Marie Tumlířová

Marie Tumlířová, née Kuklová, was born on 9 June 1889 in Hradec Králové as one of six children. Although her father, the lawyer JUDr.Matěj Kukla, discouraged her from a “male” profession and imagined a more stereotypical female role for his daughter, Marie asserted herself and became the first woman in the Czech lands and the first woman in Central Europe to receive a doctorate in technical sciences.
She received this title in 1921 after graduating in agricultural engineering from the Czech Technical University in Prague and then taking the rigorous examination at Charles University. Her rigorous thesis, entitled Numerical ratios of the blood cells of the domestic chicken, was professionally recognised and contributed to the development of scientific knowledge in the field of agriculture.
During her studies she met Bohuslav Tumlíř, also an agricultural engineer, whom she later married and together they took care of a large number of farm animals. However, that was hardly her only occupation. She spent six days a week as a commissioner at the Ministry of Education and National Awareness. In the meantime, she also managedto contribute to the Technology in the Home columnof Woman and Home (Ženaa domov) magazine, where she advised housewives on how to deal with farmstead, so they could have time for self education and culture. 

She also actively promoted the electrification of villages. Tumlířová was very active in the field of women’s emancipation and social issues. She was a member of several women’s associations, including the Association of University-Educated Women, where she became president in 1925. In the association she negotiated, in cooperation with a foreign organization of the same name, scholarships and valuable foreign experience for gifted female students without sufficient support, so that they would have a better chance of obtaining employment than men, who were still favored. In 1934, she was elected to the National Assembly as a member of the Agrarian Party, where she focused on rural issues, agriculture and the status of women. As the war approached, women began to lose their hard-won jobs as their positions became available to men evicted from the Sudetenland. Married women in the civil service lost their jobs and so did Marie Tumlířová. So she went to the family farm, where she devoted herself to her beloved animals.
In 1948, however, with the advent of the communist regime, collectivisation of agriculture was promoted and private farmers became enemies of the state. Marie, her husband and children therefore decided to emigrate and head into the dark night forest towards the border. After overcoming all obstacles, the family settled in Paris and later in Switzerland.
Even abroad,however, Marie did not slackoff. She wrotefor expatriate magazines, worked in exile organisations and prepared her own programme for Radio Free Europe. She was such a strong critic of the communist regime that a Czech agent was sent abroad to kidnap her, but without success. Marie fought for human rights until her death in 1973.