Servant of God Lambert Ehrlich

Lambert Ehrlich (18 September 1878 – 26 May 1942) was a Carinthian Slovene Roman Catholic priest, political figure, and ethnologist. Ehrlich was born in the hamlet of Seifnitz in the Canal Valley (Slovene: Žabnice) in the town of Tarvisio, then part of the Duchy of Carinthia (now Camporosso in Italy). He attended secondary school in Klagenfurt and then studied theology in Innsbruck (1897–1902) and in Rome (1903). He was ordained a priest in 1903 and also received a doctorate in Innsbruck that year. Ehrlich first served as a curate in Villach, and then as a cathedral curate in Klagenfurt (1903–1907), an episcopal secretary (1907–1910), and a professor of theology in the University of Klagenfurt (1910–1919). He was a leading figure in Catholic education in Carinthia. After World War I, southern Carinthia became a contested region between the Austrian Republic and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes; because of his familiarity with the situation in the region and his ethnographic knowledge, Ehrlich was appointed to the Yugoslav delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He continued his studies in ethnology and comparative religion at the Sorbonne and in Oxford in 1920 and 1921. In 1922 he became a full professor of comparative religion at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Ljubljana, a position that he held until his death. He wrote numerous books and articles about the religious customs of the Australian Aborigines and about various ethnological and theological issues. Ehrlich worked in various church organizations. He was a church representative for the Slovenian High School Students’ Union (Slovene: Slovenska dijaška zveza), the Academic Union (Akademska zveza), the Straža Catholic students’ club, and the Marian Congregation of Academics. He became the ideologue of the Straža club and edited the club’s magazine Straža v viharju (Sentinel in the Storm).