Born: 3 May 1856, Lithuania
Died: 25 October 1925
Country most active: Lithuania
Also known as: Žmona
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
Mrs. Liudvika Didziulis used as her pen name the simple term: “Zmona” which means: a woman; a married woman; or, a wife. “Zmona” was one of the Lithuanian renaissance writers. She was born in 1856 in the county of Rokiskis in northeastern Lithuania. Even as a child she showed great fondness for the Lithuanian language, which her father taught her to read. Later she studied with a teacher who happened to be living on the same estate. In 1887 she married Mr. Didziulis, who, incidentally, possessed a large library, and the young wife spent hours among the books. She also gathered together groups of young people and read to them, encouraging them to discuss whatever was read as well as other topics. Besides reading, she started early in life to write plays and dramas, and to translate various foreign works, especially songs from the Russian and Polish. Some of her plays were staged in the cities of Mintauja and Riga, Latvia. But at this time, the vigilantes of the czaric rule began anew their raids and plundering. No longer could Mrs. Didziulis carry on her cultural work. Much Lithuanian literature was seized and destroyed , and for fear of discovery and arrest, the Lithuanian people themselves burned their precious literature.
During the German onslaught of 1915, Mrs. Didziulis tried to escape by going to her daughters in Yalta, Crimea. Fleeing, she left behind everything but her writings, which she packed into a box and took with her on the train. But, on the way, this box was stolen and all the compositions therein were lost forever. In Crimea, “Zmona” devoted herself to uniting, aiding and encouraging the Lituanian fugitives, of whom there was a goodly-sized colony in Yalta. Nor did she stop her literary pursuits, but wrote twenty-two sketches of life in the sanatorium, and helped the patients edit a small newspaper. It was in Yalta that the “Wife” wrote a number of the works that are now existing, among which are dramas and various stories: Crimean Sketches, a collection, Foreign Relatives, Evening Gayeties and others. Upon returning to Lithuania, she was urged to write her autobiography; but, in 1925 she fell victim to pneumonia and died in October of that year.