11/12/2025
They said she wouldn't survive her first night—so she traveled alone to 60 countries, then her town called her a witch and erased her from history.
The midwife shook her head. The baby was too small, too weak, born too early.
It was 1889 in Celje, a small town in Slovenia, then part of the sprawling Austro-Hungarian Empire. The infant girl gasped for breath in the cold October air.
Her mother didn't want her. Her father remained distant. The doctors gave her no chance.
But Alma Karlin refused to die.
She survived that first night. Then the next. And the next.
And then she did something nobody expected: she thrived.
Alma grew up small, frail, and partially deaf. In a society obsessed with beauty, propriety, and conformity, she was none of those things. She was different. Awkward. Bookish. Odd.
So she turned inward and discovered something extraordinary: she had a gift for languages.
By her twenties, Alma Karlin had mastered at least ten languages—possibly twelve. English, French, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Croatian, and more. She created her own multilingual dictionaries. She worked as a teacher and translator, moving through words and worlds with equal fluency.
But teaching in a small Slovenian town felt like suffocation. Alma wanted more than borrowed adventures through books.
She wanted the world itself.
In 1919, at thirty years old, Alma Karlin made a decision that shocked everyone who knew her:
She was going to travel around the world. Alone.
Not with a tour group. Not with a husband or chaperone. Not with family money or institutional support.
Just her, a portable typewriter she lovingly named Erika, and an unshakeable determination.
Women simply didn't do this in 1919. Solo female travelers were nearly unheard of—considered dangerous, improper, scandalous, impossible.
Alma didn't care what was proper. She cared what was possible.
She left Celje with almost no money, planning to finance her journey by writing travel articles for European newspapers and teaching languages along the way.
For the next eight years, Alma Karlin traveled through more than sixty countries across Asia, the Pacific Islands, South America, and beyond.
She rode through the Andes on horseback. She survived malaria in the tropics. She documented Indigenous cultures with respect and curiosity. She studied religions, collected artifacts, and wrote prolifically—her dispatches marveling readers back home who could barely imagine such audacity.
She traveled through Japan, China, Korea, Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, and dozens of places most Europeans had only seen on maps.
She did it alone. A small, deaf woman with a typewriter, navigating a world that constantly told her she didn't belong.
But Alma's travel writing wasn't typical colonial tourism. She didn't just observe—she immersed herself. She learned local languages. She stayed with families. She participated in ceremonies. She listened.
She wasn't a tourist. She was a witness, a chronicler, a bridge between worlds.
In 1927, after eight extraordinary years on the road, Alma returned home to Celje.
She expected recognition. Perhaps celebration. At minimum, respect for what she'd accomplished.
Instead, she was met with suspicion and whispers.
The woman who traveled alone? Who lived with "strange" people? Who brought back all those "pagan" artifacts?
They called her a witch.
Her massive collection—thousands of carefully documented ethnographic objects from around the world—was dismissed as occult, dangerous, unnatural.
Then the political situation in Europe darkened.
When the N***s occupied Slovenia during World War II, Alma's German linguistic heritage and her fierce independence made her a target. She faced interrogation. Her writings were scrutinized for disloyalty.
After the war, Tito's communist partisans distrusted her for being too German, too intellectual, too unconventional.
She was too much for everyone. And somehow not enough for anyone.
The only person who truly understood Alma was Thea Schreiber Gamelin, an artist who became her companion, her partner, and the love of her life.
They lived together openly—two women defying every social expectation in a deeply conservative, post-war society. Their relationship was scandalous to neighbors who already viewed Alma with suspicion.
But they didn't hide. They didn't apologize.
Together, Alma and Thea created a "Cabinet of Curiosities" in their home—a private museum filled with Alma's collection. Masks from the Pacific. Textiles from Asia. Sculptures from South America. Each piece carefully cataloged, each with its own story.
It was Alma's life's work. Her legacy. Her proof that the world was vast and varied and worth understanding.
On January 14, 1950, Alma Karlin died of cancer at age sixty.
She died in obscurity. Her books were out of print. Her collection was neglected and misunderstood. Her name was spoken as a warning—eccentric, strange, not to be emulated.
After her death, locals whispered that her artifacts were cursed. Some pieces were stolen. Others damaged. Children were told cautionary tales about the "mad woman" who brought dark magic back from distant lands.
For decades, Alma Karlin was erased from history.
Her crime? Traveling alone. Loving a woman. Bringing back objects people feared because they didn't understand them. Refusing to be small, quiet, and obedient.
But history has a way of correcting its mistakes.
In the 1990s and 2000s, scholars began rediscovering Alma's writings. Her travelogues were republished. Historians recognized her as one of the first women to document global cultures with such depth, empathy, and linguistic skill.
Her Cabinet of Curiosities was carefully restored and put on permanent display in the Celje Regional Museum, where her collection is now celebrated as an invaluable ethnographic archive.
In 2015—sixty-five years after her death—a statue of Alma Karlin was unveiled in the town square of Celje.
It shows her sitting with Erika, her beloved typewriter, gazing toward the horizon. Still looking outward. Still curious. Still unconfined.
Today, Alma is celebrated as a Slovenian national icon—a pioneering traveler, writer, linguist, and feminist who refused to be limited by gender, nationality, physical disability, or societal expectation.
Schoolchildren learn her name. Travelers visit her statue. Her books are studied in universities worldwide. Her courage is finally recognized.
But for fifty years after her death, she was called mad. Dangerous. A witch.
All because she dared to see the world on her own terms.
The midwife said she wouldn't survive her first night.
She survived—and then traveled alone to 60 countries with nothing but a typewriter and impossible determination.
She mastered a dozen languages and documented cultures with respect and curiosity.
The N***s interrogated her. Her neighbors called her a witch. She loved a woman openly in a time when that was unthinkable.
She died forgotten, her life's work dismissed as cursed.
But today, she has a statue in her hometown square.
Her collection fills a museum.
Her books teach new generations.
Her name is Alma Karlin.
And the world she refused to be confined by finally remembers her as she deserved:
Fearless. Brilliant. Free.
