Mark Krasniqi, a university professor, ethnographer, geographer, writer, and academic, passed away in Prishtina. He was born in Gllaviçia near Peja in 1920, where he completed his primary education before finishing high school in Prizren in 1941. Between 1941 and 1943, he studied literature at the University of Padua in Italy, and later, from 1946 to 1950, he studied the geography of ethnography at the University of Belgrade. After World War II, he worked as a journalist-editor for the newspaper “Rilindja” (“Renaissance”) published in Prizren from 1945 to 1946, and subsequently (1947-1949) at Radio-Belgrade, where he edited shows in the Albanian language. From 1950 to 1961, he was employed at the Ethnographic Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences in Belgrade, initially as an assistant and later as a “scientific associate.” He received his doctorate from the University of Ljubljana in 1960. From 1961 to 1981, he served as a professor at the University of Prishtina until the Serbian government excluded him from the teaching process. In 1979, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, where he served as both vice president and president. Krasniqi was the first chairman of the Writers’ Association of Kosovo in 1970, chairman of the Democratic Christian Albanian Party of Kosovo from 1993, and an external member of the Academy of Sciences of Albania. He published several scientific books focusing on geoethnographic, anthropogeographic, and ethnocultural themes, in addition to literary works, journalism, and textbooks. He translated numerous novels and collections of poems from Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, and Macedonian into Albanian. His journalism included a four-book series titled “Qëndrime e reagime” (“Attitudes and Reactions”) (1995) and “Përpjekje për Kosovën” (“Efforts for Kosovo”) (2001). In literature, he authored several works for children, which were reprinted multiple times and served as school readings for many generations of students. (In the photo: Mark Krasniqi)
Text: Encyclopedic Dictionary of Kosovo – Vol. I, Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, Prishtina, 2018, page 877.
Photo: © https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Krasniqi
Graphic processing: AHCF
