Belgrade – As Donald Trump campaigned for the Oval Office, his Slovenian-born wife Melania did not receive much love and respect in her homeland.
But it’s still trying to cash in on her fame anyway.
National politicians mostly backed Hillary Clinton, and the local boulevard press raced to dig up unflattering details from Melania’s youth and the years she spent in Slovenia, then still a part of the Communist former Yugoslavia.
Few outside Slovenia, and even many within, had heard of Sevnica, the place Melania was born on April 26, 1970, until she appeared alongside Trump.
The town of 20,000 people and one traffic light sits on the Sava river, not far from the border with Croatia and the Krsko nuclear power plant.
Sevnica’s residents welcomed Trump’s election win with a street celebration – and then quickly raced off to devise how to make a Melania-related profit.
The ideas swirled – lingerie and honey, crepes and cakes, posters and magnets – but the fun soon ended.
Melania’s Slovenian law firm Pirc Musar issued a warning in late November pointing out that the commercial use of copyrighted photos, as well as the names of the Trumps, may be used only with permission.
Sevnica, Slovenia, located on the Sava river, is the hometown of Melania Trump. (Credit Image: © Ben Stevens/i-Images via ZUMA Wire)
Sevnica’s budding entrepreneurs weren’t the only ones looking to capitalize on the incoming first lady.
Slovenian leaders would like to put Melania to use, too.
Many in the capital Ljubljana dream of building bridges between the White House and the Kremlin. Melania, who will have the ear of the most Moscow-friendly US president in recent history, is seen as key to making that a reality.
Slovenian Foreign Minister Karel Erjavec has already checked the pulse of his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov’s on the issue.
Ljubljana aspires to having warm ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who visited last year in spite of Western sanctions, which Slovenia – a NATO and EU member – take part in. Slovenia has urged an end to the sanctions, saying they are harming trade ties between the two nations.
But Slovenian journalist Dejan Steinbuch, publisher of the portal PLUS, voiced scepticism over the euphoria to which Melania’s ascent has been met, both in Sevnica and the capital.
“Slovenians aren’t particularly interested in her. They prefer to poke around their gardens and leave the global challenges far, far away,” he told dpa.
Neither does Melania, Steinbuch estimated, show much interest for Slovenia.
She replaced the Sevnica countryside with Milan catwalks as a teenager and then continued on to the United States. Even her parents spend most of their time inside the Trump Tower in New York.
One of the tasks of her parents is to help raise the Trump couple’s son, Barron, with the knowledge of Slovenian. Melania speaks with him in her mother tongue.
But it is far from certain that such a proof of linkage to her homeland also signals her will to donate clothes, photos and other memorabilia to a museum that Sevnica plans to open.
And while Melania’s name and image have cropped up on all sorts of products in Sevnica, she hasn’t visited her birthplace in 30 years and few there actually know her.
Those who did know her back then have now found themselves in the spotlight, including: a schoolmate, her first boyfriend, and the long-retired photographer Stane Jerko, who discovered her at 16 and brought her into the world of modeling.
“As soon as I saw her, I wanted to photograph her,” Jerko, now 75, told Vice News. She was still attending high school at the time.
Jerko gave a lot of interviews around the time of the US presidential election, but admitted that he has not remained in touch with Melania. Jerko said he hopes Melania still remembers him.
-dpa
