Bulgarian Women Scientists “Removed” from the Collective Memory in the Communist Times – the Case of Kostadinka (Dina) Tvardishka (1907-1963)

Abstract

The article presents a specific biographical case for an unrealized female academic career because of the changed political regime in Bulgaria after 1944. The documentary traces of Kostadinka (Dina) Tvardishka are preserved and "hidden" in the archive of her husband (the artist Dimitar Rizov) in Bulgarian Central State Archives. In 1941, through the German Scientific Institute in Sofia, K. Tvardishka studied in Germany with scholarships granted by the foundation Alexander von Humboldt. Until the summer of 1944, under the leadership of the famous Prof. Constantin von Dietze, at the University of Freiburg, she developed a dissertation on "Social problems of the Bulgarian village" (Die sozialen Probleme des bulgarischen Dorfes). Her research was almost completed when a pro-Soviet regime of government was established in Bulgaria. Fearing political repression, like dozens of other students and postgraduate students in the Bulgarian-German scientific networks from the WWII period, K. Tvardishka never returned to scientific work, and her study was never published.