Ljubljana, where he was superintendent of the Protestant Church of the Slovene lands, for which he wrote his most original book, Cerkovna ordninga (Church Canon).
At the age of 57, he was expelled from his country for the second, and last, time. His last official post was to Derendingen, near Tübingen (Germany) where he coined the word 'nigdirdom', at home nowhere!

“Stati inu obstati”  - Trubar’s well-known motto

“Stand and withstand”(“Stati inu obstati”) is his well-known motto, behind which lies his life’s work and his idealism, his strong personality and deep love for the Slovene nation.
He went to Kempten, near the border with Switzerland, where he experienced his most creative period lasting from 1553 to 1560 and started translating the Bible. After being expelled for the second time, he was assigned to a parish in Lauffen within the Heilbronn district for a few months, and as early as the next year, in 1566, when he was 58 years old, he took his last job in Derendingen, in the district of Tübingen.


His illustrious life abroad ended on 29 June 1586.

By the time of his death in Derendingen in 1586, he had written 26 books and translated the entire New Testament, and two years before his death, he lived to see the entire Bible being translated into Slovene – a work done by his disciple, Jurij Dalmatin.



(Based on a text by Dr Zvone Štrubelj, published in Trubar's Year 2008,
Ljubljana 2008. Click on this link to read the whole text:
Dr Zvone Štrubelj: Trubar's 'nigdirdom' in Germany).