Jagoda Truhelka

Jagoda Truhelka (1864 - 1957) was a Yugoslav writer and pedagogist.

Truhelka was born on 5 February 1864 in Osijek, capital of the Kingdom of Slavonia, Austrian Empire. She was the eldest of three children of Marija (née Schön) and Antun Vjenceslav Truhelka. Her parents were both immigrants to Slavonia; her father, a teacher, was a Czech, and her mother was a Danube Swabian. She attended a gymnasium in Osijek. After her father's death in 1878, Truhelka moved to Zagreb, now capital of the new Austro-Hungarian Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, with her mother and younger brothers, Dragoš and Ćiro Truhelka.

Truhelka continued her education in Zagreb, intending to follow in her father's footsteps. She received her teacher's diploma in 1882 and got her first job, teaching girls in Osijek. Following further education, she was appointed principal of a girls' school in Gospić, where she worked for seven years. She accepted a new job in Zagreb in 1892, and soon became one of the first women to enroll in the University of Zagreb.

In 1901, Truhelka moved to Banja Luka, in the Austro-Hungarian-occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina, where she worked as a girls' school principal for ten years. During her subsequent work in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina's capital, Truhelka was particularly active in promoting womens' rights.

Upon her retirement in August 1923, Truhelka returned to Zagreb, then the second largest city of Yugoslavia. No longer active in public life, she focused on children's literature, only seldom speaking about women's rights and notable women. She died in Zagreb on 17 December 1957.