Barbora Hoblová

Barbora Hoblová was an outstanding personality of Mladá Boleslav region at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries. She worked in the social field, ethnography and in women’s movement. Here, among others, she contributed to female education. She was born in 1852 in Nymburk. When she was twenty years old, she inspired the foundation of women’s reading society Lada where she worked until she got married. Then she moved with her husband, a high school teacher, to Mladá Boleslav. She was not active in the first years spent in this town, only in mid 1880’s she got involved in ethnography and a few years later she was one of the founders of the Ladies and Girls Association in Mladá Boleslav where she worked until her death. Thanks to her activity, many needed facilities were established: nursery, shelter for unemployed women and girls, evening school of sewing, etc. She also took part in collecting ethnographic material for the Czechoslavic Ethnographical Exhibition in 1895, for which she was highly praised and which brought her to attention. Many times she proved in her numerous studies published in Český lid that she became a true expert on her region. She proved that Mladá Boleslav region was not ethnographically uninteresting, as many people assumed, but that it had not been discovered yet. She was interested in cultural and social life until her last days, she died in her family circle on August 15, 1923 in Kokořín.