St. John’s Eve is here, South Slavs’ wonderful, great spring festivity …
In this house lived and died Mara von Berks, writer and one of the first European ethnographers.
17
Gorica / Gorizia
Via Dante Alighieri, 14

Mara von Berks (1850–1910) signed her works also as Mara Čop Marlet and Mara Tschopp. She travelled extensively with her first husband, including to North Africa and a number of Mediterranean islands, and shared her impressions from these travels with readers of different French newspapers and journals. Her contemporaries particularly admired her ethnographic studies on the Sinti and Romani people, for which she was appointed honorary correspondence member of the Gypsy Lore Society. Following the death of her first husband she moved to Graz and in 1894 married Hugo von Berks, landowner and member of the Austrian Imperial Council. After her husband’s death in 1906 she moved to Gorizia, where she died of tuberculosis in 1910. She wrote novels, dramas, libretto for the opera Princesa Vrtavka (The giddy princess) by Josip Ipavec, and translated theatre plays.

The Sinner / Grešnica

As soon as he set foot in the small town he felt the overwhelming feeling of unease that comes upon anyone who arrives in a small town from a big city. There is no fast mail, no electric lights, magazines are from yesterday, and people try to appear important in ridiculous events. Even a dog circus is a big event here.

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