Milena Hübschmannová
| Milena Hübschmannová | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
10 July 1933 Prague, Czechoslovakia |
| Died | 8 September 2005 (aged 72) Kameeldrift, Gauteng Province, South Africa |
| Nationality | Czech |
| Occupation | academic |
| Known for | Developing studies on the Roma people, their language, and culture and founding the first undergraduate degree program in Romani Studies. |
Milena Hübschmannová (1933-2005) was Czech professor of Romani studies at Charles University of Prague. She was one of the leading experts on Romani society and culture, as well as Romani language. She founded the academic study program on the Roma at Charles University and actively opposed their assimilation into the greater culture. She wrote a Romani-Czech and Czech-Romani dictionary and collected many of the stories of the Roma, translating them for posterity. The program she founded was the first program worldwide to offer a degree program to undergraduates in Romani Studies.
Milena Hübschmannová was born on 10 July 1933 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. In her childhood, her parents were imprisoned by the Gestapo, during World War II. She attended the "H. Fasta" English Gymnasium, graduating in 1951 and went on to pursue the study of language at the Charles University. From childhood, she had been interested in the culture of India and took Hindi classes during her high school years at the Oriental Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. When she entered the university Philology Department, Hübschmannová focused on Indic languages, studying Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu. In 1953, when the communist government sent her to participate in a working brigade in Ostrava in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Republic, Hübschmannová encountered the Roma communities for the first time. She was surprised that she understood their language and recognized that it must have Indic roots. Unable to travel to India, because of restrictions placed by the communist regime, Hübschmannová changed her focus to the study of the Romani language. At that time, there was a strong push to force the Roma in heavily Czech areas to assimilate into the majority culture, forcing many communities to flee the region, going to Slovakia. There was very little understanding of their ethnicity, language, culture or traditions. Hübschmannová worked among the Roma for nearly a year learning as much as she could, before returning to Prague and graduating from Charles University in 1956.
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