Vera Albreht

Vera Albreht (née Kesler, 12 February 1895 – 25 May 1971) was a Slovenian poet, writer, publicist and translator.

Vera Albreht

Life

Vera Kesler was born in 1895 in Krško, Austria-Hungary. She was born into a bourgeois family who were known as supporters of Slovenian modernism.^[1] Her mother was Marija Kessler (née Trenz), an ethnic German socialite, while her father Rudolph Kessler was a Slovene. Her parents' home in Ljubljana was a well known meeting point of the Slovenian literary scene at the time, frequented among others also by Ivan Cankar and Oton Župančič,^[1] who married Vera's sister Ana Kessler.

Albreht was educated at the all-girls grammar school in Ljubljana, where she was involved in a school protest against the Habsburg monarchy by wearing red blouses because its soldiers shot at demonstrators.^[1]

Albreht studied at the University of Vienna, but never completed her studies due to the outbreak of World War I.^{[citation needed]} During World War I, she worked as a volunteer Red Cross nurse.^[1] In 1919 she married the poet and critic Fran Albreht.

During World War II, Albreht and her husband actively participated with the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People.^[2] They were both imprisoned by the Italian fascist authorities on a number of occasions between 1941 and 1943. In 1944, she was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp by the Germans.^{[citation needed]} Albreht later wrote Ravensbriške pesmi (Poems of Ravensbrück) about her experiences.^[2]

After the war, Albreht moved with her husband to Ljubljana where she worked as a publicist and at the Slovene center of International PEN. She died in 1971 in Ljubljana.

Works

PROSE

• 1957 – Lupinica (youth prose)
• 1960 – Nekoč pod Gorjanci (Once Upon a Time under the Gorjanci) (youth prose)
• 1964 – Babica in trije vnučki (Granny and Three Grandchildren) (youth prose)

POETRY

• 1950 – Mi gradimo (We build) (youth poetry)
• 1950 – Orehi (Wallnuts) (youth poetry)
• 1955 – Vesela abeceda (Happy Alphabet) (youth poetry)
• 1958 – Živali pri delu in jelu (Animals at Work) (youth poetry)
• 1965 – Pustov god (Pust's celebration) (youth poetry)
• 1967 – Jutro (Morning) (youth poetry)
• 1967 – Pri igri (At Games) (youth poetry)
• 1967 – Večer (Evening) (youth poetry)
• 1969 – ABC (youth poetry)
• 1972 – Mornar (The Sailor) (youth poetry)
• 1972 – Slikarka (The Painter) (youth poetry)
• 1977 – Ravensbriške pesmi (Ravensbrück poems)(poetry)
• 1978 – Dobro jutro (Good Morning) (youth poetry)

See also

• List of Slovenian language poets
• Slovenian literature
• Culture of Slovenia
• Yugoslav People's Liberation War