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Alma Vilibalda Maximiliana Karlin

1889 – 1950

About

Alma Karlin was an extraordinary traveller, polyglot, theosophist, and writer from Celje. From 1919 to 1927 she travelled to South and North America, the Pacific Islands, Australia, and various Asian countries and supported herself with odd jobs and writing. Her travel and fiction novels (written in German) became very popular in the 1930s (The Odyssey of a Lonely Woman and The Spell of the South Sea, a novel in two volumes was reprinted several times in the edition of over 100,000 copies.) During the war her work was banned and in 1944 she joined the Partisans. After the war she lived in a small house in Pečovnik above Celje in straitened circumstances together with her companion Thea Schreiber Gamelin. Alma’s work had been forgotten till the 1960s when ethnologists began to study her collections. Nowadays Alma Karlin inspires artists, feminists, historians as well as the inhabitants of Celje and the general public. Alma Karlin and Thea Schreiber Gammelin are buried together at the church’s courtyard at Svetina. The parish church is dedicated to the Mother of God and belongs to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Celje. It predates its earliest mention in written documents in 1480. Next to the church is a chapel dedicated to the Holy Cross. It dates to the late XV century, but was extensively rebuilt after a fire in 1714 that destroyed most of the village.