Ivan Kramberger was one of the most eccentric personalities Slovenia has ever known. Once a chimneysweep, he became well-known as an inventor, rose to the heights of fame as a populist politician, and was killed under circumstances that remain mysterious to this day.

Born in 1936, one of eleven children in a poor family from the village of Negova in eastern Slovenia, Kramberger followed the lead of many other Slovenians and moved to Germany in order to make a better living. After working as a chimneysweep and a locksmith, he found work in a local hospital, where he worked with dialysis machines as a technician. It turned out that Kramberger had a talent for complicated devices, and he invented a number of improvements that were eventually implemented in newer dialysis machines.

His patents brought him a considerable amount of money, much of which he donated to charities. He even bought a number of dialysis machines for Slovenia’s cash-starved hospitals, and became widely known as the "Benefactor from Negova".

In 1990, with the advent of multiparty democracy in Slovenia, Kramberger decided to run for the presidency. It was a campaign the likes of which Slovenia had never seen. With a flamboyantly populist flair that wouldn’t have been out of place in the American South of days gone by, Kramberger portrayed himself as a man of ordinary people. As he travelled the country with an antique sports car and his pet monkey, he rallied against the establishment and in favor of the ordinary workers and farmers trying to make ends meet.

After decades of uniformly grey Communist politicians whose designated role was to repeat the party line, Kramberger was, to many people, a breath of fresh air. Not only did he – with his long, black hair and a trademark hat – look different than any previous politician, but he also spoke a different language: It was simple, direct, and emotional language of the masses, not of career politicians.

Kramberger's political positions were intellectually and ideologically unsophisticated. He spoke in terms of ensuring peace, caring for the poor, and other broad ideals. But his convictions were genuine and he managed to bring many poor, disenchanted people into the political process.
Kramberger ultimately finished third in the 1990 election, but he had captured the imagination of the masses and ended up with more than 18% of the vote. Two years later, he announced that his party would participate in the 1992 parliamentary elections. But while campaigning in Jurovski Dol, a village near his hometown, on June 7, 1992, tragedy struck. Kramberger was shot dead by Peter Rotar, a local resident who was, according to the police, under the influence of alcohol.

To this day, the motive for the murder remains unclear, and some even doubt that Rotar pulled the trigger. Many Kramberger supporters, including members of his own family, suspect that his murder was politically motivated or even ordered by his political rivals, but no proof has ever emerged.

What is clear is that not everyone appreciated Kramberger's anti-establishment message. Just months before his murder, his little pet monkey, which had captured the hearts of so many Slovenes, was found slaughtered with a butcher’s knife. Attached was a message predicting that Kramberger would suffer the same fate.

Today, no monument stands on the spot where Kramberger's life came to an end. The local authorities backed down with their plan to build a marker after they received a legal threat from Peter Rotar – the man convicted of killing the "Benefactor of Negova" 22 years ago.