Alongside innovation, creativity is an important driver of economic and social development. For this reason, Slovenia’s Intellectual Property Office has decided to draw attention to five notable women who were active in the fields of literature, theatre, journalism, translation and education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
At a time when the world of the arts was far less welcoming to women than it was to their male peers, they had to struggle even harder, more courageously and more unbendingly to win the recognition that was due to them. The achievements of these women, who lived and worked both in Slovenia and abroad, have left an important mark on Slovene history.
Minka Skaberne was born in Kranj. After graduating from the teachers’ training college in Ljubljana, she accepted a post at the girls’ teacher training college. In 1911 she went to Vienna to take a course in instruction for the blind. In 1917 she visited Slovene soldiers at the institute for the blind in Graz and familiarised herself with the Braille library there. She later established a library in Ljubljana along the same lines. She continued to teach, but care of the blind became the essential mission of her life. She began by organising a course in writing and reading Braille, for which a hundred volunteers registered, working in their own homes under her supervision. They wrote using the slate and stylus method, which involves punching raised dots on to heavy paper. In a single year they transcribed 60 works by Slovene writers. This was the foundation of Slovenia’s first library for the blind. Skaberne went on to establish new courses for Braille transcribers, supervising their work and the instruction of the blind and looking after the Braille library. By the time of her death, she had transcribed hundreds of books that today form the principal library for the blind in Slovenia. She died in Ljubljana.
Intellectual Property Office of the Republic of Slovenia
