Alma Karlin | |
---|---|
Alma Maximiliana Karlin
|
|
Born | October 12, 1889 Celje, Slovenia |
Died | January 15, 1950 Pečovnik, Slovenia |
Resting place | Svetina, Svetina, Obcina Store, Savinjska, Slovenia |
Alma Vilibalda Maximiliana Karlin (12 October 1889 – 15 January 1950) was a Slovene-Austrian traveler, writer, poet, collector, polyglot and theosophist.
She was born in the Styrian town of Celje (now part of Slovenia) in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire as the daughter of Jakob Karlin, a major in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and Vilibalda Miheljak, a teacher. Her father died when she was eight years old. Alma grew in a predominately German-speaking milieu, and regarded herself chiefly as Austrian rather than ethnic German or Slovene.
After completing her secondary education in Graz, she traveled to London, where she studied languages. She learned English, French, Latin, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Russian, and Spanish. In the later years, she also studied Persian, Chinese, and Japanese. She also spent six months in Paris, where she attended various languages courses at the Sorbonne.