Milena Hübschmannová

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Milena Hübschmannová 2004

Milena Hübschmannová (born June 10, 1933 in Prague ; died September 8, 2005 in Kameeldrift ( Pretoria , South Africa ) was a Czech Indologist and founder of Czech Romance studies .

Life

Hübschmannová came from a middle-class family in Prague . From 1951 to 1956 she studied Hindi , Urdu and Bengali at Charles University in Prague and dealt with the culture and language of the Czech and Slovak Roma at an early age . During her studies she learned Romani , the language and culture of the Czechoslovak Roma, through her stays with families in some Roma settlements in Slovakia . She conducted field research in eastern Slovakia and northern Bohemia and recorded the Roma language and its different dialects , numerous fairy tales and songs on tape and in notes. Her audio archive contains 330 audio tapes and 180 audio cassettes from the years 1966 to 1990. Among other things, she lived for almost a year in the Slovak Roma settlement in Rakúsy , where she worked as a teacher in a day care center.

During her research, she discovered relationships between Hindi and Romani. In 1959 she made her first trip to India , which she repeated in 1969, 1990 and 1998. Further recordings from Bulgaria and Romania (1980), Greece and Turkey (1986) as well as the Indian cathedral from Rajasthan , Gujarat and New Delhi were added. Even during the time of the communist government in Czechoslovakia , she campaigned for the interests of the Roma and taught the then unrecognized language Romani.

During the Prague Spring she helped found the Svaz Cikánů-Romů ( Association of Gypsy Roma ) and supported the Rome writers. During the period of so-called normalization in the 1970s, many of Hübschmannová's efforts were withdrawn: the Roma Association and a research group in the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences were dissolved, Hübschmannová himself did not find a job as an undesirable person between 1975 and 1982. In 1991 she founded the subject Romistics at the Indological Institute of the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University and completed her habilitation there in 2000 - thus she established Romistics for the first time in Czechoslovakia as a scientific university subject. She headed the department until her death. In 1994 she was co-founder and then co-editor (until 2005) of the magazine Romano džaniben , the only specialist periodical for Romistics in the Czech Republic.

She died in a traffic accident near Camel Drift in South Africa. She left a daughter.

Creation and reception

Hübschmannová is considered to be the founder of Romance studies in Czechoslovakia. But she also worked for an understanding between Czechs and Roma outside of university contexts. “Milena Hübschmannova not only succeeded in putting herself in the shoes of the Roma, she also encouraged them wherever possible in their self-image and supported them as much as possible. For a whole generation of Czech Romance students she was the undisputed role model and leading figure. " Hübschmanová's commitment to the culture, rights and language of the Roma came at a time when the communist regime was negating the existence and specifics of the Roma ethnic group in Czechoslovakia; the "backward" Roma were to be integrated into society through assimilation, which meant a radical change in their habits and disadvantaged their language and culture - all of this was enshrined in Law 74/1958 Coll. in 1958.

Together with the German orientalist Heinz Mode , she published a four-volume fairy tale anthology in German from 1983 to 1985 under the title Gypsy Tales from All Over the World . The editors emphasize in the introduction that they would have preferred the title Rome fairy tale , since the term Gypsy is a foreign name. The collection contains 279 fairy tales with extensive commentaries, word explanations, a list of types and a bibliography. Due to the relatively late recording of the fairy tales into the 1970s, they contain numerous modernisms. In fairy tale research, this means the occurrence of terms from more recent times, such as “bikini”, “social worker”, “passport”, “ultrasound”. How topical the storytelling of fairy tales was for the Roma can be seen in their report on the encounter with construction workers in Prague in 1970: “On the second floor of the house that Rome led me to, he opened one of the many doors and we entered one Bedroom. I could gradually make out more than fifty men in the thick fog of smoke. They sat in chairs and armchairs, on beds and bedside tables, on the floor and on the table. Two men even sat on top of the cupboard. Every age group was represented between sixteen and sixty years. Everyone looked spellbound at a stocky man who screamed and whispered, who took up a sword - which was not there - who wept and laughed and hit his chest, tore his hair. This man told a Rome fairy tale ”. She is the author of a Romani-Czech dictionary .

Awards

Hübschmannová received numerous awards and recognitions, including:

  • In 1994 she received the "František Kriegel Prize" from the Charter 77 civil rights movement
  • In 1998 she was awarded two diplomas by the Roma Citizens' Initiative for her work in the field of education and culture of the Roma
  • She received another diploma at the 5th International Congress of the Romani Union in Prague in 2000
  • In 2002 and 2003 she was awarded the Medal of Merit of the Czech Republic ( Medaile Za zásluhy ) in the I and III degrees by President Václav Havel . Level awarded by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic, both for their contributions to the preservation and development of the Roma language and culture

Publications

In addition to her collections of fairy tales, Hübschmannová has published various works on the language of the Roma, including the first Romani-Czech dictionary (1991), studies and collections of material on the language of the Roma themselves (basics of Romani, teaching material for the language), but also sociological-political Roma studies etc. She also worked as a translator into and from Hindi, Bengali and Romani.

Publications in German
  • with Heinz Mode: Gypsy tales from all over the world . Volumes I to IV, Insel-Verlag Leipzig, 1983–85; 1991 also in the Insel-Verlag Frankfurt
  • Janitschek in the robber's castle. Fairy tale Slovak Rome. The children's book publisher, Berlin 1983.
  • as editor: Ruda Dzurko: I've become human again. Pictures and stories of a Rome. Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig and Weimar, 1990.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Zuzana Jurková: Teta všech Romů - Milena Hübschmannová , online at: lidemesta.cz (Czech), accessed on April 23, 2015
  2. ^ A b Jan Rác: Hübschmannová Milena. In: Chavez , online at: chave.cz (Czech), accessed April 23, 2015
  3. ↑ a b c Eva Davidová: Milena Hübschmannová (1933–2005). In: Sociologický Časopis , Vol. 42, No. 1, 2006, pp. 203-206 ( online ).
  4. ↑ a b c Obituary from The Guardian, September 19, 2005 , accessed April 21, 2015
  5. ↑ a b c Romano džaniben , homepage, online at: dzaniben.cz (Czech), accessed on April 23, 2015
  6. ↑ a b Odkaz Mileny Hübschmannové , Archive of the Czech Radio, online at: rozhlas.cz (Czech), accessed on April 23, 2015
  7. ↑ a b Christiane Fennesz-Juhasz and Petra Cech: Milena Hübschmannová (1933 - 2005) , an obituary, in: d | ROM | a , October 2005, p. 18 ff., Online at: roma-service.at ; accessed on April 23, 2015
  8. ^ Obituary Roma-Service dated November 1, 2010 , accessed April 21, 2015
  9. ^ Obituary for Radio Prague from September 13, 2005 , accessed on April 21, 2015
  10. ↑ Goethe-Institut Prague , accessed on May 25, 2015
  11. ^ Heinz Mode / Milena Hübschmannová: Gypsy tales from all over the world. Volumes I to IV, Insel-Verlag Leipzig, 1983–85.
  12. ^ Heinz Mode / Milena Hübschmannová: Gypsy tales from all over the world. Insel-Verlag Leipzig, first collection 1983, p. 7
  13. ^ Heinz Mode / Milena Hübschmannová: Gypsy tales from all over the world. Insel-Verlag Leipzig, first collection 1983, p. 49

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hübschmannová, Milena
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech Indologist and Romist
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 2005
Place of death Camel drift ( Pretoria )