Born: 1843, Bulgaria
Died: 1915
Country most active: Bulgaria
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
Born in Sofia of well to do parents, Iordana had every opportunity to develop the gifts with which nature had endowed her. Braving local prejudice, her passion for knowledge sent the fifteen year old girl to register as the first student of the first Bulgarian girls’ school in Sofia. She soon outstripped her classmates and even outdid her teacher, meanwhile attracting the attention of the charming young founder of the schools in Sofia, Sava Filaretoff, whom she married in 1860. Filaretoff’s wonderful success in awakening the national consciousness of the Bulgarians through the school, aroused the suspicions of the Turkish officials and to escape the consequences that usually followed such suspicions, he left for Russia. In a few months’ time he became a Russian citizen and a member of the Russian diplomatic corps at Constantinople. Mrs. Filaretova joined her husband with her baby boy, but in 1863 donned mourning for her husband and wore it to the end of her life. Crushed by her grief, she devoted all her attention to the rearing of her son, so that he might be a worthy bearer of his father’s name. In 1869 she returned to Sofia where her benevolent activities soon made her popular and won for her the title “The Mrs.” Her house was always open to the unfortunate. Half a dozen poor and aged women shared the comforts of her home, and on great holidays the poor and hungry flocked to her tables. Meanwhile she became absorbed in the struggles for political and religious freedom, showing so much tact and wisdom that the archives of the Secret Revolutionary Committee were entrusted to her care. It was in her home that the apostle of freedom, Levski, found safe refuge during his dangerous missions. In 1877, the Turkish authorities, suspecting her participation in the nationalistic movement, searched her house and, finding the copies of her letters, arrested her. She was brought before a jury of three along with the pile of incriminating letters. Just as Moussa Effendi picked up the one that would surely send Mrs. Filaretova to the gallows, the town crier shouted the sale of a horse. The jury rushed out, to watch the bargaining. Mrs. Filaretova snatched the incriminating letters and slipped it into the pile of letters marked ‘‘innocent.” So finding no seditious letters the jury set her free. In the War of Liberation she was one of the first to enlist as a nurse. The culmination of her sorrows came with the death of her only child in mid-sea. In 1885 she again volunteered as a nurse. She was the first woman to receive the Bulgarian Red Cross medal. In the Prince Batenberg intrigue she was temporarily exiled to Constantinople. On her return to Sofia, she adopted a three year old orphan boy and gave her considerable possessions to the society called “Happiness to All the Sorrowing” which she founded. A handsome building, made possible by her donations, shelters many poor and aged men and women; benevolent work is carried on through its school of home economics. Thus even after death her good deeds continue. Mrs. Filaretova died at the “home” at the age of seventy-two, devoting to the very last, her thoughts and time to the welfare of the unfortunate.