Jelica Belović-Bernardzikowska

Jelica Belović-Bernardzikowska
Born (1870-02-25)25 February 1870
Osijek, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary
Died 30 June 1946(1946-06-30) (aged 76)
Novi Sad, Province of Vojvodina, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Nationality Croatian
Other names Jelica Belović, Jelica Belović Bernadžikovska, (Serbian: Јелице Беловић Бернадзиковске)
Occupation writer, feminist

Jelica Belović-Bernardzikowska (Serbian: Јелице Беловић Бернадзиковске) was a Croatian ethnographer, journalist, writer, and feminist. She wrote literary works for children and educational discussions. As a journalist, wrote theater and music criticism, and published works on handicrafts and folk costumes. She wrote for and was the editor of the first Serbian women's magazine. She wrote under multiple pseudonyms, including Ljuba T. Daničić (Serbian: Љуба Т. Даничић), Hele, Jelica, Jele, Jasna, Aunt Jelica, and young lady Ana.

Biography

Jelica Belović was born on 25 February, 1870 in Osijek, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary to Katenina (née Fragner) and Josip Belović. Both of her parents were Croatian born but her father's family was from Montenegro and her mother's family was from Germany. From childhood, she learned French, German, Italian and Serbo-Croatian from her parents, who were both teachers. When her father died, she was five years old and her mother tutored to provide for the family.[1] Belović attended primary school in Osijek and then studied at a secondary school in Djakovo. She also studied at the Institute of Josip Juraj Štrosmajera before attending the Convent of Mercy School, where she first began to study and collect handicrafts.[2] Balović went on to complete her education at the Teacher Training College of Mercy in Zagreb and at the College of Education in Vienna and Paris. In 1891, after her higher studies, she returned to Croatia and began teaching in Zagreb.[3]

Career

For two years, Belović taught in Ruma[4] and Osijek,[1] and began writing pedagogical essays. Her writing caught the attention of Ljuboje Dlustuš, regional Secretary for Education, who offered her a teaching position in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1893.[5] Though technically a part of the Ottoman Empire, the area had become an occupied territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with the signing of the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. Belović began teaching at the girl’s school in Mostar, where she met Janko Bernadžikowski, a Polish civil servant. They married in February 1896 and she subsequently had two children, Vladimir and Jasna.[1] Bernadžikowski was appointed to a position in Sarajevo and the couple relocated.[3] Belović-Bernardzikowska taught at the girl's school in Sarajevo, but was transferred in 1898 to the girl’s gymnasium in Banja Luka, when she refused the advances of her mentor.[6] She became an administrator of the school,[2] but increasingly had differences of opinion with her superiors, as she drifted away from their pro-Austrian policies and developed an empathy for the Serbians[7] she was living among and teaching. She learned to write in the Cyrillic script and published in Serbian magazines.[8] In 1900, Belović-Bernardzikowska was dismissed from her teaching post.[3]

She continued to write, and traveled frequently to collect folk tales and craft work. During this period, she published such works as Пољско цвеће (Croatian: Poljsko cvijeće, Wild flowers, Sarajevo 1899), Разговор цвијећа (Croatian: Razgovor cvijeća, Talk of Flowers, Zagreb 1901) and Хрватски народни везови (Croatian: Hrvatski narodni vezovi, Croatian folk embroideries, Zagreb 1906).[9] Having experienced inequality, she was also keenly interested in improving the cultural and social standing of women. She wrote numerous articles about the changing realities for women and published such pieces as "Žena Budućnosti" (Women of the Future) and "Moderne Žene" (Modern Women) both which appeared in the 1899 edition of the journal Zora (Dawn).[10] Between 1904 and 1913, she worked with Friedrich Salomon Krauss,[2] using the pseudonym Ljuba T. Daničić, in his noted yearbooks Antropofiteja, which collected information on the social and sexual lives of rural southern Slavs.[10] She was said to be very outspoken and when she was banned from publishing under one name, Belović-Bernardzikowska used another. Among the names she is known to have published under are Hele, Jelica, Jele, Jasna, Aunt Jelica, young lady Ana,[4] Ljuba T. Daničić[10] and Jasna Belović.[2] She spoke nine languages and though most of her works were published in Serbian or Croatian, she also published in German.[4]

In 1907, she was invited by the provincial government of Zagreb to assist them with their ethnographic collections for the National Museum of Art and Trade. Belović-Bernardzikowska created a catalog of textiles for the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb and an ethnographic catalog for the Sbírka Commerce Crafts Museum in Zagreb.[3] She published articles about textiles and handicrafts in many journals throughout Europe, including "Anthropophytea", "Gipsy Lore", "Revue des Deux Mondes", and others. She also exhibited embroidery and folk costumes in at venues in Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Paris and Vienna, collaborating with other experts.[2] In 1910 Belović-Bernardzikowska exhibited at the Prague exhibition of Serbian women, with a display of Bosnia-Herzegovinian textiles. At the meeting, she was inspired to create a women's almanac. The journal, Srpkinja, published in Sarajevo, was the first almanac written by Serbian women for Serbian women.[10] Founded in 1913,[11] Belović-Bernardzikowska edited the volume and wrote serialized articles for it.[9][12]

When the war broke out in 1914, Belović-Bernardzikowska left Sarajevo, returning to Osijek, where she remained until 1917.[3] Around the same time, her marriage fell apart due to infidelity and syphilis, leading her to increase her feminist activity.[6] She returned to Sarajevo in 1918 and became the editor of the newspaper Народна снага (People's power).[9] Later that year, she was hired to teach at the co-ed school in Novi Sad,[4] which that same year became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.[13] She taught in Novi Sad until her retirement in 1936.[4] Though her publishing efforts slowed,[14] during her lifetime, Belović-Bernardzikowska published over 40 manuscripts and books.[9] She died on 30 June 1946 in Novi Sad.[4]

Selected works

References

Citations

Sources

External links

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