Mara Matočec

Mara Matočec (née Jendrašic, 12 September 1885 – 8 May 1967), also known as Marija, was a Croatian folk writer, poet and playwright. She was also a women's inheritance rights activist, suffragist, and member of the peasant movement. She was a political campaigner for the Croatian Peasant Party (Croatian: Hrvatska seljačka stranka, HSS) and organised local branches of Seljačka sloga, the HSS cultural organisation.

Biography Matočec was born on 12 September 1885 in Drnje, then part of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. Her parents were Luka Jendrašić and Mara Vrbančić. She graduated from public school in Đurđevac in 1896. Matočec married at a young age to carpenter Stjepan Matočec and gave birth to four children. After the outbreak of World War I, her husband enlisted as a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was captured at the Russian front, and was taken as a prisoner of war to Siberia. Her husband did not return from war, so she farmed by herself. She later wrote that peasant women in the countryside had an advantage over women living in cities, as peasant women lived on their own land, had bread to eat and were with their children every day. In 1918, Matočec became a political campaigner for Stjepan Radić and Antun Radić's Croatian Peasant Party (Croatian: Hrvatska seljačka stranka, HSS) and joined the party. She made her first speech to a large gathering of the party in Koprivnica in 1920 and was active in the party in the 1920s. She organised local branches of Seljačka sloga [hr] (Peasant harmony), the cultural organisation associated with the HSS. She…Citește mai mult

Legacy A documentary was made about Matočec's life and work by Nada Prkačin in 2011. Two books have been written about her by Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević and Vlatko Smiljanić. A collection of Matočec's written works was published in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of her death.