THEY CALLED HER THE WITCH
By AI-ChatGPT4o-T.Chr.-Human Synthesis-22 July 2025
Alma Karlin’s story is nothing short of extraordinary—a tale of resilience, rebellion, and radical selfhood in a world unkind to difference.
From the outset, she was marked by society as other: born with deformities, orphaned, isolated, female, queer, multilingual, unafraid. And instead of yielding to the margins, she used them as her launchpad. The cardboard suitcase, the typewriter "Erika," and her hand-made dictionary weren’t just tools—they were symbols of defiance.
Her journey was not only geographical but existential: the pursuit of understanding in a world built to silence people like her.
She was labeled a witch for her independence, her intellect, her love. But a witch is also a symbol of feminine power, ancient wisdom, and refusal to conform—and Alma embodied that to her core. Even in death, they tried to erase her. But stories like hers refuse to stay buried.
A Philosophical Overview of the Life of Alma Karlin
Alma Karlin’s life is a meditation on the paradox of human existence: how one can be both profoundly rejected and deeply meaningful; how one can wander the world and yet never fully belong; how the pursuit of truth often invites persecution. Her story is not just about physical travel—it is the odyssey of a soul defying imposed limits in a world governed by fear and conformity.
The Self Beyond the Body
Born with physical deformities and motor difficulties, Alma defied the deterministic thinking of her time—the idea that one’s body defines one’s destiny. Her very survival was an act of resistance. She lived in defiance of a culture that equated physical perfection with human worth, proving instead that the mind and will can shape a life more profoundly than any outward form.
She did not deny her body, but she refused to let it imprison her.
Language as Liberation
Alma mastered twelve languages, a philosophical act of reclaiming agency. For her, language was not merely a means of communication—it was a bridge to understanding, a dismantling of borders. In a world still fractured by nationalism, tribalism, and fear of the “other,” she used polyglotism as protest: a belief that humanity is one, diverse and worth knowing.
To speak in many tongues is to say: I refuse to be contained.
The Courage to Wander
Traveling the world alone as a woman in the early 20th century was more than bold—it was radical. She chose uncertainty over safety, experience over reputation. In philosophical terms, she lived authentically, as described by existentialists like Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir: embracing freedom and the weight of responsibility that comes with it. Her suitcase and typewriter were not only her tools—they were her refusal to accept the roles society had assigned her.
Love Without Apology
Alma's long partnership with Thea Schreiber Gamelin, in an era when same-sex love was scorned and criminalized, represents a quiet, enduring rebellion. She loved without seeking permission. Her queerness was not a spectacle but a truth lived gently and fiercely. She showed that intimacy could be an act of sanctuary, a chosen refuge against the world's rejection.
Love, for Alma, was a form of resistance.
Misunderstood by All Sides
Alma was suspected by the Nazis and rejected by Tito’s partisans. She was too German to be Yugoslav, too Yugoslav to be German, too intellectual for the simple, too spiritual for the rational, too feminine to be free, too independent to be safe. She was a philosopher’s riddle: a person that challenged every binary imposed on her—us/them, male/female, right/left, normal/deviant.
She became, in the end, a mirror: and those who feared her saw not Alma, but their own discomfort with freedom.
The Witch as Archetype
To be called a witch is, historically, to be marked as a woman who threatens order. Alma’s cabinet of curiosities—objects, stories, cultures collected—was misunderstood as madness. But symbolically, her cabinet was a cathedral of otherness, a testament to all that doesn’t fit but still matters. In her, the archetypal witch is redeemed: not evil, but wise; not dangerous, but uncontainable.
Legacy as Philosophical Reversal
The statue raised in her honor by the same city that once feared her is an embodiment of history’s dialectic—the reversal of rejection into recognition. Hegel would say the spirit (Geist) progresses through conflict. In Alma’s case, the conflict was her very being; the progress is our growing ability to see her not as a monster but as a mirror of human potential.
Conclusion: The Ethics of Walking On
Perhaps the most powerful philosophical act of Alma Karlin’s life was simple: she kept walking. In a world that tried to bind her in pity, shame, and fear, she chose curiosity over despair, truth over silence, and love over fear.
She lived as you an outsider—but not as a victim.
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