TIRANA, October 2/ATA/ The National Historical Museum in Tirana marks today the 4rth death anniversary of distinguished albanologist Robert Elsie.
By May 2016, the Museum had the fortune of having Scholar Elsie at the UNESCO hall of the museum where he presented for the guests a part of the fund of 450 unknown photos that Miss Edith Durham made during her travels mainly in Albania and Montenegro.
After he learned Albanian and extended his knowledge in our language, Elsie decided to devote himself to albanology, a field in which he later became one of its most distinguished experts.
From the ’90s until the beginning of the 21st century, he worked as a freelancer, an Albanian interpreter and participated in high-level negotiations for the German government, the European Union, the United Nations, NATO, the Council of Europe. Robert Elsie was a member of the Southeast European Association (Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft), an external member of the Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts, and an honorary member of the Kosovo Writers’ Association.
In the field of albanology, Robert Elsie was initially devoted to Albanian literature. Among his early publications are: Dictionary of Albanian Literature and History of Albanian Literature, in two volumes. He has also published literary translations in English and German, such as in the UNESCO volume ‘An Elusive Eagle Soars: Anthology of Modern Albanian Poetry’, London 1993; ‘Albanian Folktales and Legends’, Tirana 1994; poetic works of poet Migjeni (1911-1938) translated into English in the volume Free Verse (Free Verses), Tirana 1991. Considering the extremely difficult situation in Kosovo, a situation largely unknown to the outside world, he compiled the first anthology in the 600-page volume Kosovo: In the Heart of the Powder Keg- Boulder, Colorado 1997. He also published the Canun in German, Der Kanun: das albanische Gewohnheitsrecht nach dem sogenannten Kanun des Lekë Dukagjini, Peja 2001; author of many books and countless articles, mainly in the field of albanology.
Robert Elsie’s untimely death from rare motor neuron disease occurred on October 2, 2017./p.s./
