Ivanka Gruber

One of the first foreign workers in Graz

„My principle was: Have a good command of the language in the country where you live. “

Ivanka Gaber was born in the small village of Sveti Vid nad Valdek (St. Veit am Waldegg) near Slovenj Gradec. Together with her six siblings, she experienced a childhood marked by deprivation and the dramatic events of the Second World War. In 1944, her family’s home was completely destroyed in a fire. Due to her poor circumstances, she moved to Zagreb after completing compulsory schooling to begin training as a paediatric nurse. As a Slovenian living in Croatia, she experienced living with a new culture and language for the first time. She got married and her son Boris was born.

After her divorce, she decided to accept a job offer at the children’s clinic at Graz State Hospital in 1967 and moved once again. This made her one of the first women to leave her home country in the 1960s as part of Austria’s Gastarbeiter (literally, ‘guest workers’ / migrant workers) recruitment programme. In addition to her work at the LKH, which she continued until her retirement in 1996, she began attending evening school for working adults and passed her A-level exams in 1977. She then completed a degree in translation, specialising in Serbo-Croatian–German and Slovenian–German. She also took up art history studies.

In 1979, she married Ludwig Gruber from Upper Styria. In addition to her professional activities and her family – her son Georg followed – Ivanka Gruber was involved as a cultural advisor in the association Triglav for the children of Slovenian Gastarbeiter families. After the break-up of Yugoslavia, she founded the Austrian-Slovenian Friendship Association (VÖSF) in 1992, which she headed as President until 2015. Her aim was to cultivate and deepen friendly relations between Austria (especially Styria) and Slovenia through art and cultural projects, with a particular focus on supporting young people in their ideas and artistic development.