Daughter of the director of the Romanian National Theatre. Mia had become a refugee from the Communist regime and took a position as tutor to a Norwegian family named Bjørnson. Bjørn Bjørnson, the husband of the family, who was much older than her, became so enamoured of Mia that she fled to Paris, but he pursued her there. Bjørn Bjørnson then abandoned Mia and her unborn child, and Maria was born in Paris in 1949. Mia came to London in 1950, desperately ill with tuberculosis and almost penniless, a young baby in her arms, and went to the address of the only person whose name she knew in England: Ion Ratiu, another refugee who had been at university with her sister in Cluj, Romania. Ion and Elisabeth Ratiu took care of little Maria for two years while Mia recovered her health. Having been deprived of her mother between the ages of one and three, and abandoned by her father, whom she did not meet until she was an adult, Maria suffered from overwhelming insecurities and anxieties during her lifetime. Mia Proden worked as a cleaner at the BBC, where her linguistic skills and high intelligence were noticed and she became a stalwart of the BBC World Service broadcasting to Romania. Struggling against poverty and TB, which had given her a limp, in order to earn the money to pay for Maria to be able to go to art college Mia accepted a three-year contract as an interpreter in Niger, West Africa, and left Maria again with the Ratiu family during her teenage years. After the fall of Ceausescu, Ion Ratiu was the first non-Communist to return home and ran for president; Maria's only trip to Romania, in 2000, was for his funeral.
Daughter of the director of the Romanian National Theatre. Mia had become a refugee from the Communist regime and took a position as tutor to a Norwegian family named Bjørnson. Bjørn Bjørnson, the husband of the family, who was much older than her, became so enamoured of Mia that she fled to Paris, but he pursued her there. Bjørn Bjørnson then abandoned Mia and her unborn child, and Maria was born in Paris in 1949. Mia came to London in 1950, desperately ill with tuberculosis and almost penniless, a young baby in her arms, and went to the address of the only person whose name she knew in England: Ion Ratiu, another refugee who had been at university with her sister in Cluj, Romania. Ion and Elisabeth Ratiu took care of little Maria for two years while Mia recovered her health. Having been deprived of her mother between the ages of one and three, and abandoned by her father, whom she did not meet until she was an adult, Maria suffered from overwhelming insecurities and anxieties during her lifetime. Mia Proden worked as a cleaner at the BBC, where her linguistic skills and high intelligence were noticed and she became a stalwart of the BBC World Service broadcasting to Romania. Struggling against poverty and TB, which had given her a limp, in order to earn the money to pay for Maria to be able to go to art college Mia accepted a three-year contract as an interpreter in Niger, West Africa, and left Maria again with the Ratiu family during her teenage years. After the fall of Ceausescu, Ion Ratiu was the first non-Communist to return home and ran for president; Maria's only trip to Romania, in 2000, was for his funeral.
Family Members
Children
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Records on Ancestry
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
