Milica Ninković (30 January 1854 – 18 November 1881) was a
Serbian feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
, translator and editor.
Life
Milica Ninković was born on 30 January 1854 in
Újvidék, in the
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from 1000 to 1946 and was a key part of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526-1918. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coro ...
(now Novi Sad,
Serbia
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, national_motto =
, image_coat = Coat of arms of Serbia.svg
, national_anthem = ()
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, map_caption = Location of Serbia (gree ...
). She attended the School of
Pedagogy
Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...
of the
University of Zurich
The University of Zurich (UZH, ) is a public university, public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of the ...
from 1872 to 1874 with her sister Anka. Upon leaving Switzerland in 1874, they decided to establish a private high school for girls in
Kragujevac
Kragujevac ( sr-Cyrl, Крагујевац, ) is the List of cities in Serbia, fourth largest city in Serbia and the administrative centre of the Šumadija District. It is the historical centre of the geographical region of Šumadija in central Se ...
, Serbia, but permission was not granted by the government and they were threatened with expulsion from Serbia. Ninković avoided this by marrying the journalist and future politician
Pera Todorović. During the
Serbian–Ottoman War of 1876–78, she volunteered as a nurse. After the war, she worked for the British
Legation
A legation was a diplomatic representative office of lower rank than an embassy. Where an embassy was headed by an ambassador, a legation was headed by a minister. Ambassadors outranked ministers and had precedence at official events. Legation ...
in Belgrade, Serbia, until pressure from the Serbian government forced the British to fire her. Ninković then left the country to study medicine abroad, but caught
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
and died in Kragujevac on 18 November 1881.
[Pantelić, pp. 370–71]
Activities
Shortly after their marriage, Ninković and her husband founded the newspaper ''Old Liberation'' (''Staro Oslobođenje'') and edited and she edited its supplement. She also worked as a translator and translated, among other works,
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo, vicomte Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romanticism, Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, journalist, human rights activist and politician.
His most famous works are the novels ''The Hunchbac ...
's ''
The History of a Crime'' () into Serbian and
Svetozar Marković's ''Serbia in the East'' (''Srbija na istoku'') into Russian. Upon her return from abroad in 1880, Ninković established one of the first feminist organizations of Serbs in Újvidék.
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Notes
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ninkovic, Milica
1854 births
1881 deaths
Serbian feminists
Serbian women's rights activists
University of Zurich alumni
19th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis deaths in Serbia
People from Austria-Hungary
Immigrants to the Principality of Serbia