Centralizing Custody and Curing by Chance:
Early Austrian Madhouses under Medical Supervision and
State Constraint, c. 1780–1830

Carlos Watzka

Sigmund Freud Private University, Vienna

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 Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 4 (2025): 493-536 DOI 10.38145/2025.4.493

This article offers an overview of the early development of madhouses as an insti­tutional framework for the custody and treatment of mentally ill persons, from the initial phase of comprehensive governmental health politics in Austria (the peak of the Enlightenment movement in the region in the late eighteenth century) until 1830, when a second phase, which had begun in 1815 and which bore witness, again, to the establishment of asylums for people suffering from mental disorders, came to an end with the foundation of an asylum in the city of Hall in Tyrol. The article outlines the establishment of such institutions for the accommodation, detention, and, partially, treatment of people seen as insane in the Austrian Hereditary Lands as a political and societal attempt to react to a rising number of individuals who were perceived as suffering from serious mental problems but whose families and communities either did not feel obliged to provide care for them or were simply not capable of treating them anymore in their respective localities. The article points out, as has been noted in the secondary literature, that all early madhouses in Vienna, Linz, Graz, and Salzburg operated primarily as institutions for the internment of persons perceived as mentally ill and posing a threat to themselves and others. The physicians involved intended to implement therapeutical activities, but this was only rarely possible due to a lack of financial resources, accommodation space, and asylum staff.

Keywords: madhouse, psychiatry, Austria, Josephinism, early nineteenth century, social history

Introduction: The Scope and State of Research

In the discussion below, I offer an overview of the early institutional history of madness in Austria in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.1 Remarkably, one does not find, in the secondary literature, any real comprehensive or systematic accounts of the historical development of discourses and practices dealing with people deemed insane in Austria before 1900.2 Hence, this article presents a still provisional overview of the state of research regarding aspects fundamental to asocial-historical analysis of the issue. It focuses on the following questions: what type of institutions were there to provide care for those deemed mentally unfit? When and where were they established? What resources and treatments were used, in what manner, and with what outcomes?

Regarding the history of the mentally ill and the ways in which they were treated in even earlier periods, it should be noted here that peculiar discourses and practices had been present in Austria (and in most regions of Western and Central Europe) since the Middle Ages, with an increasing number of sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries onwards,3 relating to academic as well as clerical and popular medicine.4

Nonetheless, within the Habsburg Monarchy, it was not until the last decades of the eighteenth century that social institutions were established with the specific public mandate to provide custody and/or care for people who were regarded as mentally ill and whose circumstances were perceived as a social problem. The appearance of the “madman”5 as a social role and prominent cultural figure was connected to broader sociocultural changes. Since the publication of the works of Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Klaus Dörner, and several other prominent representatives of “antipsychiatry” in the 1960s and 1970s,6 the historical research community, too, has devoted considerable attention to the topic of insanity. From the 1980s onwards, the history of the institutionalization of mental health care began to be written by professional historians who adopted clearly critical perspectives, inspired in part by insights from social and cultural history.7 They all identified an increase in political and social demands for the control of people suffering from mental disorders in early modern Europe. For the most part, this transformation directly affected not only the mad themselves, but also those in their immediate surroundings. This process was largely ambiguous and in many cases devastatingly negative in terms of both the quality of the life for patients in institutions and even from the quantitative perspective of their life expectancies.8 On the other hand, increasingly intense material and intellectual efforts were made to cure the mentally disturbed in this period, in part because of the influence of Enlightenment ideas concerning the curability of madness, which formed something of a widespread ideal and mindset among the middle and upper classes.9

The pace of this process varied across Europe, and it clearly depended in part on the regional tendencies in technological progress, urbanization, and industrialization.10 These processes led to an increasing number of individuals not living within the traditionally narrowly woven networks of family and neighborhood communities anymore. These communities, which of course should hardly be idealized, usually played important roles in addressing interpersonal conflicts, thus restricting the demand for permanent institutional accommodation mainly to cases of perceived need for intensive care or custody, which would have overstrained the resources of the local community.11

The time span under discussion in this article stretches from the late eighteenth century to 1830, the year in which the first phase of the institu­tionalization process in Austria came to a temporary end with the opening of an Irrenheilanstalt in the town of Hall in Tyrol. Later, from the 1850s and 1860s, several other projects were launched to create new spaces for a rapidly expanding “population” of inmates. The spatial scope was limited to the Austrian Hereditary Lands, which had a majority German-speaking population and a direct nexus to the Austrian core land. Therefore, neither the Bohemian nor the Polish crown lands, the Kingdom of Hungary, Vorderösterreich (Outer Austria), the Litoral, or Carniola are dealt with here. It is worth noting that the secondary literature on early psychiatry in the area under study here (roughly, the territory of modern-day Austria, though also including parts of South Tyrol and Lower Styria, and excluding Burgenland, which was part of Hungary until 1920–21) is quite heterogenous. Even in the case of Vienna, which was the imperial capital and the political, economic, and cultural center of the Habsburg Monarchy (and was considered the “vanguard of progress” in many fields and had the most comprehensive public infrastructure), until recently, no extensive or thorough scholarly studies have been published on the early stages of psychiatry.12 Until recently, very little had been written even on the “Narrenturm” (Tower of Fools), which was founded in 1784 and garnered enormous notoriety as an irritatingly noticeable symbol of the beginnings of psychiatry in Austria (it now houses the anatomical-pathological collection of the Naturhistorisches Museum of Vienna). The regrettably fragmented state of the secondary literature on the topic has now begun to change due to new, insightful publications. Above all, in 2023, Viennese physician and writer Daniel Vitecek published the first (!) comprehensive scholarly monograph on the medical and social history of the Narrenturm and the beginnings of psychiatry in Lower Austria, including the peculiar institution for mental patients regarded as incurable in Ybbs. Vitecek presents a vast array of valuable earlier findings, hitherto scattered in various remote contributions, and also several entirely new insights based upon sources analyzed from this perspective for the first time.13

Remarkably, from the perspective of the institutionalization of mental health care in the nineteenth century, Tyrol is the Austrian region that has been the most thoroughly studied, even though this process began in Tyrol later than in other regions of the monarchy. The research group dedicated to the social history of medicine and medical humanities at the University of Innsbruck has produced remarkable results in this field since the 1990s, with contributions by Elisabeth Dietrich-Daum, Maria Heidegger, Michaela Ralser, and others.14 Heidegger in particular has published numerous insightful contributions regarding Tyrolean psychiatry in the mid-nineteenth century from several perspectives. In addition to social and patient history, she has focused on gender history, the history of emotions, and body history.15 For Salzburg, the first historical analysis by Harald Waitzbauer was published in 1998, and recently, a further overview, examining additional archival sources, was authored by Theresa Lumetzberger. Both works deal with the period before the mid-nineteenth century, though the focus is on later periods, as is the case in Elisabeth Telsnig’s study on artistic work by psychiatric inmates in the region.16 For other parts of Austria, until now, there have been no studies comparable in extent or chronological scope on the early stages of psychiatry, neither for the more populous crownlands of Upper Austria and Styria nor for Carinthia.17 For Upper Austria, some research on the initial phases of housing for the mentally ill since the 1780s was done in 1970s and 1980s by Konrad Plass, Gustav Hoffmann, and others, but no additional studies have been undertaken.18 Regarding the history of psychiatry in Styria, particularly the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are moderately well-researched now, but for the period before the mid-nineteenth century, there is much research still to be done. Overviews were given by Carlos Watzka and Norbert Weiss.19 In the case of Carinthia, the nineteenth-century history of the asylum founded in Klagenfurt in 1822 has largely been overlooked, despite some efforts by Paul Posch, Karl Frick, Lisa Künstl, and Thomas Platz.20

Figure 1. Early public madhouses within the area of contemporary Austria, 1780 to 1830
(Sketch map by C. Watzka, based on a template available at Wikimedia commons)

In the discussion below, I examine the development of public institutional structures for the custodial care and, eventually, the cure of the mad in the Austrian Hereditary Lands between the 1780s and 1830, drawing mainly on the secondary literature and printed sources.21 I pay attention particularly to fundamental aspects, such as buildings, staff, patients, and their living conditions, as well as the therapies eventually provided for them. The broader context of the cultural and social history of the Habsburg Monarchy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including its politics regarding poor relief and the healthcare system in general, is dealt with only selectively here, when connections of processes in these wider fields with concrete institutional developments in mental health care are highlighted.22

The Tower of Fools (Narrenturm) in Vienna

Compared to Western Europe, from the perspective of early efforts to establish a specialized structure for the internment and, eventually, treatment of the mad, Austria was a latecomer, even though the opposite is sometimes asserted in older literature and on some popular websites even today. The beginnings of larger, specialized structures for the accommodation of the insane date back to the fifteenth century in Spain and to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Italy, France, England, Holland, Germany, and Poland.23 In Austria, however, until about the mid-eighteenth century the task of providing custody for insane persons was largely left to a non-centralized structure of small multifunctional hospitals, often owned and run by communities or religious orders. Additionally, some state-run poorhouses also began to accommodate mad people as an additional task. This situation, albeit probably advantageous at least for some of the affected individuals, was seen as insufficient by the central authorities, especially in light of permanently growing public demands. Yet it was not until the government of Emperor Joseph II from 1780 to 1790 that any large-scale establishment of state institutions for public health care in general was implemented, and this then took place in the context of a systematic effort to strengthen the agency of the central government and, in turn, to cut back the political and social power of the Catholic Church and other stakeholders, such as the already quite insignificant traditional, regionally based nobility. With such regulations, which bore strong affinities with other projects for progress, Joseph II and the enlightened official nobility around him put into practice the concept of “medizinische Policey,” or medical police, developed by academic physicians of the time. Johann Peter Frank (1745–1821) of south German origin, the most prominent and productive of them,24 was recruited as a medical professor first for Austrian Lombardy in 1785 and then took over the Viennese general hospital in 1795. The foundation of the latter in 1784 was the work of his Vienna-born predecessor, Joseph von Quarin (1733–1814), who had served as personal physician to Maria Theresia and Joseph II.25

In 1781, Joseph II focused his attention on efforts to provide relief and healthcare for the poor. He himself authored the so-called “Directiv-Regeln,” the rules for the future establishment of hospitals and care institutions. These rules formulated the principle of internal separation between the various kinds of needy persons, the impact of which lasts until today. The intention was to draw a clear distinction between children (foundlings and orphans) and adults and to provide separate accommodations for them. Among the latter, it distinguished between pregnant women in need of maternal care, people who were “merely” poor but healthy, poor individuals with acute but treatable diseases, and people who were poor and chronically ill or disabled.26 This categorization, which reflects the emphasis among the so-called enlightened on classifications (particularly of matters regarded as problematic, as discussed by Foucault),27 was enriched by a peculiar further category of ill persons, namely those not regarded as suitable for treatment within the general hospital. This classification applied to individuals who for some reason “cause damage or disgust” and included Wahnwitzige (maniacs), people purportedly suffering from venereal diseases, and those with visible signs of illness or damage to the body (Krebse or cancers). All of them, according to the emperor himself, had “to be removed from general society and from the eyes of humans.”28

The Viennese Narrenturm, which was established in 1784 as the first purpose-built madhouse in the Habsburg Monarchy, was part of these coordinated efforts to create a state-run public health care system for the urban population of the capital, which had roughly doubled over the course of only 80 years, from more than 120,000 around 1700 to approximately 250,000 in the 1780s.29 The Narrenturm was situated within the area of the new general hospital in the Alsergrund suburb (today the ninth district of Vienna). For the building itself, the former Großarmenhaus (Large Poorhouse) was used. This edifice had been established in the 1690s and had been home to more than 1,600 inmates in 1781, when it was dissolved.30

The foundation of the Viennese Narrenturm or Tollhaus was a personal project for Emperor Joseph II, who spent a considerable amount of money from his personal funds and dedicated significant efforts to its creation, thus centralizing the detention of the mad hitherto accommodated within various smaller structures. In quantitative terms, the wing for mad inmates at the large civic hospital in the Saint Marx suburb of Vienna (today the third district of Vienna) was probably the largest source for transfers to the newly erected Narrenturm. The hospital had offered space for 300 to 500 persons altogether in the mid- and late-eighteenth century, including space dedicated for the internment (and eventually treatment) of about 30 people perceived as mad. In reality, it accommodated up to nearly 80 persons of allegedly “corrupted” mind in the 1760s and 1770s, as Sarah Pichlkastern has shown in her extensive research on the Viennese Civic Hospital and its various sites.31

Prior to its opening, other inmates who came to be lodged in the Narrenturm had been accommodated in institutions such as civic poorhouses scattered across the city and its surroundings. These institutions held more than 2,600 inmates already in 1766, of whom at that date 128 (ca. 5 percent) were considered “Hinfallende, Habnärrische, Blödsinnige” (epileptics, half-fools, or stupid), as Daniel Vitecek’s research has demonstrated, drawing on the Wienerische Diarium, a journal which reported on the issue. Patients were also transferred to the Narrenturm from the Viennese Spanish Hospital (also called the Trinity Hospital) in the Alsergrund suburb and the monastic hospital of the Barmherzige Brüder (Order of Saint John of God) in the Leopoldstadt suburb (today the second district of Vienna),32 which mainly treated somatic diseases but also offered accommodation and treatment for the mentally ill in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.33 That hospital was left open even during the Josephinist cloister dissolutions because of its acknowledged practical value, but with regards to accommodation for the mentally ill, it was limited by imperial order to the task of providing care exclusively for insane clergymen.34

By founding the Narrenturm, Joseph II and his government avowedly intended to ameliorate the living conditions and, particularly, chances of recovery for the insane. Thus, this initiative resembled the founding of the general hospital in Vienna, which was established to improve the circumstances and living conditions of those suffering from some bodily illness. Nonetheless, the emperor himself was not free of stereotypical and prejudiced convictions regarding illness and insanity, even by contemporary standards. In particular, he obviously held the traditional belief that, were a pregnant woman to behold something disgusting or horrifying, this might have dire consequences for the health and sanity of her unborn child. “Objects or humans” that were deemed a horrific sight were therefore to be isolated and kept away from the public eye as a matter of public health.35

Unfortunately, the sources reveal only broad outlines concerning Joseph II’s personal ideas on the needs and legitimate claims of the mentally ill. But the issue of providing accommodation and care for the insane was clearly a target of the emperors’ pronounced habit of thriftiness, as he personally gave the order, still in 1784, to provide “only a diet of four Kreuzer per day” “for the mad,” instead of the seven Kreuzer given as the amount that would cover the average expenses for “ordinary” patients at the Viennese General Hospital.36 Perhaps the belief in a general “lack of judgement” among the mad, which was quite common among in enlightened thought, contributed to the emperor’s conclusion that it would not “pay off” to provide expenses beyond the sheer minimum for madmen, as differences between higher or lower quality of food, clothing, or furniture would not be noticed by them, and shortcomings would not be have the same negative health effects as they would for “normal” persons. Vitecek summarizes the sobering effect of Joseph’s II personal interest in designing the first Austrian mental asylum: “the scarcest equipment and scarcest staff” were allocated to the Narrenturm, compared with the other institutions founded by the emperor.37

This, of course, had dire consequences for the inmates of the new institution. In contrast to at least some of the hospitals where these people had been accommodated before, in the Narrenturm, all approximately 250 inmates were indiscriminately prohibited from taking walks outside the building. Only two small and dark inner courtyards were set aside for this purpose (see Fig. 2). This order was kept even after the death of Joseph II in 1790. Eventually, during the principalship of Johann Peter Frank, in 1796, two small gardens, surrounded by a high wall, were installed, offering the inmates somewhat better conditions and an opportunity to enjoy sunlight and fresh air.38

Figure 2. The Narrenturm in Vienna: the blueprint of the basement and ground floor,
displaying the cell structure, the building for the staff, the courtyards, and pipes for heating and the removal of waste.
(Copper etching, Vienna 1783. Image in the public domain)

There obviously was a strong drive behind the Josephinian government to segregate the insane from a society believed to be in a state of becoming increasingly healthy (including with reference to its mental wellbeing) due to a virtually all-embracing medical police and the broad healthcare measures launched in the monarchy. Notions concerning the possible transmissibility of madness by infection, even if they were not widely believed, may have played a certain role in this practice of exclusion as well. Thus, in enlightened late eighteenth-century Vienna, official approaches to care for the insane clearly put the idea of custodialism at the forefront, and therapeutical pursuits were a distant second. This was expressed openly by the inscription on the Narrenturm’s entrance since about 1790, by order of Leopold II, the successor to Joseph II: Custodiae mente captorum, or “to provide custody of the insane.”39 In this regard, the Austrian version of enlightened biopolitics appears to have been a quite defensive and conservative one, even during the reign of Joseph II, which was allegedly the peak of progressive tendencies.40

Figure 3. Depiction of the Narrenturm in Vienna, Painting by Franz Gerasch
(mid-nineteenth century)
(CC – Belvedere Online Collection:
https://sammlung.belvedere.at/objects/12044/das-alte-irrenhaus-in-wien-narrenturm-kaiser-josephguge)

The menacing exterior of the Viennese madhouse (see Fig. 3), which was described as “a terrible prison far from all human society” as early as 1793 by an anonymous visitor, corresponds with its distinctive inner structure. In other words, this interior is a seemingly endless circular sequencing of small cells, which were used to isolate inmates from one another, though they tended to confuse everybody residing in the building (as one can experience even today by taking a personal visit). This structure was designed at the order of Joseph II to contain either only one or two detainees per cell, who, from the outset, were to be locked up in their cells with the use of iron manacles and chains if considered dangerous, as most of them were.41 The cells on each floor form an outer ring structure, easily supervised by the wardens from the circular gangway making up the inner ring of the building, connected by the central wing, accessible only to the staff (see Fig. 2). Cells were furnished in a manner designed to reduce the need for direct interaction between staff and inmates to a minimum, with slightly angled floors to allow excrement to run on its own into a drainage system. A central heating system was used to avoid any need for stoves or furnaces near the cells. Iron rings were installed in the walls to make it possible to bind inmates with chains. Heavy double doors with locks were used, along with barred windows, to prevent attempts to escape.42 Quite clearly, at least for the decision-makers involved in the founding of this asylum, there must have been a considerable fear of the people who were put into custody in the edifice.

Yet, the whole building, which was erected in less than two years (1783–1784), seems to represent, in addition to its practical function as a madhouse, some of Joseph II’s very distinctive ideas. The emperor hired acknowledged master builder Josef Gerl (1734–1789) to implement his vision. Even apart from the somewhat daring assumption that the installation of a lightning rod on the roof of the building (it is perhaps worth noting that the Narrenturm was one of the first buildings in Vienna to receive one) had been part of a secretly planned device for experimental electrotherapy,43 the basic architectural features of the madhouse seemed peculiar to most observers from its foundation. This included the overall tower-like shape, which inspired its non-official name, “Tower of Fools” (instead of house). This designation quickly spread in popular discourse, as did the nickname the “Emperor’s Guglhupf,” which was attached to it later. The outstanding 2023 monograph on the Narrenturm by Daniel Vitecek underpins the assertion that this and other stylistic features of the building were designed by Emperor Joseph II himself. According to the funeral speech given by his personal physician Giovanni Alessandro Brambilla (1728–1800), it was Joseph II who had drafted the drawing.44

This simple fact suggests that the distinctive shape of the Narrenturm did not serve medical purposes but rather was an aesthetic means of serving a political goal. The edifice provided an impressive landmark of imperial power and perhaps also of purposefully created mysteriousness.45 The tiny octagonal tower, originally situated at the center of the tower’s roof (but missing today) probably symbolized imperial perfection in this case, too, reflecting a tradition that can be traced back to Roman and medieval rulers, who used the existing interpretative pattern of equating the number of eight with the sacred, in particular in architecture.46

Figure 4. The old Lazareth located in Alsergrund suburb,
the second site of the Viennese madhouse since 1792.
(Detail from copper plate—view of Vienna by Folbert van Alten-Allen, 1686; CC)

Already around 1790, the Narrenturm proved insufficient to meet the growing demand for accommodations for severely mentally disturbed persons in Vienna and Lower Austria. The authorities reacted to this situation by refurbishing the former Viennese lazaretto near the general hospital (see Fig. 4) for this purpose, a measure already proposed by Quarin in 1784. This institution opened in 1792 as an asylum for about 150 so-called “ruhige Irre” or “peaceful insane” (a behavioral classification meaning patients who were considered men­tally ill but not violent, not disruptive, and not considered dangerous), ending the provisional accommodation of “completely harmless fools” in other public buildings in the Alsergrund district, a practice that was followed from at least 1786 due to the lack of space in the Narrenturm.47 Irrespective of the administrative connections of both madhouses (the Narrentum and the lazaretto) to the general hospital, apart from a primary physician who served the needs of the patients part-time in the 1780s (in addition to providing treatment for patients in the general hospital), the medical staff consisted of only one surgeon and his assistant. According to an instruction to the staff dating from 1789, one male and two female keepers (Wärter) were assigned to each floor of the building, which formed a department. This document also refers to so-called “helpers” (Gehilfen), but it does not specify their numbers.48

Late eighteenth-century observers did not form a favorable judgement of the accommodations within the building either. Apart from the fact that the so-called “raving mad” were chained to the wall within their respective “containers” (Behälter), the “peaceful insane” also had to cope with inappropriately low beds and spartan furniture (a bed, a table, and two chairs) in their small, dimly lit cells. Furthermore, the central heating system, praised as innovative when the edifice was built, could never be used properly, as it did not warm up the cells due to a technical failure which could not later be corrected, even though staff tried to heat the spaces with ovens positioned in the circular, connecting corridors. The lack of a separate water supply in the building aggravated problems, especially sanitary hygiene, because the water needed had to be carried there from the general hospital. The wish to spare costs for this probably led to stronger limitations in the use of water as would have been in place otherwise. This was particularly disadvantageous, because the second largest-scale technical innovation in the construction of the Narrenturm, the waterless system for the removal of excrement from the patients’ cells, also could not be used after the 1790s, probably due to the gradual obstruction of the pipes by excrement, thus causing an intolerable stink in the building. These conditions are detailed in the testimony of Johann Peter Frank, who ordered that these outlets be bricked up and replaced with the simple, time-tested tool of the chamber pot, which in turn made the regular manual removal of excrement from each individual cell a necessity.49

Therapeutic measures of any kind were considered desirable in principle, but in practice, due to the small number of medically educated staff, they were only rarely used. Hence, within the asylum, the mode of cure overall was very simple and mostly consisted of simple diet, as a contemporary observer reported in 1797.50 We cannot rule out the possibility that, even at this initial state, so-called moral treatments were put to some use, along with psychological cures, such as the contemporary innovations highly praised by progressive early psychiatrists and doctors for the mentally ill, above all Pinel, Tuke, and Chiarugi in France, England, and Italy.51 However, there is no systematic documentation indicating the use of such approaches before the 1790s.

The situation began to change around 1800, when a traveler acknowledged the compassion and concern apparent in the psychological treatment of inmates conducted by primary physician Franz Nord (1761–1822), who had succeeded Johann Peter Frank as primary physician for the madhouse in 1795 and since 1805 had also served as director of the general hospital.52 His medical work with the mentally ill was praised by others, but difficulties in the organization of the finances of the institution and/or his habit of “openly confessing the defects of the institution on several occasions and demanding adequate remedies”53 led to his dismissal in 1811.54

In contrast to the use of psychological remedies, which probably remained rare, somatic treatments, which followed the tradition of humoral pathology, apparently were quite frequently used from the outset (i.e., from 1784), as they were seen as more time efficient. As for pharmacological therapies, detailed descriptions from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries remain scattered. However, as a travel report published in 1802 reveals, two traditional purgantia—Cantharidin, contained in Spanischen Fliegen (Spanish flies, Cantharis vesicatoria and Brechweinstein (Antimonium tartaricum, tartar emetic) – were used by Nord in a relatively cautious manner as an externally applied irritant. Orally administered drugs were not mentioned by name in the relevant report but rather were described as “strengthening and stimulating substances.”55

As a general result of the centralization process of the Viennese health care system, survival and recovery rates did not increase as had been hoped and expected. On the contrary, mortality rates increased due to the more rapid transmission of infectious diseases among the now densely populated wards in hospitals. This seems to have been the case in the Narrenturm as well, as least to some extent. The earliest records on the numbers of inmates, admissions, releases, and deaths56 cannot be aggregated to offer a fully consistent and clear picture, as some of the data are lacking, but Vitecek nonetheless persuasively demonstrates in his study that during the first period of about 16 and a half years from April 1784 to August 1801, there were 3,201 registered admissions to and 2,719 departures from the asylum altogether. With 729 fatalities among the inmates, the total mortality rate for this period of 16.5 years comes to 23 percent or 27 percent (depending on the mode of calculation). Annual mortality, of course, was much lower, but it still varied between approximately five and ten percent. This was quite high in contemporary terms as well. The same statistical data prove that, despite the stereotypical opinion that admission to the asylum equaled long-term interment (perhaps until the patient’s death), a considerable number of the inmates, slightly more than 100 on average, were actually dismissed each year. For the total time span between 1784 and 1801, this amounts to 54 percent of those admitted and 63 percent of those who were released. Transfers to other departments of the general hospital came to about ten percent annually. Therefore, though the ratio of inmates regarded as cured remains unknown, even during this first stage, when many patients in the Narrenturm had to endure inhumane living conditions aggravated by the absence of proper therapeutic treatments, more than half of the admitted patients survived the institution and were discharged sooner or later. Among the early patients, there were more men than women (ca. 60 percent versus 40 percent). Furthermore, the figures also reveal that male inmates had lower chances of survival than female inmates.57

Within the former lazaretto, which was repurposed in 1792 to serve as a department for “peaceful fools” and particularly convalescent patients, overall living conditions were better than within the Narrenturm. Yet it was not until 1803 that a physician and a surgeon were hired exclusively for this department. They were responsible for providing care for both incurable and curable patients, with emphasis on the latter as the preferred future target group. From 1807 onwards, the political authorities expected newly admitted individuals suspected of madness to be transferred first to the lazaretto for observation and not immediately to the Narrenturm, at least in the more worrisome cases. Yet, as Vitecek points out, the differentiating criterion for admission was not supposed curability but the perceived difficulty of handling their behaviors. Inmates were thus divided into groups based on the classification of raging and impure on the one hand and the classification of peaceful and clean on the other.58

These distinctions were useful in the disciplinary functioning of the asylum, an aspect on which the contemporary reports on the Narrenturm only rarely touch. However, the physician Michael Wagner, in an appendix to his early translation of Philip Pinel’s psychiatric manual published in 1801, lists “fasting, straitjacket, straps, handcuffs and leg irons” as “usual means for taming, applied when circumstances demand.”59 In turn, useful occupations, ranging from unskilled work to qualified handicrafts and even office activities, were used for therapeutic and disciplinary purposes in cases of patients who were regarded as suitable subjects for this approach, as reported on several occasions.60

Salzburg’s Early Madhouse and the Sister Institutions of
the Viennese Narrenturm in Linz and Graz, ca. 1780–1800

Salzburg was the site of first asylum on the territory of present-day Austria, though it was an independent ecclesiastical principality within the Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 1806. Moreover, the establishment of a hospital for the Sinnlose (senseless) and Tollsinnige (mad-sensed) in 1783 appears to have been more nominal than functional, as suggested by the sources cited in the first more detailed historiographic account of Irrenwesen im Herzogthum Salzburg, by Ignaz Harrer (1826–1905), a former mayor of Salzburg.61 Remarkably, this madhouse was also founded as a consequence of personal initiative. This is indicative of the emerging and intensifying societal interest in the relationship between reason and madness among the social elites in Austria and Southern Germany during the last decades of the eighteenth century.62

Augustin Georg Paulus (1695–1777), a surgeon and administrator of several municipal institutions in Salzburg63 (including the Bruderhaus hospital), bequeathed the majority of his estate to charitable causes. Following his death, his widow allocated the substantial sum of 4,000 florins specifically to the improvement of accommodations for the furiosi (the raving mad). Until that point, such persons had been confined in Kötterl (lockable wooden hutches) beneath Saint Sebastian Bruderhaus on Linzergasse (in the suburb am Stein), a situation increasingly deemed inadequate. Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo (1732–1812), a leading proponent of the Catholic Enlightenment in the region in the late eighteenth century,64 took a personal interest in the matter. He contributed an additional 4,000 florins, solicited further donations, and ultimately initiated the construction of a new facility on the grounds of the existing Bruderhaus. The aim was to provide a space for those “degraded to the level of animals by their defect of reason,” where, through appropriate care, they might recover their mental faculties.65 Echoing the model set by Joseph II for Vienna, Colloredo decreed in 1800 that the new institution should admit only individuals who, due to their raving behavior, would pose a threat “to the lives and property of the other human beings in society.”66

However, the following year, Dr. Michael Steinhauser von Treuberg (1754–1814), city physician and chief medical officer at the Johannis hospital in the suburb of Mülln,67 submitted a report that, in my assessment, clearly demonstrates that little had changed in practice since 1783. The few mentally ill individuals housed at the Bruderhaus site were, in fact, still kept in the old wooden hutches, while the new building had partly collapsed and the part that remained intact was being used as a school. Steinhauser concluded that “the structure was not yet at all in a condition to serve a medical function,” and the facility would only be able to serve as the desperately needed institution of a madhouse are repairs had been done and the school that was functioning in the building had been relocated.68 Thus, with regard to the Narrenhaus in Salzburg, although there were indeed plans to found a new asylum and a new edifice was built in the late eighteenth century, the new institution did not become practically operational until 1801. In this case, too, economic difficulties, which got increasingly pressing over the course of the 1790s, were also a decisive factor.69

Figure 5. The building of the former Prunerstift in Linz,
partially used as madhouse between 1788 and 1867. Recent view, photography
taken by Volker Weihbold, Oberösterreichische Nachrichten (by courtesy).

As had been true in Lower Austria, the establishment of madhouses in Upper Austria and Styria was initiated by Joseph II, but developments in these provinces followed somewhat different trajectories. In Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, the new madhouse was established by imperial decree in 1788. A large charitable institution originally founded in the 1730s was repurposed. This institution had been founded thanks to a generous testamentary donation of more than 175,000 florins by Johann Adam Prunner (1681–1734; often spelled Pruner), a merchant and long-serving mayor of Linz. His endowment had been intended to provide shelter and sustenance for no fewer than 81 impoverished townspeople. Situated just to the east of the city walls near the Danube River (the address today is Fabrikstraße 10, Linz), this charitable foundation enjoyed a favorable location, though it was considered somewhat unhealthy due to the foul odors from a nearby rivulet and surrounding industrial activities. By 1785, however, it had come to the attention of state authorities as a problematic institution, largely because inflation had created a growing financial deficit. Following a personal visit to Linz in 1786, Joseph II ordered a complete restructuring: the orphans and elderly residents without serious health problems were to be relocated to private homes, and the building itself was to be repurposed as a state-run facility comprising a general hospital, a madhouse, a labor and delivery department, and a foundling asylum. The plan for a general state hospital in Linz was not pursued, however, in part because the two existing hospitals operated by religious orders were considered sufficient. Likewise, the idea of a foundling asylum was soon abandoned, and foundlings instead were placed in foster care outside the city. 70

Ultimately, the only facilities that were permanently established at the so-called Prunerstift (see Fig. 5) were to provide housing for the mentally ill and unmarried pregnant women. When the madhouse began operations in 1788, it occupied only one side wing of the building and housed eight individuals, two men and six women. These individuals had previously been provisionally accommodated at the city’s lazaretto, which had served this function since 1768.71 Plans, however, referred to a total of 24 cells, located within both rear side wings of the building, to be used for the confinement of the mentally ill, with one wing designated for male patients and the other for females. The existing cells, which, in accordance with Pruner’s will, were slightly larger than those of the Capuchins, were fitted with wooden grids for that purpose. While this construction created significant noise disturbances for the inmates, it was considered advantageous for heating purposes, since the cells themselves were not equipped with stoves but instead were warmed only indirectly by heating in the corridors during winter.

The madhouse in Linz, along with the adjoining delivery house, was managed by an administrator of the foundation. As in Vienna and other early asylums in Austria before 1800, no physicians were permanently employed to treat mentally ill inmates at the outset. Medical visits were arranged when perceived as needed, primarily for somatic conditions. Two attendants, one man and one woman, were responsible for daily provisions, nursing care, and supervision of the inmates. Patients considered dangerous were chained to their beds, and, as was true of the Narrenturm in Vienna, visitors frequently remarked on their deplorable conditions, which included oppressive darkness, loud noises, and particularly the stench caused by excrement on the floors, which could not be adequately removed. These issues likely affected not only the inmates but also the staff who lived in the institute and thus was exposed to the same conditions.72 Nonetheless, no substantial structural improvements appear to have been made in the first decade after 1800, and the number of inmates probably remained close to the originally planned capacity of 24 until at least 1815.

The madhouse in Graz was similarly founded due to the personal intervention of Joseph II. In 1781, the emperor had instructed the regional government in Graz to conduct a survey of existing charitable institutions and foundations across Inner Austria,73 including all hospitals, workhouses, and the large poorhouse already operating in Graz.74 In March 1784, Joseph II personally visited in the Styrian capital for five days, during which time he is credibly reported to have toured “all public institutions” in the city. At the end of his visit, he issued an imperial Handbillet to Governor Johann Franz Anton von Khevenhüller (1737–1797) outlining significant structural changes, including the repurposing of the existing poorhouse in the Gries suburb for a future medical hospital, which was also to accommodate mentally ill individuals. This mirrored the approach already taken in Vienna.

Figure 6. The former Capuchin cloister in Graz, which was used as madhouse
between 1788 and 1873. Recent view, image from Google maps (3-D-view, 18.04.2025),
edited by C. Watzka. The rather small, muddled complex near the northeastern city gate
is displayed from the eastern direction in bird’s eye view.

However, preparations for such large-scale changes took time. During another visit to Graz in June 1786, Joseph II noted the vacancy of the former manor of the Upper Styrian cloister of Saint Lambrecht in Graz and reconsidered his plans. He designated that vast building, located at the edge of the city in the Paulustorgasse, to house the new General Hospital and another, smaller building across from it (the former Capuchin cloister in Graz, also vacant at the time) as the new madhouse. After some further delays, the madhouse in Graz (Paulustorgasse 11, see Fig. 6) officially began operations in December 1788.75

The first inmates were transferred to the madhouse from the various provisional locations around the city.76 By the end of 1789, the number of inmates had risen to 26, and by 1790, it reached 31. Initially, the institution was intended to house only “raving, demented, and furious” individuals. “Peaceful” people suffering from milder mental disorders were to be placed in the general hospital. An accommodation fee of 10 Kreuzers was fixed for the third-class patients, which included ordinary and poor persons. This fee was to be paid either by the patients or by charitable foundations responsible for their care. Interestingly, no distinction was made between fees for the general hospital and those for the madhouse. Yet from the outset, the entire General Hospital, to which the madhouse was organizationally linked, faced severe financial difficulties, which intensified in the 1790s. Meanwhile, the number of inmates increased steeply, from 31 in 1790 to 65 in 1795 and 78 by 1800.77

As in all other Austrian madhouses of the period, no specialized medical staff was employed to treat the mentally ill in Graz. This is revealed, for instance, by the official 1796 publication by Philipp Graf Welsperg von Primör und Raitenau (1735–1806), governor of Inner Austria at the time. This publication provided an overview of the structure of the poor relief institutions in Graz.78 The staff of the madhouse included the director and the administrator of the general hospital, who oversaw the institution, as well as the surgeon and assistant from the general hospital. Together, they were scheduled to supervise the inmates in pairs, alternating daily, and to monitor the work of the two “sub-supervisors” employed at the madhouse. The primary focus of these visits was to oversee the inmate’s “food, laundry, cleanliness,” and “custody,” especially to ensure protection against harm, whether self-inflicted or inflicted on others by the inmates. Doubtless, this concern for safety was one of the main reasons for the policy of isolating each inmate in a separate room or chamber.

Illness was largely understood in terms of somatic illnesses that could affect the insane. In such cases, the protocol was to transfer the patient to a “sickroom” within the madhouse or to the nearby general hospital, with medical assistance provided as needed. However, there was no mention of specific psychiatric or moral treatment. The focus was on preventing “mistreatment of any kind.” The accommodations provided for the inmates and the ways in which they were handled depended on the severity of their diseases and the dangerousness of their behaviors, according to Welsperg’s description. Those deemed dangerous were put in chains, while the raving were separated from the more harmless inmates. More peaceful patients were allowed “to walk in a locked courtyard or garden,” with men and women alternating. Inmates were encouraged to engage in “moderate occupations,” but only with the consent of the attending physician and only if accommodated free of charge. This clearly shows that this was intended more as a means to contribute to the costs of their stay than as a genuinely therapeutic measure.

Remarkably, the regulation explicitly excluded the admission of individuals from rural areas for whom nobody (neither family nor any community, authority, or fund) would cover the costs of their stay.79 One year later, in 1797, Graz, unlike other major cities in the Hereditary Lands, was occupied for the first time by French troops during the Napoleonic wars. While no major acts of violence were reported, the military occupation placed significant additional financial strain on the city and the region.80

Austrian Madhouses during the Napoleonic Crisis of
the Habsburg Monarchy: Survival under Precarious Conditions

In Austrian proto-psychiatry, even the modest plans to improve the living conditions of mentally ill inmates largely came to a standstill from the mid-1790s, and no significant initiatives in this direction were taken for more than two decades. The broader political and economic context was profoundly discouraging to any reform efforts, both ideologically and financially. As early as 1789, the Austrian Monarchy became deeply embroiled in a fierce struggle against the spread of democratic and liberal ideas, which had gained momentum across Europe in the wake of the French Revolution. From 1792 onward, this ideological confrontation escalated into military conflict. Particularly since the Third Coalition War of 1805, the Habsburg Monarchy faced existential threats and found itself teetering on the brink of collapse due to the immense loss of life and resources incurred in the wars against Napoleonic France, a country that, in the eyes of many Central Europeans, had shifted from a beacon of human progress to a source of imperialist aggression and repression.81

During the military campaigns of 1805 and 1809, even the Austrian capital was occupied by French troops, and this turmoil inevitably impacted the Viennese madhouse, too. At the time, both sites, the Narrenturm and the lazaretto, together housed 430 to 440 patients annually. These two years witnessed particularly high annual mortality rates: 17–18 percent in 1805 and 1809, compared to a relatively lower range of 9–12 percent in 1806, 1807, and 1808.82 The defeat of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1809 contributed dramatically to the temporary collapse of Austrian state finances in 1811, further paralyzing any institutional improvements. Even the seemingly modest proposal to appoint a single physician with full-time responsibility, on the basis of a salaried employment contract, for the Viennese madhouse was implemented only after the end of the Napoleonic wars.

Dr. Ignaz Eisl (born 1764, died after 1845), who served as primary physician at the madhouse from 1811 to 1826, in 1817 was formally relieved of all other responsibilities within the General Hospital of Vienna by decree of the Imperial Court Chancellery.83 He was then exclusively tasked with the treatment of the insane in both the Narrenturm and the lazaretto. On that occasion, a written directive originally prepared in 1814 was reissued by state authorities. This directive emphasized the two main duties of the primary physician: to prevent mistreatment of the inmates and to implement appropriate precautions to protect others from potential harm by the patients. Significantly, this document confirmed that a differentiated accommodation scheme was already in effect to determine whether a new patient should be admitted to the Narrenturm or the lazaretto, and to which ward specifically. The classification criteria included perceived “dangerousness, noisiness, uncleanliness, incurability, and inclination to escape.” Notably, the concept of moral treatment, which developed in late eighteenth-century England and France,84 is explicitly referenced in these instructions under the term “moralische Arzney.” The use of the then “modern” straitjacket as a means of physical restraint is also documented.85

As for the medical personnel, it is worth noting that Bruno Goergen (1777–1842), who later gained recognition as the director of the first large private asylum in Vienna (from 1819 onward), also served as a primary physician responsible for the mentally ill at the General Hospital from 1805 to approximately 1814.86 The exact division of responsibilities between Nord, Eisl, and Goergen during this period remains unclear, but it is likely that each was primarily assigned to one of the two facilities for a given timespan.

Even less is known about actual staffing and other fundamental organizational aspects at the smaller madhouses in Linz, Graz, and Salzburg during that period from about 1800 to 1815. This historiographic silence is in itself revealing, suggesting that few changes occurred, or at least no changes that were later regarded as positive or memorable by learned observers.

One notable exception is the case of Salzburg, where Ignaz Harrer (1826–1905),
later mayor of the city and an active reformer of its health and welfare institutions, took a keen interest in the development of a modern “Irrenanstalt” (insane asylum) in the 1860s.87 Drawing on archival sources, Harrer reconstructed the prolonged and difficult early history of psychiatric care in Salzburg, which started in the late 1770s. As mentioned above, until 1801, individuals suffering from severe mental illnesses had still been confined under harsh conditions in hutches attached to Bruderhaus hospital. Despite earlier intentions, a separate madhouse had not yet been established. In 1804, city physician Dr. Steinhauser, responsible for the treatment of the inmates, submitted a new report on the issue, indicating that large parts of the asylum had remained in a dilapidated state and were unfit for patient accommodation. Meanwhile, “only raving or severely unclean human beings” were held in the aforementioned huts, where prolonged stay was deemed both “unsanitary and unhealthy” by the rapporteur. Particularly illuminating are Steinhauser’s further remarks on the day-to-day operations of this rudimentary institution:

The staff appointed for all the sick [of the Bruderhaus hospital] consists of two old and weak women, who care for the patients and cook for them from the weekly [monetary] contributions made. These miserable contributions hardly suffice for the women to obtain the necessary food; the house provides only lodging, firewood, lighting,

and straw [for the inmates]. Thus, nothing remains—not even for a shirt or some medicine—and each visit by the physician or these women entails begging and personal danger. Particularly instructed staff and a fund supporting the physician’s psychological [sic] intentions, regarding the pharmacy, kitchen, and living rooms, but also contact, labor, walking, cold and warms baths etc., should be introduced.88

Among the therapeutic measures Steinhauser deemed appropriate were “serious coercive treatment, isolation, suitable diet, and adequate psychological use of the lucida intervalla [periods of mental clarity].” But he warned against excessive use of purgative medicines, which, in his view, either killed people or rendered them permanently “unreasonable.” Notably, Steinhauser admitted to having applied various traditional remedies to treat insanity, inherited from ancient and early modern medicine,89 during the “early stages of his medical career,” such as “opium, camphor, measures to cause suppurating wounds, starvation and thirst,” but (unsurprisingly to us today) without sufficient, lasting success.90 These brief but pointed remarks reflect a clear shift towards the then emerging approach of moral treatment and a distancing from older, somatic-based approaches that dominated early modern cures.

Sobering commentary from the principal medical council, addressed to the government of the Salzburg principality, explicitly emphasized the dangers of the “current miserable and disordered situation of the institution for the insane, which brings the unfortunate [inmates] closer to the edges of ruin.” Yet, at the same time, it cautioned that no substantial remedy for this situation could be formulated until more financial resources were found to expand the institution’s potential.91 In the years that followed, local authorities attempted to address the problem by initiating a complete relocation of the institution and soliciting funds from private benefactors, a process that began in 1807 but took more than a decade to complete.92

Wider geopolitical turmoil and economic instability (warfare and economic hardships all over Europe) contributed to this prolonged stagnation. Salzburg, in particular, suffered severely. The city was occupied and plundered three times between 1800 and 1809 by French and Bavarian forces. The Erzstift (ecclesiastical principality) of Salzburg was dissolved in 1803, and the region became a part of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1805, only to be annexed by Napoleonic Bavaria in 1810 following Austria’s military defeat. Only after the final defeat of Napoleonic France in 1815 and a treaty concluded between Austria and Bavaria in 1816 did the country and the city of Salzburg become definitively incorporated into the Austrian Monarchy.93

Even less information appears to have survived regarding the two Josephinian madhouses in Graz and Linz during the “silent” period between approximately 1800 and 1815. However, some basic data on the institutions’ operations were preserved, mainly in nineteenth-century publications. For Graz, in his account of the 100-year anniversary of the city’s general hospital published in 1889, the Styrian medical historian Viktor Fossel provided annual counts of the numbers of patients, beginning in 1789. According to him, the asylum housed between about 60 and 95 inmates per year in the early nineteenth century, with a peak between 1801 and 1804. Numbers dropped to 70–80 for the period from 1805 to 1812, reaching a low point of 58 in 1814.94 While the reasons for this decline are not explicitly documented, it was likely due to a lack of resources rather than a decrease in the number of mentally ill individuals in the region.

In Linz, the Prunerstift was reportedly capable of accommodating 32 inmates at the time, as described in Benedikt Pillwein’s 1824 publication on the city and its institutions. Yet in 1800, only 14 patients were housed there, and by 1824, the number had increased only modestly to 22. These relatively low numbers were attributed to the requirement that non-local communities in Upper Austria had to provide for their own mentally ill.95

Similarly, the total number of inmates at the Viennese madhouse (comprising the Narrenturm and lazaretto) declined rapidly from around 500–570 in the first years of the nineteenth century to approximately 430–460 between 1804 and 1811. In the final years of the Napoleonic wars, the numbers rose only slightly, reaching about 480–520. A closer look at Viennese statistical data, particularly the numbers of annual admissions and dismissals, reveals that this decline resulted from a combination of moderately reduced admissions, increased discharges, and higher mortality rates.96

Institutionalized Custody and Care for the Insane
during the Early Austrian Biedermeier Period

Shortly after the peace treaties concluded by the Congress of Vienna, Austrian governmental authorities once again devoted attention to the problems of inadequate facilities and overcrowding within Austrian madhouses. In 1818, a decision was made by the Hofkanzlei (Court Chancery) which had a lasting impact on the structure of funding for the whole of the poor relief and health care system in the Habsburg Monarchy for at least half a century, as the relevant institutions were now differentiated in two categories, one relating to organizations dealing with “cases, in which the overall wealth of the state is endangered by diseases” and another for institutions with purposes deemed less urgent. The institutions that belonged to the first class were then regarded as “state institutions” and were entitled to receive subsidies from the imperial treasury. In addition to the lazarettos and other facilities for the prevention of epidemics, they consisted of hospitals for venereal diseases, homes for foundlings, and madhouses. The institutions that belonged to the second class, which included medical, maternity, and other kinds of hospitals and hospices, were considered “local,” and funding was to be provided by the communities that made use of them.97

On the regional level, in Lower Austria, efforts to ameliorate the living conditions of the insane within the existing institutions quickly led to the creation of an auxiliary branch designed to house patients deemed both relatively peaceful and incurable outside of Vienna. In 1816, first the empty former monastery of Mauerbach (20 kilometers west of Vienna) was briefly converted into an insane asylum, accommodating 30 to 40 chronically mentally ill individuals. However, this initiative proved short-lived. Just one year later, the government repurposed former cavalry barracks in Ybbs, considerably farther from Vienna but offering much larger capacity, to house 300–400 mentally ill individuals. These patients were accommodated alongside other dependent persons in need of care. Significantly, the institution in Ybbs operated without any structured therapeutic regime, reflecting the concept of a Pflegeanstalt (nursing institution), where the focus was not on medical treatment but on containment. This custodial approach drew criticism from the first physician formally appointed to care for the mentally ill there in the 1840s, Carl Spurzheim (1810–1872). Spurzheim lamented that the institution had functioned as little more than a mere “depot” for the insane until the start of his tenure there.98 Despite the establishment of the Ybbs facility, concern about the quantitative and qualitative inadequacy of psychiatric infrastructure in Vienna persisted.

As early as the 1820s, public and professional voices began calling for a new, larger, purpose-built mental asylum in Vienna. In 1822, the administration of the Vienna General Hospital acquired the extensive vacant grounds at Bründlfeld, situated near the hospital, for this very purpose. Architectural plans were soon designed for a vast and impressive Irrenheilanstalt (institution for curing the insane; see Fig. 7).

Nevertheless, the lack of funds or, rather, the lack of will among the political elites to invest considerable sums for such a purpose led to the collapse of this project in 1829 before any construction work had started.99 Following this failed initiative, no major public project to expand psychiatric institutions in Vienna was launched for nearly two decades, despite the urgent and growing demand within the city’s health care system.

Some small expansion of the infrastructure for psychiatric treatments in Vienna occurred in 1828, when a further space within the General Hospital (a hall large enough to accommodate approximately 20 individuals) was de­signated as an “observation room” for newly admitted patients suspected of mentally illness.100 The overall annual number of patients housed within the various facilities collectively known as the Lower Austrian Irrenanstalt in Vienna rose to slightly above 600 in 1816 and 1817, thus surpassing the figures recorded around 1800. This was followed by a modest decline to approximately 540–570 in 1818–1820, but patient numbers rose again throughout the 1820s to about 620–630 in the early part of the decade and to sums between about 700 to nearly 800 individuals by its second half.101

The existing sources provide little evidence, however, of any improvements to conditions from the perspectives of accommodation, care, and treatment during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, new therapeutic measures were introduced (particularly in the “observation ward”) that probably exacerbated patient suffering. The German psychiatrist Wilhelm Horn (1803–1871), who visited Vienna in 1828, described the frequent use of the so-called Cox’s swing, a mechanical device that rapidly rotated the restrained patient with the intention of inducing nausea and vomiting. Some contemporary psychiatrists viewed this reaction as both disciplinary and curative. Horn also observed the regular use of the “Mundzwinge,” a gag-like apparatus invented by Johann Autenrieth (1772–1835), which forcibly prevented patients from crying out.

Within the “regular” departments of the Viennese asylum, the Narrenturm and the lazaretto, therapeutic practices may have been somewhat less brutal by comparison. However, the physical infrastructure of these institutions was widely regarded insufficient. Franz Güntner (1790–1882), who served as primary physician of the madhouse from 1826 to 1831 and succeeded Eisl in this position, still relied heavily on traditional remedies rooted in humoral pathology. Many of these medicines were designed to provoke strong bodily reactions, such as disgust, vomiting, diarrhea, and pain. Examples included the use of the “Autenrith’sche Salbe,” a skin-irritating ointment promoted by the aforementioned German physician, and the well-known tartar emetic. As a sedative drug, valerian (Valeriana officinalis) was commonly administered.102

In Graz as in Vienna, the available accommodation space within the mad­house had become grossly insufficient by the early nineteenth century. Around 1820, overcrowding had once again led to disastrous living conditions. The former Capuchin cloister, which contained only 26 cells and a few additional rooms for staff and infrastructural needs, was forced to house approximately 90 detainees over the course of one year, a situation reminiscent of the immediate post-1800 period. By 1825, the annual number of inmates had surged even to 130. Even if the number of individuals present at any one time was considerably lower, the chronic lack of space necessitated that each small former monastic cell had to be shared by two or three mentally ill persons. This practice, especially in the case of agitated and raving individuals, could only be maintained through the constant use of mechanical restraints. In 1829, after more than a decade of planning, the next phase of the asylum’s expansion was finally realized. The institution was extended with the purchase of the so-called Röchenzaun’sche Häuser adjacent to it, which then were used in part for the asylum and partly for the Gebärhaus (birthing house) of the city. The urgency of this expansion is evidenced by the immediate and steep rise in the number of patients, which leapt to 168 already in 1830.103

No physician was employed to care specifically for the inmates of the madhouse after 1815; instead, medical responsibility remained a secondary entrusted to doctors of the general hospital in Graz. Even when the Styrian government formally petitioned, in the late 1820s, for the creation of a salaried post for a chief asylum physician (suggesting an annual wage of 200 florins, a sum markedly lower than that of a grammar school teacher, which came to 450–800 florins at the time), the request was denied by the authorities in Vienna. The position was ultimately filled without remuneration when Dr. Albert Ritter von Kalchberg (ca. 1800 – after 1877), the son of the wealthy noble landowner, historian, and politician Johann Ritter von Kalchberg (1765–1827), agreed to serve without salary in exchange for free accommodation within the asylum. It was not until 1832 that a financial compensation was approved for the asylum’s primary physician.104

Living conditions at the asylum in Graz remained harsh throughout these decades, as was openly acknowledged in early 1840s by Dr. Wenzel Streinz (1792–1876), who was then chief health officer of the whole of Styria. In his brochure Die Versorgungsanstalten zu Grätz, Streinz critically observed that the madhouse served primarily as a custodial facility rather than a therapeutic one:

According to its original and still current regulations, that institution serves the care of insane, raving, and lunatic persons, for whom accommodation in such a specifically designated facility appears necessary to render the outbreaks of their mental confusions harmless to them and others. Therefore, the madhouse in Grätz [sic] remains nothing more than a place of detention and nursing for such individuals, the vast majority of whom remained unhealed and spend [the rest of] their lifetime there—largely because they were already in a chronic and therefore incurable stage of illness. Nevertheless, occasionally single recoveries do occur, though they must be considered fortunate accidents, since all the conditions required for a systematically arranged curative institute for the mentally ill are still lacking.105

Remarkably, this was the same Dr. Streinz who had earlier served as chief health officer in Upper Austria and had become director of the Linz asylum after it was designated a state institution in 1824.106 Streinz advocated for the purchase of a new, more suitable facility for the mentally ill in Linz soon after his appointment. However, these efforts were ultimately thwarted due to financial concerns. In the absence of a new site, the existing building was modified to function, to the extent possible, as a proper asylum. According to Anton Knörlein (1802–1872), who became director of the institute in 1837, the reforms introduced by Streinz in the 1820s included the removal of the old, foul-smelling wooden flooring, the provision of proper equipment and laundry, and the abandonment of the use of chains as restraints. By the early 1830s, the numbers of inmates at the asylum in Linz also had risen considerably. Knörlein recorded 48 inmates at the end of 1833 and a total of 86 patients treated during 1834. Yet in Upper Austria the request for the appointment of a salaried physician was likewise rejected at the time by the Viennese authorities. A paid position for a doctor of medicine at the institute was only established in 1837, after the then-responsible physician Georg Meisinger (1799–1874) had resigned from his unpaid post.107

In Salzburg, the development of a dedicated asylum, understood as an institution with its own administrative structure and qualified, specialized appointed staff, had been envisioned since around 1780, but no concrete steps were taken in this direction until 1815, as previously noted. This situation only changed after a devastating fire in 1818 destroyed large parts of the old suburb am Stein, which had been home to 1,154 persons, the Bruderhaus included.108 The hospitalized insane survived the blaze thanks to the efforts of compassionate townspeople, but those among them who were agitated had to be tied to trees outside the city gates for two days and two nights, until the so-called Kammerlohrhaus (a small former correctional house) in the suburb of Mülln was hastily prepared to receive them.109 Contemporary physicians soon judged this new facility inadequate for its use as an asylum for the mentally ill. It had only 17 small, dimly lit chambers, and its staff was considered insufficient. In 1830, three attendants were responsible for all care duties, and a lack of space restricted the number of inmates to around 20, which was less than needed. In contrast to the asylums in Vienna, Linz, and Graz, the Salzburg madhouse was never designated a state institute during the Vormärz period. Rather, it remained a locally administered institution until its closure in 1852.110 An 1850 account still described it, despite the presence of medical support, as “a mere institute for detention.”111

As mentioned in the introduction to this article, two additional asylums were founded between 1815 and 1830. In Klagenfurt, a former prison was provisionally adapted in 1822 to accommodate up to 40 mentally ill individuals.112 More significantly, in 1830, a new asylum was established in Hall in Tyrol, housed in a former monastery. Unlike its predecessors, this institution was explicitly designed as an Irrenheilanstalt, i.e., a facility for curing the mad. Thus, it was the first such functioning institution in the Habsburg Monarchy. The subsequent development of this asylum, along with the development of the other asylums after 1830, lies beyond the scope of the present study.113

Conclusion

The article has demonstrated, in broad consensus with the secondary literature on the subject that in the Austrian context, the Enlightenment era brought with it a declared intention to treat individuals suffering from serious mental disorders humanely and, as far as possible, to cure them through the methods of emerging psychiatry. However, neither sufficient political and social attention nor, more crucially, an ethical commitment to invest adequate financial resources accompanied this ambition. The nascent Josephinist welfare system of late eighteenth-century Austria was generally shaped by a paternalistic if not outright autocratic ethos. In this framework, the primary goal of early public madhouses was clearly the preservation of public order and not to nurture or further the wellbeing of the inmates. Even if such institutions were, with a few possible exceptions, not purposefully used for the interment of politically inconvenient but mentally sound individuals, their core function remained custodial, not therapeutic.114

Providing truly adequate living conditions for the mentally ill would have required more spacious and appropriate housing and also a significantly larger and better-trained staff. This, in turn, would have incurred considerably higher costs, resources that neither the imperial court nor the central or regional authorities nor even local communities were willing to provide, especially not for the vast majority of inmates, who hailed from ordinary or poor family backgrounds. In contrast, wealthier individuals and those of higher social status who suffered from mental illness often had access to private care at home or could be accommodated in one of Vienna’s private asylums.

Apart from the inmates themselves and, in some cases, their family members, the staff of these early mental asylums were those most consistently confronted with the harsh realities of contemporary asylum life. Physicians, surgeons, supervisors, administrators, and occasionally priests, as the most educated and highest-ranking professional groups involved, often gave sobering descriptions of the conditions in the asylums and the treatments sometimes used. Many of these accounts adopted an explicitly critical stance towards the institutions in which their authors worked. In contrast, the experience and perspectives of lower-ranking staff, such as keepers, servants, nurses, and so-called “old women,” are only rarely documented and thus remain largely inaccessible to historians.

Personal testimonies of inmates themselves from the early phase of institutional psychiatry are similarly scarce. Where they exist, these rare accounts are of particular value for research into the history of psychiatric patients.115 However, a deeper exploration of these sources, from the perspective of patient history, lies beyond the scope of this overview, as does any look into the early stages of academic psychiatry in Austria, which, at least from the perspective of publications, was limited in quantity and, with a few exceptions, also of limited importance for the further development of the discipline,116 at least until the 1830s, when Ernst von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) published Zur Diätetik der Seele. The focus here instead has been on fundamental institutional and structural aspects of the emergence of psychiatry in Austria, especially with regard to the early developments and limitations of public asylums during the late Enlightenment and Vormärz periods.

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1. 1 For an earlier account covering the period until 1850, see: Watzka, “Psychiatrische Anstalten.” All translations of quotations from German are mine.

2. 2 This fact is surprising, given that Austria is the home country of Sigmund Freud. On the lamentable state of historical knowledge regarding mental health in Austria at the end of the twentieth century see: Springer, “Historiography and History of Psychiatry,” 251.

3. 3 See especially: Watzka, Arme, Kranke, Verrückte; Pichlkastner, “Eine Stadt in der Stadt”; Pichlkastner, “Bier, Wein, Kapitalien”; Pichlkastner, “Physicus”; Watzka, “Stellenwert und Gestaltung”; Watzka, “Mehr als bloß Exorzismus”; Lobenwein, “Medizin- und Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte”; Watzka, “Heuhaufen und Nadeln”; Ammerer and Watzka, “Der Teufel in Graz”; Ammerer, “Exorzismus und animalischer Magnetismus”; Ammerer et al., Dämonen.

4. 4 On differentiations and overlaps between these systems of health-oriented actions see especially: Gentilcore, Healers and Healing. With regard to mental disorders: Watzka, “Interpretationen des Irrsinns.”

5. 5 Contemporary terms used to designate individuals suffering from mental illnesses are employed here without further remarks on their often particularly stigmatizing character today, of which I am, of course, aware.

6. 6 See especially: Doerner, Madmen and the Bourgeoisie; Foucault, Madness and Civilization; Goffman, Asylums.

7. 7 Porter, Madness; Porter, Madmen; Kaufmann, Aufklärung; Scull, Madness in Civilization.

8. 8 See for example: Eghigian, The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health.

9. 9 On the social history of the Enlightenment see: Bell, “For a New Social History.” On its particular variant in Austria: Beales, Enlightenment and Reform; Fillafer, Aufklärung habsburgisch.

10. 10 On the temporal-spatial pattern of the establishment of madhouses and psychiatric institutions across Europe see the exhaustive compilations done by Dieter Jetter in the 1980s, especially: Jetter, Geschichte des Hospitals.

11. 11 See for example: Watzka, Vom Hospital zum Krankenhaus; Scheutz et al., Europäisches Spitalwesen.

12. 12 See Gabriel, “Psychiatrische Einrichtungen,” esp. 195.

13. 13 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm. See earlier scholarly contributions reflecting on the period until 1850: Lesky, “Wiener Psychiatrie im Vormärz”; Jetter, “Zur Entwicklung der Irrenfürsorge”; Jetter, “Wiener Irrenhausprojekte”; Jetter, Geschichte des Hospitals; Fellner, “‘Irre’ und Gesellschaft”; Gröger et al., Zur Geschichte der Psychiatrie in Wien; Brenner, “Der Wiener ‘Narrenturm’”; Gabriel, “Psychiatrische Einrichtungen im Erzherzogtum unter der Enns.” Moreover, Stohl, Der Narrenturm, albeit a speculative work by a non-academic, and engaged mainly with an alleged hermetic meaning of the building itself, must not be neglected, due to interesting hints which remain partly relevant for professional historiographic scholarship.

14. 14 See Dietrich-Daum and Ralser, “Die ‘Psychiatrische Landschaft’”; Dietrich-Daum and Heidegger, “Menschen in Institutionen”; Dietrich-Daum and Heidegger, “Die k. k. Provinzial-Irrenanstalt Hall in Tirol”; Dietrich-Daum and Taddei, “Psychiatrische Versorgung am Land.”

15. 15 See especially: Heidegger, Sorgen um die Seele; Heidegger, “Lärm macht (Un-)Sinn”; Heidegger, “Der Teufel als Ohrwurm”; Heidegger, “Schmerz, Männlichkeit und Religion”; Heidegger, “’Zur Erregung eines angenehmen Lebensgefühls”; Heidegger, “The Devil in the Madhouse”; Heidegger, “Psychiatrische Pflege.”

16. 16 See Lumetzberger, Das öffentliche Irrenwesen; Waitzbauer, Vom Irrenhaus; Telsnig, “…Trotl bin ich nicht.”

17. 17 See the sketch in Watzka, “Psychiatrische Anstalten.” The ecclesiastical principality of Salzburg only became a part of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1816, even if, in terms of political and economic relations, it had been closely linked to the Monarchy for centuries.

18. 18 See Hoffmann, 200 Jahre psychiatrisches Krankenhaus; Hoffmann et al., “Zur Geschichte der Psychiatrie in Oberösterreich”; Plass, “Die Stiftung des Johann Adam Pruner.” In turn, the history of psychiatry for the twentieth century and its darkest period (the mass murder of mentally ill individuals at Hartheim Castle during the national socialist regime in particular) is well documented. See Kepplinger et al., Tötungsanstalt Hartheim; Schwanninger and Zauner-Leitner, Lebensspuren. On the cruel history of Austrian mental hospitals during World War I, see especially: Schwanninger and Rachbauer, Krieg und Psychiatrie.

19. 19 See Weiss, Im Zeichen von Panther & Schlange; Weiss, “Gestörte Seelen”; Watzka, “Die ‘Landes-irrenanstalt Feldhof bei Graz’”; Watzka, Vom Armenhaus.

20. 20 See Posch, Landeskrankenhaus Klagenfurt; Frick, Geschichte der Krankenhäuser Kärntens; Künstl, “‘Mögen in diesen lichten Räumen…’”; Platz, “Die Anfänge.”

21. 21 Due to the structure of the competences of the authorities, the archival sources on early Austrian psychiatric institutions are mainly found in the Austrian National Archives (Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, for the most part within the department Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv), the Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, and the other archives of the regional authorities (the provincial archives in Lower Austria [Niederösterreich], Upper Austria [Oberösterreich], Styria [Steiermark], Carinthia [Kärnten], Salzburg, and Tyrol [Tirol]), whereas community, church, and university archives are of less importance. They are of considerable use, however, from the perspective of biographical questions relating to individual staff members or patients, as well as building history.

22. 22 For an overview of the history of medicine in eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Austria see: Wimmer, Gesundheit, Krankheit und Tod; Lesky, Österreichisches Gesundheitswesen; Lesky, Wiener medizinische Schule. For the early history of poor care see especially: Scheutz and Weiß, Spital als Lebensform; Scheutz, “Demand and Charitable Supply.”

23. 23 See esp. Jetter, Grundzüge; Watzka, Vom Hospital zum Krankenhaus, 92–97.

24. 24 Frank, System einer vollständigen medicinischen Polizey.

25. 25 See Pfeiffer, Allgemeines Krankenhaus; Grois, Allgemeines Krankenhaus.

26. 26 Weiß, Geschichte der öffentlichen Anstalten, esp. c–cii.

27. 27 See Foucault, Madness and Civilization; Foucault, Discipline and Punish.

28. 28 Cited in: Weiß, Geschichte der öffentlichen Anstalten, cii.

29. 29 See Klein, Historisches Ortslexikon – Wien, 2.

30. 30 On the history of Viennese poorhouses see: Scheutz and Weiss, Das Spital in der Frühen Neuzeit, 205–16. For penitentiaries and workhouses see: Ammerer and Weiß, Strafe, Besserung und Disziplin.

31. 31 Pichlkastner, “Eine Stadt in der Stadt,” 120–30, 394–402.

32. 32 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, esp. 20–21, 47, 76.

33. 33 Watzka, Vom Hospital zum Krankenhaus, esp. 154–81.

34. 34 On this issue see especially: Lehner, Mönche und Nonnen im Klosterkerker.

35. 35 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 36–37. On the concept of stigmatization see: Goffman, Stigma.

36. 36 Wittelshöfer, Wien’s Heil- und Humanitätsanstalten, 44. See also: Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 37.

37. 37 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 82.

38. 38 Ibid., 41, 104, 403.

39. 39 Watzka, “Psychiatrische Anstalten,” 54.

40. 40 The concepts of biopolitics and biopower stem from Michel Foucault. See especially: Foucault, Will to Knowledge; Foucault, Security, Territory, Population; Foucault, Birth of Biopolitics.

41. 41 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 77, 122.

42. 42 See Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 55–62. See also: Stohl and Hasenhütl, “Zur architektonischen Form des Narrenturms.”

43. 43 See Stohl, Der Narrenturm.

44. 44 Brambilla, Rede auf den Tod des Kaisers Joseph II., s.p. [24].

45. 45 This conclusion is suggested in: Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 70.

46. 46 Famous examples include the tomb of Diocletian in Split, the Baptistery of the Lateran Palace in Rome, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Chapel of Grace in Altötting, Bavaria, and the Castel del Monte near Bari. See Heinz, Kleine Kulturgeschichte der Achtzahl.

47. 47 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 42, 79, 403.

48. 48 Brenner, “Der Wiener ‘Narrenturm,” 58–59; Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 89.

49. 49 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 90–92, 103–4, 129.

50. 50 Rohrer, Gemählde von Wien, 44.

51. 51 See Porter, Madness; Doerner, Madmen and the Bourgeoisie; Foucault, Mental Illness and Psychology.

52. 52 See Hoffmann, Das Wiener k. k. allgemeine Krankenhaus, 86.

53. 53 Viszánik, Leistungen und Statistik, 3.

54. 54 See Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 106, 125–27; Puschmann, Die Medicin in Wien, 136–37.

55. 55 See Brenner, “Der Wiener ‘Narrenturm,” 60–61; Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 94, 131.

56. 56 Viszánik’s Leistungen und Statistik is the best known but not the earliest source. See also: Wagner, “Anmerkungen,” 361–64; Puschmann, Die Medicin in Wien, 82; Wittelshöfer, Heil- und Humanitätsanstalten, esp. 201–2. See Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, especially 83–89, 346–64.

57. 57 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 44, 80, 85–88.

58. 58 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 99–103. Note that this constellation of a differentiation of living conditions according to the “disciplinary behavior” of inmates corresponds to the system of inner departmentalization still to be found in the psychiatric clinic studied by Goffman through participant observation in the 1950s, which led him to the idea of the so-called “total institution.” See Goffman, Asylums.

59. 59 Wagner, Anmerkungen, 359.

60. 60 See Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 129–33.

61. 61 Harrer, “Das Irrenwesen im Herzogthum Salzburg.” See also: Zillner, “Salzburgisches Irrenwesen.”

62. 62 On the earlier stages of reactions to mental disorders in Bavaria see: Lederer, Madness, Religion and the State.

63. 63 See Besl, “Die Entwicklung des handwerklichen Medizinalwesens,” Part 2, 136.

64. 64 See Lobenwein et al., Herrschaft in Zeiten des Umbruchs.

65. 65 Founded by Archbishop Colloredo, quoted in: Waitzbauer, Vom Irrenhaus, 17. See also: Lumetzberger, Das öffentliche Irrenwesen; Scheutz and Weiss, Spital als Lebensform, 129–30.

66. 66 Decree from year 1800, quoted in: Harrer, “Das Irrenwesen im Herzogthum Salzburg,” 9.

67. 67 For his biographical data see Pirchmayer, “Adolf Maximilian Ritter von Steinhauser,” 37–38.

68. 68 Quoted in: Harrer, “Das Irrenwesen im Herzogthum Salzburg,”11–12.

69. 69 See Harrer, “Das Irrenwesen im Herzogthum Salzburg,” 11; Brettenthaler, “Vom alten ‘Irrenhaus’,” 246–47.

70. 70 See Plass, “Die Stiftung des Johann Adam Pruner,” especially 36, 68–69, 80; Pillwein, Beschreibung, 264; Heinse, Linz, 38, 44. For the general hospital in Linz, see: Hahn-Oberthaler and Obermüller, 150 Jahre Gesundheit.

71. 71 See Hoffmann et al., “Zur Geschichte der Psychiatrie in Oberösterreich,” 204; Schnopfhagen, “Die o.ö. Landes-Irren-Heil und Pflegeanstalt Niederhart-Linz,” 174.

72. 72 See Knörlein, Die Irren-Angelegenheiten, 13, 24–28; Pillwein, Beschreibung, 262–64.

73. 73 See Fossel, Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses, 13–14.

74. 74 On the history of the institutions, see especially: Hammer-Luza, Im Arrest; Huber-Reismann, 300 Jahre Altenversorgung. On early modern hospitals in Styria: Watzka, Arme, Kranke, Verrückte. For the whole of the Austrian Hereditary Lands: Scheutz and Weiss, Das Spital in der Frühen Neuzeit; Scheutz and Weiss, Spital als Lebensform.

75. 75 See Fossel, Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses, 17–23; Watzka, Vom Armenhaus, 308; Weiss, “Gestörte Seelen,” 42–43.

76. 76 During the second half of eighteenth century, the mentally ill were held, in larger or smaller numbers, for longer or shorter periods of time, in poorhouses, sick houses, civic hospitals, court hospitals, lazarettos, the Hospitals of the Order of Saint John of God, the Hospital of the Order of Elizabeth, and voluntary workhouses. They were also sometimes held in prisons, such as the one at Schlossberg. See Watzka, Arme, Kranke, Verrückte; Huber-Reismann, 300 Jahre Altenversorgung; Hammer-Luza, Im Arrest, 357–62.

77. 77 See Koenig, Skitze von Grätz, vol. 2, 240; Fossel, Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses, 3–32, 122.

78. 78 For his biographical data see Matsch, Die Auswärtige Dienst, 116–17.

79. 79 Welsperg, Umständliche Beschreibung, s.p. [37–43].

80. 80 See Toifl, “Franzosenzeit in der Steiermark.”

81. 81 See Vocelka, Glanz und Untergang; Münch, Österreich gegen Napoleon.

82. 82 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 148, 353.

83. 83 Quoted in Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 150. For biographical data concerning Eisl see: Puschmann, Die Medicin in Wien, 156; Hof- und Staats-Handbuch 1845, 95.

84. 84 See Doerner, Madmen and the Bourgeoisie; Porter, Madmen.

85. 85 See Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 152, 188.

86. 86 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 148–49, 162. In 1820, Goergen published a booklet promoting his asylum in German and French. See Goergen, Privat-Heilanstalt.

87. 87 See Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950, vol. 2, 191–92.

88. 88 Report by Steinhauser cited in: Harrer, “Das Irrenwesen im Herzogthum Salzburg,” 13–14.

89. 89 See especially Leibbrand and Wettley, Der Wahnsinn; Kutzer, Anatomie des Wahnsinns.

90. 90 Steinhauser, quoted in: Harrer, “Das Irrenwesen im Herzogthum Salzburg,” 14–15.

91. 91 Quoted in: Harrer, “Das Irrenwesen im Herzogthum Salzburg,” 15. See Waitzbauer, Vom Irrenhaus; Lumetzberger, Das öffentliche Irrenwesen.

92. 92 Harrer, “Das Irrenwesen im Herzogthum Salzburg,” 17.

93. 93 See Zaisberger, Geschichte Salzburgs; Dopsch and Hoffmann, Salzburg.

94. 94 See Fossel, Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses, 122.

95. 95 See Hoffmann et al., “Zur Geschichte der Psychiatrie,” 205; Pillwein, Beschreibung, 264.

96. 96 See Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 352–53.

97. 97 See Weiß, Geschichte der öffentlichen Anstalten, clvii–clviii.

98. 98 See Watzka, “Psychiatrische Anstalten,” 362; Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 153–56.

99. 99 See Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 175.

100. 100 A subsequent expansion of the structure of the general hospital was made when two additional halls were repurposed for the use of the asylum in 1845. See Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 176–77.

101. 101 Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 354.

102. 102 See Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, especially 149, 175, 186–93.

103. 103 See Streinz, Die Versorgungs-Anstalten, especially 24–25; Fossel, Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses, 122; Watzka, Vom Armenhaus, especially 311–12.

104. 104 See Fossel, Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses, esp. 50; Streinz, Die Versorgungs-Anstalten, 24–26.

105. 105 Streinz, Die Versorgungs-Anstalten, 24–25. See Watzka, Vom Armenhaus, 312.

106. 106 See Knörlein, “Kurzgefasste Geschichte der Heilanstalten,” especially 27–29.

107. 107 See Knörlein, Irren-Angelegenheiten, especially the title page, 14–15, 42.

108. 108 See Baumgartner et al., “Die Flammen lodern wütend.”

109. 109 Waitzbauer, Vom Irrenhaus, 20–22, citing two different eye-witness reports. The edifice in Müllner Hauptstraße 48 still exists but was heavily rebuilt over the course of the following decades.

110. 110 See Waitzbauer, Vom Irrenhaus, 23–30; Lumetzberger, Das öffentliche Irrenwesen.

111. 111 See Tettinek, Armen-Verorgungs- und Heilanstalten, 178–79.

112. 112 Posch, Landeskrankenhaus Klagenfurt, 230; Platz, “Die Anfänge.”

113. 113 See esp., Dietrich-Daum, Elisabeth et al., Psychiatrische Landschaften.

114. 114 See the very informative deliberations given in: Vitecek, Der Wiener Narrenturm, 425–34.

115. 115 For this topic, see especially the studies by Heidegger cited above.

116. 116 Only in retrospective, the concept of “animal magnetism” by Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), elaborated in Vienna during the 1770s, was regarded as an important forerunner of psychodynamics. “Phrenology,” developed by Dr. Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), who had also studied in Vienna, in turn, was certainly of some relevance for the history of nineteenth-century medicine, but rather for neurology and brain anatomy, than for psychiatry. Some actual impact, yet, on the development of genuinely psychiatric knowledge was made by the works on mania and suicide, written in the late eighteenth century by the Austrian physician Dr. Leopold Auenbrugger (1722–1809) and by the contributions of Dr. Philipp Karl Hartmann (1773–1830), professor for general pathology, therapy and materia medica, on mental health and psychopathology. See Gabriel et al., Zur Geschichte der Psychiatrie in Wien.

The Journalistic Activity of Rosika Schwimmer
from the 1890s until her Death in a Transnational Perspective

Dóra Fedeles-Czeferner

ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 459-490 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.459

This paper examines the journalistic career of Rosika Schwimmer, a prominent Hungarian feminist and pacifist, from the 1890s until her death. It situates her work within the broader historical context of transnational feminist and pacifist movements of the early twentieth century. Schwimmer’s career was shaped by a wide network of contacts in the international progressive women’s movement. Her activism enhanced her visibility as a public intellectual, but her controversial pacifist stance later led to political isolation and negatively affected her professional opportunities after emigrating to the United States. Throughout her life, Schwimmer used the press as a tool for activism and as a platform for self-promotion. The paper also explores her qualifications, skill sets, and the range of publications she contributed to, which included liberal newspapers and feminist journals.

The paper also provides insights into the challenges women faced in journalism in the first half of the 20th century, contrasting two articles from 1912 and 1914 that present opposing views on women’s prospects in the field. Schwimmer’s career began with translations, which served as a gateway to international journalism. She published in Hungarian, German, and later English-language journals, often on topics like women’s rights, peace advocacy, and international cooperation. Her controversial and eccentric personality led to conflicts with colleagues, which also shaped her professional image and legacy. The paper concludes with a case study of her articles from 1919–1920, which illustrate the fusion of her political and journalistic identities.

Key words: Rosika Schwimmer, journalism, feminist, pacifist, women’s rights, activism, transnational, Hungary, international press.

Introduction

In October 1912, A Nő és a Társadalom (Woman and Society), a journal published in Budapest between 1907 and 1913 as the first official press organ of the Budapest-based Feministák Egyesülete (Feminists’ Association, or FE) and Nőtisztviselők Országos Egyesülete (National Association of Female Clerks, or NOE), included a short article in its Szemle (Review) column. According to the author of this article, who wished to remain anonymous, “the new phenomenon in the occupation of female labor is the employment of women in the field of political journalism.” The author could not, of course, undertake an analysis of the general trends in this phenomenon in such a short article, but (s)he did provide a number of examples in support of his/her arguments. In addition to journalists from Budapest, the article shares the names of female reporters living and working in Timişoara (or Temesvár by its Hungarian name; today a city in Romania).1 Because the text emphasized the importance of Timişoara, we might suppose that it was written by the leader of the FE’s Political Committee, Rosika Schwimmer, who had grown up in the city and was obviously familiar with local conditions. By that time, she had emerged as an internationally well-known progressive feminist activist and pacifist. She would have been a logical choice as author, as she was the editor-in-chief of A Nő és a Társadalom, which by the early 1910s had a nationwide circulation in Hungary. The article also mentions the women editors of a political daily in the southern regions of Hungary and in Transylvania. Furthermore, it lists a few women from the membership and supporter circles of NOE and FE who were employed by various daily newspapers published in Budapest. At the end of the text (which is only 15 lines long), the author expresses his/her wish that “we do hope that professional women journalists will replace the sports journalists who are damaging through the amateurism and imitation of male writers.”2

This was not the only time that A Nő és a Társadalom devoted attention to women journalists. However, after a series of articles was published in this organ encouraging women’s empowerment in journalism, reporting, and editing, A Nő. Feminista Folyóirat (Woman. A Feminist Journal), which was the successor to A Nő és a Társadalom, began to deal with the issue. In one article, it reported on journalism courses that were organized for women in Budapest. The author of the article is identified merely as “A woman reporter.” The relatively detailed and long article approaches the issue from several different aspects and argues that “Hungarian journalism is closed to women’s contributions.” After discussing the reasons for the “male domination” of newspaper editorial offices, the author explains that, “with a few exceptions […] the situation and living conditions of women writers and journalists are dire […], their position is uncertain, and their success is sometimes dependent on petty considerations.” The author therefore warns women who are about to embark on a career in journalism not to do so. She claims that even if they succeed, they will almost certainly fall victim to the exploitative attitudes of male editors.3

While the article published in 1912 is entirely optimistic about women’s prospects in journalism, the article which appeared two years later is negative. This can be interpreted in several ways. The interpretations can be linked to the structural characteristics of the two journals and the editorial motivations behind their publication. Like many of the short news items in the two periodicals, which share many similarities in terms of structure, content, and style, the earlier text seems to have been intended to inspire the readers with propagandistic elements. The author of the 1912 text clearly wanted to convey the message that women were able to succeed in careers in journalism and editing that had previously been almost entirely dominated by men. The 1914 article, in contrast, is a longer, analytical piece. In its structure and length, it is a problematic article that uses every possible argument and rhetorical device to dissuade women from pursuing careers in journalism. Of course, the author of the article may have been several reasons for writing this. However, given her identity (a “female reporter” who chose to keep her name secret), she may also have sought to discourage other women from becoming journalists, as they might have been competition for her.4

The reality is roughly halfway between the claims made in the two articles. As early as the 1880s, a few Hungarian women were able to make a living from journalism and editorial work.5 At the turn of the century, Rosika Schwimmer was one of these women. She made an unparalleled contribution as a journalist, author, and periodical editor in Hungary, western Europe, and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century.6

This paper explores the key turning points in Rosika Schwimmer’s journalistic career, situating her work within the broader historical context of early twentieth-century transnational feminist and pacifist movements. I argue that from the outset of her career, Schwimmer benefited from substantial support from prominent figures in the international progressive women’s movement, particularly in Austria, the Netherlands, and the United States. This network of allies significantly shaped her trajectory as both a journalist and editor. Drawing on the growing historiography of transnational feminism and the role of the press in women’s activism,7 I show how Schwimmer’s involvement in the women’s and peace movements intersected with and influenced her professional path. During the formative years of her career, her activist engagement enhanced her visibility and credibility as a public intellectual. However, this relationship became ambivalent following her emigration to the United States, where increasing political isolation, amplified by her controversial pacifist stance, negatively affected her professional opportunities and public reception.

Throughout her life, Schwimmer sought to utilize the press not only as a tool for activism but also as a platform to construct and maintain her own public persona. Her self-branding strategies can be understood in light of recent literature on women’s authorship and media,8 which underscores how women navigated public discourses through journalism. At the same time, her strong and eccentric personality led to frequent conflicts with colleagues and collaborators, and these tensions shaped her professional image and legacy. This paper also investigates Schwimmer’s qualifications and the specific skill sets that made her well-suited to a journalistic career. What kind of formal or informal training did she have? What editorial or rhetorical techniques characterized her work? I map the types of publications she contributed to, which ranged from liberal newspapers to feminist journals, and I examine the scope and reach of these press outlets within and beyond Hungary. In terms of content and genre, Schwimmer wrote primarily on issues related to women’s rights, peace advocacy, and international cooperation. Her work spanned various formats, including editorials, news reports, and opinion pieces, reflecting a deep commitment to both activism and professional journalism.

The article concludes with a close reading of a three-part series of articles published by Schwimmer at the turn of 1919–1920. I interpret this series as a form of ars poetica for her activism, or in other words as a reflection on her political ethos and the challenges of sustaining idealism amid disillusionment and exile. This case study illustrates the fusion of her political and journalistic identities and sheds light on the intellectual and emotional foundations of her lifelong struggle for peace and women’s emancipation.

Sources

In addition to meticulously preserving her correspondence and documents related to her personal life and political activism, Schwimmer also archived her journalistic writings, organizing them as a distinct section within the Rosika Schwimmer Papers in the New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division.9 Her extensive documentation practices, driven by a tendency toward graphomania, a growing compulsion for systematization, and a persistent need for self-vindication following her unsuccessful diplomatic mission in Switzerland as envoy of the Hungarian government in 1918, are especially evident in Series 2 of the collection, which comprises twelve boxes. In this section, carefully sorted and catalogued published and unpublished articles can be found from the period between 1896 to 1948. These articles are supplemented with notes and research materials, partly produced by Schwimmer herself. Her secretaries also included the different references/reactions Schwimmer received to her articles between 1899 and 1940. Regarding the correspondence she carried on with the editors of the journals she published in, however, only a small fraction can be found here.10 The archivists who organized the collection have integrated the vast majority of these materials into the 465 boxes of Schwimmer’s general correspondence (Series 1).11

The six publication indexes, which have also been preserved in this series of the collection, contain Schwimmer’s articles published in Hungarian, German, English, and French, as well as references to her early writings. The indexes include her writings published in Hungary, further regions of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Europe, and the United States of America in chronological order.12 Schwimmer’s short articles are also included here, the majority of which had been published anonymously or under pseudonyms. These were submitted to the review sections of various Austrian and German journals, and most of them appeared in the early 1900s. A tremendous amount of manuscripts can also be found here, partly with notes made by editors and proofreaders.

Schwimmer’s Journalistic Career within the Context of Women’s
Intellectual Work

It is essential to begin with an examination of Rosika Schwimmer’s journalistic career within the broader context of women’s intellectual labor at the fin-de-siècle. After this, I briefly analyze the particular situation of Schwimmer and her family background. The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century was a period marked by profound social and cultural transformations in East Central Europe.13 It can be characterized as one of the most turbulent periods in the economic, social, and cultural development of the region, including Austria and Hungary. Vienna was at the forefront of the adaptation of modern Western culture within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but Budapest also played an important role.14

The innovations of the industrial revolutions, the development of transport, communications, and the press, as well as the gradual expansion of institutional education greatly expanded the world of traditionally closed communities. Distances that had seemed unbridgeable in previous decades were shortened, and the flow of ideas and information accelerated rapidly, alongside the flow of products. However, it was not until the establishment of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1867 that Hungary began to experience a major economic boom. The social and economic changes, the growing “surplus of women,” and the increasing number of widows even before World War I forced more and more women into the world of paid work. This was exacerbated by the economic crisis of 1873 and the subsequent recurrent recessions. Marriage was therefore no longer a “solution” for all women in society, as the example of Rosika Schwimmer also illustrates.15

The increased participation of women in the labor market began in the late 1880s, i.e. around the time of Schwimmer’s birth. In 1900, more than a quarter of women (27.6 percent) were already working to earn an income in Hungary, with a higher proportion (36.1 percent) in the capital. The general trend was for girls to start working at a very young age, but the majority of them stopped working after they got married. In 1910, 70 percent of working women were unmarried.

After the turn of the century, the structural transformation of the economy in the Dual Monarchy led to the feminization of certain professions. In many cases, this led to the reduction of the prestige these professions had enjoyed.16 Until World War I and in many respects even in the interwar period, a large part of public opinion, still dominated by men, considered women unfit to do work requiring serious concentration. Nevertheless, even before 1914, the number of women employed in certain intellectual jobs in agriculture, industry, and the service sector had begun to increase gradually.17 Importantly, however, a significant proportion of women did not “rush” into the world of labor of their own free will, but in response to overwhelming pressures. The postponement of marriage compelled women to support themselves financially. Over time, these multifaceted social transformations contributed to a growing recognition that the role of a wife could be reconciled with participation in the paid labor market.18

The Budapest-born and, by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, internationally renowned Rosika Schwimmer was a women’s rights and peace movement activist and also editor-in-chief and author for the first Hungarian feminist journal, A Nő és a Társadalom. She was born into a middle-class Jewish family as the oldest of three children. After her father’s bankruptcy, the family had to leave Budapest. From the age of six, Schwimmer grew up in parts of Transylvania and also in the cities of Timişoara in the region known as Banat and Subotica in the region known as Vojvodina. She moved back to Budapest in the middle of the 1890s and lived there until 1920. She attended primary school in Budapest and Transylvania. For a while, she was educated in a convent school that she later criticized harshly, and she graduated from a public school for girls. She also enrolled in a special school for commerce. She became proficient in several languages aside from Hungarian: German, English, and French, and she was able to communicate in Dutch, Italian, Swedish, and Norwegian. In the capital, she worked as a governess and later as a female clerk, meaning she became well aware of the troubles faced by working women.19

Schwimmer’s journalistic activity has to be examined within the context of women’s paid work for several reasons. First, she could not rely on her impoverished father for financial support, and she thus had to support herself from a relatively young age. From the sources on Schwimmer’s income and expenditures, it is clear that she could not or did not want to rely on her husband Béla Bédy’s support during their comparatively brief marriage. Bédy was also a journalist, but their marriage only lasted from 1911 until 1913. Thus, Schwimmer needed money, which may explain why, in addition to progressive, feminist journals, she also published in the organs of social democratic women’s organizations and even in several fashion magazines. Schwimmer needed the money she earned from journalism throughout her entire life, including the decades she spent in emigration in the United States. Even a few weeks before her death, she noted among her medical records that “it would be much more useful if I wrote my article [instead of these notes on the state of my health]. Everyone reads articles, but no one will read these…”20

Schwimmer did not remain, however, at the level of the average female journalist. By the eve of World War I, she had become a celebrity about whom the world’s leading newspapers and journals published. This popularity did not change from the period of her isolation beginning in the 1920s. And even though she became persona non grata in certain groups of the women’s and peace movement during the last two decades of her life, stories about her still frequently appeared in the papers, and she gave interviews regularly.

Influences, Challenges, and Rewards: How Schwimmer’s Relation
to her Journalistic Profession Altered over the Years

How did Rosika Schwimmer’s family background, her childhood in southern Hungary, and her involvement in both the Hungarian and international women’s and peace movements shape her development as a journalist? To what extent did her determined, passionate, yet markedly egocentric and at times confrontative personality facilitate or obstruct her professional advancement? I consider additional aspects that require further exploration in order fully to understand the intersections between her personal history, activism, and journalistic career. Schwimmer graduated from a state school for girls. After her graduation, she enrolled in a special trade school. From an early age, her parents and teachers recognized her talent for languages and writing. This talent proved invaluable in her later career. Within the family, they spoke not only Hungarian but also German, and she learned French at school. This likely explains her ability to master English and a few other languages as an adult. At around 16, she already had ambitious career plans, envisioning herself as a journalist, which was rather unusual in contemporary Timişoara. Her maternal uncle, Lipót/Leopold Katscher, who made a living as a writer and journalist, certainly served as an inspiration in this respect.21

Schwimmer had no qualifications of the type that would have predisposed her to a career as a journalist. At that time, however, this was not a problem, as very few female journalists had any qualifications in this field. Schwimmer’s ars poetica as a journalist may have been influenced, later, by the work of her husband, the aforementioned journalist Béla Bédy, but we cannot be sure of this, as their marriage lasted only two years. When Schwimmer began to build her career as a journalist and activist in the early 1900s, her first mentor was her uncle. In addition to his valuable professional and practical advice, he provided her with ongoing financial support and publication opportunities in Hungarian and foreign (German-language) periodicals.22 As Katscher was also the head of Magántisztviselők Országos Szövetsége (National Association of Private Officials, Budapest, 1893–?) at the time, he presumably influenced Schwimmer’s future activism and political agency.

Within the frames of FE, Schwimmer was responsible for the associations’ international relations, from which it continued to benefit even after Schwimmer left Hungary permanently in 1920. Until her emigration in 1920, she was also responsible for monitoring the international women’s movement press and promoting the achievements of the FE and the NOE in the official organs of women’s associations in Hungary and abroad.23 The development of Schwimmer’s career as a journalist went hand in hand with the gradual broadening of the FE’s scope of activities. The 1905 working program of FE merits consideration here, as the objectives of the association were primarily related to women as individuals existing and functioning within families, rather than to women as separate entities.24 This strategy was certainly adopted by the FE leadership in the hope of reaching more supporters in different layers of the society. According to the minutes of the board meetings, the number of FE members, and thus the number of subscribers to A Nő és a Társadalom and subsequently A Nő. Feminista Folyóirat, increased from 319 to 5,312 between 1906 and 1918, and the association gained more and more press coverage in Budapest and the rest of the country.25 The number of FE members, however, decreased to around 500 in the interwar period, a tendency which continued during and after World War II. At the same time, the number of people who followed FE’s official organ declined dramatically. A Nő. Feminista Folyóirat finally ceased publication in 1928.26

At the time of FE’s foundation in 1904, Schwimmer, who was barely 30 years old, was increasingly strategic in her efforts to build her international career. Partly as a result of this, by 1905, she was publishing in several Austrian, German, Swiss, and Western European journals. Related her lecture tours first in Western and Eastern Europe (after 1907 yearly) and then in North America (1914–1915, 1916), she gradually became a widely published journalist, writer, and popular speaker. She also became an encouraging role model for a growing number of young middle-class women. Her persuasiveness and speaking style won the sympathy of large audiences. A form of celebrity culture began to coalesce around her, illustrated by the many “fan letters” addressed to her, which offer testimonies to the personal admiration she inspired among her contemporaries.27 However, her commitment to her ideals, her eccentric personality, and her impulsiveness made daily life increasingly difficult for her and got her embroiled in professional and private debates and irreconcilable conflicts.28

As a result of her writing and journalistic activities in Hungary and abroad, as well as her lecture tours in Europe and the United States, Schwimmer built up a wide network of contacts, corresponding and collaborating with a wide range of women’s rights and peace activists, politicians, church leaders, intellectuals, and artists. She benefited greatly from these contacts throughout her life. She became increasingly isolated after going into emigration, however, and also came into conflict with her former coworkers at various journals. She never regained her role in feminist and pacifist organizations in the United States, although she continued to write, publish, and hold public speeches and lectures. Even in the last weeks of her life, she remained active writing articles.

From a Town in Southern Hungary to the Top of the Journalistic Profession: Schwimmer Path towards a Career as a Professional Journalist

Rosika Schwimmer started her career not by publishing articles but by doing translations. This work laid the foundation for her knowledge of and interest in the international world of ideas. In the early 1900s, she translated several works on the women’s emancipation movement from German into Hungarian. Among her first translations were articles published by Leopold Katscher in the German periodical Ethische Kultur: Monatsblatt für ethisch-soziale Neugestaltung in 1896–1897.29 From the late 1890s onwards, she began to build her journalistic career intensively. She sent her first contribution to a well-established Budapest periodical, Budapesti Hírlap (Budapest News), in April 1898. The editor, however, refused to publish her article for the following reasons:

The article submitted bears the character of a woman so impressed by her reading that a man […] cannot be judged from it. The essay itself, regardless of its author, is superficial and breezy, and […] lacks thoughtfulness and substance. I would have liked to have said something kinder and more positive.30

Schwimmer’s first articles in Hungarian finally appeared, with the support of Leopold Katscher, in Magántisztviselők Lapja (Journal of Private Officials), the official organ of Magántisztviselők Országos Szövetsége.31 The issues addressed in these articles can be reconstructed from letters written by Katscher, which are part of the Rosika Schwimmer Papers. Schwimmer usually reported on the activities and general board meetings of NOE and the exploitation of working women.32 She soon began to publish in several Hungarian journals, including Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century), Független Magyarország (Independent Hungary), Nemzeti Nőnevelés (National Education of Woman), Az Újság (The News), and the aforementioned Budapesti Hírlap.

At the same time, she also began to send articles to German and Austrian periodicals. She first posted an article for the Berlin monthly journal Die Frau in August 1901,33 but it was rejected for publication. The first stage of her international journalistic endeavors was the Austrian bourgeois women’s movement journal Frauenleben, which was published out of Vienna between 1894 and 1901 and which was edited by Austrian women’s movement activist Helene Littmann.34 Frauenleben published a submission by Schwimmer a mere month after her rejection by Die Frau. Its readership included members of women’s associations outside the Monarchy, as indicated by a letter by Aletta Jacobs to Schwimmer in 1902.35 In the following years, Schwimmer published articles in several German and Austrian journals (they were mostly women’s periodicals that focused on the women’s movement), including the following: Die Zeit, Wiener Mode, Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung, Neues Frauenleben, Illustrierte Frauen-Rundschau, Etische Kultur: Monatsblatt für ethisch-soziale Neugestaltung, and Dokumente des Fortschritts.36 The titles of these papers reveal two things. First, Schwimmer did not publish exclusively in the journals of progressive, bourgeois-liberal women’s associations, since the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung, to which she sent articles relatively frequently for a few years, was the most important official organ of the Austrian social democratic women’s movement. Second, alongside the various periodicals that focused on the women’s movement, Schwimmer also published in women’s magazines and even in fashion magazines and newspapers.37

Schwimmer reported on the activities and achievements of women’s associations in Hungary, at first exclusively in German periodicals. After 1902, the aforementioned Aletta Jacobs helped her translate her articles into English and publish them in western and northern European journals.38 Schwimmer did not speak any English until the mid-1900s. This lack of knowledge of English had not been a major problem, since Schwimmer had corresponded almost exclusively with German, Austrian, French, and Swiss activists. Jacobs was the only exception, but she spoke German relatively well.39 After this point, however, Schwimmer began to correspond with Carrie Chapman Catt, founding president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, which was established in Berlin in 1904 and then renamed the International Alliance of Women in 1926. This correspondence was only possible in English. Because of their inadequate knowledge of English, Schwimmer, internationally renowned progressive women’s rights and peace activist Vilma Glücklich, and a few other FE members hired a native English-speaking tutor to give them evening classes several times a week in the association room of FE and NOE.40 Schwimmer’s talent for foreign languages enabled her to master English within a short period of time, to the extent that within a few years, she was able to convey her ideas eloquently in what was for her a fourth language after Hungarian, German, and French.

One salient feature of Schwimmer’s personality was her apparently constant yearning for conflict. There are numerous signs of this in her journalistic oeuvre. In her correspondence, one finds regular traces of her conflicts with periodical editors from Hungary and other countries, of which I briefly outline one typical case below. Schwimmer published articles in Neues Frauenleben (Vienna, 1902–1918), the successor to the periodical Frauenleben, from the moment it was launched. She had a good collegial relationship with Auguste Fickert (1855, Vienna–1910, Maria Enzersdorf, Austria), editor of the periodical and a leading figure of the Austrian progressive women’s movement. Their good relationship, however, was overshadowed in 1908 by a dispute over Fickert’s editorial practices. The disagreement erupted because Fickert had entirely rewritten a news item sent by Schwimmer on the Hungarian women’s movement. He had published the rewritten piece without Schwimmer’s permission.41 After this conflict, Schwimmer did not publish in Neues Frauenleben until 1910, and no further letters from Fickert are found in her correspondence.42

By the 1910s, Schwimmer was able to express her ideas in English with relative fluency. By this time, she was publishing in several English-language journals and attending IWSA congresses every two years, where German and French were also used as official languages, though English became the major language of communication.43 By this time, she had become a well-established member of the international women’s movement, and her articles originally written in German were translated into English by the editorial offices of the papers. In 1910, the editor of the journal Englishwoman asked her permission to publish a translated version of one of her articles originally written in German.44 A few months later, the editor of Englishwoman again commented on Schwimmer’s knowledge of English and criticized the article she had sent to the journal:

Your article on the women’s movement in Hungary is very interesting. If I may say so, the English still sounds of a bit foreign flavour, and the article is very short. […] We cannot offer payment for the articles, as we consider them propaganda, […] but if it is in the interest of the cause, we are happy to publish them.45

Schwimmer did not stop writing propagandistic articles proclaiming the success of progressive women’s associations in Hungary. She continued, however, to work hard on her English. As a result of her efforts, she was capable of writing longer texts and giving relatively long lectures in English. During her lectures, she spoke freely without using notes. She was increasingly strategic in the steps she took to build her career as an international journalist and activist, from which both NOE and FE benefited greatly. Almost from the beginning, the IWSA leadership was open to her innovative ideas. It was Schwimmer who initiated the creation of the organization’s badge and who, at the Copenhagen Congress in 1906, proposed the launch of the organization’s official monthly journal, Ius Suffragii (1906–1924), which was also published in English.46 Schwimmer’s efforts were finally crowned with success. Her articles were published in the most prestigious Western European and North American journals after 1914. Editors of the most outstanding papers (e.g. The New York Times) continued to publish her writings even after her political influence had dissipated.47

Thus, as the discussion above has shown, for Schwimmer, translation was a gateway of sorts to the world of international journalism.48 From the early 1910s, she published not only in women’s journals but also in renowned Western European and North American newspapers and periodicals, as I discuss in greater detail below. The interest taken by the international press in her personality and her articles was further stimulated by the IWSA Congress in Budapest in 1913, as well as by her peace movement activities after the outbreak of World War I.

The most Common Subject-Matters of Schwimmer’s Articles

Schwimmer’s articles, which were written between the turn of the century and 1948, cover a relatively wide range of topics and almost all aspects of womanhood. In terms of genre, they range from news articles consisting of only a few lines (with or without titles) to glosses and reports on various women’s rights events and congresses. They include a wide range of editorials, interviews, and reports. Before 1914, most of her writings were on women’s work and education, the women’s movement, and suffrage, but she also authored many writings on child labor and the various approaches to providing support for mothers. Between 1914 and 1918 and before World War II, the subject of pacifism dominated her articles. After 1920, she started to discuss the motivations behind her political agency. In the 1920s, she also began to reflect on the situation of Jewish people.

From the outset of her journalistic career, Schwimmer wrote on the advancements of women’s emancipation from a transnational perspective. She also published numerous biographical articles on the activities and achievements of various politicians (including Hungarians), women’s movement activists, and artists. This can be interpreted as a career building strategy. I offer here only a few examples as illustrations. Schwimmer regularly published articles on leading figures of the Hungarian and international women’s movement. She wrote several articles on the aforementioned Vilma Glücklich (1872, Vágújhely [today Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Slovakia]–1927, Vienna) after Glücklich’s death in 1927. At the time of FE’s foundation, she regularly published biographical articles on the aforementioned Aletta Jacobs and Carrie Chapman Catt, who also served as a role model for Hungarian progressive women’s activism. The lecture tour held by the two women in Hungary in 1906 was covered in detail not only in A Nő és a Társadalom but also by the Hungarian dailies.49 In addition to her organizational work before the 1913 IWSA Congress in Budapest, she found time and energy to write articles on the event.

Schwimmer also published only on those activists with whom she had personal working or friendly contacts. Thus, the list of activists on whom she wrote offers a clear index of her growing international network of contacts. She wrote several pieces on Helene Stöcker, leader of the radical wing of the German bourgeois women’s movement. Like Schwimmer, Stöcker also emigrated to the United States after World War I. Schwimmer also wrote on Gina Krog, a Norwegian women’s movement activist and one of the founding members of the IWSA. After the death of Marianne Hainisch, president of Bund österreichischer Frauenvereine (Vienna, 1902–), the umbrella organization of the Austrian bourgeois women’s associations for more than three decades, she wrote several obituaries for American newspapers. From the years of World War I until the mid-1940s, she published numerous articles on Count Mihály Károlyi (1875, Fót, Hungary–1955, Vence, France), president of the Hungarian Democratic Republic (acting between November 16, 1918–March 121, 1919), and his wife Katinka Andrássy, both in Hungarian and international journals.50

In autumn 1914, Schwimmer interviewed US President Woodrow Wilson. This interview brought her international recognition. In the months following the outbreak of World War I, in part thanks to the efforts of the aforementioned Catt, Schwimmer undertook a determined campaign to persuade President Wilson to assume the role of neutral mediator in hopes of bringing the war to a swift conclusion. In September, President Wilson received Schwimmer at the White House and granted her a formal interview. Schwimmer’s efforts were not crowned with success, however, in spite of the fact that she met Wilson for a second time in 1915 and that both presidential audiences were widely covered by the media. Schwimmer herself also reported on the events in the international press.51

Probably most of Schwimmer’s articles after 1916 were written on her dispute with US magnate Henry Ford.52 After the unsuccessful negotiations with President Wilson, Schwimmer finally managed to persuade Ford in November 1915 to finance the (in)famous Peace Ship. This became well-known in world history under the name of the Ford Peace Expedition. Most of the participants in this mission were influential Americans, including, of course, Schwimmer and Ford, as well as a number of journalists. The ship carrying them sailed from Hoboken (New York harbor) on December 4, crossing the Atlantic and arriving in Oslo. Its primary aim was to draw attention to the importance of immediate peace negotiations. However, the world press and later Schwimmer herself reported only on the disputes among the passengers, who quarreled with one another during the voyage. During the cruise, Schwimmer’s and Ford’s earlier conflicts became irreconcilable differences.53

The failure of the Ford Peace Ship and the conflict between Schwimmer and Ford was partly caused by Schwimmer’s eccentric personality and aggressive attitudes. This failure led to the collapse of Schwimmer’s carefully nurtured political influence in the United States in 1914–1915. This was exacerbated by a barrage of derisive, disparaging articles and cartoons in the international press, which deeply undermined Schwimmer’s earlier popularity.54 This was the reason why, during the three decades of her exile in the United States, Schwimmer published a large number of articles criticizing Henry Ford and excusing herself in the most popular American and Hungarian American periodicals. Numerous articles appeared, for instance, in The Day, The New York Publisher’s Weekly, New York Herald Tribune, Buffalo News, The New York Times, Amerikai Magyar Népszava (American Hungarian People’s Word), and Az Írás (The Writing), in which she sought to clarify Ford’s political role in 1918. It is important to keep in mind, as an important element of the backdrop of these disputes, that Schwimmer never received US citizenship on account of her pacifist beliefs, and her documents thus always labeled her as “stateless.”55

Even in the 1940s, editors of well-established periodicals were still happy to publish Schwimmer’s articles and other writings or interviews with her, despite the fact that she was no longer part of the leadership of the Hungarian and international peace and women’s movement organizations. Why did the press take such a strong interest in her work and ideas? I argue that this was partly because Schwimmer remained in relatively close contact with a number of influential politicians, public figures, artists, and activists in the United States and Europe. This fact, together with her eventful life and controversial personality, made her interesting to the press. Her previous involvement in domestic political affairs in the United States only made her more interesting to the press, as did her unsuccessful years-long fight for US citizenship, not to mention the (false) accusations according to which she had served as a Soviet during her diplomatic mission in Switzerland. These various factors made her an interesting figure for broad readerships.56

“The Grievances of Feminism during the Proletarian Dictatorship”:57
A Close Reading of Two Articles by Schwimmer

In the discussion below, I analyze two editorials written by Schwimmer in December 1919 and January 1920. I argue that these articles offer insights into her journalistic ars poetica, her values, and her political orientation. In these texts, Schwimmer problematizes FE’s and her own controversial relations with the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the social-democratic women’s associations. The texts thus offer indirect explanations for her decision to emigrate. They also provide insights into FE’s views on women’s employment and women’s labor activism, which differed from the views of the abovementioned groups. Finally, in these two texts, Schwimmer lists the alleged crimes committed by the Hungarian Soviet Republic against women and the discriminatory practices of the Republic against women when it came to paid work. Her journalistic ars poetica, her values, and her political orientation changed very little during her lifetime, including the period of nearly three decades that she spent in exile. The texts also reveal her views on the regime changes after World War I and on the short-lived Soviet Republic. Finally, the texts also give an impression of the image Schwimmer wanted to convey of herself to the public immediately before she emigrated from Hungary in January 1920. The texts are important in part simply because the political, economic, and social shifts (and upheavals) that took place over the course of the few months covered in the articles had a profound impact on Schwimmer’s later life and career. It became evident at the time that her active political involvement as an envoy of the Károlyi government in Switzerland had made her persona non grata for the authorities in Hungary. Due to these factors, she decided to leave her home country and live in exile.58

With regard to the historical moment in which these texts were published, it is important to note that, in the wake of the Great War, the heretofore relatively stable situation of FE and the positions of the entire progressive feminist movement in Hungary weakened. The Soviet Republic and the subsequent regimes (during what is known as the Horthy Era after Regent Miklós Horthy) made every effort to marginalize feminists. There was also a radical attempt to limit the press activity and press coverage that the movement had established for itself over the course of the previous decade and a half. Publication of A Nő. Feminista Folyóirat was banned, first in 1919 and then temporarily in 1920. Through revisionist propaganda, the valorization of religious and nationalistic ideas, the glorification of women’s (traditional) roles within the family, and the demonization of the belief systems of progressive feminists, the foundations of a whole new women’s movement were finally laid. At the heart of this was the Magyar Asszonyok Nemzeti Szövetsége (National Association of Hungarian Women, or MANSz), founded in January 1919 by the writer and activist Cécile Tormay, which according to some sources managed to grow to approximately half a million members in Budapest and the rest of Hungary by the eve of World War II.59

As Rosika Schwimmer herself emphasized several times in the two texts, the new circumstances did not automatically bring an end to the feminist movement. This does not mean, of course, that the various organizations and figures at the vanguard of this movement did not suffer enormous setbacks, as Schwimmer notes in the texts. Beyond the specific examples mentioned by Schwimmer in the texts, it is worth noting that NOE, for instance, was unable to adapt to the challenges that arose in the new transitional period. Some members of NOE, which had been dissolved in the summer of 1919, joined the Communist Party, while others joined FE. FE could never regain its former position within the new right-wing women’s movement of the interwar period. Nevertheless, in the early 1920s, it managed to redefine itself and its aims. Thus, although it was only able to operate within a narrower framework than before, it remained active until it was banned in 1942, and it then became active again between 1946 and 1949.

The two articles are the first two pieces in a series of articles that were to be published in the future. As I have already noted, Schwimmer wrote these texts for A Nő. Feminista Folyóirat right before she left Hungary. In the end, only the first part of the series of articles was published in December 1919 under the title “The grievances of feminism under the proletarian dictatorship.”60 The second part survives in the Rosika Schwimmer Papers, among the numerous unpublished manuscripts and draft speeches.61 This handwritten text is in some places difficult to read, since Schwimmer almost invariably recorded her articles and drafts in pencil on poor-quality paper until she emigrated to the United States. Beginning in 1921, the handwritten notes, which were written for the most part in Hungarian, gradually disappeared, and most of the later texts were typed in English.

The two texts thoroughly clarify the relationship between the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the progressive feminist movement. They can, thus, also be interpreted as an indirect explanation of Schwimmer’s decision to leave Hungary permanently. In addition, the writings reflect on a number of issues that were discussed on several occasions within the framework of FE, as well as the Magyarországi Munkásnő Egyesület (Hungarian Working Women’s Association, or MME, Budapest, 1903–) and the broader labor movement. MME was headed by Marika Gárdos, with whom Schwimmer had had a rather complicated relationship since 1902. Their relationship was characterized as much by camaraderie as by conflict and rivalry. Although Schwimmer was actively involved in the establishment of MME and Gárdos followed the activities of FE, conflicts between the two associations were inevitable. The goals of feminist organizations and social democratic women’s organizations differed dramatically, as did the ideal means with which these goals were to be achieved. This led to the two associations insulting each other in every possible way, for example at their official meetings, in their public protest events, and in the press.

This controversy ridden relationship was important for several reasons. Liberal and radical feminists at the time were often accused of campaigning exclusively for the extension of female suffrage and of being unconcerned about the social and economic problems faced by working-class women and women who belonged to ethnic minorities. These two articles, however, clearly show that this picture needs to be considerably more nuanced. In this context, the texts highlight the most important points of contention between feminists and contemporary Hungarian socialists on women’s paid work, their position in the labor market, their organization, and their wages.

In addition to the abovementioned issues, the texts touch on issues that were on the agenda of FE from its foundation, including women’s employment structures and the issue of equal pay, women’s (vocational) education, the protection of mothers and children, the promotion of women’s labor activism, the fight against prostitution and sex-trafficking, and sex education in schools. Considering the prominence of these issues in the texts, alongside other important points, it is evident that Schwimmer’s reflections in the two articles refer not only to the Hungarian Soviet Republic but also to the nearly two decades of the history of FE and the cornerstones of the controversy between feminists and social democrats.

In the text, Schwimmer reveals the indirect insults made by the Soviet Republic against her and FE and also notes its direct attacks against feminist ideology in general and against FE in particular. In the first article, Schwimmer contends that FE managed to escape “violent dissolution” because of “its membership and representation in several international women’s federations, and the People’s Commissar’s fear of protests from foreign feminists.”62 Since Béla Kun (1886, Hadad, Romania–1938–1939, Moscow), People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs and War under the Soviet Republic, considered feminist ideology “a remnant of bourgeois ideology,” the dictatorship mobilized all possible means against organized feminism. In addition to banning the secret meetings of FE’s board, the authorities also made it impossible for the association to publish its official journal between March and August 1919. Schwimmer offered a detailed list in the article of the crimes allegedly committed by the regime against progressive feminist ideology and the feminist press.

At several points in the text, Schwimmer impresses upon the reader that the dictatorship had the characteristics of a medieval state: it was both anti-democratic and anti-feminist. She does not fail to mention that women who, like her, refused to join trade unions were not allowed to vote. Female suffrage had already been introduced by the government of Mihály Károlyi. In addition, the communist regime, which was in power for 133 days, had, according to Schwimmer, enacted legislation that would have continued the exploitation of working women in line with previous practices. She pointed out that the FE (along with other women’s associations and trade unions) had been fighting against this kind of exploitation since 1904. Its main objectives included equal pay for men and women workers and the introduction of a complex system of health care, as well as support for working mothers. The Soviet Republic did not achieve any of this, and Schwimmer blames it for this failure. Towards the end of the first article, she discusses the situation of married women and the problems of regulating prostitution. These ideas fully reflect the initial objectives of the FE, which were published immediately after its establishment in 1905.63

The second (handwritten and unpublished) part of the article focuses almost exclusively on discrimination against women in paid employment. Schwimmer provides precise statistics showing that, despite the regime’s widely trumpeted principle of “equal pay for equal work,” women workers were paid significantly lower wages than men. In my opinion, this is the most detailed and well-developed part of the article. These arguments are followed by a brief reflection on marriage, prostitution, and the centralized household (or Zentralhaushaltung in German).64 After this discussion, the text ends abruptly. And although Schwimmer indicates at the end of the paper that the article will be continued, I have not found the third part in her collection.

Brand Building in the Press

Over the course of her career as a journalist, Rosika Schwimmer learned how to use the press as a tool to build her brand (in modern terms). The interviews that were done with her with by journalists who worked for world-renowned papers provided an excellent platform for this. Through these interviews, Schwimmer was (or wished to be) able to influence the public and the public’s perception of her. She followed the same practice in her work as an author, of which I give an example at the end of this paper. Schwimmer’s brand-building efforts offer insights into her strategic use of the media and personal connections to shape her public image in exile. In 1928, Schwimmer, who had been living in the United States for some seven years as an emigrant, published her first book, which was an illustrated children’s book in English. Tisza Tales, which contains Hungarian stories, was published by Doubleday-Doran Publishing Company in New York.65 Reviews of the book were published in American and American-Hungarian periodicals and newspapers between 1928 and 1931, and they were systematically archived in the Rosika Schwimmer Papers. From these reviews, it is clear that Schwimmer herself actively sought to influence the press response to the book and, thus, to her own work as an author. Her efforts to influence the reception of Tisza Tales reveals her strategic use of branding principles in a literary context, highlighting the interplay between her various public roles. Furthermore, the mixed reception with which the book met and Schwimmer’s responses to criticism offer insights into the challenges and complexities of her brand management.

Despite Schwimmer’s efforts, the reception of the storybook on the US book market was mixed. In addition to the reviews, there were also several articles in both the American and the American-Hungarian periodical press which, while promising a review of the book in their titles, for much of their length focus on Schwimmer’s political efforts and, more importantly, her active political involvement. The positive reviews praise the book’s “fantastic,” “elegant,” and “charming” presentation, as well as the illustrations. According to several reviews, the stories are engaging for adults as well as children.66

Many praised the book’s language and style, which according to the reviews are particularly charming and accessible to children. Schwimmer’s American friends and acquaintances of Hungarian origin living in the United States also played a major role in organizing the publication of the reviews. Zoltán Haraszti, a newspaper editor and librarian who lived in New York for many years, Lola Maverick, Schwimmer’s wealthy American patron, and women’s movement activist Alice Park did much to help the cause. In October 1929, Park offered the following comments on her progress in promoting the book:

I succeeded in getting a review of Tisza Tales in Open Forum of October 5. I sent a copy to the publisher and one to Franceska [Franciska Schwimmer (1880, Budapest–1963, New York), Rosika Schwimmer’s younger sister, who also emigrated to the USA and worked as her elder sister’s secretary]. I have tried in vain for other reviews. But have succeeded with libraries and their order lists.67

The review published in Open Forum also mentioned that Schwimmer’s mother had told her daughter the stories in the book when Schwimmer had been a child. Tisza Tales was named one of the 50 most outstanding children’s books of 1928 by the Chicago Evening Post and was included in the New York Times Christmas Booklist.68

In addition to the American English-language newspapers, the book also received a relatively large amount of attention in the American Hungarian press. This was due in part to Schwimmer’s personal relationships with many journal editors but certainly also to the book’s importance. Amerikai Magyar Népszava emphasized that the storybook introduced Americans to the “gems of Hungarian storytelling” and that it also offered Hungarian children born in the United States, who had become somewhat Americanized, an unforgettable reading experience in English that took them to the world of stories from their parents’ homeland.69 According to a columnist for the periodical Az Írás, published in Chigago, “the irredentism of the beaten track has not done Hungary as good a service as the book of the bowed down writer.” In their view, the collection of stories was the biggest Christmas sensation in America’s extremely rich book market.70

According to the article in Az Írás, the publisher had not been excessive when giving the book what was arguably a high price, since, “printed on 250 pages of molded paper, it was a book in the artisanal sense of the word.”71 Many, however, considered the storybook overpriced, and it was indeed quite expensive at the time compared to most books. The New York Herald Tribune was not far off the mark when it wrote that, for $5, the storybook would be a hard sell. The Public Library of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. claimed that the book was not on the American Library Association’s book list because it was priced above the limit for which libraries could buy books.72

It should be pointed out that two rather negative reviews appeared in The New York Herald Tribune and the New York World, which Schwimmer and her circle of friends did not ignore. Schwimmer herself wrote an indignant letter to the editor of The New York Herald Tribune, accusing the author of the review of not having read Tisza Tales. In his reply, the editor of the newspaper said that Schwimmer’s allegation was nonsense and that it was only natural that someone might not like a book. He also stressed that, as editor, he was not able to read every book reviewed and that it was not his job to judge or overrule the opinions of reviewers. At the end of his letter, he added the following:

These things are always happening, you know. If every author who did not agree with his reviewer were to reply we should have little room for new reviews. Personally, I am sorry, but one cannot let personal friendship dictate editorial action.73

Tivadar/Theodor Koppányi, a physician and university professor who was a confidant of the Schwimmer family and also Schwimmer’s family doctor, responded to the other review, which was published in The New York World. According to this review, the main problem with Schwimmer’s book was that a similar children’s book had already been published in London by Nándor Pogány (The Hungarian Fairy Book). Nevertheless, Koppányi insisted that Schwimmer was a pioneer in this field, if only because her book contained a completely different type of fairy tale from that of Nándor Pogány’s book.74

Conclusion

This article has explored the defining contours of Rosika Schwimmer’s journalistic career, with a particular focus on how her political activism and personal ambitions shaped and were shaped by her engagement with the press. I have argued that Schwimmer’s political agency, rooted in the interconnected struggles for women’s suffrage and international peace, was instrumental in launching her journalistic trajectory. However, the same qualities that made her a powerful public actor (her uncompromising stance, her self-promotion strategies, and her refusal to conform to conventional gender norms) ultimately contributed to her marginalization within increasingly conservative or male-dominated professional spaces.

To understand the mechanisms with which Schwimmer sought to assert herself as both journalist and activist, I turned to the rich collection of her papers: her diary notes, extensive correspondence (both official and private and both incoming and outgoing), and the vast body of journalistic texts and speeches that she carefully archived. These documents provide more than biographical detail. They reveal a methodical effort to shape her own public memory and to control the narrative of her life’s work. Her archival practice itself can be interpreted as an extension of her political and authorial agency. It constituted a refusal to be misrepresented or forgotten and an assertion of her right to define her own legacy. This is especially evident in Series 2 of her papers, where she organized her articles.

In tandem with articles written about her and interviews she gave during different periods of her life, these self-curated materials illuminate a complex media strategy aimed at navigating gendered constraints on women’s participation in public discourse. Schwimmer was acutely aware of the challenges facing women who sought intellectual and political authority in early twentieth-century Europe and North America. Her story thus exemplifies how women could and, in her case and others, did use journalism as both a platform for advocacy and a means of crafting enduring cultural capital.

From the perspective of gender history and feminist theory, Schwimmer’s career invites us to reconsider the boundaries of political agency. Her case reveals how women in marginal or contested positions mobilized the tools of authorship, archiving, and self-representation not simply to “participate” in public life but also actively to construct the conditions under which their voices would be heard and remembered. In this sense, her biography challenges static understandings of women as secondary figures in the media or political history of the period. She emerged instead as a historical agent whose efforts to claim discursive spaces across borders, languages, and genres were both innovative and deeply reflective of the structural limitations she faced.

Finally, to put this issue in a larger context, I briefly compared the journalistic activity of Schwimmer with the leading female journalists, editors, translators, and authors of books in the region, i.e. with the aforementioned Austrian progressive women’s activist Auguste Fickert,75 and two important activists from the region i.e. Slovenian feminist Zofka Kveder,76 and German radical women’s rights activist and later völkisch politician Käthe Schirmacher.77

Schwimmer, Fickert, Kveder, and Schirmacher each wielded journalistic platforms to advance different yet overlapping feminist agendas across diverse linguistic and cultural spheres before 1918. Each of these four women that they became central figures of their national women’s movements through their journalistic activity. Schwimmer leveraged her international connections to report on every aspect of women’s emancipation and peace activism. Kveder published on the situation of women wage earners and women’s university education. Schirmacher’s articles analyzed different aspects of transnational women’s movement and issues related to legal reforms for women’s rights, women’s employment, and prostitution. As multilingual women, Schwimmer, Kveder, and Schirmacher published their articles in many countries apart from their home homelands. In contrast, Fickert focused her journalistic efforts primarily on Austria in her efforts to advocate women’s suffrage and support women’s rights in the field of education and on the labor market.

All four women engaged with contemporary feminist debates. Schwimmer’s focus extended beyond national borders to global peace movements and pacifist activism. Schirmacher’s work was deeply embedded in the specifics of German legal and social reform, while Kveder’s journalism often took a more literary and regionally focused approach, highlighting the lived experiences of women in a multi-ethnic context. Fickert’s idealistic views are reflected in her articles, as is her sympathy for the social-democratic women’s associations. Their collective journalistic output reveals a diverse yet interconnected struggle for women’s emancipation and social justice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

After 1920, a different world emerged in the field of women’s journalism. As Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe have argued in their edited volume, although mainstream conservative newspapers typically preferred their female correspondents to cover exclusively “women’s” issues, it is notable that certain right-wing women managed to secure column space to discuss political matters from a nationalist (or radical) viewpoint. Some established their strong patriotic stance by criticizing nationalist men for any perceived weakening of their ideological dedication. Others achieved this by completely disregarding their own gender while still advocating for conservative family values and a “natural” separation of roles between men and women, which communists, liberals, or feminists (or a combination thereof) were allegedly trying to dismantle. Hungarian journalist Cécile Tormay, who was also the leader of MANSZ, the most powerful right-wing women’s association, offers a clear example of this.78 By this time, however, Fickert had been dead for ten years, and Kveder and Schirmacher were struggling with worsening health. Schirmacher, however, was one of the founders of the right-wing Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party), and she briefly entered the National Assembly in 1919 as its deputy and representative for West Prussia. Schwimmer was practically forced to leave Hungary, and while she remained a widely-published publicist in the United States, she did not send articles to Hungarian periodicals except for the official organ of FE.

Archival Sources

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára, Budapest [Hungarian National Archives] (MNL OL)

P999. Feministák Egyesülete [Feminists’ Association]

New York Public Library (NYPL)

Manuscript and Archives Division

MssCol 6398 Rosika Schwimmer Papers (RSP)

MssCol 6318 Leopold and Berta Katscher Papers 1866–1939 (LBKP)

Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (WR)

LQH0003431 Nachlass Auguste Fickert (NF)

Bibliography

Printed sources

Schwimmer, Rosika. Tisza Tales. Stories from Hungary: Retold for American Children, Illustrations by Willy Pogany. New York: Doubleday-Doran, 1928.

Tájékoztatás a Feministák Egyesületének céljairól és munkatervéről [Information on the aims and work plan of the Feminists’ Association]. Budapest: Márkus Samu könyvnyomdája, 1905.

Periodicals

“Annual Report of the Feminists’ Association.” A Nő és a Társadalom 1, no. 5 (1907): 89.

Bédy-Schwimmer, Rosika. “Két kiváló asszony [Two Outstanding Women].” Új Idők, October 14, 1906, 383–84.

Egy női reporter [A Female Reporter]. “Laptudósítói tanfolyam” [Course for newspaper correspondents]. A Nő. Feminista Folyóirat 1, no. 12 (1914): 244–45.

“Karácsonykor magyar könyvet olvasnak az amerikai aprószentek” [At Christmas, the American Altar Boys read a Hungarian Book]. Az Írás, January 6, 1929.

“Nők a sajtóban” [Women in the Press]. A Nő és a Társadalom 6, no. 10 (1912): 185.

Schwimmer, Rosika “A feminizmus sérelmei a proletárdiktatúra alatt” [The Grievances of Feminism during the Proletarian Dictatorship]. A Nő. Feminista Folyóirat 6 no. 6 (1919): 2–3.

Z. Sz. “Magyar mesék angol nyelven” [Hungarian Fairy Tales in English]. Amerikai Magyar Népszava, December 14, 1928.

Secondary literature

Brighton, Paul, and Dennis Foy. News Values. London: Sage, 2007.

Delap, Lucy, Maria DiCenzo, and Leila Ryan. Feminism and the Periodical Press, 1900–1918. Vol 1 of the Feminism and the Periodical Press, 1900–1918. London: Routledge, 2007.

Fedeles-Czeferner, Dóra. Progressive Women’s Movements in Austria and Hungary: Conflict, Cooperation, Circulation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2025.

Gehmacher, Johanna, Elisa Heinrich, and Corinna Oesch. Käthe Schirmacher: Agitation und autobiographische Praxis zwischen radikaler Frauenbewegung und völkischer Politik. Vienna–Cologne–Weimar: Böhlau, 2018.

Gehmacher, Johanna. Feminist Activism, Travel and Translation Around 1900: Transnational Practices of Mediation and the Case of Käthe Schirmacher. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.

Gyáni, Gábor, and György Kövér. Magyarország társadalomtörténete a reformkortól a második világháborúig [Social history of Hungary from the Reform era until the end of the Second World War]. Budapest: Osiris, 2001.

Gyáni, Gábor. A nő élete – Történelmi perspektívában [The life of the eoman – in historical perspective]. Budapest: Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, 2020.

Hacker, Hanna. “Fickert, Auguste” (1855–1910). In A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminism: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern European, 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Francisca de Haan et al, 131–33. Budapest: CEU Press, 2006.

Hanák, Péter. A dualizmus korának történeti problémái [Historical problems of the Dualist era]. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1971.

Klaus, Elisabeth, and Ulla Wischermann. Journalistinnen: Eine Geschichte in Biographien und Texten 1848–1990. Vienna–Berlin: LIT, 2013.

Koncz, Katalin. Nők a munka világában [Women in the world of labor]. Budapest: Kossuth, 1982.

Lake, Marilyn. Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism. St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1999.

McFadden, H. Margaret. “A Radical Exchange: Rosika Schwimmer, Emma Goldman, Hella Wuolijoki and Red-White Struggles for Women.” In Women’s Movements: Networks and Debates in Post-Communist Countries in the 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Edith Saurer, 494–504. Cologne–Vienna: Böhlau, 2006.

Mészáros, Zsolt. “Wohl-nővérek munkássága: Irodalom, sajtó, szalon” [Activity of the Wohl sisters: Literature, press, salon]. PhD diss., Eötvös Loránd University, 2016.

Offen, Karen. European Feminisms, 1700–1950: A Political History. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Poniz, Katja Mihurko. “Kveder, Zofka.” In A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminism: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern European, 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Francisca de Haan et al, 282–84. Budapest: CEU Press, 2006.

Rupp, Leila J. Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Sharp, Ingrid, and Matthew Stibbe. “Introduction.” In Women Activists between War and Peace: Europe, 1918–1923, edited by Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe, 1–29. London: Bloomsbury Acaemic, 2017.

Szapor, Judith. “Who Represents Hungarian Women? The Demise of the Liberal Bourgeois Women’s Rights Movement and the Rise of the Rightwing Women’s Movement in the Aftermath of World War I.” In Aftermaths of War: Women’s Movements and Female Activists, 1918–1923, edited by Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe, 245–67. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Szapor, Judith. “‘Good Hungarian Women’ vs. ‘Radicals, Feminists, and Jewish Intellectuals’: Rosika Schwimmer and the Hungarian Women’s Debating Club in 1918–1919.” Women’s History Review, Agency, Activism and Organization, Special Issue 28, no 6 (2017): 1–19.

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1. 1 For example, a member of FE leadership, Count Mrs. Sándor Teleki, née Júlia Kende (1864, Pest–1937, Budapest), who published her works under the pseudonym Szikra [or Spark], is mentioned in an editorial in the journal Világ [World] (Budapest, 1910–1949). Four other women journalists are mentioned: Mrs. Géza Antal, who also published in Világ, Lydia Kovács (?–1918, Budapest), who was employed as a reporter by the journals Az Est [The Evening] (Budapest, 1910–1939) and A Nap [The Day] (Budapest, 1904–1922), and Mrs. Hollós née Nandin de Grobois, who was “secretary of the editorial office of the [newspaper] Budapesti Hírlap [Budapest News] [Budapest, 1883–1939].” “Nők a sajtóban,” 185.

2. 2 Ibid.

3. 3 Egy női reporter [A female reporter], “Laptudósítói tanfolyam,” 244–45.

4. 4 Ibid.

5. 5 Compare with Janka Wohl (Pest, 1843–Budapest, 1901) and her sister Stefania Wohl (1846, Pest–1899, Budapest), who worked as authors for different journals and editors of various fashion magazines. They published articles in Hungarian and also in German, English, and French in several foreign press organs. In addition to their work as journalists, they published independent volumes, ran a popular salon in the center of Budapest, and worked as translators. For more details on their lives, work, and international reception, see Mészáros, “Wohl-nővérek munkássága.”

6. 6 On this, see Fedeles-Czeferner, Progressive Women’s Movements.

7. 7 E.g. Offen, European Feminisms. This foundational text maps out transnational feminist networks and contextualizes the work of figures similar to Schwimmer. Rupp, Worlds of Women, which discusses the emergence of an international feminist movement and the key role played by women like Schwimmer in shaping its discourse.

8. 8 E.g. Delap et al., Feminism and the Periodical Press, 1. This book offers insights into how early twentieth-century feminist writers used the press as a tool for activism and self-fashioning. It also highlights that at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, the periodical press became “a crucial vehicle through which women’s movements debated and disseminated ideas, developed organizations and networks, and connected readers across social and geographic lines.” Ibid xxvii. See also Lake, The History. Though it focuses on Australia, this analysis of feminist political agency and public engagement through the media is conceptually relevant to the discussion here. On the advancement of women’s journalism in the Austro-Hungarian context, see Klaus and Wischermann, Journalistinnen, 66.

9. 9 NYPL RSP.

10. 10 Writings and speeches, 1896–1948. NYPL RSP II.

11. 11 General Correspondence 1890–1948. NYPL RSP I.A.

12. 12 The indexes, written initially in Hungarian and German and later in English, include the title of the article, the name of the newspaper or journal, the place of publication (country and city), and occasionally information on the honoraria received by Schwimmer. Publication index volumes, 1899–1914. NYPL RSP II.A. Box 466.10; Publication index volumes, 1906–1915. NYPL RSP II.A. Box 467.1; Publication index notes (incomplete), 1903–1940. NYPL RSP II.A. Box 467. 2–3.

13. 13 Hanák, A dualizmus korának, 47.

14. 14 E.g., various political conflicts, recurrent economic crises and the debates related to ethnic minorities. Ibid.

15. 15 On these trends, see Gyáni and Kövér, Magyarország társadalomtörténete, 19.

16. 16 See Appelt, Von Ladenmädchen, 212–16.

17. 17 Ibid.

18. 18 Gyáni, A nő élete; Koncz, Nők.

19. 19 This paragraph is an extract from my book on the life and career of Rosika Schwimmer. Fedeles-Czeferner, Progressive Women’s Movements, 117–18.

20. 20 Rosika Schwimmer’s diary note in English. June 21, 1948. NYPL RSP X. Box 586.

21. 21 Leopold Katscher studied at the Academy of Commerce in Pest and Vienna and also attended medical and law courses. He was interested in literature. He studied literature and economics in Vienna, Budapest, and London. The fact that he was addressed as “Dr. Katscher” in the letters preserved in his papers may indicate that he had a doctorate. Leopold and Berta Katscher Papers 1866–1939, NYPL LBKP MssCol6318.

22. 22 One of the first German-language journals to which Schwimmer sent an article was Ethische Kultur: Monatsblatt für ethisch-soziale Neugestaltung (Berlin, 1893–1936).

23. 23 The association did not pay for the press products, which were compiled in the FE documentation in the Hungarian National Archives. Most issues are complimentary copies, which Schwimmer received because they contained her articles. For a series of correspondence with the editors of these press products, s. NYPL RSP I.A.; for an index of articles, s. NYPL RSP II.A. Box 466.10; Box 467.1–3. S. also the notebooks in which Schwimmer kept her receipts and expenditures. NYPL RSP I.A.

24. 24 Feministák Egyesülete, “Tájékoztatás.”

25. 25 Fedeles-Czeferner, Progressive Women’s Movements, 138–48.

26. 26 Ibid.

27. 27 I studied the celebrity cult around Schwimmer within the frameworks of the FWF project “Frauen schreiben an Frauenbewegungsaktivistinnen, ~1870–1930” at the University of Vienna under the direction of Corinna Oesch. Between 1902 and 1930, Schwimmer received a total of 303 “fan letters” from unknown women and men in Hungarian, German, English, and French. 74 of these letters are related to her journalistic and editorial activities.

28. 28 On this, see Rupp, Worlds of Women.

29. 29 Schwimmer’s translations of works by Leopold and Berta Katscher, 1896–1897. NYPL RSP II. Box 467.8.

30. 30 Letter from Jenő Módos to Rosika Schwimmer. April 21, 1898. NYPL RSP I.A. Box 1.

31. 31 Letter from Leopold Katscher to Rosika Schwimmer. December 14, 1900. Ibid.

32. 32 Letters from Leopold Katscher to Rosoika Schwimmer. December 1900. Ibid. Schwimmer’s outgoing letters from this period are not in the collection.

33. 33 Postcard of the editorial office of Die Frau to Rosika Schwimmer. August 23, 1901. NYPL RSP I.A. Box 2.

34. 34 Rosika Schwimmer first published in the journal in September 1901. Postcard from the editorial office of Frauenleben to Rosika Schwimmer. September 7, 1901. Ibid.

35. 35 In her letter, Jacobs made several references to the Frauenleben. Letter from Aletta Jacobs to Rosika Schwimmer. August 1, 1902. NYPL RSP I.A. Box 2.

36. 36 For the correspondence with the editorial offices of these journals, see NYPL RSP I.A. Box 1–11. For the articles, see NYPL RSP II.A. Box 466.10.; Box 467. 1–3. For the notebooks, in which Schwimmer kept her receipts and payments, see NYPL RSP I.A.

37. 37 Publication index volumes, 1899–1914. NYPL RSP II.A.

38. 38 E.g. letter from Aletta Jacobs to Rosika Schwimmer. March 5, 1904.

39. 39 General Correspondence. NYPL RSP I.A. Box 1–5.

40. 40 These courses were open to all FE members. Courses were held in small groups in the evenings after working hours and came to an end with an examination, after which participants received a detailed assessment of their performance and a certificate. On this, see e.g. “A Feministák Egyesületének éves jelentése,” 89.

41. 41 Fikcert’s revisions as a proofreader clearly reveal that she frequently shortened the paragraphs in the articles, in addition to making minor stylistic changes. Sometimes, she restructured and rewrote entire sections of articles, changing or simply removing important elements of their original content. Konvolut von Artikeln über die Frauenfrage. WR NF. B-77991; Tagebuch von Auguste Fickert. WR NF. H.I.N.-70494.

42. 42 In spite of this conflict, she remained in close collegial contact with other leaders of the Austrian progressive and bourgeois women’s movement. On this, see Fedeles-Czeferner, Progressive Women’s Movements, 16–173.

43. 43 See Gehmacher, Feminist Activism.

44. 44 Letter from E. M. Goodman to Rosika Schwimmer. August 24, 1910. NYPL RSP I.A. Box 23.

45. 45 Letter from E. M. Goodman to Rosika Schwimmer. July 1, 1910. Ibid.

46. 46 “A Feministák Egyesületének éves jelentése,” 89.

47. 47 NYPL RSP II.A. Box 466.10; Publication index volumes, 1906–1915. NYPL RSP II.A. Box 467.1; Publication index notes (incomplete), 1903–1940. NYPL RSP II.A. Box 467. 2–3.

48. 48 On the different translation practices in women’s movements, see Gehmacher, Feminist Activism.

49. 49 These events were covered, for instance, by Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation), Budapesti Hírlap (Budapest News), Új Idők (New Times), Az Újság (Journal), Pesti Napló (Journal of Pest), and Pester Lloyd. Among women’s periodicals, Nemzeti Nőnevelés (National Women’s Education) reported on the news. For the articles written by Schwimmer, see e.g. Bédy-Schwimmer, “Két kiváló asszony,” 383–84.

50. 50 For the Hungarian-, German-, and English language articles, see Manuscripts and drafts, 1896–1948, n.d. NYPL RSP II.A. Box 466–478.

51. 51 See Rosika Schwimmer’s literary work on Ford & Wilson. NYPL RSP IX. Personal Press Clippings. Box 511.

52. 52 Ibid.

53. 53 Ford Peace Ship. NYPL RSP IV. Box 486–490.

54. 54 Ford Peace Ship. NYPL RSP IV. Box 486–490.

55. 55 For Schwimmer’s official documents relating to her emigration, see NYPL RSP X. Box 554, 555.

56. 56 On news values, see Brighton and Foy, News Values.

57. 57 Schwimmer, “A feminizmus sérelmei,” 2–3.

58. 58 C. McFadden, “A Radical Exchange,” 494–504.

59. 59 Szapor, “Who Represents”; Szapor, “Good Hungarian Women.”

60. 60 Schwimmer, “A feminizmus sérelmei,” 2–3.

61. 61 A Nő. Feminista Folyóirat was not published between January and June 1920, and the July issue was no longer devoted to the Hungarian Soviet Republic but to a much more current event for the FE, namely the eighth Congress of the IWSA in Geneva. For more details on Hungary’s participation in the IWSA Congress in Geneva, see Szapor, “Who Represents.”

62. 62 Schwimmer, “A feminizmus sérelmei,” 2–3.

63. 63 Feministák Egyesülete, “Tájékoztatás.”

64. 64 The notion of the centralized household was a revolutionary model of urban housing development in which a large, centrally managed kitchen within a multi-apartment building replaced kitchens in individual apartments. The concept was based on the ideas of the German women’s rights activist and social democrat Lily Braun (1865, Halberstadt, Germany–1916, Zehlendorf, Germany).

65. 65 Schwimmer, Tisza Tales.

66. 66 Reviews of Tisza Tales. NYPL RSP Series VIII. Box 516.

67. 67 Letter from Alice Park to Lola Maverick Lloyd. October 17, 1919. Reviews of Tisza Tales. NYPL RSP Series VIII. Box 516.

68. 68 Christmas book recommendation of the Chicago Evening News and The New York Times. December 1928. Ibid.

69. 69 Z. Sz, “Magyar mesék.” Press clipping, page number is not given. Ibid.

70. 70 “Karácsonykor.” Press clipping, page number not given. Ibid.

71. 71 Ibid.

72. 72 The Public Library of the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. Ibid.

73. 73 Letter from the editor of The New York Herald Tribune to Rosika Schwimmer. n. d. Ibid.

74. 74 Letter from Tivadar/Theodor Koppányi to the editor of The New York World. n. d. Ibid.

75. 75 Fickert, the eldest of the four women, was a middle-class teacher, women’s rights activist, and devoted pacifist. She was also founding president of the leading Austrian bourgeois-liberal women’s association Allgemeiner österreichischer Frauenverein (General Austrian Women’s Association), Vienna, 1893–1922) and editor-in-chief of its official organ Neues Frauenleben (New Women’s Life, Vienna, 1902–1918). On her, see Hacker, Auguste Fickert, 131–33.

76. 76 Kveder (1878, Ljubljana–1926, Zagreb) was a journalist, editor, and author of fiction who became a central figure of the Slovene women’s movements. She lived and published articles in Ljubljana, Trieste, Bern, Munich, and Prague. Through her journalistic activity, she had a broad network of contacts with women from various countries of Central and Southeastern Europe. Poniz, Kveder, Zofka, 282–84.

77. 77 Schirmacher (1865–1930), the second eldest among the four women, was a writer, journalist, translator, and activist in the German left-wing women’s rights movement before 1918. She traveled extensively, lectured internationally, and wrote and published on women’s (higher) education, work, and suffrage in German, French, and Austrian papers. Her texts were also published in English translations. She later became involved in German nationalist politics. On her life and work, see Gehmacher et al., Käthe Schirmacher; Gehmacher, Feminist Activism.

78. 78 Sharp and Stibbe, “Introduction.”

“Terror against Women.” The Struggle of “Red” Women at the Beginning
of the Nazi Era: Between Invisibility and Solidarity*

Anna Veronica Pobbe

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 443-458 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.443

When the men kill, it is up to us women to fight
for the preservation of life. When the men are silent,
it is our duty to raise our voices on behalf of our ideals.1

In a 1934 publication of the International Red Aid (MOPR), it can be read that Rudolf Diels, head of the Gestapo between 1933 and 1934, described communist women as “the most stubborn enemies of the state because they did not become informers despite being tortured.” Despite their absence in higher positions of the RHD (Rote Hilfe Deutschland, German Red Aid), women played a major role in the activities of the RHD: “It was women [in fact] who drove the bailiffs out of their homes and the provocative Nazis out of the welfare office. […] In the Ruhr region, proletarian housewives put together a delegation and demanded a pay rise for their husbands in the factories. Women prevented arrests and demanded the release of their husbands. This was the case in Berlin and Breslau, where women snatched an arrested apprentice and market trader from the police. In Berlin, the police were unable to arrest a communist in one factory because the workers threatened to go on strike. In the Rhineland, 40 women went to the district administration office and demanded the release of their husbands. In another place, 60 women and their children forced the release of 40 prisoners through a demonstration. In Freiburg, women achieved the release of a communist woman.”2 Taking this attestation as our starting point, the current paper aims to shed a light, at first, on the communist women activism during the Nazi Era. This activism is also reported by some members, like Rosa Lindemann, who was also the leader of a mostly women resistance group based in the Tiergarten district of Berlin: “Some of our women helped the men whose wives had been arrested in the household and looked after the children. We had contacted over thirty families and were able to alleviate some of the suffering. It was a particular joy for us to hear how happy our comrades in the prisons and penitentiaries were that we were looking after their relatives and caring for them.”3 Secondly, the paper aims to address the peculiar strategies that were used by the women, like it has been reported in the Berlin Moabit case, where there was a circle of women, that organized relief campaigns and met weekly, disguised as coffee parties or meetings in garden sheds; these women collected money for relatives of the prisoners and helped resistance fighters who had gone into hiding.4 Last, but not the least, the paper aims to address some key-role women in the Red Aid scenario: like Ottilie Pohl, who died in Theresienstadt.

Keywords: communist women, political activism, solidarity, Third Reich, resistance

Introduction:
Solidarity among German Women between Weimar and the Nazi Era

The history of German women’s associations is a complex, varied, and intertwined with the history of the legislative recognition of women as actors in public life.5 Far from proposing to offer an exhaustive picture of this history, the following essay focuses on politically oriented women’s associationism, with specific emphasis on a communist association, attempting to highlight behaviors, personalities, and actions carried out in the period between the National Socialist regime’s rise to power until the end of 1935, the year of Liselotte (Lilo) Hermann’s arrest.6 The choice to focus on this period and in these specific terms is motivated by what the documents have shown. Communist women were, initially, underestimated, even by their own comrades, who often hindered their efforts in the Party. Secondly, when the Nazy party took power, these women began to be persecuted, deported, and often killed by the new regime. Through a constant search for strategies, first of resistance and then of survival, these women never ceased to be activists. The final aim of this essay is to show how the struggle of communist women to be recognized was fought until it was no longer physically possible to do so.

It is also important to emphasize at the outset that, despite its specific goals, the story to be told here is neither specifically German nor monochromatic in terms of political alignments. Communist women’s associationism was, in fact, avowedly transnational, and the battle for the recognition of women’s participation was a common thread among almost all party platforms of the time. Emblematic in this regard are the words of Gertrud Bäumer, president of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF), the largest bourgeois women’s association during the Weimar Republic. In a 1918 speech, Bäumer declared that “German women are forced to breastfeed their babies with their hands tied behind their backs.” 7 The image evoked by Bäumer later became one of the strongest and most defining symbols of femininity in the interwar period, namely the icon of the self-sacrificing mother.8 This iconography of the mother-martyr was also part of the narrative of proletarian women, according to which sacrifice was oriented toward a totalizing political life. 9

In addition to the roles of icons of womanhood, another motif in the narratives and events I describe here is the link between women (also understood as political actors) and welfare activities. Associationism on a welfare basis was initially the main area of aggregation among women, since at least until the 1920s many German states denied women the right of associationism.10 However, even when political associationism was secured, care activities were defined as “a special area for women’s abilities, and as such they [women] must be given a prominent role in this area.”11 Statements like this reflect what Rouette and Selwyn say was a fairly common expectation in early postwar Germany, namely that women were the caregivers of society.12

The social tensions and clashes that ensued in the period following World War I, however, made evident what Kaplan describes as the “contradiction between the feminine sacrificial ideal and real female power in society,” leading to the consolidation of what Kaplan defines as a new female obsession: survival.13 This “obsession” was also visible in the activities carried out by German communist women, who managed to forge a path of militancy and solidarity despite a cumbersome iconography and increasingly cramped spaces.

The Struggle for Recognition inside the Parties

One of the difficulties that German women encountered within the parties in their efforts to have the “women’s” issue recognized and put on the political agenda was the autonomous management of welfare activities. Regardless of political alignments, between the 1920s and the 1930s, a real “commonality of difficulties” regarding women’s associations came to be established. I offer below three examples of this “commonality.”

The first example comes from the context that one might label with the adjective “bourgeois.” In 1924, Humanitas was founded, a handmaiden association of the BDF, which in its founding statute declared that women should be guaranteed a primary role in welfare work.14 Humanitas was founded at the initiative of Gertrud Bäumer, who had entrusted Anne Von Giercke with the organization of humanitarian activities, especially in areas involving members of the younger generations. This universalistic humanitarian ambition never really found expression, however, due mainly to the opposition of male officials and doctors within both the Ministry of Labor and the Langstein organizations, which were a series of interdenominational organizations dedicated to welfare activities and medical care.15

The second example concerns the German women’s socialist movement, which, as historian Charles Sowerwine has observed, was the largest women’s movement of any political color on the European continent between 1890 and 1914.16 Sowerwine contends that the initial independence of the female side from its male counterpart was central to the success of this movement.17 However, the goal of liberating working women from both the male yoke and capitalism, which Marxist theorist and activist for women’s rights Clara Zetkin called for in a speech in 1889, 18 was never achieved because of a dependence on the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany, or SPD), which , as Karen Honeycutt has observed, was always male-driven and was fundamentally incapable of liberating women from the oppression of the family.19 Zetkin herself, who left the SPD after the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg, was highly critical of the party’s failure to develop a strategy of women’s emancipation, as this failure, in her eyes, meant an unwillingness to break with bourgeois tradition.20

Finally, the most emblematic example in this regard was the evolution of women’s activism within the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party, or KPD). In the mid-1920s, the KPD implemented a series of measures to recruit women into the party ranks and improve women’s rights, culminating in the creation of a new association called the Roter Frauen und Mädchen Bund (Red Women’s and Girls’ League, or RFMB), which was founded in 1925.21 As Sara Ann Sewell has noted, the party considered women’s militancy fundamental,22 and RFMB members were incited to take part in a variety of propaganda activities.23 However, while inciting the active participation of female comrades, communist men generally remained reluctant to grant political equality to their female counterparts, as evidenced by the following statement made by a woman at the 1930 district party convention: “Very many male party comrades still hold the petty-bourgeois-opportunistic viewpoint that women belong at the cooking pot. They don’t believe it is necessary to inform their wives or to bring them to meetings.”24

The “commonality of difficulties” described above never led to cooperation among the various associations, which always directed their outpourings of solidarity more toward their own “comrades” than toward other women’s organizations.25 According to Honeycutt, the lack of solidarity among the various women’s associations was due to at least three reasons: 1) the “long shadow” of the anti-socialist laws issued under Bismark; 2) strong discrimination against proletarian women; and 3) the presence of anti-cooperation activists such as Zetkin, who always opposed cooperation with women whom she regarded as bourgeois.26

Rote Hilfe Deutschland: A Women’s Association

Rote Hilfe Deutschland (Red Aid Germany, or RHD) was founded in 1924. In the period between the Weimar Republic and the early years of the Nazi era, it became the leading humanitarian organization devoted to the cause of political prisoners on German soil.27 RHD was formally set up as a German detachment of the Russian social-service organization Mezhdunarodnaya organizatsiya pomoshchi bortsam revolyutsii (or MOPR), known most commonly in English as International Red Aid. MOPR was a humanitarian organization linked to the Communist International. It was founded in 1922 to provide support and aid to communist prisoners and their families.28

RHD can be defined as a women’s association for two reasons. First, it was heir to a specific humanitarian tradition, including the work of organizations such as Frauenhilfe für politische Gefangene (Women’s Aid for Political Prisoners),29 which was founded in Munich in 1919 and which in its four years of activity managed to distinguish itself as a humanitarian body even outside the work of the KPD. Second, RHD was called a “women’s organization” even by the male members of the party.30

The clearly defined political orientation never limited, at least in terms of public statements, the humanitarian thrust of the RHD’s communiqués, in which it defined itself as “a nonpartisan organization devoted to the assistance of all political prisoners, whatever their political beliefs.”31 Within this narrative, the notion that welfare efforts should never show any trace of discrimination was central:

Aid is not only a relief to the material needs of prisoners and their oppressed families, it is also an enormous lever to uplift all those who hesitate, to strengthen the spirit and resistance of prisoners, to give new strength to those in the anti-fascist struggle. […] Solidarity must include all victims, without exception, regardless of which party they ever belonged to and regardless of their worldview.32

However, as was true in the case of the way in which the women’s issue was regarded within the KPD, there was a similarly strong discrepancy between words and acts in the RHD. Historians such as Kurt Schilde and Klaus-Michael Mallmann have called attention to this ambivalence.33 Their analysis of the communiqués issued by the organization reveal that the RHD did not even consider itself a welfare organization, even going so far as to declare, “we never intended to become charitable in the bourgeois sense of the term.” Despite this contention, however, both Schilde and Mallmann agree that the RHD, by pruning its welfare activities, closely resembled the various “bourgeois” associations that were particularly active on the German scene at the time.34

Like many other welfare associations, RHD was an association with high female participation,35 but it never succeeded in balancing power relations within the Communist Party, where women always represented a minority. As Sewell observes, one should not be fooled by the presence in the history of the KPD of figures such as Zetkin, Luxemburg, Fischer, who managed to hold high ranks in the party hierarchy. The presence of these women did not change the nature of the party, which remained, according to Helen Boak, an “out-and-out men’s party.”36 Mallmann notes, however, that in 1928 women comprised 23 percent of the KPD, a proportion significantly higher than in any other German party of the time. So even before the beginning of the “Terror Era” (as it was dubbed by the KPD), the scenario for women involved in political activities was very limited and limiting. In the 1930s, the women involved in RHD welfare activities had to face another hardship: the National Socialist movement. The Nazis’ rise to power became the fundamental external factor that drastically limited women’s opportunities for political involvement. It had two immediate consequences. The first was a collapse in women’s participation (in KPD activities), which declined by up to 10 percent. The second concerned the motivation that drove many “comrades” to withdraw from militancy and activism. This motive was fear.37

On the Front Lines: Activism and Acts against Nazi Terror

With the banning of the KPD by the Nazi authorities, one of the first measures taken by the party was to dissolve all women’s auxiliary associations, a step taken in August 1933, i.e., very soon after the Nazi rise to power. There were two main reasons behind this decision. The first involved the disorientation experienced by the KPD in the early years of the “period of illegality,” as has been noted by Silke Makowski.38 The second (which was probably more important than the first) relates to the prevailing machismo within the party itself. About the latter, we have already seen how associations such as the RHD were considered more in keeping with the “feminine nature” of “women’s” work than the efforts of groups that might have engaged in armed struggle.39 It took two years for the KPD leadership cadres to open itself again women’s activism, as shown, for instance, by the following statement:

Women are particularly well-suited to carry out outreach activities. Women must be included in the functions of all our work, as broadly as possible, decisively and through the elimination of all prejudices that exist within our ranks. There is much evidence that the wives of arrested anti-fascists have agreed to take over the functions of their husbands.40

Despite the formal disestablishment of women’s sections, communist women continued to be active promoters of spontaneous initiatives and demonstrations, sometimes exploiting in their favor the prejudices according to which they should serve merely as a “fifth wheel” of the party.41 As for the media-propaganda sphere, a 1934 pamphlet offers the following words of encouragement for women’s participation in activism of all kinds, including militant activism:

It was women [in fact] who drove the bailiffs out of their homes and the provocative Nazis out of the welfare office. […] In the Ruhr region, proletarian housewives put together a delegation and demanded a pay raise for their husbands in the factories. Women prevented arrests and demanded the release of their husbands. This was the case in Berlin and Breslau, where women snatched an arrested apprentice and market trader from the police. In Berlin, the police were unable to arrest a communist in one factory because the workers threatened to go on strike. In the Rhineland, 40 women went to the district administration office and demanded the release of their husbands. In another place, 60 women and their children forced the release of 40 prisoners through a demonstration. In Freiburg, women achieved the release of a communist woman.42

Such spontaneity was not always welcome within the KPD or even within the RHD itself, which from 1933 onward had been promoting a genuine policy of mass demonstrations. The reopening to women’s activism was, in fact, a necessity, deeply linked to the mass revolutionary movement envisioned by the communist leadership. In a scenario in which, to use the Party’s words, Germany “had been turned into a prison,”43 “mass resistance” was considered the only means by which it would be possible to stop the “degenerateness of this dictatorship,” which through increasingly intense political repression had already set the stage for the “looting and further impoverishment of the working masses.”44 From this perspective, the RHD represented itself as a guiding light capable of leading the masses, even before rousing them to action:

We as Rote Hilfe must show the way to the social democratic workers, showing them how their leaders have betrayed them and how they too are victims of the fascist regime. Our main task must be to make social democratic workers join the RHD, the struggle against fascist terror and active solidarity within a collective discussion.45

The goal of uniting communist-driven anti-fascist resistance efforts (or even some of these efforts) was never reached, however, as recently pointed out by Udo Grashoff, who studied the resistance practices implemented by communists against the Gestapo.46 Despite attempts at coordination, communist women continued to hold spontaneous demonstrations and shows of defiance:

The wives of those arrested went first to the police stations, then to the SA [Sturmabteilung] centers, and finally began demonstrating outside the KLs [Konzentrationslager]. They often brought their children to these protests […] The entire group of women from our committee participated in the funeral of a well-known pediatrician who had been denied treatment because he was Jewish, thus turning that moment into a large demonstration.47

This resilience was also noted by some comrades, as in the case of Georg Bruckmann, who in 1934 noted that women were more effective than most of their male comrades in the strategies they used to pass on information. This observation was confirmed by Mallmann, who shows how women used at least three specific expedients: 1) carrying propaganda leaflets inside strollers; 2) disguising themselves as “mistresses” to distribute information, especially at night; and 3) using sites that were regarded as typical gathering places for women to share information, such as cemeteries and cafes.48

The histories of some RHD committees offer perhaps the most emblematic examples of women’s defiant activism. One could mention, for instance, the issue concerning the “refunding” of the Central Committee (ZV). In 1933, Kurt Bartz, coordinator of the Central Committee of the RHD was arrested. Taking the reins of the ZV was his wife Erna Bartz, who together with Hilde Seigewasser and Maria Lehmann tried to push forward both humanitarian-solidarity activities, such as providing financial aid for the families of political prisoners, and propaganda activities, such as founding a communist newspaper devoted explicitly to women’s issues.49 One could also mention the welfare activities carried out by the Berlin-Tiergarten Committee, where Rosa Lidemann, who was also involved in an array of other activities, coordinated an assistance group for orphans and the children of political prisoners:

Some of our women helped the men whose wives had been arrested by offering assistance in the household and looking after their children. We had contacted over 30 families and alleviated some of the suffering. It was a particular joy for us to hear how happy our comrades in the prisons and penitentiaries were that we were looking after their relatives and caring for them.50

Perhaps the most emblematic case was that of Ottilie Pohl. Pohl, who was Jewish and a long-serving activist, was a member of the Berlin-Mohabit Committee. She had devoted the previous years of her life, up to the time of her deportation in 1942, to assisting the children of those politically persecuted by the Nazi regime. She was arrested the first time in 1940 on charges of aiding an “enemy of the state,” but she was released after only eight months.51 She was subsequently arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 and deported to Theresienstadt, where she died in 1943.52

“The Most Stubborn Enemies”

Rudolf Diels, head of the Gestapo between 1933 and 1934, described communist women as “the most stubborn enemies of the state because they did not become informers despite being tortured.” However, the targeting of communist women was not an immediate goal for the Nazi regime but rather the result of a gradual path toward the construction of a new “enemy of the state.” This propaganda goal was only achieved in late 1935, when Liselotte (Lilo) Hermann was arrested. More than others, Hermann’s case could be read as a real turning point for at least two reasons. The first reason concerns the mother-martyr symbolism. The second concerns the radicalization of Nazi policies against women activists. Hermann was indeed a young mother who was deeply involved in the KPD’s illegal activities.53 After her arrest in December 1935, she was incarcerated for almost two years. She was then put on trial at the People’s Court in Stuttgart, 54 where she was sentenced to death in June 1937. Before 1935, if arrested, communist women were usually given light prison sentences, usually less than a year. Beginning in 1935, however, the sentences imposed on communist women arrested by the Nazi regime increased dramatically, as evidenced, for instance, by the case of Eva Lippold, who was arrested in 1935 and sentenced to nine years in prison.55 But even in this case, there are exceptions, as we have seen in the case of Ottilie Pohl, who, despite being a communist and a Jew, was initially sentenced to an eight-month prison term. One could suggest two possible reasons for the initial “levity” with which the Nazi authorities dealt with communist women. The first involves the simple fact that, as repeatedly pointed out in the discussion here, women’s activism was consistently underestimated. The second is simply the general failure to consider even the possibility that women were political aware and engaged.

From 1935 onward, references to violent acts committed against communist women specifically by the Nazi regime appeared ever more frequently in RHD communiqués. In this regard, the most emblematic documents are those collected in two files, Methods of the Gestapo (Methoden der Gestapo)56 and Terror Against Women (Terror gegen Frauen).57 Both files were compiled by several hands, probably in 1934, and were part of the information that was reported in a series of pamphlets published by MOPR between 1935 and 1936. In these files, we read of how the Gestapo would arrest the wives of dissidents to increase pressure on these dissidents and to limit their sabotage actions.58 The intensification of so-called precautionary measures against communist women was also recorded in the last reports issued by the RHD Central Committee, which sought in its final months to collect as much material as possible concerning political persecution in Germany. One of these reports describes how as many as 193 Communist women were arrested in the early months of 1935.59

After not even two years of Nazi rule, only a few scattered committees of the RHD remained in operation, often run by the wives of the men who until recently had headed them. The more the horizon narrowed and the dark clouds of the regime smothered any attempt at solidarity, the more the goals of the RHD came to seem little more than mirages:

The RHD has the urgent task of organizing aid and protection for the persecuted and organizing reception facilities. Relief for all detainees and victims is a duty for all who reject this barbarism.60

In 1935–1936, these illusions gradually gave way to a bitter realization:

Efforts so far have not been sufficient to organize effective protection and truly comprehensive help for all victims. There are tens of thousands of families who are without aid. There are tens of thousands of prisoners with whom there is no connection and/or communication. […] The situation in Germany requires that the whole problem of protecting all politically persecuted people and their families be considered.61

The latter reports reveal a more intense awareness of the need to create a common humanitarian front, unencumbered by political allegiances, though this awareness, alas, was belated:

In the interest of helping all victims imprisoned behind prison walls and barbed wire, in the interest of helping families deprived of their livelihood, in the knowledge that only together can a dam be built against this terror… The RHD declares itself willing to accept any proposal to be absorbed into such an (all-inclusive humanitarian) organization.62

As the circumstances in Germany made it increasingly difficult for the RHD to remain active, the work of gathering information regarding the conditions of political prisoners was increasingly directed to foreign interlocutors in cities such as Paris, London, Prague, Brussels, Basel, Oslo, and Copenhagen. The intention was to encourage protests in these cities and demonstrations of solidarity with, in particular, the defendants in the trials of the People’s Courts.63 In Paris, for example, several RHD leaders took refuge, organizing in 1935 within the Lutetia Kreis (Lutetia Circle), which was established to promote an international campaign for the release of Rudolf Claus and then, following Claus’ execution, to promote mass demonstrations, efforts which continued until 1937.64 In early 1936, two newspapers in Prague, a city in which KPD leadership had taken refuge, published detailed reports on the developments in two political trials: the Wuppertal Trial65 and the third trial concerning clashes between KPD members and the SA, which took place at Berlin’s Richardstasse.66 A rally led by German women in front of the German embassy was also reported during this period.67 In the summer of 1937, several student and working women’s committees in Basel responded to the call for mass mobilization in reference to the abuses reported in a trial in Stuttgart.68

It seemed for a moment that the long-sought goal of solidarity, which was consistently part of the RHD appeals at the beginning of the “Nazi Era,” had finally been achieved. This proved a fleeting illusion, however, for things had radically changed in Germany, and the few remaining members of the RHD had been silenced and forced to hide their political activism out of fear for their lives. The story of the “Red Caritas,” as it was called by Mallmann, had its final act in 1938, when what remained of the RHD (as an association) was absorbed by the Deutsche Volkshilfe, one of the many humanitarian organizations directly controlled by the Nazi party.

As with many of the moments in the history of the RHD, even in this case the fate of this association was deeply intertwined with the fate of the women who belonged to it and who tried to pursue humanitarian actions against a very hostile backdrop. The RHD ceased to exist in 1938, the year in which Liselotte Hermann was executed on June 20 in the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.

* The research has been founded by European Union – Next Generation EU, related to the project PRIN 2022, entitled Political Repression and International Solidarity Networks (PRISON). The Transnational Mobilization on Behalf of Political Prisoners in the Interwar Period (1918–1939 ca.) (2022XBMWZ3).

Archival Sources

Bundesarchiv, Berlin

Das Digitale Bildarchiv des Bundesarchives (BILDY)

Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BArch)

RY1/3211, Berichte der Zentralvorstandes

RY/3213, Rundschreiben der Zentral Vorstandes (ZV)

RY1/3217, Presse Und Information Material

RY1/3219, Internationale Protests Kampagnen gegen den Terror in Deutschland

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Zetkin, Clara. Clara Zetkins: Selected Writings. Edited by Philipp Foner. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015.

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1. 1* The research has been founded by European Union – Next Generation EU, related to the project PRIN 2022, entitled Political Repression and International Solidarity Networks (PRISON). The Transnational Mobilization on Behalf of Political Prisoners in the Interwar Period (1918–1939 ca.) (2022XBMWZ3).

   Clara Zetkins: Selected Writings, 116.

2. 2 Winter, Ella, Frauen unter faschistischem Terror!

3. 3 Schilde, “Das Columbia Haus.”

4. 4 Ibid.

5. 5 Hong, “Gender, Citizenship, and the Welfare State,” 1. Cfr. Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany; Briedenthal, Koonz, Stuard, Becoming Visible.

6. 6 Fischer, “‘Aber den Mut werde ich schon nicht verlieren.’”

7. 7 Fischer, “‘Aber den Mut werde ich schon nicht verlieren.’” For the conservative movements, see also Reagin, Sweeping the German Nation.

8. 8 Apel, “‘Heroes’ and ‘Whores’,” 367.

9. 9 Ibid.

10. 10 Honeycutt, “Socialism and Feminism in Imperial Germany,” 31.

11. 11 Hong, “Gender, Citizenship, and the Welfare State,” 8.

12. 12 Rouette and Sewyl, “Mothers and Citizens,” 50.

13. 13 Kaplan, Women and Communal Strikes in the Crisis of 1917–1922, 446.

14. 14 Langstein to Labor Ministry (no date), BAF Ram 9149.

15. 15 Hong, “Gender, Citizenship, and the Welfare State,” 8.

16. 16 Sowerwine, The Socialist Women’s Movement from 1850 to 1940, 406.

17. 17 Ivi.

18. 18 Ibid., 407.

19. 19 Honeycutt, “Socialism and Feminism in Imperial Germany,” 31.

20. 20 Apel, “Heroes and Whores,” 368.

21. 21 Sewell, “The Party does indeed fight like a man,” 166.

22. 22 Sewell, “Bolschevizing Communist Women,” 281.

23. 23 Ibid., 283.

24. 24 Genossin Th., quoted in “Im Zeichen der revolutionären Selbstkritik,” SR (May 14, 1930) in Grashoff, Gefahr von innen; Sewell, “The Party does indeed fight like a man,” 167.

25. 25 Honeycutt, “Socialism and Feminism in Imperial Germany,” 33.

26. 26 Ibid., 32.

27. 27 There are comparatively few works on the history of RHD, and there is little overlap in the existing secondary literature on the subject, mainly due to the scattered nature of the sources. For a framing of the RHD as a welfare/humanitarian organization, see Hering and Schilde, Die Rote Hilfe; Brauns, Schafft Rote Hilfe! It is important to point out, however, that the approaches used in these works are more militant than scientifically rigorous. To date, there is only one monograph that has attempted to deal with RHD in the years following the Nazi rise to power: Makowski, “Helft den Gefangenen in Hitlers Kerkern.”

28. 28 Ryle, “International Red Aid and Comintern Strategy.”

29. 29 The founder of Frauenhilfe für politische Gefangene was Rosa Aschenbrenner, who later served as the head of the RHD Committee at Munich, Schilde, “Schaft Rote Hilfe,” 34; Sewell, “Bolshevizing Communist Women,” 269.

30. 30 “For most party members, the RHD’s welfarist attitude was better suited to women than the self-defense Red Brigades.” Sewell, “The Party does indeed fight like a man,” 172.

31. 31 BArch, RY1/3211, Berichte der Zentralvorstandes, “Terror’s statistics,” 132.

32. 32 BArch, RY1/3211, Berichte der Zentralvorstandes, “Our duties,” 253.

33. 33 Mallmann, “Zwischen denunziation und Rote Hilfe,” 81; Schilde, “‘Schaft Rote Hilfe’,” 31

34. 34 Among the many, the one with which a similarity in terms of services provided appears evident is Caritas, Schilde, “‘Schaft Rote Hilfe’,” 32.

35. 35 RHD activities were considered by fellow party members to be more suitable for women, Hagemann, “Frauenprotest und Mannerdemonstrationen,” 210.

36. 36 Boak, Women in Weimar Germany, 157.

37. 37 Mallmann, “Zwischen Denunzation und Rote Hilfe,” 86.

38. 38 Makowski, “Helft den Gefangenen in Hitlers Kerkern.”

39. 39 Mallmann, “Zwischen Denunzation und Rote Hilfe,” 86.

40. 40 BArch, RY/3213, Rundschreiben der Zentral Vorstandes (ZV), 26, “Unsere Antwort auf die neue Terrorwelle und die Massenprozesse im Reich,” 1935.

41. 41 Mallmann, “Zwischen Denunzation und Rote Hilfe,” 85.

42. 42 Winter, Frauen unter faschistischem Terror, 2.

43. 43 BArch, RY1/3213, Rundschreiben der Zentralvorstandes, 1.

44. 44 BArch, RY1/3213, Rundschreiben der Zentralvorstandes, 2.

45. 45 BArch, RY1/3213, Rundschreiben der Zentralvorstandes, 5.

46. 46 Grashoff, “Outwitting the Gestapo?”

47. 47 BArch, RY1/3217, Presse Und Information Material, 93–94, “Gestapo Methods.”

48. 48 Mallmann, “Zwischen Denunzation und Rote Hilfe,” 88.

49. 49 Lehmann was arrested in 1935 and sentenced to a two-year prison term; in 1939, she fled to England; Seigewasser continued her welfare work until she was arrested in 1943. She died in 1945 as a result of a bombing that hit the prison in which she was imprisoned; Bartz’s trail was lost shortly after the “closure” of the Berlin ZV. BArch, RY1/3211, 86.

50. 50 Schilde, “‘Schaft Rote Hilfe!’”

51. 51 BArch, R3018/2757.

52. 52 BArch, R3017/5540; BILDY 10/1101.

53. 53 Schad, Frauen gegen Hitler, 203–20.

54. 54 BArch, R3017/28892-28917. The charge was “treason in concomitance with preparation of high treason in aggravating circumstances.”

55. 55 BArch, NY 4550.

56. 56 BArch, RY1/3217, 79–89.

57. 57 BArch, RY1/3217. 45–51.

58. 58 BArch, RY1/3217, 80.

59. 59 BArch, RY1/3211, Berichte der Zentralvorstandes, “Our Duties,” 251.

60. 60 BArch, RY1/3211, Berichte der Zentralvorstandes, “Our Duties,” 252.

61. 61 BArch, RY1/3211, Berichte der Zentralvorstandes, “Our Duties,” 253.

62. 62 BArch, RY1/3211, Berichte der Zentralvorstandes, “Our Duties,” 254.

63. 63 BArch, RY1/3219, Internationale Protests Kampagnen gegen den Terror in Deutschland, 1–121.

64. 64 BArch, RY1/3219, Internationale Protests Kampagnen gegen den Terror in Deutschland 1, 121.

65. 65 BArch, RY1/3219, 10, Nova Svoboda, 10 Febbraio 1936; 12, Prszaky Vecer, February 22, 1936. Cfr. Moos, Anti-Nazi Germans.

66. 66 BArch, RY1/3219, Internationale Protests Kampagnen gegen den Terror in Deutschland 9, February 1, 1936.

67. 67 BArch, RY1/3219, Internationale Protests Kampagnen gegen den Terror in Deutschland 7, “On the Rudolf Claus death.”

68. 68 BArch, RY1/3219, Internationale Protests Kampagnen gegen den Terror in Deutschland, London, October 10, 1936, 45–50.

Adrift on the Periphery:
The Alternative Development of Hungarian Women’s Organizations in Interwar Transylvania

Zsuzsa Bokor

Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities

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 Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 402-442 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.402

This study explores the interwar history of Hungarian women’s organizations in Transylvania, focusing on the complex interplay between gender, ethnicity, and politics in the aftermath of the Treaty of Trianon. It examines the foundation and evolution of the Central Secretariat of the Hungarian Minority Women of Romania (RMKNKT) and its affiliated religious and social associations, analyzing how Transylvanian Hungarian women developed alternative, hybrid models of emancipation that blended traditional gender roles with modern political activism.

Through discussion of archival sources from transnational perspectives, the essay traces how Hungarian women in Romania adapted to exclusion from national and international women’s organizations by reconfiguring their activism along ethno-religious lines. It devotes particular attention to so-called “railway mission” programs designed to protect women, who were compelled to move among various locations in the country to pursue work, illustrating how these initiatives became vehicles for ethnic self-defense and identity construction.

The study reveals that Hungarian women’s activism in interwar Romania cannot simply be categorized as conservative or progressive. Instead, it operated in a liminal space shaped by the constraints of minority status, the failures of multicultural inclusion, and opportunistic engagement with both international and religious networks. This essay contributes to the redefinition of minority women’s political subjectivity and highlights how social work and community care were understood in ethnic frameworks.

Keywords: Transylvanian Hungarian women’s organizations, interwar, railway mission

“Let’s not take any leadership position in the MANSZ, and let’s not break our unity.”1 In the spring of 1942, at a meeting of the Transylvanian Catholic Women’s Association, Countess Paula Bethlen2 declared the organization’s intent to maintain its autonomous status, thereby rejecting any affiliation with the National Alliance of Hungarian Women, (Magyar Asszonyok Nemzeti Szövetsége or MANSZ)3, the biggest national Hungarian women’s association. This statement is surprising in light of the prevailing sentiment following the Second Vienna Award, in the wake of which one would have expected Transylvanian women’s organizations to align themselves with the biggest conservative Hungarian women’s organization. At this meeting, the Association also explained its choice: “Here, for 20 years, associations of all denominations worked in harmony. Let us stay in the shadow of the Church and continue to work there.” As one participant in the meeting commented, “We don’t want to work together because of resentment. We know that unity is strength.”

What events led these women to make this decision? The present study analyzes Hungarian women’s organizations in Transylvania during the interwar period and the roles of women’s welfare activists in ethnic identity politics. The analysis focuses on the establishment of the Central Secretariat of the Romanian Hungarian Minority Women (Romániai Magyar Kisebbségi Nők Központi Titkársága, RMKNKT), which was the primary umbrella organization of the various women’s associations. It traces the trajectories of the process of emancipation after World War I and the ways in which the women’s organizations of an ethnic minority group were able to function in a context in which they had only sporadic and conditional national and international support. This study explores the formation of the minority identity of Hungarian women, with emphasis on the manner in which the construction of femininity was shaped within the daily lives of the Hungarian ethnic community in Transylvania.

There is very little secondary literature on Hungarian women in Transylvania. While significant advancements have been made in eastern Europe concerning the “potential of gender analysis in the wider historical scholarship,”4 both the Romanian and the Hungarian secondary literature has overlooked the experiences of Transylvanian women who belonged to ethnic groups other than the Romanian majority.5

While women’s associations in Transylvania in the interwar period are occasionally mentioned in some of the scholarship, the works in which they are discussed often lack a sufficiently broad perspective. In some cases, discussions of religious women’s organizations are offered in isolation, with a narrow focus on the given confession and little or no consideration of how these organizations related to or interacted with other groups and bodies or, for that matter, the broader sociopolitical context.6 This paper addresses this lacuna in the secondary literature by highlighting an underappreciated dimension of national political history and offering an alternative perspective on the ethnic struggle through a women-centered lens.

While the primary objective of this essay is to present new evidence concerning a series of paradoxical developments in the interwar history of Transylvanian Hungarian women’s movements, it has also been informed by the study of networks in which these women’s organizations were embedded. In the aftermath of the Treaty of Trianon, minority women’s organizations found themselves disconnected from both international women’s organizations and the feminist movement and also, to a certain extent, from women’s associations in Hungary. However, some ties with international religious women’s organizations were still kept, albeit in an informal manner. This study will show also that even Romanian organizations were only superficially open to minority women’s groups in the interwar period.

As the analysis of organizational linkages offered in the discussion below reveals, in their efforts to maintain official relationships exclusively with national organizations, women’s international organizations marginalized newly formed minority organizations in Romania. This led – among other political and social factors – to a narrowing of perspectives and the ethnicization of regional women’s organizations. Consequently, the objectives of the progressive organizational program of the RMKNKT shifted toward an ethnic interpretation of social problems. In the absence of any kind of professional or financial support from the state and from international networks, local organizations were obliged to shift their focus from the development of comprehensive, long-term programs to the management of smaller, short-term social issues. This shift is evidenced by the integration of relationships with larger, primarily religious international organizations into the operations of the local women’s organizations. The concept of ethnicization, as I approach it in this study, includes both top-down and bottom-up dynamics. The former pertains to state-led categorization, while the latter involves mobilization among minority groups. In my discussion, however, the focus is placed on ethnicity as a dynamic process, rather than on the assumption that ethnic groups can be seen as stable actors. The case study will demonstrate how political, institutional, and network dynamics contribute to ethnicization and the self-determination (and self-interpretation) of a group.7

The second part of the article analyzes how the “railway mission,” which was an initiative to prevent the exploitation on the labor market of women and girls who felt compelled to move in search of work, was undertaken by religious women’s associations. The discussion offers a revealing example of the interconnectedness of various national and international tendencies, organizations, and discourses. A notable aspect of these social programs and discourses concerned ethnically Hungarian women who found themselves pressured to move to seek work. The category of the peasant or working-class woman who sought employment outside the home and therefore encountered an unfamiliar cultural environment (among predominantly Romanian speakers) served as a potent metaphor for interwar Hungarian femininity. According to this discourse, these women needed care, oversight, and supervision. The categories of ethnicity, class, and gender intersected in the context of women who regularly moved in search of work, and these categories were therefore used in the discourses of the “servant-programs” and the railway-mission projects.

The study demonstrates that Hungarian women’s activism and the process of emancipation were characterized by a kind of ambivalent or dual politics which embodied both tradition and modernity. Although the Hungarian women’s rights activists in Transylvania were familiar with the conservative trends in the women’s movement in Hungary itself, or what Katalin Sárai Szabó has characterized as “norm-following emancipation,”8 the approaches they choose in their politics and the position they adopted was hardly a conscious choice of a group of upper-class women. Furthermore, this position was also influenced by significant external factors.

It is also worth noting that the adoption of conservative values and gender roles did not propel these activists to the extreme right, as was the case in Hungary.9 In this sense, the classical dichotomy of left-wing and right-wing women’s activism is an oversimplification, at least in the case of this discussion.

Combining the Social and the Political

In the wake of World War I, the former activities undertaken by Hungarian women from Transylvania in the social sphere were supplemented by new public roles in the domain of ethnopolitical mobilization, which had economic, political, educational, and cultural dimensions.10 This shift led to the renegotiation of the position of these women beyond the confines of the philanthropic framework. As Ella Kauntz Engel, a Unitarian women’s rights activist, noted in her comments on the importance of gender equality within the Church,

Our goal, of course, is complete equality, but we know that this cannot be achieved overnight. Today, we are not yet sufficiently self-aware and disciplined. In the early stages of our movement, we are essentially just searching for ways to begin moving toward this goal. Our situation is made more difficult by the fact that our so-called work to date has been limited to begging and organizing entertainment. These things are necessary, but we must now prove that we are capable of more than just organizing buffets.11

This was in line with international trends and broader global developments linked to women’s employment and professionalization after World War I. In the wake of the war, the political and cultural climate reinforced traditional gender roles, according to which women were the “mothers of the nation,” tasked with ensuring the biological and cultural reproduction of ethnic groups. They were also seen as the guardians of morality and the reproductive vessels of “pure” ethnic lineage. This period, however, also came with very strong transnational influences, and powerful women’s alliances and leagues emerged which fought for the rights of women.

A close examination of the brief yet profoundly turbulent period reveals substantial transformations in the nature and significance of women’s associations in Europe. A global functional shift had occurred in the conceptualizations of social work and social activism, with women emerging as the primary agents of social transformation. As English poet and philosopher Denise Riley has argued, “this new production of ‘the social’ offered a magnificent occasion for the rehabilitation of ‘women’. In its very founding conceptions, it was feminized; in its detail, it provided the chances for some women to enter upon the work of restoring other, more damaged, women to a newly conceived sphere of grace.”12

The secondary literature on gender and social reforms in eastern Europe reveals significant changes in women’s associations as they evolved to address shifting societal conditions and priorities.13 In the prewar period, most of the women’s associations focused on charitable works, addressing issues such as poverty, education, and public health. These efforts were often framed as extensions of women’s domestic roles. After World War I, many associations shifted from charitable aid to advocacy for systemic change. They began addressing structural inequalities and campaigning for legal reforms, including labor rights, suffrage, and family law. Women’s associations became more professional and institutionalized in their structure. As they engaged directly with state governments and international institutions, such as the League of Nations, they influenced policies on issues such as trafficking, education, and gender equality.

Consequently, women were not only the actors but also the objects of these social actions. Voluntary charitable work began to shift. In their social work and reform efforts, women aspired to do more than simply extend their roles and traditional responsibilities in the private intimate space of the home to the public sphere. At the same time, opportunities for professionalization were created. As Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe have argued, “women were expected to take responsibility for healing the wounds of war,” which “could provide opportunities for women to break away from traditional restrictions and make a significant and meaningful contribution to cultural demobilization in the war’s aftermath.”14

There was a discernible shift in the activities of Transylvanian Hungarian women’s organizations following the war and the Treaty of Trianon. This shift was prompted in part by an expansion in membership to encompass women from diverse social classes and an engagement in the ethnic struggles of the newly formed ethnic minority.

Before World War I, the Hungarian women’s associations in Transylvania had primarily functioned as local philanthropic organizations. They were small entities engaged in sporadic support activities, occasionally under the auspices of a church or in affiliation with larger Hungarian umbrella organizations, such as the Hungarian Federation of Women’s Associations (Magyar Nő­egye­sü­letek Szövetsége), the National Association of Women’s Welfare Workers (Nőtisztviselők Országos Egyesülete), and the Feminist Association (Feminista Egyesület). This involvement also led to affiliations with prominent international organizations, such as the International Council of Women (ICW) and the International Women Suffrage Alliance (IWSA).15 There was no common Transylvanian Hungarian ethnic platform, as there was no need for such a platform.

After the Treaty of Trianon, the Hungarian community in Transylvania sought to rebuild its political and institutional framework through the Hungarian Party (Országos Magyar Párt, OMP). Instead of a fully developed institutional background, they relied on key pillars, such as churches, political organizations, and cultural-economic institutions. This broader ethnic program also led to the formation of new Hungarian women’s associations, many rooted in prewar charity work. These women’s organizations, in addition to their ongoing social and cultural initiatives, underwent a marked politicization in response to the repressive policies of the Romanian state. A key turning point was the 1924 primary education law, which mandated Romanian as the language of instruction, effectively marginalizing Hungarian-language education. The 1925 private education law further limited the use of Hungarian in schools and exams, which left Hungarian students at a disadvantage. The Romanian Civil Code of 1865, furthermore, stripped married women of legal rights, right that were previously granted under Hungarian law in Transylvania. In response, Hungarian women began organizing to challenge these restrictions, marking a shift toward gender-based activism within the minority rights movement.16 Romanian authorities frequently imposed restrictions on the social activities of Hungarian women, and on multiple occasions, did not authorize their meetings or charitable endeavors.

In order to function more efficiently, smaller local women’s religious groups merged into larger, regional, Transylvanian associations. In 1922, the Unitarian Women’s Association was re-established. In August 1926, the Transylvanian Catholic Women’s Association was founded, followed by the foundation of the Reformed Women’s Association in November 1927. After they succeeded in registering as a distinct legal entity, the Hungarian Lutheran women founded the Hungarian Lutheran Women’s Association in 1935.

The initial organizational stages were characterized by a pronounced articulation of the objectives of this transformative era and their conception of the shifts in women’s public role, women’s political significance, and the need to integrate into international organizational frameworks. As Ella Engel,17 a Unitarian, observed in her comments about the importance of women’s rights in the Unitarian Church,

Our movement, at this initial stage, is really just a search for how to begin to move towards this goal. The situation is made more difficult by the fact that our so-called work so far has been exhausted in begging and entertaining. We need these activities too, but we must now prove that we can do more than just organize buffets.18

Writer Irén P. Gulácsy19 expressed similar views:

The new home, the new society, and the new state have to be made habitable and have to be made acceptable for men, the family, and the community. It is the woman’s job to do this. […] While we are laboring on this artwork, half of the women’s energy is used for society. When the opus will be ready, women will have time again to turn to themselves and their families until a new earthquake comes.20

A general sympathy for emancipation was in the air. Even “conservative” religious women felt that they needed to be present in politics. This was arguably something of a hybrid form of emancipation, 21 which has been given different terms in the secondary literature, such as “norm-following emancipation”22 or “mother-based feminism.”23 These terms refer to the efforts and aspirations of a group of women who derived their roles from their status as wives and performed traditionally female tasks yet were actively involved in various social policies and sought to improve the social status of women.

This norm-following emancipatory model served as a paradigm for Transylvanian Unitarian, Reformed, and Catholic women, who emphasized the importance of community service, societal contributions, and the promotion of moral and intellectual education, including women’s education, yet pursued these goals in a different manner. As noted in an earlier study,24 their approach was both opportunistic and realistic. In the interwar period, these women experienced a loss of social, economic, and cultural influence. They underwent a shift from a dominant position to a new minority situation, they experienced forms of state repression.

The mid 1920s represented an important period for Transylvanian women, as it was the first historical moment in which they were able to wield significant influence in the political sphere. Their actions were characterized by a deliberate and strategic approach based on self-organization and policymaking. Beyond issues such as education and the protection of Hungarian language (which had become the language of an ethnic minority in the new Romanian state), women’s activism assumed novel roles, including, for instance, responsibility for the maintenance of the community’s newly delineated boundaries. This shift signified a political commitment rather than a mere personal interest or recreational pursuit.25

The Romanian Model and the Role of Alexandrina Cantacuzino in
the Processes of Self-Organization

In the aftermath of the war, Romanian women’s organizations, which were predominantly charitable and religious associations, underwent a substantial integration into the public municipal welfare apparatus. Women began to assert themselves as experts in the field of social reforms and lay experts on the women’s question.26 These organizations had international connections, and in the early 1920s, they began to receive considerable subsidies from the central government. One of the main figures of this period was Alexandrina Cantacuzino (1876–1944), the leader of the National Council of Romanian Women (Consiliul Naţional al Femeilor Române, CNFR). 27 Cantacuzino was also elected Vice President of the ICW in Washington in 1925. The election of Alexandrina Cantacuzino was justified on the grounds that Romanian women made significant contributions to the resolution of conflicts among ethnic groups in southeastern Europe. Notably, at this conference Cantacuzino, was regarded as “the first woman in Europe to be concerned with the problem of minorities.”28 It remains an open question whether the election of Cantacuzino as Vice President of the ICW was a gesture intended by the international organization to promote peace, a strategic step towards the consolidation of the Transylvanian situation, or just a political step taken by an uninformed institution which was not up to date on the circumstances in this region or the complete absence of interaction between minority women in Transylvania on the one hand and women in the rest of Romania on the other. However, letters expressing discontent from women in minority groups in Romania prompted the ICW to request information regarding the situation there. In her response, Cantacuzino delivered a lecture on the Hungarian aristocracy’s unjust protests against the nationalization of its estates.29 This evasive response reveals both her nationalistic perspective on the issues and also her limited understanding of the activities of the Hungarians, including women, residing in Transylvania.

In a similar organization known as the Little Entente of Women (a trans­national umbrella organization for women’s groups in southeastern Europe), where Cantacuzino also played a significant role as president, it was considered the primary responsibility of women’s associations and gatherings to contribute, through their unique methods, to the resolution of conflicts and tensions arising from the question of minorities in the successor states. Delegates to the Athens Conference (1925) denounced the actions of states that remained discontent with the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty, particularly with regard to the alleged “persecution of ethnic minorities” in Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and other states. This issue was a recurrent theme in various international forums and congresses, including those specifically dedicated to women’s issues. In alignment with their professed democratic principles, the women of the Little Entente of Women wanted to ensure the intellectual and economic advancement of minority groups, contingent upon their demonstrated allegiance to the state in which they resided.

Upon returning from Washington, Cantacuzino puts forth a proposal for a rapprochement with minority groups. This proposal can be understood as an act that was intended on her part to give her legitimacy in her new influential international position. In Universul, a Romanian newspaper that enjoyed widespread circulation, Cantacuzino articulated her perspective on the state’s minority communities. She placed emphasis on the expectation that minority communities are obligated to demonstrate loyalty to the state. She also insisted that the state could not be expected to provide support and services for these communities without such loyalty. The notion of loyalty was a recurring theme in her subsequent speeches and writings on minority issues30.

On October 25, 1925, Cantacuzino organized a special meeting with the “associations of minority women.”31 A delegation of 75 associations, including Hungarian, Saxon, Jewish, and Ukrainian minority women’s associations from Transylvania, Bucovina, and Banat traveled to Bucharest for the meeting.

The associations originating from Hungarian communities, however, did not identify themselves, in their names, as ethnic organizations. Instead, they identified themselves as religious or philanthropic associations. This stands in contrast to the Saxon women’s association, which explicitly identified themselves as Saxon associations. It is particularly interesting to note the position of the Jewish women’s association at this meeting. Jewish associations from Hungarian-speaking communities identified Hungarian as their mother tongue and requested schooling in Hungarian for their children (e.g., the Jewish Women’s Association from Satu-Mare (Szatmár)32 Although some local Jewish organizations were represented by their own deputies at the meeting, in many cases, local Jewish women’s associations were represented by Catholic or Protestant delegates. For instance, the women’s associations of various denominations in Turda (Torda), such as the Jewish Women’s Association, the Jewish Women’s Association for Orphans, the Roman Catholic Altar Society, and the “Elizabeth” Women’s Benevolent Society, were represented by Mária Bethlen.33 The same was true of the delegates from Cluj (Kolozsvár). Paula Bethlen, the representative of the Catholic women of Cluj, was also appointed as a delegate for the Jewish Women of Cluj, Tîrgu Mureş (Marosvásárhely), and Şimleul Silviei (Szilágysomlyó).34 Following the meeting, however, collaboration in this form came to an end. Several questions arise. What took place at the meeting? How was womanhood as part of a minority community understood by the Romanian majority? What new models of womanhood emerged within the Hungarian, Saxon, Jewish, and other minority communities, and how were these models intertwined with understandings of ethnic and minority identity?

The objectives of the meeting were many and varied. The general and idealistic purpose was to cultivate collaborative ties between majority and minority women’s associations and to foster a deeper understanding among ethnic groups. It was also intended as a platform for deliberating matters deemed crucial to the social status of women in Romania. It was further asserted that the Romanian partners would serve as a mediator between the Romanian authorities and minority ethnic women’s organizations. For the Romanian hosts, there was a strategic ambition to consolidate their existing network of female constituents. As such, the establishment of a unified multicultural platform could also be perceived as a legitimizing act in the eyes of the international women organizations and the League of Nations (as an indication that the women’s organizations in Romania were attentive to minorities), since Cantacuzino was also involved in the discussion of minority rights in the League of Nations and other international feminist organizations. What was the purpose of the participation of the Hungarian and other minority groups at the conference? First and foremost, they hoped that by strengthening ties with the Romanian women’s organizations, they could draw some attention to the problems faced by ethnic minority communities and also establish connections with international women’s organizations through the Romanian National Council of Women.

In her invitation letter sent to the participants, Cantacuzio mentioned that they would be permitted to speak “only about issues related to the protection of children, social assistance, the protection of mothers, and the problems related to the education of children, because these are the problems women are concerned about.”35 It is clear that some of the major elements of this minority womanhood were defined already here, and the “guardian angels of the home”36 had been empowered to act at higher levels. Through this meeting and through the National Council of Romanian Women, which appeared to function as a neutral, non-state institution, the state itself could reinforce its views of the qualities of womanhood and thus could shape understandings of the foundations of women’s allegedly natural or proper responsibilities.

It is obvious also that, on behalf of the national (Romanian) majority, the primary objective of the meeting was to promote awareness regarding the status of minorities and to clarify the hierarchy between the ruling elite and the ethnic and national minorities. The event provided a valuable opportunity for Cantacuzino to articulate her understanding of the minority identity of women of other nationalities and to underscore the distinctions between dominant and subordinate subjects and delineate ethnic boundaries.

The Category of Minority as a Force to Self-Organize:
The Formation of the RMKNKT

The positive consequence of the 1925 meeting was the founding of the aforementioned RMKNKT, the largest Hungarian women’s organization in Romania. The Secretariat was founded within a few weeks of the conference. The initiative was based on the conviction that “womanhood will save the future.” It was hoped that, through collaborative efforts with a prominent Romanian women’s organization, significant advancements would be made. The organization’s establishment was clearly predicated on the expectation that it would benefit from the support of the CNFR:

We decided, in accordance with the discussions with the National Council of Romanian Women, to establish a center of Hungarian women’s associations in Transylvania and in Romania, with its headquarters in Cluj. The aim of this center is to establish and maintain direct contact with the Romanian National Council of Women. The members of the center are the women whom Countess Bethlen announced at the congress under this title. In addition, members are to be sent by the local centers to be established in each town.37

The idea of establishing a more substantial organization to unite smaller women’s organizations, however, had been raised before this event. In January 1922, the “women of Cluj” approached the Hungarian government, seeking support for the Transylvanian welfare institutions that had been neglected by the newly established state. 38 This request included the establishment of a “center of charity institutions.” However, the Hungarian government deemed it beyond its capacity to engage in this revitalization process.39 This center actually took its final form in 1925, after the Minority Women’s Congress.

Following the conference, a clear decision was made to collaborate with other minority women:

A center of women’s associations of the various minorities in Transylvania and the whole of Romania will also be established. The establishment of this center will be prepared by a committee to be sent by the center in Cluj. The deadline for sending in the declaration of affiliation of the establishment of the local centers is December 1, 1925.40

The initial project was predicated on this imagined community of “loving womanhood,” and it regarded the problems faced by all minority women living in Romania as a common issue that needed to be solved. Consequently, a significant collaborative effort was launched by Transylvanian Saxon, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Hungarian women. Later, the formation of the RMKNKT was preceded by a series of negotiations between the representatives of Hungarian women (Polixénia Huszár and Paula Bethlen) and Saxon women (Lotte Binder as the federal leader of the Free Saxon Women’s Association). Hungarian leaders approached Saxon women at the conference with the idea of creating a minority women platform. This was meant to be a collective/cooperative initiative, rather than an act of isolation or a closing of ranks. The German and Hungarian women’s relationship was more or less personal and not professional, but their aim was to work together on all issues affecting their perceived common interests.41 Although a large minority women’s association was never actually founded, there were strong ties between the Saxon and the Hungarian women during this period. The aforementioned Lotte Binder was present at the first congress of the RMKNKT. There was also a joint campaign to reintroduce German and Hungarian as languages at midwifery schools in Sibiu (Nagyszeben) and Cluj and some joint protest actions against the new Law of Religion.42

Transylvanian Saxon women offered a clear model of a functioning minority women’s organization. As they had been active as members of minority organizations before World War I, they were able to exemplify not only strategies necessary for survival but also techniques with which to maintain close ties with international organizations.43 The attempt to establish a multiethnic women’s association proved unsuccessful. Saxon women expressed a preference for collaborating on specific issues without affiliating themselves with some unified platform. Consequently, the RMKNK was founded and it was a mono-ethnic organization, like the Association of Free Saxon Women.

The RMKNKT comprised at least one hundred local groups, predominantly from Transylvania and Banat. Participating religious women’s associations in Transylvania, predominantly supported by their churches, were formed and gathered strength.

Religious associations and former charity organizations formed the cornerstone of the RMKNKT’s organizational structure. They included the Social Mission Society, which later formed its “movement association,” the Catholic Women’s Association, the Unitarian Women’s Association, and several Lutheran and Calvinist women’s associations. Although prior to 1925, Jewish women had maintained a significant collaborative relationship with Hungarian women, they did not engage with this ethnic women’s umbrella organization. The RMKNKT was created by a group of upper-middle class women, many of them members of the aristocracy, complemented by a significant presence of middle-class intellectuals. The Central Secretariat was led by the Catholic Paula Bethlen, the Reformed Polixénia Huszár, the Unitarian Aranka Mikó, and the Lutheran Margit Mannsberg. In 1928, there was an inaugural congress of the Central Secretariat, where Paula Bethlen underscored the fundamental principle of women’s organizations: “All female solidarity has a higher intrinsic value, and the large community that exists among all women, always and under all circumstances, provides a strong foundation. This community is the great love that lives in women’s hearts, the sacred harmony of motherhood, and its connecting power.”44 This concept of love as an essential and defining element of womanhood entailed the notion that women possessed the capacity to redress prevailing societal abnormalities and thereby create novel ethical norms and forms of charity.

The activities of the Central Secretariat encompassed a wide range of social initiatives, including the provision of care for children, orphans, servants, and the sick, the protection of women, and the fight against trafficking in girls. The RMKNKT participated in the railway mission in the larger Romanian cities, organized courses in mother, child, and infant protection, and helped set up medical centers for infant protection. It also supported rural agricultural education lessons (maintaining cottage industries to support Hungarian girls at home and providing various economic training courses), and it launched medical assistant and midwife training in Hungarian. However, the Central Secretariat was also involved in various protests. It held protests, for instance, in support of Hungarian-language schools and against the religious law and the civil code (together with other Romanian and Saxon feminists).

The relationship with the CNFR was neither long-lasting nor particularly deep. It was marked, rather, by a certain superficiality, encompassing only a limited number of issues that it could meaningfully address. Cantacuzino’s antagonistic perspectives became particularly pronounced later, in 1937, when she began to use exclusionary rhetoric in Cluj and thus aligned herself with right-wing political ideologies.45 This discourse accentuated the concept of “otherness” and the notion of treating members of minority groups as subordinates or second-class citizens. It thus harmonized well with the prevailing priorities of the Romanian majority.46 In response to Huszár’s accusation that she had made a statement intended to cause harm to Hungarians, Cantacuzino offered an explanation, stating that her remarks were not directed at the Hungarian population. A close reading of the speech, however, reveals an underlying sentiment of fear and xenophobia, which likely contributed to the disappointment experienced by Hungarian women.

Ethnic Politicization

By the mid 1920s and the establishment of the RMKNKT, the roles of women as members of an ethnic or national minority had become openly politicized, as their forms of activism were also reactions to the state’s repressive policies towards the given minority community.47 The social activities of these women’s organizations were constrained by a markedly repressive state and the status of marginalized minority, which was a product of the prevailing political climate.48 As a result, concerns that had previously been regarded exclusively as social issues subsequently evolved into matters of ethnic concern, including the wellbeing of Hungarian mothers and infants, the education of Hungarian children, and the rights of Hungarian servants and peasants.

The trend of ethnicization had occurred among other ethnic women’s organizations in Transylvania before World War I. Romanian historians have observed a similar pattern among Romanian women’s organizations in Transylvania before 1919.49 According to Oana Sînziana Păltineanu, “The Romanian women’s movement in Hungary developed gradually and in close relation to the Romanian nation-building project in the dual monarchy. As such, the growing Romanian women’s movement sought to improve women’s situation within the conceptual frame of the nation, in opposition to the ruling elite and nation in Hungary.”50 Saxon women also took part in their community’s ethnic survival and their ethnic politics, and they were engaged in a significant amount of emancipatory work and possessed a more complex institutional background in comparison to their Romanian counterparts.51

The church and political elites also strengthened the role of women in fighting for the rights of their national communities. The Hungarian National Party (Országos Magyar Párt, OMP), which represented the Hungarian community in the Romanian parliament, also supported women’s associations. As the new law on the organization of public administration, enacted on August 3, 1929, had granted certain categories of women the right to vote and the right to be elected to the municipal and county councils, the OMP required women’s support in the 1930 local elections. Hungarian women were mobilized to participate in the OMP electoral lists, and their participation in public life received more attention than ever before. Something similar occurred among Saxon women. They were mobilized by efforts within their community to represent the Saxons as a national minority, and Saxon women were profoundly implicated in this process. As demonstrated by a speech held by Saxon women’s leader Ida Servatius in 1929, there was also a prevailing mistrust of women who belonged to national minorities with regard to the Romanian elections.52

Due to the strong support of the OMP, the mobilization of Hungarian women in Cluj was much more effective than the efforts to mobilize Romanian women:

The Hungarians are making a big propaganda effort to include women in the electoral lists. The Hungarian Party carried out the formalities of enrolment, and by the time 600 to 700 minority women had enrolled, Romanian women were still completely absent. Later, the ruling party went from house to house, office to office, and enrolled some women voters.53

Notably, the political mobilization of Hungarian women in Transylvania resulted in the assumption of additional roles and responsibilities by these women in the economic, political, educational, and cultural spheres.

This group evidenced a high degree of mobility, making it a social group that was particularly susceptible to mobilization efforts. Indeed, its presence in public life reached an unprecedented level during the period.

In March 1930, at the general meeting of the “electing Hungarian women,” Baroness Huszár,54 expounded on the significance of women’s suffrage, urging Hungarian women to exercise their democratic right in a manner that would elevate the standing of the entire Hungarian nation.55

Previously, in January she published an article on this subject, explaining the importance of elections for women.

The present and the future demand that we spare no effort and consider it our duty to exercise our rights in the interests of humanity in general and of our Hungarian race in particular. Hungarian women must remember that their votes double the number of Hungarian votes. Our schools, our kindergartens, the cleaning of our streets, the establishment of hospitals, and many other tasks aimed at promoting the wellbeing of our people all await the work of women. […] Once again, we urge everyone not to fail to apply, but to do their part in the sacred duty that falls upon us Hungarian women.56

Women regarded the right to vote as being of paramount importance, not only as an equal right for women but also as a means with which to achieve success on the ethnic stage. Hungarian women understood their involvement in politics within an ethnic context, as evidenced by the actions of the Hungarian women of Sighetul Marmaţiei (Máramarossziget), who refused to participate in a women’s bloc with other ethnic women to secure the election of women to the city council. Instead, these women supported the OMP.57

Huszár’s speech for the 1930 local elections exemplifies the intertwining of conservative and progressive values, thereby elucidating the role of women. In her call to action, she insisted that, “Once again, we urge you not to neglect your civic duty: contribute to the sacred responsibility that falls upon us Hungarian women.”58

The involvement of women in the international politics of the Hungarian community is also worthy of mention. The United Nations Association of Hungarians from Romania (Romániai Magyar Népliga Egyesület), which was affiliated with the World Federation of United Nations Associations, played an instrumental role in the facilitation of the Hungarian community’s involvement with the League of Nations. Established in 1927, the organization was headquartered in Cluj and was under the leadership of Huszár, who served vice president. 59

The RMKNKT’s International Network

With the cessation of hostilities, we Hungarian women, along with the dissolution of our nation, were dealt a devastating blow that overwhelmed us, leaving us no time or inclination to engage with the organizations and activities of women from other nations and the recently established global federations of women.60

Huszár made these remarks at the inaugural congress of the RMNKT, offering a noteworthy perspective on the organization’s international relations.

Although initially the RMKNKT’s aspirations extended beyond the horizon of mere local and regional connections, the status of Hungarian women as members of a national minority in a country that was nominally a nation state hampered their efforts to build the networks they had envisioned. Delegates and figures at the international level had to be women representing self-governing nation states or federal states in a multinational empire, so women from minority ethnic and national groups had difficulty participating in international organizations.61

The RMKNKT’s 1928 Congress offers a clear illustration of the efforts of the organization to become more active, effective, and visible and also to extend its network and foster relations with similar organizations. One key aspect of its strategic vision was to maintain connections with other minority organizations and Romanian women and also to gain access to international organizations that could provide solutions to the problems faced by minority women.62 At the 1928 congress, Paula Bethlen delivered an extensive and detailed account of these organizations (the text was published in the journal Magyar Kisebbség (Hungarian Minority) but was also featured in the daily press).63 Bethlen also contended that it is almost impossible for a minority organization to participate in international movements:

If we study the statutes of the large women’s organizations, we see that they place an extremely high emphasis on national frameworks, to the extent that some of them may even go too far in this area, because they proclaim, comparing nation and state, that they will only accept one organization from a country as their members. The postwar peace treaties created approximately 40 million people in Europe who belong to minority communities, and these people are excluded from some international women’s organizations.

The organization’s first collaborative effort was undertaken with the International Co-operative Women’s Guild (or ICWG), when the Guild started to initiate cooperative programs for Hungarian women. Alice Honora Enfield,64 the secretary of the organization, visited Romania, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union in 1928. In Transylvania, she gave a lecture on economics within the Hangya cooperatives.65 Although the methods used by the ICWG to facilitate cohesion among women through household activities aligned with some of the perspectives articulated by the RMKNKT, this collaborative endeavor was relatively brief in duration.

There was also a strong urge on behalf of the minority organizations to collaborate with the ICW. The hopes of winning Ishbel Hamilton-Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair and an internationally prominent advocate of women’s rights (known perhaps most succinctly as Lady Aberdeen), over to the minority issue were not fulfilled. Both the Saxon and the Hungarian women’s organizations were persistently trying to become members of the ICW, but they were not even allowed to attend the women’s congress.66

Hungarian women leaders (including Polixénia Huszár, Mária Bethlen) were present in Bucharest at the reception of the delegation of the ICW, a reception organized by Alexandrina Cantacuzino. The delegation was also present in Braşov (Brassó) when Alexandrina Cantacuzino visited the city with Lady Aberdeen, where Cantacuzino was expected to present also the Saxon and Hungarian women’s associations to Aberdeen.67 On this occasion, Aberdeen visited the Saxon women’s and children’s protection institutions in Braşov and also received the greetings of the Hungarian women’s associations.68 The extent to which the presence of minority women served as a tool for the CNFR and for Cantacuzino for her own professional prestige and international standing remains a topic of speculation. It is also clear that the parade of women’s organizations upon Lady Aberdeen’s arrival was intended to serve as evidence of a well-functioning, fruitful relationship between the majority and minority women’s associations.

In an interview in 1930, Polixénia Huszár summarized the place of the RMKNKT on Romanian and international platforms with less optimism. She also observed that the relationship between the organization and the CNFR was two-faced:

Madame Cantacuzene, pronounces Mrs. Huszár with a French accent, is undoubtedly a pioneer of every international movement, but she is also a great Romanian woman. In Bucharest, she is considered an excellent patriot who stands up for Romanian national interests even in a more international movement. She, on the other hand, knows very well that I am also fighting for the establishment of international relations, and I am 100 percent committed to my own national interests. I stand by my thinking. But that is precisely why we understand and respect each other on this point. In any case, our situation is extremely difficult in terms of participating in an international movement, because in Bucharest they would like us to do it through them if we have grievances that they might want to bring to an international social forum. It is a bizarre situation: those who present grievances against whom the grievance is directed. However, Princess Cantacuzino would like us to have no grievances… But after all, she is only one voice in this still noisy jungle.69

How Huszár have achieved her aspirations for international relations in this short, tense period? In practice, the RMKNKT was able to mobilize only those international organizations to which it had access through its subgroups (such as the International Association of Liberal Religious Women), the ties that Unitarian women had with figures and organizations in the United States, the International Union of Catholic Women, the Catholic girls’ protection organizations, the International Catholic Association of Organisations for the Protection of Girls (Association catholique internationale des Œuvres de la Protection de la Jeune Fille, ACISJF), and the protestant International Federation for Aid to Young Women.

In summary, very few of these organizations were both supportive of and involved in international networks. The majority of these entities were religious organizations that operated in a relatively closed manner and primarily engaged in social work, with a particular focus on the protection of mothers and children. A distinctive initiative undertaken in this regard was the establishment of a program aimed at protecting female youth, a program that was meticulously spearheaded by the International Federation for Aid to Young Women (Union Internationale des Amies de la Jeune Fille, AJF), through its Romanian association, known as Asociaţia Amicele Tinerelor Fete (Association of Friends of Young Girls).

The following discussion provides a concise overview of the involvement of Hungarian women in two distinct station assistance programs. First, the discussion addresses the participation of Hungarian women in the nationwide Romanian station assistance program, which was initiated around 1932 by the AJF and its Romanian counterpart, Amicele Tinerelor Fete. Second, it examines the Hungarian women’s initiative in establishing railway assistance social work under the auspices of the Church, with a particular focus on the contributions of Catholic nuns and the Society of the Sisters of Social Service, particularly their Bucharest center founded in 1930.

The Romanian Nationwide Station Assistance Program

The protection of girls who felled themselves pressured or compelled to move in search of labor was a priority in social policies across Europe, with numerous programs developed to combat trafficking in children and girls and to prevent prostitution. Romania was a signatory to the relevant protocols of the League of Nations. Notably, the 1921 International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, specifically Article 7,70 mandated that signatory nations undertake measures to oversee harbors and train stations, educate women about the risks they faced, and provide them with lodging and support. Representatives of the Romanian government launched the Asociaţia Amicele Tinerelor Fete (AATF) association, the Romanian branch of the AJF. The AATF also enjoyed the support of the Orthodox Church and the patronage of Queen Mary. Volunteers met with women seeking employment at train stations in Bucharest and other cities, such as Braşov, Constanţa, and Galaţi. The representatives disseminated information, offered accommodations, and provided assistance and care to those in need.

In 1932–1934, there was active collaboration among women who belonged to the three major ethnic groups in the Transylvanian city of Braşov (a multiethnic city located on the border between Transylvania and the Old Kingdom of Romanian, or the so-called Regat). The president of the German-Saxon Women’s Association, Amalie Musotter, emphasized at the meeting of representatives in 1931 that the participation of Saxon women in the founding of the Braşov branch of the Amicele Tinerelor Fete was important for their ethnic community.71

In 1932, the Bucharest and Braşov station assistance efforts were undertaken in Romania with the help of funds from the association’s headquarters in Neuchatel but also with state support.72 It is important to note that there were no ethnically Hungarian or Saxon women among the association’s leadership and its supporters.73

The organization’s Braşov-based center stood out as a unique platform, fostering collaboration among women from diverse ethnic and confessional backgrounds.74 In Braşov, in 1932, a total of 633 individuals were consulted “with no regard to nationality,” yet only 58 of these individuals were admitted to the home established to provide temporary accommodation for women travelers. In Bucharest, according to their 1932 report, at the Northern Railway Station the organization provided aid for 1,320 women, with a negligible percentage of those beneficiaries being of Hungarian origin (44 in total). It was a small number considering the hundreds of Hungarian girls for whom some form of aid was provided in the same period by the Catholic Social Sisters,75 as discussed in greater detail below. The figures below, which are revealing, indicate the number of Hungarian women for whom the Catholic Social Sisters provided accommodations in the given year: 1931: 188; 1932: 220; 1933: 582; 1934: 597; 1935: 682; 1936: 760; 1937: 780; 1938: 810; 1939: 870; and 1939: 930.

Despite its alleged commitment to multiculturalism, the organization’s operational practices reveal that it was under pressure to deal with women as members of distinct national or ethnic communities. The AJF did not made possible the creation of a supportive ethnic space in the interwar period. Catholic Hungarian women and Saxon women thus found themselves compelled to launch their own, independent railway mission-type activities.76

The “Railway Mission” of the Hungarian-Speaking Denominations
of Romania

The Hungarian railway mission project, known as the “pályaudvari misszió” (train station mission), was initially spearheaded by religious women’s associations in Hungary at the beginning of the twentieth century. Following the war, various organizations engaged in similar social initiatives in Hungary. The most prominent of these organizations was the Magyar Egyesület a Leánykeresekedelem Ellen, or the Hungarian Association against Trafficking in Girls (MELE),77 founded in 1909 in Budapest, which sought to prevent prostitution and assist women and girls who were seeking to secure livelihoods on the urban labor market. MELE was also part of the huge national organization Pályaudvari Missziókat Fenntartó Egyesületek Országos Szövetsége, (National Association of Railway Station Missionary Associations), founded in 1913. The aim of this Association was to provide support (both moral and financial) for women from cities and villages outside of Budapest who came to the capital or planned to travel abroad by establishing shelters and homes for them (until their departure, in the case of those who sought to leave the country). However, the social programs administered by MELE, in contrast to those of the Transylvanian women’s organizations, were primarily financed by public funds and were closely aligned with state institutions.

The Transylvanian Catholic women’s elite convened during the Congress of the Catholic Women’s Association, which was held from July 29 to August 1, 1928, and reestablished a committee tasked with resolving the situation of Székely girls who moved to the Old Kingdom of Romania. This committee was entrusted with the mission of assessing the living conditions of the Székely girls in major Romanian cities. During the conference of the RMKNKT on November 10–12, 1928, the organization passed a resolution that outlined several key directives for the Transylvanian confessions. These directives included the initiation of precise data collection in rural areas concerning the circumstances of young girls, the establishment of youth associations for girls, the initiation of educational initiatives regarding the commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls, the establishment of accommodation offices and servants’ homes in major towns in collaboration with the relevant authorities, the promotion of domestic industry, and the organization of a railway mission in partnership with the authorities. 78 Therefore, the missionary endeavors of the Hungarian Christian confessions were initiated in the major Romanian cities, but primarily in the Old Kingdom of Romania, where the most of servants traveled to work.

Transylvanian Hungarians had begun to emigrate to the Regat for economic reasons in the nineteenth century.79 The migration of Hungarian girls from Transylvania and particularly from Székely Land to the Regat has been a prominent topic in contemporary discourse80 The Romanian middle class preferred to employ Székely women as maids, housekeepers, servants, and childcare providers due to their punctuality, discipline, and culinary expertise. The issue became politicized not only due to the danger of trafficking in girls or as an alleged symptom of moral decline and the breakdown of peasant values and values associated with womanhood, but also because it had significant ethnic implications.81 A prolonged stay in Romanian territory was often associated with a decline of Hungarian “blood,” ethnically or nationally mixed marriages, the loss of one’s mother tongue, assimilation, and permanent migration. These women were also frequently viewed as being at the mercy of a foreign world due to their ethnicity and otherness and therefore often more vulnerable to predation and violence. Although some women activists wrote or spoke about thousands of Székely girls who faced this face,82 it is difficult to determine the actual numbers. According to the official statistics, by 1930, 1.04 percent of the women from Ciuc County (Csík) and 1.24 percent from the region known as Trei Scaune (Háromszék) had moved to Romanian cities (both Ciuc County and Trei Scaune were and to some extent still are home for the most part to Hungarian-speakers). The number of women from other Székely cities, such as Gheorgheni (Gyergyó), and administrative units (such as Odorhei, Udvarhelyszék, which was a former Székely seat), who were registered as residing in the Regat was less than 1 percent.83 This data, however, should be approached with a critical eye, as it reveals nothing about seasonal migration patterns, for instance migration in winter months and the migration of the unskilled labor force during the agricultural off-season.

A considerable segment of the Hungarian population residing in Transylvania sought employment opportunities in the major Romanian cities. In response to the social changes caused by migration, the various institutions, each with its own discursive framework, promised or provided different types of protection. In response to the fear of life in a community of strangers, women’s organizations offered two courses of action. First, they recommended staying at home. This involved adhering to domestic patterns, the making of clothing, the promotion of traditional attire (as opposed to garments that had an “urban” nature), and active involvement in local religious rituals. Second, they recommended participation in urban women’s groups for women who did chose to migrate, founded especially for women who were in search for employment opportunities.

One of the most promising projects in this minority program in support of girls was the Catholic railway missionary program initiated in 1930, when the Society of the Sisters of Social Service, founder of the Catholic Women’s Association, was granted authorization to oversee the situation of Hungarian servants and maids in Bucharest. The Society ran a railway mission project and operated a labor exchange office and a girls’ home. In the mid-1930s, the Reformed Church also launched its own servant mission program, which entailed the establishment of various initiatives for female servants who belonged to the Reformed Church and were engaged in work outside their home. The Church also established a home in Bucharest for girls who belonged to it. The Reformed Church incorporated the servant mission within its internal mission. This practice was adopted by the Unitarian Women’s League, which operated employment centers and accommodation houses for servants in the 1930s. These organizations had initiated census monitoring and communication with girls working far from home. The social work involving peasant women had to be administered through existing social groups to ensure its efficacy. Consequently, this activity was implemented within confessional groups. These groups constituted living communities that operated according to their own networks and moral values.

In the discussion below I present the Catholic railway mission program as a case study. The initiators of the program, the Society of the Sisters of Social Service,84 which was a prominent Catholic community of the RMKNKT, played a significant role in the social activism of Transylvanian Hungarians in the interwar period. They were engaged in various aspects of social life and have been recognized for their significant contributions. The Society, which had its center in Budapest, was led by Margit Slachta, a formidable character who significantly influenced the organization’s social profile. The legal union of the Romanian branch with the Hungarian main organization was prohibited by Romanian law. However, this union was in practice maintained in secrecy. As articulated by Sister Auguszta to the leaders of the Hungarian organization in Budapest in 1923, on the occasion of the establishment of the Romanian branch, “We are united with you in spirit, direction, and love.”85

They considered the training and professionalization of women in various areas important. They maintained hundreds of girls’ associations and provided religious training for the female elite. Training courses were also held for mothers, and agrarian courses were held for women living in rural areas. Groups were also formed for servants and women working abroad.

The Social Sisters explained their mission as follows:

The most genuine and pioneering task of the Society is to place in the public arena intellectual workers whose vocation is to represent the Catholic public interest, the interests of the temporary and eternal wellbeing of the family, woman and child, and to defend them with the same modern instruments and in the same centers as those with which the holders of secular power operate, influencing millions of people of the future centuries.86

The Social Sisters placed emphasis on the empowerment of women in rural and village society. These initiatives encompassed a wide range of activities, including preventive measures, intervention strategies, problem-solving in settings such as employment offices, and ongoing fundraising efforts. The sisters’ organizational power derived from their efforts in community-building. They had an extensive Catholic women’s network. They established numerous women’s groups in their home villages and in major cities to which some of these women had migrated. These groups were referred to as the Saint Katalin groups, the Márta groups, and the Saint Zita groups. There were also groups, however, that were simply referred to as “girls’ groups from,” followed by the name of the given town or village. These groups were able to provide accommodations and food for girls in collectives and also to exert a strong influence on their life choices and opportunities. A notable example of this multifaceted endeavor was Harangszó (Chime of the Bell),87 a monthly newspaper published in Cluj from 1935 to 1943 which was specifically intended for girls and women in villages, and Ezer székely leány napja (The Day of One Thousand Székely Girls) in the 1930s, the biggest procession of Catholic Székely girls in the interwar period.88 The publication of narratives about and photos of on girls in rural communities underscored two salient themes: their sense of providence, particularly the profound sense of connection to their homeland, and their sense of affiliation with a vast Catholic women’s collective.

The rural girls’ communities and the servants’ homes in Timisoara, Braşov, and Bucharest eased the challenges of acclimatization process for young women who had to adapt to the demands and challenges of urban life when they moved to larger towns and cities in pursuit of work. These institutions functioned as temporary shelters for individuals lacking permanent accommodations. These institutions also served as communal gathering spaces, facilitating interactions among individuals on weekends and during community meetings. These institutions also functioned as communal support networks for women during their initial period of adjustment. Meeting and cohabitating with other girls facing similar challenges often led to the formation of distinct women’s communities.

According to the memoirs of the aforementioned Sister Auguszta and her coworker, Sister Lídia,89 the aforementioned ACISJF in Brussels launched the first Romanian railway mission program. In response, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Bucharest asked the Sisters to carry out a railway mission in the capital. It is hypothesized that the international connection was ephemeral, as evidenced by the absence of reports to the ACISJF and the lack of support from the ACISJF. Despite its peripheral involvement in this ambitious undertaking, the international organization evidently facilitated the sisters’ engagement by offering professional support and guidance derived from its extensive experience.

Stationed at Bucharest’s Northern Railway Station, the Sisters’ railway mission entailed the pickup of girls traveling alone, followed by interviews, accompaniment to the girls’ home if necessary, and the placement of those in need into positions of employment. The girls’ home, with a capacity of 14 beds, was established at Petre Poni Street nr. 3, in proximity to the Northern Railway Station. The St. Joseph’s sewing shop, which provided additional income for the girls temporarily residing there, was also located there.

One might well ask what distinguished this program from the Romanian programs run all over the country designed for the protection of girls and women. These servant programs, I would argue, were part of an internal initiative with its own set of objectives and a comprehensive integration of the perspectives and requirements of the ethnic community. They operated within a religious and ethnic context and offered a known set of conditions in the unknown. The resolution of the problem entailed the establishment of trust among the communities and groups formed during the migratory process. This trust was crucial if these girls were to be given a sense of belonging and protection that extended beyond the temporary accommodations and counseling provided. This initiative was part of a comprehensive program to cultivate a sense of connection to their home and their religion. This occurred against the backdrop of the prevailing processes of ethnicization and identity construction at the time. In this period of distrust and the erosion of moral, ethnic, and cultural boundaries, the institution of the sisters served as a source of comfort, reliability, and a sense of community. The sisters’ institution was a symbol of domesticity, confidence, and communal belonging. This was the distinguishing factor between the Catholic sisters’ and the Amicele’s railway mission.

Conclusion

The interwar period marked a profound transformation in the public engagement of Transylvanian Hungarian women. Forced to navigate the intersecting axes of ethnic marginalization, patriarchal norms, and political exclusion, their organizations forged a new model of female activism, a model that was simultaneously shaped by external limitations and internal strategies of resilience. These “minority” women (members of the RMKNKT and its affiliate organizations) employed an ambivalent politics in their pursuit of self-determination. On the one hand, they demonstrated a conscious adoption of feminist principles and the concept of the “new woman,” who was capable of engaging in public sphere activities and asserting her rights and who moved away from her static position and moved into the public sphere, the wider community of women, and the realm of state politics. On the other hand, they exhibited a degree of assimilation into the conservative discourse surrounding the role of women, which placed heightened emphasis on women’s service to the family and nation. This politics did not align exclusively with traditional conservative or progressive frameworks. While it was founded on ethnic principles, it did not function through mechanisms of exclusion. Instead, it demonstrated a greater degree of openness to diversity and a propensity for collaboration with other ethnic groups.

This ambivalent politics, in addition to the multiethnic nature of the working space, rendered these women’s organizations distinct from their counterparts in Hungary. Despite the evident parallels in their political ideologies, which bear a striking resemblance to those espoused by MANSZ in Hungary, it is crucial to recognize that the influence of MANSZ is undoubtedly evident, yet it is imperative to acknowledge the unique character of the political movements within Transylvania, which played a significant role in the history of women’s organizations.90 Importantly, this study challenges the binary classification of women’s politics into “left-wing” or “right-wing” categories. The Transylvanian case demonstrates that conservative notions of womanhood, centered on family, motherhood, and faith, could coexist alongside progressive aspirations, such as literacy, voting rights, and public engagement. Hungarian women’s activism reflected a dual logic. It drew strength from both traditionalism and modernity, from religious obligation and political strategy. Moreover, Hungarian women’s international ambitions were consistently constrained by structural exclusions. Despite symbolic cooperation with CNFR and international religious organizations, they were unable to integrate into global feminist platforms. These exclusions also led minority women to construct community-based networks rather than participating in universalist feminist agendas. Their inability to join large organizations, the impossibility of cooperating with Romanian organizations, and the window-dressing policies which limited them in the pursuit of their plans made them more enclosed in their ethnic groups. The “idea of internationalism,”91 advocated by the main international organizations, which were based on western models of state building, was not a viable model for Transylvanian women. Cultural and linguistic differences and a general lack of understanding of (or indifference or hostility to) the needs of ethnic and national minority communities hindered collaboration between Romanian and Hungarian women. The international organizations in question did not address the needs of the ethnic minorities. In this initial phase of organization, the CNFR played a pivotal role. It defined the concept of minority women, their working space, opportunities, and limitations. The other actor, the international organizations, by excluding minority women’s organizations, narrowed the spectrum within which minority women could assert or voice their own international politics. Conversely, the inclusion of these regional women’s organizations in the program by other international entities contributed to the shaping of their profile. The acknowledgement of minority status and the role of minority women as representatives of minority interests empowered these women to assume roles as advocates for their community, with the objective of addressing the challenges that minority communities faced and contributing to cultural mobilization. This process of empowerment also entailed significant political empowerment and assertion of the right to at least some limited spaces in the public sphere (including state and other policy platforms) for women.

This brief presentation of the railway mission programs reveals how national and international gendered discourses were reinterpreted in minority contexts. While Romanian and international initiatives functioned through official channels, they failed to engage meaningfully with the experiences of women who belonged to minority communities. In contrast, the Hungarian Catholic and Protestant railway missions operated through their own networks, combining social protection with identity preservation.

In conclusion, Hungarian women’s organizations in interwar Romania were far more than charitable groups. Their legacy compels us to rethink how emancipation is articulated in minority contexts, not merely as a struggle for equality, but as a collective strategy for survival, solidarity, and self-determination.

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Szapor, Judith. “Who Represents Hungarian Women? The Demise of the Liberal Bourgeois Women’s Rights Movement and the Rise of the Right-Wing Women’s Movement in the Aftermath of World War I.” In Aftermaths of War: Women’s Movements and Female Activists, 1918–1923, edited by Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe, 245–64. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2011.

Tešija, Jelena. “Millions of Working Housewives: The International Co-operative Women’s Guild and Household Labour in the Interwar Period.” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 31, no. 2 (2023): 321–38. doi: 10.1080/25739638.2023.2227517.

Wimmer, Andreas. Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Wingfield, Nancy M., and Maria Bucur, eds. Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Żarnowska, Anna. “Women’s Political Participation in Inter-War Poland: Opportunities and Limitations.” Women’s History Review 13, no. 1 (2004): 57–68. doi: 10.1080/09612020400200382

Zimmermann, Susan. “The Challenge of Multinational Empire for the International Women’s Movement: The Habsburg Monarchy and the Development of Feminist Inter/National Politics.” Journal of Women’s History 17, no. 2 (2005): 87–117. doi: 10.1353/jowh.2005.0026

Zsakó, Erzsébet. “Az unitárius nőmozgalom kialakulása és a női eszmény fejlődése” [The emergence of the Unitarian women’s movement and the development of the female ideal]. Keresztény Magvető 98, no. 1 (1992): 1–41.

Zsakó, Erzsébet. Hinni és tenni: Az Unitárius Nőszövetség története [To believe and to act: The history of the Unitarian Women’s Association]. Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Unitárius Egyház, 2003.

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1. 1 Jegyzőkönyv. Felvétetett a Kat. Női Misszió 1942. III. hó 17-én tartott választmányi gyüléséről. Katholikus Női Misszió jegyzőkönyve, Főegyházmegyei Levéltár, Kolozsvári Gyűjtőlevéltár, Kolozsvár, 188–91.

2. 2 Known as Countess Bethlen Györgyné (born as Paula Jósika, 1899–1962).

3. 3 Magyar Asszonyok Nemzeti Szövetsége (National Alliance of Hungarian Women or MANSZ) was a nationalistic and conservative women’s organization in Hungary in the interwar period, which supported the government’s nationalistic agenda.

4. 4 Bucur, “An Archipelago of Stories,” 1375.

5. 5 Some rare exceptions can be found among Romanian historians, ex., Cosma, “Asociaţionismul feminin maghiar,” Cosma, “Aspecte privind constituirea şi activitatea Secretariatului Central al Femeilor Minoritare Maghiare,” Lönhárt, “Asociaţiile femeilor maghiare din Transilvania.”

6. 6 For comprehensive discussion of the activity of the Sisters of Social Service and the work of the Unitarian Women and the Reformed Women, see Lengyel, “Nemzetmentők és nemzetrontók”; Farmati, “Szerzetesnők a keresztény feminizmus – a társadalom szolgálatában”; Murányi, “SSS, Szellemben, irányzatban, szeretetben”; Zsakó, “Az unitárius nőmozgalom kialakulása”; Zsakó, Hinni és tenni; Bokor, “A csendes szemlélő”; Blos-Jáni, Belső képek; Gaal, “De Gerando Antonina”; Püsök, “To Serve with Words, Letters, and Deeds”; Adorjáni, “A nőszövetség és a belmisszió.”

7. 7 The following references were considered to be of particular significance in this study of ethnicity: Wimmer, Ethnic boundary making; Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity; Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups.

8. 8 Sárai Szabó, “Normakövető női emancipáció”; Papp and Sipos, Modern, diplomás nő a Horthy-korban.

9. 9 See Pető, “The Rhetoric of Weaving and Healing.”

10. 10 Bokor, “Minority femininity at intersections”; Bokor, “A székely Nagyasszony testőrei.”

11. 11 Kauntzné Engel, “A nőmozgalom nálunk,” 208.

12. 12 Riley, Am I that name? 48.

13. 13 Fell and Sharp, The women’s movement in wartime; Kuhlman, Reconstructing patriarchy; Wingfield and Bucur, Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe.

14. 14 Sharp and Stibbe, “Introduction,” 20.

15. 15 On Hungarian women’s activism and their networks, see Fedeles-Czeferner, Nőmozgalom, nemzetköziség, önreprezentáció and Szapor, Hungarian Women’s Activism in the Wake of the First World War.

16. 16 See Bokor, “Minority femininity at intersections.”

17. 17 Known as Dr. Kauntz Józsefné, born Ella Engel (1890–1956).

18. 18 Kauntzné Engel, “A nőmozgalom nálunk,” 208.

19. 19 Irén P. Gulácsy (1894–1945).

20. 20 Gulácsy, “A nő a politikában,” 143.

21. 21 Studies on the controversies among Hungarian women activists after the war: Pető, Napasszonyok és holdkisasszonyok; Szapor, “‘Who Represents Hungarian Women?”; Szapor, Hungarian Women’s Activism in the Wake of the First World War; Pető and Szapor, “Women and ‘the alternative public sphere’.”

22. 22 Sárai Szabó, “Normakövető női emancipáció”; Papp and Sipos, Modern, diplomás nő a Horthy-korban.

23. 23 Fábri, A szép tiltott táj felé, 173–74.

24. 24 Bokor, “Minority Femininity at Intersections.”

25. 25 Ibid.

26. 26 Ghiţ, “Loving Designs.”

27. 27 See Bucur, “The Little Entente of Women”; Cheşchebec, ‘The “Unholy Marriage”; Mihăilescu, “Introducere.”

28. 28 See Mihăilescu, “Introducere,” 51.

29. 29 See Cantacuzino, Conferinţa asupra călătoriei în America, Mihăilescu, “Introducere,” 51.

30. 30 Cantacuzino, “Drepturile minoritatilor.”

31. 31 Activitate politică socială, Alexandrina Cantacuzino. ANR SANIC, fond Familial Cantacuzino, Inv. 1860, dosar 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76.

32. 32 ANR SANIC, fond Familial Cantacuzino, Inv. 1860, dosar 67. 5–7.

33. 33 Proces verbal. ANR SANIC, fond Familial Cantacuzino, Inv. 1860, dosar 71, 9–10.

34. 34 ANR SANIC, fond Familial Cantacuzino, Inv. 1860, dosar 72.

35. 35 Cantacuzino, “Organizarea de întruniri.”

36. 36 Cantacuzino, “Cuvântarea Doamnei Cantacuzino.”

37. 37 Brassói Lapok, “Tíz perces beszélgetés Bukarestet megjárt hölgyeinkkel.”

38. 38 Kolozsvári nők kérése. Társadalmi Szervezetek Központja iratai, MNL OL K 437 1921-1-398.

39. 39 It is not clear whether the Hungarian government helped them or not. Huszár and Bethlen lobbied continuously for financial support for women’s organizations in Cluj, and in 1928–1929 the RMKNKT received 15,000 lei from the Hungarian government. See Bárdi, Otthon és haza, 440.

40. 40 Brassói Lapok, “Tíz perces beszélgetés Bukarestet megjárt hölgyeinkkel.”

41. 41 Schiel, Frei – politisch – sozial.

42. 42 ‘Legea pentru regimul general al Cultelor’, Monitorul Oficial, 89 (22 April 1928), 979–92. From 1928, according to the new Law on Religion, if parents were not of the same religion, the father had the right to determine which religion each child would be. This contradicted the old Transylvanian legal custom, according to which parents agreed on the religion of their children before their marriage. Usually, the boy followed the father’s religion and the girl the mother’s. This law also stated that in the case of orphans, if there was no indication of their parents’ religion, and if the orphanage that housed them was maintained by the state, they must follow the Orthodox religion. Female activists suggested that this law did not support equality between husband and wife. These protests represented a possible way to rethink and reevaluate women’s social and civil rights in society.

43. 43 Lotte Binder was a member of the leadership of World Union of Women for International Concord (WUWIC), an organization with a large number of Saxon members. This enthusiasm may be due to the support from the Romanian Helene Romniciano, the secretary of the WUWIC in Geneve, who maintained a fruitful relationship with some Saxon women activists, Ida Servatius and Adele Zay. Also Rominicano helped them take part in the other organization, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). The Saxon women’s association did not affiliate itself with this latter organization, however, because Adele Zay felt that “the League practices cosmopolitanism, whose principles, especially the philo-Semitic direction, we cannot adopt completely as our own.” Saxon women therefore remained individual members of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Schiel, Frei – politisch – sozial, 384.

44. 44 [Bethlen], “Gróf Bethlen Györgyné előadása.”

45. 45 On Cantacuzino’s nationalism, see Bucur, “The Little Entente of Women.”

46. 46 For the printed version of the speech, see Cantacuzino, “Străinii ca factor politic.” ANR SANIC, Cantacuzino family documents, dossier 61.

47. 47 A similar tendency has been observed among other ethnic communities in Europe with regard to the participation of women in public life and the goals of their struggles. See Żarnowska, “Women’s Political Participation.”

48. 48 See Bokor, “Minority Femininity at Intersections.”

49. 49 Păltineanu, “Converging Suffrage Politics”; Bucur, “The Little Entente of Women”; Szapor, Hungarian Women’s Activism.

50. 50 Păltineanu, “Converging Suffrage Politics,” 57.

51. 51 See Schiel, Frei – politisch – sozial.

52. 52 Schiel, “Was haben wir vom Frauenwahlrecht zu erwarten?”

53. 53 “A községi választások esélyei Kolozsváron”; Universul, “ Alegerile comunale la Cluj.”

54. 54 Known as Huszár Pálné baroness (born as Nemes Polixéna, 1882–1963).

55. 55 Keleti Ujság, “A kolozsvári választás fontos erőpróbája a román nemzeti-parasztpártnak.”

56. 56 Keleti Ujság, “Szükséges-e a magyar nőknek a választásokon aktív szerepet vállalni?”

57. 57 Szamos, “Az mszigeti nők első politikai megmozdulása.”

58. 58 Keleti Ujság, “Szükséges-e a magyar nőknek a választásokon aktív szerepet vállalni?”

59. 59 See Sulyok, “Az erdélyi magyarság nemzetközi kapcsolatai,” 87–89; “A Romániai Magyar Népliga-Egyesület tisztikara és alapszabályai.”

60. 60 Huszár Pálné, “A Magyar Nők Központi Tikárságának megalakulása és működése,” 21.

61. 61 See Zimmermann, “The Challenge of Multinational Empire”; Grubački and Selišnik, “The National Women’s Alliance in interwar Yugoslavia.”

62. 62 The minority society closely followed international feminist activism (In 1927, Korunk published an article by the Hungarian feminist Vilma Glüclich on international women’s organizations. Glücklich, “Nemzetközi nőmozgalom a háború után”).

63. 63 [Bethlen], “Gróf Bethlen Györgyné előadása”

64. 64 On the activity of ICWG, see Tešija, “Millions of working housewives.”

65. 65 Bethlen Györgyné, “A külföldi nagy nőegyesületek.”

66. 66 Schiel, Frei – politisch – sozial, 398.

67. 67 Brassói Lapok, “Magyar asszonyok munkája.”

68. 68 Brassói Lapok, “Aberdeen márkinő Brassóban.”

69. 69 Ligeti, “Látogatás Kolozsvár vezető asszonyainál.”

70. 70 International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, concluded in Geneva on September 30, 1921, as amended by the Protocol signed at Lake Success, New York, on November 12, 1947. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1921/09/19210930%2005-59%20AM/Ch_VII_3p.pdf

71. 71 See Schiel, Frei – politisch – sozial.

72. 72 See Asociaţia Amicele Tinerelor Fete, Dare de seamă pe anul 1932. ANR SANIC, Cantacuzino family documents, dossier 90, 49.

73. 73 Ibid., 49.

74. 74 Brassói Lapok, “Akció a leányok védelmére.”

75. 75 A bukaresti ház krónikája. 39. A Szociális Testvérek Társaságának Levéltára, Kolozsvár.

76. 76 Something similar happened in Poland, where Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish women worked in separate railway mission projects. See Nithammer, “Closing the Abyss of Moral Misery.” The Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish denominations separately sent out station missionaries throughout Europe. See Bieri and Gerodetti, “‘Falling Women’”; Nithammer, “Closing the Abyss of Moral Misery.”

77. 77 MELE was predominantly funded by public money (alongside smaller private donations) and cooperated with state institutions, such as the Ministries of Justice, Health, and Transportation, as well as religious women’s organizations, such as the National Association of Catholic Housewives and the National Association of Hungarian Protestant Women. See Bokor, “Nők a nemzetben, nemzet a nőkben.”

78. 78 Horváth, “Küzdelem a leánykereskedelem ellen”; “Határozat a leánykereskedelem elleni küzdelem tárgyában.”

79. 79 At the time of the 1889 census, there were 11,222 Hungarians living in the Old Kingdom of Romania. According to contemporary publicists, their numbers had been steadily increasing since the 1880s, and by the turn of the century, churches counted 26,000 Hungarian souls. See Árvay, “A bukaresti magyarok lélekszámának alakulása,” 143. According to the 1930 census, Bucharest’s Hungarian population numbered 24,052 individuals. This demographic, however, was not monolithic. It comprised individuals hailing from diverse regions of Transylvania, with many representing second-generation Hungarians.

80. 80 Gidó, “Az 1902-es tusnádi székely kongresszus.”

81. 81 See also Bözödi, Székely bánja.

82. 82 Stettner, “Leányegyesület – lélekmentés – fajvédelem,” 2.

83. 83 Recensamântul general, 1931.

84. 84 See Farmati, “Szerzetesnők a keresztény feminizmus – a társadalom szolgálatában.”

85. 85 See Murányi, “Szellemben, irányzatban, szeretetben egyek vagyunk veletek.”

86. 86 “A puszták rejtekéből az élet centrumába.”

87. 87 Bokor, “‘A mi kis világunk.’”

88. 88 See Bokor, “A székely Nagyasszony testőrei.”

89. 89 Sister Auguszta and Sister Lídia, “A Szociális Testvérek Társasága Erdélyi Kerületének megalakulása.” A Szociális Testvérek Társaságának Levéltára, Kolozsvár.

90. 90 See the studies by Andrea Pető, Susan Zimmermann, Judit Szapor, and Judit Acsády listed here.

91. 91 Zimmermann, “The Challenge of Multinational Empire.”

Phantom Borders and Nostalgia: German Women’s Associations in the Second Polish Republic after 1918*

Paula Lange

University of Vienna, Department of History

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Transformations associated with the end of World War I had an immense impact on the population of the former Prussian partition area, most of which became, in the wake of the war, the Second Polish Republic. Members of the German women’s associations, which had existed before 1918, found themselves in a new situation. As members of a national minority in the newly established Polish state, they were confronted with a reversed balance of power. Meanwhile, women’s suffrage had been introduced, opening up new political spaces of action for women. This article examines gender-related spaces of action for German women in this region after 1918 and explores the strategies and points of reference used by these women. The two examples on which it focuses, the Vaterländischer Frauenverein in Graudenz/Grudziądz and the work of feminist activist Martha Schnee in Bromberg/Bydgoszcz, are examined using the concepts of phantom borders and nostalgia.

Keywords: Second Polish Republic, German women’s associations, phantom borders, nostalgia, interwar period

Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 373-401  DOI 10.38145/2025.3.373

Introduction

Women’s activism in Central and Eastern Europe was strongly influenced by World War I and, in particular, the regime changes that came at the close of the war, with the emergence of new states after 1918. Women’s associations, many of which now belonged to the national minorities in the new states (such as the Germans in the Second Polish Republic), occupied a special position in this context. On the one hand, German women’s associations1 found themselves in a reversed position of power, since they had belonged to the national majority in most regions of the Prussian partition area of the German Empire until its collapse. On the other hand, the founding of the Second Polish Republic, the introduction of women’s suffrage in 1918, and the establishment of democratic structures opened up new political, institutional, and imagined spaces of action for them. While the position of the German minority in the Second Polish Republic has been rigorously studied,2 little attention has been paid to German women’s associations, their networks, and their spheres of influence after 1918.3 As this paper will show, broadening the perspective by including the category of gender in the study of national minorities (in addition to, for example, denomination or class) offers new insights into women’s agency in the interwar period and sheds light on the hitherto unstudied activities of women’s organizations and their networks.

In the new political, institutional, and imagined spaces of action that emerged after 1918, women’s organizations adopted strategies and types of activism that resembled prewar aspirations and efforts (e.g., organizing supra-regional network meetings), and they remained linked to their previous points of reference (e.g., the German Empire). These continuities in women’s activism in a completely new political situation will be demonstrated with two examples: the Vaterländischer Frauenverein des Roten Kreuzes (VF – Patriotic Women’s Association of the Red Cross) in Graudenz/Grudziądz and the efforts of feminist activist Martha Schnee in Bromberg/Bydgoszcz. The source material used consists mainly of records of the respective associations, as well as police files and court records. Two concepts will be used to explain the action strategies of Vaterländischer Frauenverein and Martha Schnee: the theoretical frame of phantom borders4 and the concept of nostalgia, drawing on the definitions offered by Svetlana Boym.5

The collected volume Fragmentierte Republik? Das politische Erbe der Teilungszeit in Polen 1918–1939 edited by Michael G. Müller and Kai Struve, deals with the question of how experiences in the various partitioned areas as ‘phantom borders’ affected the actions of the political elites after 1918 and how this also contributed to the political fragmentation of the Second Polish Republic. A contribution to this discussion that explicitly considers the category of gender, however, is missing. Phantom borders can be described as “former mostly political borders or territorial divisions that continue to structure space after they have been institutionally abolished.”6 Phantom borders leave behind “tangible traces of the no longer existing political body and its external borders” over different periods of time. In our case, these are the phantom borders of the German Empire respectively the Prussian partition area in the Second Polish Republic, which was founded in 1918. The concept of phantom borders enables us to highlight the features of historical regions without essentializing them or reifying their physical borders. It reminds us that what had once existed as a very real political space can persist as an imagined space, and these imagined spaces can be incorporated into a historical analysis without perpetuating imperial narratives or lending persuasive force to revisionist claims.7 This is particularly important in the case of what had been, before the war, the eastern part of the German Empire, which remained the subject of nationalist and revisionist fantasies and a highly controversial political issue after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s triad of space,8 three dimensions of phantom borders can be characterized: The Raumimagination (imagining of space), the Raumerfahrung (experience of space), and the Raumgestaltung (formation of space).9 The relevance of phantoms borders in the creation, interpretation, and lived experience of spaces is clearly visible in the activities of the women’s associations.

The members of the Vaterländischer Frauenverein in Grudziądz maintained symbolic ties to the defunct German Empire in order to situate themselves in space and to give meaning and consistency to their situation and existence (Raumimagination).10 Their value orientations and practices, which had emerged from their experiences of successes under the German Empire, continued to function as routines under changed circumstances in the Second Polish Republic as they continued their association’s work (Raumerfahrung).11 Phantom borders, however, are not simply metaphors for the ways in which spaces are imagined or experienced. They also shape the spaces in which they exist, for example through old and new institutional orders. Surviving legal traditions, for instance, contribute to the meaningful formation of space (Raumgestaltung).12 The German law on associations, for example, which was adopted into the new Polish legal system and only replaced in 1933, played a major role in the fate of the Vaterländischer Frauenverein.

In their “academic positioning on phantom borders in Eastern Europe,” Hannes Grandits, Béatrice von Hirschhausen, Claudia Kraft, Dietmar Müller, and Thomas Serrier point out that the three ways in which phantom borders can be understood as part of Lefebvre’s triad of space overlap.13 As Marko Zajc states, the “conceptual openness of the ‘phantom border’ concept bears the potential of its productive application.” Referring to examples in which the notion of phantom borders has been used as a fruitful theoretical concept, Zajc asks the following question: “Is this about ‘phantom borders’, or rather ‘phantom spaces’?”14

This paper explores this question by adding Svetlana Boym’s concept of nostalgia to the analysis. Boym defines nostalgia as a “longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy.”15 She draws a distinction between reflective and restorative nostalgia: “Reflective nostalgia thrives on algia (the longing itself) and delays the homecoming—wistfully, ironically, desperately.” The notion of restorative nostalgia, which emphasizes nostos (home) and “attempts a transhistorical reconstruction of the lost home,”16 seems very useful as a perspective from which to study the activities of the German women’s associations in the aftermath of World War I. Boym describes the creation of a “phantom homeland” as an “extreme case of nostalgia.”17 After a brief historical overview, the two examples mentioned are discussed from the perspective of the concept of phantom borders. Women’s activism in the region before and during World War I is also described to offer context and some grasp of the reference points that were used by women in their work after 1918. Finally, I link the findings of this discussion to the concept of nostalgia.

The End of World War I and the Negotiations Concerning the Borders of the New Polish State

With the collapse of the German, Habsburg, and Russian Empires and the end of World War I, new states emerged. These states saw themselves as homogeneous nation states despite the presence of considerable linguistic and confessional minorities. In 1918, 123 years after the Third Partition of Poland, which divided the land of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth among the Prussian, Habsburg, and Russian Empires, the Second Polish Republic came into being. But the proclamation of the Second Polish Republic in November 1918 did not determine the final borders of the new state. For another three years, military conflicts, armed uprisings and referendums shaped the nation-building and state-building processes of the region, which was still suffering from the consequences of the war. Industry and agriculture had collapsed, infrastructure was largely destroyed, food shortages and diseases were a common part of everyday life, and populations were dwindling because of resettlement, deportation, and civilian and military war casualties.18

The incorporation into the new Polish state of the formerly Prussian territories (the Province of Posen) and large parts of West Prussia was decided by the Treaty of Versailles. From then on, East Prussia was separated from the Weimar Republic by parts of the newly established Second Polish Republic, as the treaty guaranteed Poland access to the Baltic Sea. Danzig was placed under the supervision of the League of Nations as a Free City. In addition, referendums were to be held in parts of East Prussia and Upper Silesia, which, as an industrial region, was of great interest to both countries. The population here was able to vote as to whether to remain with the Weimar Republic or to be incorporated into the new Polish state.19 The first plebiscite in East Prussia took place on July 11, 1920, in the shadow of the Polish-Soviet war. 96.5 percent of the population voted to remain in the Weimar Republic. Only eight villages were made part of the Second Polish Republic.20

New political spaces of action

Women’s associations participated in the preparations for the plebiscites. In February 1921, for example, the main office of the Deutsch-Evangelischer Frauenbund (DEF – German Protestant Women’s Association)21 sent a letter to local Silesian groups with instructions on how to prepare for the upcoming plebiscite in Silesia. The main office asked the local groups of the association in the voting areas for increased commitment. According to the letter, the members of the DEF were

obliged to be faithful to the program of the association and to promote moral-religious, German Protestant thoughts and principles […] among the population, to stand up for German nature and German character, to strengthen national feelings and, ultimately, also to point out the responsibility of women to do their duty in the election.22

In particular, the groups in Silesia were encouraged to mobilize women to vote in favor of remaining in the Weimar Republic. To this end, members were to travel to various areas to prepare group meetings and give lectures. Although the activities of the women in the DEF were voluntary and unpaid, the speakers were to receive honoraria for their talks. This offers a clear illustration of how urgent the matter seemed to the main office.23

The statement concerning “the responsibility of women to do their duty in the election” should not be misunderstood to suggest that the DEF supported the introduction of women’s suffrage. On the contrary, the DEF continued to oppose women’s suffrage, which was introduced in the Weimar Republic and the Second Polish Republic in 1918. In 1919, women exercised universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage for the first time in the first elections to the National Assembly. A woman’s “duty” to exercise the right to vote derived, in the mentality of the DEF, from an obligation to the homeland (not to a democratic system) and loyalty to the fatherland, which transcended politics and parties.24 As Andrea Süchting-Hänger has observed, the commitment to “Germanness” was presented as a “retreat into a politics-free space, which, however, was often linked to concrete nationalist demands and ideas.”25

The activities of DEF women in the run-up to the plebiscite offer a clear example of how women’s associations participated in (new) political spaces of action after 1918. It is worth noting that the DEF did not use a parliamentary space as a political space but continued to operate within the framework of the association’s previous activities (such as lectures, trips, etc.) in its efforts to influence the upcoming plebiscite. In this way, political activism could continue to take place in a context that the DEF defined as apolitical, since it did not refer to democracy and elections as a means of political participation but continued to use the fatherland as a point of reference. At the same time, it becomes clear that the fatherland referred to by the association no longer existed as a political state and thus constituted an imagined space.

The outcome of the plebiscite in Upper Silesia was more ambiguous than the outcome in East Prussia. On March 18, 1921, almost 60 percent of the Upper Silesian population voted to remain in the Weimar Republic. While the League of Nations, which had the final decision on the future of the area affected by the vote, was discussing the partition of Upper Silesia, the third Silesian uprising broke out on May 3, 1921. Polish insurgents pursued the annexation of Upper Silesia to the Second Polish Republic. The civil war only ended at the end of June in an armistice and influenced the final decision of the League of Nations. In October 1921, Upper Silesia was divided. The result of the vote notwithstanding, the Polish demands, which were based on economic justifications, were granted. Both the Polish and the German parts of Upper Silesia had large national minorities. The rights of both groups were affirmed, at least on paper, in the Geneva Upper Silesian Convention in May 1922.26

The emergence of the Second Polish Republic meant drastic changes for the peoples of the entire region, especially the German-speaking populations that found themselves within the political borders of the new state. They had to redefine their identity as Germans and adapt to their place as a national minority. This led to the founding of new parties and organizations to represent the interests of the Germans in the Second Polish Republic,27 but it also meant fundamental changes for the organizations which had existed before 1918. The various organizations reacted in strikingly different ways. For example, the association Frauenwohl (Women’s Welfare) in Thorn/Toruń focused on informing women about their civil rights after the introduction of women’s suffrage, which had been one of the main goals of the association. The members of the association also discussed whether the associated legal aid office should also be opened to Polish citizens after the city’s incorporation into the Second Polish Republic in 1920. Ultimately, however, the deliberations about the future of the association and the legal aid office came to nothing, because the association dissolved in September 1920, as more and more of its members simply left the city.28 In the discussion below, I offer two examples of how other associations reacted to the new situation in the immediate postwar period.

The Vaterländischer Frauenverein in Graudenz/Grudziądz

Graudenz was a town of some 30,000 inhabitants in West Prussia with a large German population. There were numerous women’s associations, including a local group of the Vaterländischer Frauenverein. The founding of the Vaterländischer Frauenverein (Patriotic Women’s Association) in 1866 was essentially based on the voluntary work of women during the Coalition Wars between 1792 and 1815. The VF was one of the first interconfessional women’s associations, the charitable work of which was primarily based on the patriotic motivations of its members.29 The association’s main tasks included nursing the wounded and sick in times of war and preparing for war in peacetime. It undertook these efforts in close cooperation with the Ministry of War. An amendment to the statutes in 1869 also brought the training of nurses in hospitals and infant homes into the focus of the association. In the event of war, the VF had to subordinate itself to the Central Committee of the German Red Cross Associations. The charitable activities of the association were financed by membership fees and donations, which often came from the state.30 Local groups with their own executive boards were subordinate to the main board as branch associations, which in turn were organized into provincial and district associations. In 1900, the thousandth branch association was founded, and according to statistics from 1909, the VF had 395,054 members.31

By joining the VF, women shifted their traditional domestic activities into a more public sphere in which membership in an association had been seen as an integral part of bourgeois social life in the German Empire. Training as a nurse enabled women to pursue gainful employment, but this profession, furthermore, also corresponded to the ideal of femininity and did not constitute a threat to men working in this field. In principle, the association saw its activities as “women’s work.”32 According to Gabriella Hauch, the activities and foundations of these “women’s associations, which were not considered political, took place in the interplay of a heteronomous and self-determined definition based on their female gender” and “seemed to be embedded in the constructed ‘nature of women’.”33 In addition to the specific opportunities it offered its members, both in terms of association activities and in the context of gainful employment, the association aimed to improve the living and working conditions of women and girls through special social facilities.

The VF viewed its activities in an apolitical context and was committed to political party neutrality. This self-image is evident from various letters and statements. In the spring of 1920, for example, the main board cancelled its participation in a protest against the occupation of the Rhineland by Black French soldiers. The protest had been launched by the Deutsch-Evangelischer Frauenverein, and it had met with the support of a broad alliance of various women’s associations. In its justification, the board stated that, “as this issue was a political one, we regret that we had to refuse to participate for fundamental reasons.” It nevertheless wished the organization “every success.”34 Contrary to the official position of the VF in this matter, eight branch associations, together with 63 other German, Dutch, Swedish and Austrian women’s associations, signed a letter of protest to the League of Nations against the occupation of the Rhineland by French forces, which was described in the letter as “schwarze Schmach” (black disgrace).35

The Vaterländischer Frauenverein in Graudenz during the war:
The “Army of the Empress”

When the German Empire entered World War I on August 1, 1914, the VF fulfilled its original purpose for the first time since 1871: to care for wounded and sick soldiers. At the request of the Ministry of War, the branch association founded in 1868 in Graudenz set up dining facilities for soldiers passing through, opened soldiers’ homes,36 and treated soldiers in military hospitals.37 VF nurses also worked in the artillery depot in the town of Graudenz.38 The VF also advertised war bonds, which were used to help finance the war.39 The VF itself benefited from financial support from the Ministry of War, the War Office, and the War Replacement and Labor Department, as it was given funds from the so-called “Kaiser Spende” (Emperor’s donation).40 In a circular letter to all branch associations, the board appealed to each individual member to financially support a foundation affiliated with the association, and it emphasized that the “greatness of the Vaterländischer Frauenverein, which can call itself the ‘Army of the Empress’ with justifiable pride, rests on the joint work of all associations, branch associations, and association members.”41

During the war, cooperation with other women’s associations also intensified. Relationships among these associations had at times been tense due to competition in the same “areas of work” and also, for example, due to confessional differences.42 Although the association officially positioned itself as interconfessional, its members were predominantly protestants. The exceptional situation during the war and the increased demands on the various women’s associations prompted the main board of the VF to urge its branch associations to foster better relations and more intense cooperation in certain areas of work with the Deutsch-Evangelischer Frauenverein,43 the Katholischer Frauenbund (Catholic German Women’s Association),44 and the Jüdischer Frauenbund (Jewish Women’s Association),45 all of which were also represented by local groups in the Prussian partition area. This intensified networking was thus a result of the war situation. The acute situation prompted the associations to set aside their differences, at least to some extent.

The period of transformation after World War I

The Vaterländische Frauenverein had to grapple with various upheavals and changes at the end of the war. These changes included the introduction of women’s suffrage. The monarchy, which had served as a strong reference and identification factor, no longer existed due to the founding of the Weimar Republic, as well as the border shifts and referendums in the former Prussian partition area, which called into question the existence of the branch associations in the affected areas.

The introduction of women’s suffrage put the VF in a complicated position, as the association rejected women’s suffrage in accordance with its statutes. The association pursued the goal of integrating women into the existing system through its charitable activities and its commitments in the event of war, and not through democratic participation in the form of women’s suffrage. From the perspective of the VF, women’s suffrage endangered the prevailing order.46 For the VF and the DEF, by exercising the right to vote, a woman was meeting a civic duty to the fatherland and not an obligation to the democratic system. The fatherland was to take precedence over politics and political parties. This meant that the association could continue to present itself as apolitical and not officially declare any party affiliation, even if it was clear from the association’s principles that members could or at least should only vote for German nationalist parties.47

After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the main board of the VF informed its members in July 1919 that the branch associations in the ceded territories would have to leave the organization of the Vaterländischer Frauenverein due to the treaties, which no longer permitted cross-border cooperation between branch associations. The main board expressed the hope that the members of the association would “continue to prevent and combat economic and moral hardship in their association’s territory in the spirit of the Vaterländischer Frauenverein.” To this end, the branch associations had to rename themselves and separate themselves from the main association. The newly founded association could keep the association’s assets if it pursued the “same or similar goals of the Vaterländischer Frauenverein.” These orders were passed with “bleeding hearts,” and the main board expressed its “heartfelt thanks for everything they had done for the fatherland as the Vaterländischer Frauenverein.”48

The Polish constitution granted its minorities comprehensive rights and equality before the law, and the German minority was assured that it could run its own educational and cultural institutions with permission of the use of the German language.49 After the incorporation of Graudenz (and the change of the name of the city to Grudziądz) into the Second Polish Republic in 1920, the branch association of the VF was renamed Deutscher Frauenverein für Armen- und Krankenpflege mit dem Sitz in Graudenz (DFVAK – German Women’s Association for Care of the Poor and Sick with its headquarters in Graudenz).50 The association also changed its statutes and from then on defined its purpose as the “elimination and prevention of economic and moral hardship” and the provision of “children’s schools and care for the poor and sick.” While the previous statutes had not contained any explicit requirements concerning the nationality of the members of the association, according to the new guidelines, membership was reserved for “women of German nationality of good repute.”51 The association continued to be chaired by Amanda Polski, whose husband was mayor of the town until 1920. The DFVAK was also a member of the Verband der Deutschen Frauenvereine Danzigs (Union of German Women’s Associations in Danzig), which coordinated cooperation among the individual German women’s associations.52 In this case, cross-border cooperation under one umbrella organization seemed possible. After the German associations had been compelled to cut their affiliation with their umbrella organization in the German Reich, a kind of interstice opened up with the organizations that were active in the Free City of Danzig, which was located neither in the Second Polish Republic nor in the Weimar Republic. In order to strengthen the supra-regional connection to other German associations, the DFVAK also became a member of the Deutscher Wohlfahrtsbund (German Welfare Association in Poland). The Deutscher Wohlfahrtsbund also saw itself as interdenominational and apolitical, and it endeavored to support the affiliated associations “while fully preserving their independence through mutual communication and exchange of ideas and experiences, as well as to represent the common interests with authorities, legislative bodies, and in public.“53 The DFVAK hoped that its affiliation with the Deutscher Wohlfahrtsbund would primarily help it secure financial support,54 because the organization was one of the main administrators of the funds sent to Poland from the Weimar Republic.55 This financial support was also a tool used by the Berlin government to exert political influence on the German minority in Poland.56 Apparently, the positive network experience from World War I continued to have an effect here, and even in this (renewed) crisis situation, the focus was set increasingly on cooperation rather than competition.

In spite of the fact that, as of 1920, Grudziądz was part of the Second Polish Republic, the DFVAK attempted to continue its prewar undertakings, even though its main purpose (preparing for war and providing support in the event of war) had lost all relevance and the empress no longer served as the patron saint of the association following the deposition of the German imperial couple. The continued existence of the association preserved an area of activity for German women in theory, but this became less and less relevant, as the vast majority of the German speakers of the city (some 80 percent) began to leave the city in 1920, including active members of the association.57

“Revisionist actions” – the DFVAK in court

While the DFVAK regarded itself as apolitical in the tradition of the Vaterländischer Frauenverein and continued its charitable activities, the chief of police of the Toruń district, to which Grudziądz belonged, initiated proceedings against the association. In his statement dated October 24, 1921, he accused the association of acting in a “revisionist” manner and continuing to follow the principles of the VF, even though it had changed its name and statutes. He also accused the association of cooperating with other nationalist associations, such as the Deutscher Schutzbund für Grenz- und Auslandsdeutsche (German Association for Border- and Foreign Germans), and thus of pursuing political goals in addition to its “humanist goals, which, however, are not laid down in the association’s statutes.”58 Due to alleged violations of §§ 86 and 128 of the Criminal Code, he sought to initiate criminal proceedings against the chairwoman Amanda Polski and to dissolve the association in accordance with § 2 of the Associations Act of April 19, 1908, which stipulated that an association could be dissolved if “its purpose is contrary to criminal law.”59 Here, the Prussian government’s Associations Act of 1908, which remained in force until 1933,60 was coupled with Polish criminal law.

As evidence in support of the accusations, the chief of police cited several letters and other written testimonies which showed that the association continued to receive financial support from the VF, positioned themselves as irredentists through their cooperation with the Schutzbund and the Deutscher Wohlfahrtsbund,61 and pursued the “strengthening of Germanness” as its primary purpose. The last point was not in itself an offense, but according to the law on associations, it had to be reported to the Polish authorities.62 In December 1922, the Grudziądz police refused to issue Amanda Polski a passport, which she needed to travel to the Weimar Republic.63 The DFVAK filed an appeal against its planned dissolution with the Supreme Administrative Court in Warsaw, but the appeal was rejected, meaning that the association was dissolved following a decision on November 6, 1923.64 In a survey taken in March 1924, the Department of Public Security in Toruń confirmed the decisions taken, stating that there was sufficient evidence to show that the association, in addition to its charitable purposes, also pursued goals that were hidden from the state authorities, namely the promotion of so-called Germanness in the western border areas. It allegedly did so in agreement with the leadership of the organizations in the German state and thus exerted an influence on political events, even though the statutes of the women’s association made no mention of political ambitions or orientation.65

In May 1924, the Supreme Administrative Court in Warsaw confirmed that a criminal investigation would be initiated against chairwoman Amanda Polski and other members of the DFVAK’s board.66 The judges conceded that the women would have been permitted to dedicate themselves to the “promotion of Germanness” if this had been stated as the purpose of the association in the statutes. Thus, contrary to the women’s understanding of their rights, they were allowed to represent a political cause. Their strategy of carrying out their national aspirations under the guise of charity in order to be able to use the label “apolitical” must therefore be considered a failure. It remains unclear whether the court really convicted the association of not having provided information about its “real activities” or whether this accusation was merely a pretext. With the dissolution of the association, the German women lost a sphere of action that had been reserved for them as a national minority and in which they had been able to continue their sociopolitical efforts.

Phantom borders and their influence on the DFVAK

The legal proceedings against the DFVAK show that the organization’s attempt to present itself as an apolitical association was judged differently by the Polish authorities. The DFVAK’s cooperation with other nationalist associations and its commitment to irredentism were judged as explicitly political by the organs of the Polish state. The ways in which phantom borders played roles in the interpretation, experience, and formation of space are all clear in this example. While referring to the German Empire as a point of reference and continuing their association’s work as before the war, the leading women in the organization tried to situate themselves in the newly established Second Polish Republic. Their perception of the former German Empire and the “fatherland” gave meaning to their existence despite their new position in the new country as national minority and the reversed power position in which they found themselves (Raumimagination). Their experience of this space determined their strategy, which did not change despite the altered political circumstances (Raumerfahrung). Phantom borders also played a crucial role in the formation of this space. The Polish state’s reaction to the association’s activities shows the persistence of old political traditions and, thus, borders, since the conviction was based on prewar German legislation that remained in force until 1933 (Raumgestaltung). The conviction of the association under Prussian’s Associations Act reveals the reverse power dynamic after 1918. Previously, Polish associations in particular (but not exclusively) had been convicted by the Prussian authorities and their activities had been restricted with reference to § 2 of the act.

Martha Schnee’s Activism in Bromberg

The city of Bromberg, which was one of the administrative districts of the Province of Posen (and which lies some 70 kilometers from Graudenz), also had a wide range of feminist activists and various associations aimed at improving the living conditions of women and girls. Martha Lina Ottilie Schnee was born on October 18, 1863 in Bromberg. Her father worked in the city’s land registry office. After graduating from elementary school, she attended a Protestant teachers’ training college and passed her teacher’s exam there at the age of 20. She then obtained a certificate to teach at secondary schools for girls. After working as a governess for a short time, she opened a private girls’ school in the autumn of 1888. The number of students grew to 80, so Schnee employed additional teachers at her school.67 The teachers came to Bromberg from all parts of the German Empire. Many of these young women had already gained work experience in schools in Silesia, Berlin, or even England.68 From 1905 on, the so-called “Familienschule” (family school) was also attended by boys. The student body consisted largely of Protestant children, with a few Catholic and Jewish children in each of the seven grades.69 The teachers taught subjects such as German, French, history, and Protestant religion.70 The school remained in operation until 1918.

In 1901,71 Martha Schnee became chairwoman of Frauenwohl (Women’s Welfare), an association founded in Bromberg in 1897. The association was a member of the Verband der Fortschrittlichen Frauenvereine (Federation of Progressive Women’s Associations). It campaigned for the “public representation and promotion of women’s demands.” The association saw itself as part of the progressive wing of the German women’s movement. § 1 of the association’s statutes stipulated that the promotion of women’s demands should be independent of “any political or religious party.” The association sought to achieve its aims in part by listening to and discussing lectures and by working in committees. While any woman could become a full member, men could only obtain associate membership. For an annual subscription of 4.25 Deutsche Mark, the members received the federations’ journal Die Frauenbewegung.72

The Ostdeutscher Frauentag as a supra-regional networking space

As part of the organizing committee that was established as a cooperative effort between Frauenwohl and Hilfsverein weiblicher Angestellter (Aid Association of Female Employees), Martha Schnee organized the first Ostdeutscher Frauentag (East German Women’s Day) in Bromberg in October 1903. This is one of the rather rare examples of cross-class cooperation between women’s associations, since, in contrast to Frauenwohl, the Hilfsverein weiblicher Angestellter mainly consisted of women who did wage labor. At that time, there was no superior association of east German women’s associations, but the associations were, according to Schnee, united by “the bond of belonging together at home.” The organizers saw the national and international women’s congresses that had taken place previously as a model for the first Ostdeutscher Frauentag, but they also hoped to “give the German east a certain counterweight to the west and south.” The establishment of a “closed association of East German women’s associations” was also under consideration. The focus of the Ostdeutscher Frauentag was on humanitarian and economic issues. Among the 180 visitors, representatives of different women’s associations from the Province of Posen and East- and West Prussia attended the three-day event. They represented various denominations and political views. In her opening remarks, Schnee expressed her hope that the meeting would further the goal of gender equality.73 On the last day, she emphasized the specific situation of women’s organizations in the eastern parts of the German Empire and the duties arising from this situation for women, including organizational efforts among working-class women.74 Working-class women, however, were not generally seen as equal. Here, the main focus was on paternalistic notions of “aid.” The idea of gender equality thus referred primarily to the relationship between men and women within a class, and not across classes. After the first congress in 1903, the Ostdeutscher Frauentag was held in a different city every two years, including Lissa, Culm, and Danzig. It created an important networking space for the women’s movements in the Prussian partition Area. Due to her progressive stance on various issues, Martha Schnee was considered “very radical” by chairwomen of different associations, who warned against her participation at the Ostdeutscher Frauentag.75

In February 1904, Frauenwohl established a legal aid office in the same building as Martha Schnee’s school.76 The legal aid offices, which usually had been run by an affiliated association, were then united nationally in the Rechtsschutzverband (Legal Defense Association). The guiding principles of the association were to avoid legal conflicts and resolve such conflicts out of court on the one hand while also strengthening the legal awareness of women seeking advice, increasing solidarity among women across classes, and collecting evidence through counselling for the need to reform existing legislation. Efforts to resolve disputes out of court resulted above all from the inferior position of women as enshrined in private law.77 The legal aid office’s letterhead book shows that Schnee and other members of the association provided free advice to people in need four times a month. These appointments were occasionally attended by men, but mainly by women. In July 1907, for example, a servant contacted the legal aid office because she had not received her wages. The association members then wrote a letter on her behalf to her former employer, demanding that the outstanding wages be sent to the association or directly to the woman concerned. Otherwise, “further steps” would be taken.78 On the same day, a female worker, homeless with her nine children at that time, came to seek support. Members of the association contacted the local gas company and asked it to provide accommodation for the woman and her children.79 Shortly afterwards, the legal aid office supported a woman whose husband was not paying alimony for their child and urged him to comply with this obligation.80 Unfortunately, it is not clear whether Polish-speaking people also made use of the counselling services. The statutes of Frauenwohl did not preclude this.

While the members of the association (including Schnee) usually came from an educated middle-class background, those seeking advice came from a broader spectrum of classes and were often unable to afford a lawyer and thus dependent on the free advice. The legal aid office supported those seeking advice on an individual level but also collected cases and reported them to the Rechtsschutzverband. In doing so, it provided examples of the need for legal reforms on a collective level. As Angelika Schaser notes, “What is certain, however, is that the legal protection movement developed around the turn of the century made an important contribution to political education and to the legal equality of women.”81 The legal protection office was one of the association’s spheres of activity in pursuit of its statutory goal of “promoting women’s interests.” Unfortunately, it is unclear how long the legal aid office remained open, but it probably ceased to operate after the end of World War I.82

“Can we stay here?” The efforts of German Women’s Associations
after 1918

In May 1919, Schnee founded a new organization in Bromberg, the Deutscher Frauenbund (German Women’s League), of which she served as chairwoman.83 Schnee was also a political representative of the German minority in Poland and was one of the cofounders and a board member of the Deutsche Vereinigung für Posen und Pomerellen (German Association for Poznań and Pomerelia), which had its headquarters in Bydgoszcz.84

In an undated speech at the opening of an exhibition on German craftsmanship (presumably in 1921) titled “Can we stay here?”, Schnee laid out her thoughts on the future of the German population in Bydgoszcz. The Germans had “the feeling that they had to leave: The insecurity of the legal situation here, the lack of raw materials, the rising cost of clothing, the uncertainty of the political situation are driving them out.” While she acknowledged the difficult living conditions of the Germans in Bydgoszcz, she also painted a bleak picture of the Weimar Republic, which “is no longer the Germany of 1914 either.” The country was economically on its last legs, she said, and emigration was not an option, because one would have to build a life from scratch. Economically, the German urban and rural populations in Poland were better off, so it was important to “hold out” until “Germanness had prevailed again.” After all, she insisted, “Germanness has asserted itself everywhere abroad.” Strengthening “Germanness” abroad was also an important task for German women. Schnee emphasized several times in her speech that “over there, we have no dwellings, no prospects, only the very difficult struggle for survival. Here, despite the difficulties we face, we have a home, we have at least a possibility of work, a place.” She repeatedly spoke of a “difficult transition period” that must be survived “in the duty to the German fatherland.”85

The resumption of Deutscher Frauentag in Polen

Probably in the summer of 1922, the first new incarnation of the Ostdeutscher Frauentag, now renamed the Deutscher Frauentag in Polen (German Women’s Day in Poland), was held in Bydgoszcz.86 Schnee gave one of the main lectures, in which she shared her thoughts on “German women in present-day Poland: cultural and economic work.”87 In her lecture, she referred to the Polish national women’s movement, which German women should take as an example in the context of “cultural work.” She also emphasized several times how important it was, due to the new political situation, to join forces and work together with men in all fields.88

Two years later, at the Landfrauentag (Rural Women’s Day) in Bydgoszcz, Schnee held a talk on “The German Woman in Poland.” In addition to lectures, the visitors, who had come to the event from all over Poland, were also able to see an exhibition on the subject of “domestic art.” This exhibition took place annually and was an attempt to improve the incomes of homeworkers by giving them an opportunity to sell handmade goods. The event was held as part of the efforts to reestablish a supra-regional Landfrauenbund (Rural Women’s Association). This association would be responsible primarily for dealing with economic issues faced by the German female rural population, including the creation of new “employment opportunities, sales opportunities, and sales outlets for domestic crafts.”89

In April 1924, the women’s organizations active in Bydgoszcz and the surrounding area that were dedicated to charity decided to cooperate more closely. This association of 14 organizations (including Catholic, Protestant, interdenominational and Jewish ones) met monthly from then on to “discuss questions of a cultural nature, especially women’s issues, through presentations and debates.”90 The model for this was the association of German women’s organizations in Poznań, which had been working together closely in various charity efforts for some time.91

For the city council election in the fall of 1925, the association called on its members to vote for women and to get involved in the elections.92 The members of the Deutscher Frauenbund were also involved in youth welfare, career counselling, soup kitchens, and other charitable institutions.93 The Deutscher Frauentag in Polen continued to take place annually in different cities, in part simply to offer “a meeting place for all those who know that we must stand together firmly to preserve our homeland and our culture.” This shared commitment to “Germanness” led to unprecedented cooperation among the various women’s associations, the religious affiliations of which within the women’s movement were now eclipsed by the category of nationality. This is also evident in the call for women “living in foreign nations” to “appear as a unified group” at elections. While political elections are recognized as a legitimate democratic interest of the German minorities and women were also encouraged to exercise their right to vote, it was once again clear that the commitment to the “Deutsches Volkstum” was the highest priority. Explicit gender-specific interests and the resulting voting preferences were pushed into the background in the name of “Germanness” and its defense.94

However, Martha Schnee did not consider the Germans living in Poland to be united enough:

We recognize […] the absolutely hostile attacking position against Germanness. The goal: the complete annihilation of Germanness in

Poland. In the face of this, Germanness is not yet united enough. We women must make it our mission to advocate for the unification of Germanness by all means.95

In 1928, Martha Schnee began to run the Frauenfürsorgestelle (Women’s Welfare Office) in Bydgoszcz. Women of the DEF were impressed by her work, as she provided “valuable suggestions for practical welfare work for women and children of German origin in Poland.”96 Schnee remained the chairwoman of the Deutscher Frauenbund until 1934, the year she retired from her various offices and memberships at the age of 70. She died in 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. In an obituary published in Die Frau, feminist activist Gertrud Bäumer wrote of the death of the “German women’s leader in the east.”97

Phantom borders and their influence on Martha Schnee

In founding the Deutscher Frauenbund in 1919, Martha Schnee built on the experiences she had gained in her efforts to improve the lives of women and girls through association work. In her speech “Can we stay here?” the importance of phantom borders in the imagining of space becomes clear. The German Empire had fallen, and yet it still served as a reference point. The “place” itself (i.e. the territories of the newly created Second Polish Republic which had been part of the German Empire) was so symbolically charged (as suggested by Schnee’s contention that “Here, despite all the difficulties, there is a home”) that it seemed better to remain there than to emigrate to the newly founded Weimar Republic. This imagined, symbolically charged place in the Second Polish Republic thus was preferred over the real German state (Raumimagination). Parts of Schnee’s speech reveal a complete ignorance of the establishment of the Second Polish Republic and the minority protection treaties in force since January 1920, which Schnee regarded as illegitimate, since she denied the very right of the Polish state to exist. In view of the economically precarious situation of the German minority in Bydgoszcz, Schnee’s argumentation, which emphasizes the economic advantages, is surprising, especially considering the overall difficult situation of the civilian population in Poland in the immediate postwar period.98 She seems to have presented these arguments to persuade the German population to stay so that it could defend “Germanness abroad,” as she understood it.

Here, too, the experience of space played a major role. The experience of being (or at least of having been) in a position of power had such a strong effect that the actual economic and political situations were completely ignored (Raumerfahrung). Schnee sought to maintain the living conditions of the German population and their (formerly) privileged position, particularly in the economic sphere. This (imagined) living space could only survive if Germans were to stop leaving the city. This explains why Schnee was so keen to prevent them from doing so (or at least to encourage them not to do so). In the sense of phantom borders, the reintroduction of the Ostdeutscher Frauentag as the Deutscher Frauentag in Polen can be seen as an attempt to maintain existing structures of cooperation and a prewar, supra-regional networking space. This continuation is also an expression of a spatial experience that has influenced the actions of the women involved, despite the new circumstances.

Summary

The examples discussed above reveal gender-related spaces of action for the German minority in the newly created Second Polish Republic. The phantom borders of the fallen German Empire and the Prussian partition area continued to have an effect on the minds of Germans and their commitment to the preservation of “Germanness.” This was reflected in the continuing strategies of German women’s activism. We return, then, to Zajc’s question: “Is this about ‘phantom borders’, or rather ‘phantom spaces’?” Svetlana Boym’s concept of nostalgia thereby expands our perspective. Both forms of nostalgia, described by Boym, are relevant in this discussion. While the Deutscher Frauenverein für Armen- und Krankenpflege mit dem Sitz in Graudenz referred in its activism to an imagined homeland of the past, Schnee developed an imagined homeland in a(n) (utopian) future.

In the case of the Deutscher Frauenverein für Armen- und Krankenpflege mit dem Sitz in Graudenz, the renaming of the association was primarily a formal act. The adaptation of the statute offered an opportunity to create a German space of action and the cooperation with other German associations was a reaction to the changing power dynamics. Overall, however, the work of the association was shaped by a “carry on as before” mentality. The new political reality (a newly founded Polish democratic state and the resulting new participatory opportunities) was largely ignored or denied. The new borders of the Weimar Republic were rejected and the previous borders remained as a strong point of reference. While these phantom borders (i.e. the borders of the fallen German Empire) remained an important element of understandings of German national and political identity, they were especially significant in areas that were no longer geographically part of the Weimar Republic or were separated from the “fatherland.” Geographical distance from the new German state strengthened the symbolic meaning of these borders and facilitated visions of a non-existent homeland and its borders. Until the dissolution of the association in 1923, its activities had taken place in a “phantom homeland.” Commitment to the fatherland remained in place at all times, regardless of the political system or ruling parties. This phantom homeland seemed more present and “real” than actual political spaces of action, such as the very right to vote in the elections in the Second Polish Republic. In the words of Svetlana Boym, it is a typical case of nostalgia and “a longing for a home that no longer exists.”99 By constantly referring to “transhistorical reconstruction of the lost home” we see a characteristic case of restorative nostalgia.100 This kind of nostalgia is primarily backward-looking and functions perhaps first and foremost to legitimize the existence of the association and its actions in the present.

Like the DFVAK, Schnee herself sought to keep up the association work and to create networking spaces for the remaining German women’s associations in the Second Polish Republic. At the beginning of her activist career around 1900, Schnee was radically progressive; however, she had always been radically nationalistic, too. As the power position of the Germans in Bydgoszcz changed, she focused more on her nationalism, distancing herself from her progressive feminism in the meantime. Nevertheless, she remained active in the women’s movement even after 1918. She was able to use her many years of experience as chairwoman of Frauenwohl, her position as headmistress, and her commitment to strengthening cross-regional cooperation among women’s associations in the eastern part of the German Empire in her work for the German minority. While she did not leave the field of association work, she was now involved in a much more politically charged area of activity. Furthermore, her comments on the situation in the Weimar Republic and her opinion that this state was no longer “the Germany of 1914” clearly show that Schnee did not see the actual German state as a point of reference. She referred, rather, to “the German fatherland,” which no longer existed, and also to an imagined homeland in the future. Here, the fantastic side of nostalgia, as described by Boym, becomes clear: “Nostalgia […] is also a romance with one’s own fantasy.”101 Since Schnee could not accept the new political reality, she seems to have imagined a future homeland where the German population was still in a position of power, even if this envisioned homeland was geographically in Poland. This kind of nostalgia was primarily forward-looking. It sought to legitimize the aspirations of the remaining German minority and also to encourage this minority to remain despite the difficult political and economical situation. In both examples, nostalgia serves the same purpose. It fills the gap between the fallen Empire on the one hand and the Second Polish Republic on the other, which was not seen by Schnee (and many members of the German minority) as legitimate.

The extension of the concept of phantom borders to include “phantom homelands as an extreme case of nostalgia” provides a useful theoretical framework for a more nuanced understanding of the motivations and actions of women living in what was, to them, something of a “phantom space.” Further research is needed to examine how the phantom borders of the Prussian partition area, as described here, also affected Polish women’s activism after 1918.

Archival Sources

Archiv der deutschen Frauenbewegung (AddF)

NL-K-16; B-30 – Rundschreiben des Bundesvorstands an die Ortsverbände 1919–1930

NL-K-16; H-421 – Schwarze Schmach

NL-K-16; J-96 – Ortsverbände 3.2. Ortsverbände B Breslau

NL-K-16; J-98 3 – Ortsverbände 3.2. Ortsverbände B Ortsverband Bromberg

NL-K-16; J-112 3 – Ortsverbände 3.3. Ortsverbände C-D Ortsgruppe Culm

Archiwum Państwowe Bydgoszcz [State Archives in Bydgoszcz] (AP Bydgoszcz)

6/477/16/-/137 – Ojczyźniany Związek Kobiet w Grudziądzu

6/477/16/-/139 – Ojczyźniany Związek Kobiet w Grudziądzu

6/477/16/-/152 – Ojczyźniany Związek Kobiet w Grudziądzu.6/477/19/-/159 – Briefkopierbuch der Rechtsschutzstelle des Vereins “Frauenwohl” in Bromberg (Kobiece Towarzystwo Dobroczynne w Bydgoszczy)

6/477/22/-/192 – Niemiecki Związek Kobiet w Bydgoszczy

6/477/22/-/193 – Niemiecki Związek Kobiet w Bydgoszczy

6/474/0/15/490 – [Beschlagnahme bei Einzelpersonen]. Bei Fräulein Martha Schnee, Bromberg, Gdańsk 16/17, beschlagnahmte Schreiben. [Bund Deutschen Frauenvereine - rachunki, odezwy] (Niemiecki Związek Obrony Praw Mniejszości w Polsce)

6/2/0/2.2.2.61/1270 – Privatschule des Frl [Fräulein] Schräder [in] Bromberg. (Rejencja w Bydgoszczy)

6/2/0/2.2.2.61/1272 – Privatschule des Frl [Fräulein] Schräder [in] Bromberg. (Rejencja w Bydgoszczy)

6/4/0/2.1.3.4/2885 – [Stowarzyszenia niemieckie] (Urząd Wojewódzki Pomorski w Toruniu)

6/4/0/2.1.3.4/2903/2 – (Urząd Wojewódzki Pomorski w Toruniu)

Archiwum Państwowe Olsztyn [State Archives in Olsztyn] (AP Olsztyn)

42/1555/0/1/1 – Patriotyczny Związek Kobiet w Miłkach pow. giżycki (Patriotyczne związki kobiet – zbiór szczątków zespołów)

42/565/0/14/120 – Evangelischer Frauen-Verein (Sitzungen, Protokolle usw). (Kościół ewangelicki w Olsztynie - diecezja olsztyńska)

Archiwum Państwowe Toruń (AP Toruń)

69/291/0/-/3 – Frauenwohl

69/291/0/-/5 – Frauenwohl

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1. 1 An overview of the associations can be found at Statistik der Frauenorganisationen, 20–36, as well at Wyder, “Wielkopolskie działaczki,” 48–72.

2. 2 See for example Barelkowski and Schutte, Neuer Staat; Chu, German minority; Sakson, Polska.

3. 3 Süchting-Hänger, “Politisch oder vaterländisch” (However, there are only a few geographical references to the area under study here); Harvey, “Pilgrimages”; Schaser, “Engagement.”

4. 4 Hirschhausen et. al., Phantomgrenzen. The book is the first volume in a series published by the research network “Phantom Borders in East Central Europe,” which was active between 2011 and 2017.

5. 5 Boym, “Nolstalgia,” 7–18.

6. 6 Hirschhausen et. al., Phantomgrenzen, 18. All translations are mine.

7. 7 Ibid., 19–20.

8. 8 Lefebvre, “La production.”

9. 9 Hirschhausen et. al., Phantomgrenzen, 39.

10. 10 Ibid. 42.

11. 11 Müller et al., “Introduction,” 10–11.

12. 12 Hirschhausen et. al., Phantomgrenzen, 50.

13. 13 Ibid., 50.

14. 14 Zajc, “Contemporary Borders,” 302.

15. 15 Boym, “Nolstalgia,” 7.

16. 16 Ibid., 13.

17. 17 Ibid., 9–10.

18. 18 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens, 98–99.

19. 19 Ibid., 109.

20. 20 Kossert, Preußen, 143–57.

21. 21 The DEF was founded in 1899 at the Protestant Women’s Day in Kassel and was one of the three large German confessional women’s associations, along with the Katholischer Frauenbund (Catholic Women’s Association) and the Jüdischer Frauenbund (Jewish Women’s Association). It saw itself as a link between the Protestant Church and the middle-class women’s movement. Its members were mainly involved in charitable work and in the field of education for women. They founded numerous children’s homes, girls’ homes, recreation homes, workers’ homes, and later also homes for the elderly. Gerhard, Unerhört, 203–5.

22. 22 AddF, NL-K-16; J-96.

23. 23 Ibid.

24. 24 AddF, NL-K-16; B-30.

25. 25 Süchting-Hänger, “Politisch oder vaterländisch?,” 76.

26. 26 Boysen, “Zivil-militärische Beziehungen,“ 179–81.

27. 27 Lakeberg, “Das politische Leben,” 351–52.

28. 28 AP Toruń, 69/291/0/-/5.

29. 29 Süchting-Hänger, Das Gewissen der Nation, 26–36.

30. 30 AP Olsztyn, 42/1555/0/1/1.

31. 31 Statistik der Frauenorganisationen, 48–52.

32. 32 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/16/-/137.

33. 33 Hauch, “Politische Wohltätigkeit,” 202.

34. 34 AddF, NL-K-16; H-421.

35. 35 Ibid. See also Banks, “Mary Church Terrell.”

36. 36 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/16/-/137.

37. 37 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/16/-/152.

38. 38 Ibid.

39. 39 Ibid.

40. 40 Ibid.

41. 41 Ibid.

42. 42 AP Olsztyn 42/565/0/14/120.

43. 43 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/16/-/137.

44. 44 Ibid.

45. 45 Ibid.

46. 46 Süchting-Hänger, “‘Gleichgroße mut’ge Helferinnen’,” 136.

47. 47 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/16/-/137.

48. 48 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/16/-/139.

49. 49 Rumianuk, “Oblicze polityczne,” 189.

50. 50 Most of the other branch associations changed their name to Hilfsverein Deutscher Frauen. One of the aims of this change of names was to prevent Polish women from becoming members, AP Bydgoszcz, 6/4/0/2.1.3.4/2885.

51. 51 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/4/0/2.1.3.4/2885.

52. 52 Ibid.

53. 53 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/16/-/139.

54. 54 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/4/0/2.1.3.4/2885.

55. 55 Rumianuk, “Oblicze polityczne,” 190.

56. 56 Lakeberg, “Das politische Leben,” 354.

57. 57 Boysen, “Zivil-militärische Beziehungen,“ 150.

58. 58 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/4/0/2.1.3.4/2885.

59. 59 Ibid.

60. 60 Prawo o stowarzyszeniach 1932, in particular Art. 63e.

61. 61 The Wohlfahrtsbund, which can be seen as a proxy organization of the Deutschtumbund zur Wahrung der Minderheitenrechte which was banned by the Polish authorities in mid-1923, was also monitored by the Polish authorities. Hauser, “Mniejszość niemiecka,” 285 and 300.

62. 62 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/4/0/2.1.3.4/2885.

63. 63 Ibid.

64. 64 Ibid.

65. 65 Ibid.

66. 66 Ibid.

67. 67 Błażejewski et al., Bydgoski, 127–28.

68. 68 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/2/0/2.2.2.61/1270.

69. 69 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/2/0/2.2.2.61/1272.

70. 70 Ibid.

71. 71 Or 1903. The various sources offer different information.

72. 72 AP Toruń, 69/291/0/-/3.

73. 73 N.N. “Erster Ostdeutscher Frauentag in Bromberg.” Ostdeutsche Presse, 1903, no. 239.

74. 74 N.N. “Erster Ostdeutscher Frauentag in Bromberg III.” Ostdeutsche Presse, 1903, no. 241.

75. 75 AddF, NL-K-16; J-112 3.

76. 76 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/19/-/159.

77. 77 Briatte, Bevormundete Staatsbürgerinnen, 126–27.

78. 78 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/19/-/159.

79. 79 Ibid.

80. 80 Ibid.

81. 81 Schaser, “Einführung des Frauenwahlrechts,” 103.

82. 82 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/19/-/159.

83. 83 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/474/0/15/490.

84. 84 Błażejewski et al., Bydgoski, 127.

85. 85 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/474/0/15/490.

86. 86 AddF, NL-K-16; J-98 3.

87. 87 AP Bydgoszcz 6/4/0/2.1.3.4/2903/2.

88. 88 Ibid.

89. 89 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/22/-/192.

90. 90 Ibid.

91. 91 Ibid.

92. 92 Ibid.

93. 93 Ibid.

94. 94 Ibid.

95. 95 AP Bydgoszcz, 6/477/22/-/193.

96. 96 AddF, NL-K-16; J-98 3.

97. 97 Bäumer, “Das Martyrium.”

98. 98 Rumianek, Oblicze polityczne, 187–93.

99. 99 Boym, “Nostalgia,” 7.

100. 100 Ibid., 13.

101. 101 Ibid., 7.

Austro-Hungarian Women’s Activism from the Southern “Periphery” Across Ethnic Lines

Agatha Schwartz

University of Ottawa

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 351-372 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.351

Through the examples of Adél Nemessányi, Milica Tomić, Jelica Belović-Bernadžikovska, and Nafija Sarajlić, four women activists, public workers, and writers from the southern “peripheries” of Austria-Hungary who belonged to different ethnic groups, this paper examines the complex local, regional, and trans-regional aspects of women’s awakening and organizing in the Dual Monarchy. While none of these four women belonged to any associations that demanded political rights for women, their public work and activism, which took multiple forms, greatly contributed to the improvement of women’s public image, education, and social status in their own time, leaving an imprint on future generations. Through both the personal and professional lives of these remarkable women, we can discern connections that transgress ethnic, regional, and national boundaries and also reflect international developments in the fight for women’s rights. This ethnically varied sample of exceptionally educated women pioneers from parts of the Dual Monarchy that would later become Yugoslavia demonstrates what women were able to accomplish despite an overall conservative social environment.

Keywords: women’s rights, regional and trans-regional developments, feminism from the “periphery”

Introduction

Women’s activism in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was a complex phenomenon. While this activism has been relatively well studied in relation to the main centers, with by now iconic figures such as Rosa Mayreder in Vienna or Rózsa Schwimmer in Budapest, the efforts and lives of women from the “peripheries” remain lesser known, although in recent years there has been an uptake in research in this direction. Through the examples of Adél Nemessányi, Milica Tomić, Jelica Belović-Bernadžikovska, and Nafija Sarajlić, four women activists, public workers, and writers, this article argues that the definition of activism—particularly for this generation of women who lived around the time of the international First Women’s Movement and labored toward improvements in women’s social position, education, and public presence in their respective communities—must go beyond political activism understood in the narrow sense of forming political associations and demanding political rights. The contributions of women like Nemessányi, Tomić, Belović-Bernadžikovska, and Sarajlić offer a more complex picture that helps us understand the local, regional, and trans-regional facets of women’s awakening and organizing in the Dual Monarchy.

All four women were born and/or worked in the southern parts of the Monarchy which after World War I would become the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929), and they belonged to different ethnic groups. Adél Nemessányi (1857–1933), an ethnic Hungarian, and Milica Tomić (1859–1944), an ethnic Serb, were both educated in various cities of the Monarchy, and they both lived and worked in Novi Sad/Újvidék1 in Vojvodina (then part of Southern Hungary). Jelica Belović-Bernadžikovska (1870–1946), an ethnic hybrid, was educated internationally and active across various regions of the Monarchy, including Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and eventually Novi Sad. Only Nafija Sarajlić (1893–1970) was both educated and lived all her life in her native Sarajevo. Tomić and Belović-Bernadžikovska were the most connected across ethnic and national lines, both through their literary work and political activism. They were multilingual, and although they collaborated and/or corresponded with feminists and intellectuals of other nationalities and internationally, they embraced a Serbian nationalist position.2 Nemessányi and Sarajlić stayed out of the strictly defined arena of political activism. However, they both contributed in their respective locations to women’s emancipation through their work as educators and writers.

Novi Sad’s Multiethnic Early Feminist History

In a 2007 article published in the Novi Sad-based Hungarian-language periodical Létünk (Our Existence), local historian Ágnes Ózer approvingly notes the rise of an interest in studying women’s history in her city. However, she bemoans the fact that until recently, this interest had focused on Serbian women only: “Such research [Novi Sad women’s history] never delved into this question from the point of view of Novi Sad’s multiethnic, pluri-religious, and multicultural reality.”3 Thanks to Ózer’s and other feminist-minded researchers’ pioneering work in this field, the approach to women’s history in Novi Sad and in Vojvodina more generally began to shift, most notably with the publication of the 2006 volume Vajdasági magyar nők élettörténetei (Life stories of Vojvodina Hungarian Women), edited by Svenka Savić and Veronika Mitro.4 In her foreword, Gordana Stojaković acknowledges the work of mostly middle-class and some aristocratic women whose contributions to women’s emancipation in Vojvodina she deems as important as the work of organized women’s associations. “Adél Nemessányi5 was one such woman,” she writes, “the first principal of the Novi Sad Public High School for Girls and the founder of the Maria Dorothea association.”6 Since this publication, there has been a revival of research interest in the life and work of this important Hungarian Novi Sad-based early feminist.

While Nemessányi’s most important achievements regarding the advancement of women’s education are linked to Novi Sad, where she was laid to rest at the age of 76 in the tomb she shares with her parents in the Protestant section of the Futog Street cemetery,7 she was born and subsequently studied in cities further north in the then Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy. Nemessányi was born in 1857, in Liptószentmiklós in Upper Hungary (today Liptovský Mikuláš in Slovakia). She received her education in the town of her birth and later continued studies in Pozsony (Bratislava) and Budapest. After passing her teacher’s exam in Budapest in 1876, Nemessányi moved to Székesfehérvár, to the south of Budapest, where she taught at the Girls’ School. A certificate issued about her achievements in Székesfehérvár in 1884 highly praises her work and knowledge. She is said to have been greatly respected both by her pupils and their parents, as well as the larger community, for teaching German and for founding the Youth Library.8 That very same year, then 27-year-old Nemessányi was named principal of the Novi Sad Public High School for Girls (Újvidéki Állami Polgári Leány Iskola), and she moved to the southern periphery of Hungary, where she would spend the rest of her life. According to Ózer, this Hungarian-language high school became Nemessányi’s “life achievement.”9 She was held in high esteem as principal, and the school’s reputation grew, attracting more and more girls. While in 1883–84 there were 63 pupils, by 1901–1902 their number more than tripled, reaching 221.10

Nemessányi’s skills as an educator and administrator were noted already during her lifetime by Menyhért Érdujhelyi in his monograph Újvidék története (History of Novi Sad), published in 1894 (reprinted in 2002). Érdujhelyi mentions the multiethnic student body at Nemessányi’s school, which was attended not only by Hungarian but also by a significant number of ethnic German and Serbian girls.11 He attributes the school’s popularity and success to its excellent administration. Érdujhelyi’s assessment of Nemessányi’s skills as an educator and administrator are corroborated by Vasa Stajić in his 1951 study Građa za kulturnu istoriju Novog Sada (Materials for a cultural history of Novi Sad), in which he mentions two secondary schools for girls in Novi Sad: the one run by Nemessányi and the secondary school for Serbian girls. Stajić notes that Nemessányi’s school attracted more interest. Her school functioned with only two female teachers and one class, whereas the Serbian high school had three classes, four male teachers, one female teacher, one adjunct male teacher for music, and one adjunct female teacher for French. Nevertheless, Nemessányi’s school had nearly twice the number of pupils (61 compared to 38).12 Thus, despite the higher staffing and more classes offered, the Serbian secondary school still did not attract as many pupils, likely due to the better reputation of Nemessányi’s school.

The other successful area of Nemessányi’s activities was the founding of the Novi Sad branch of the Mária Dorothea Egyesület (Maria Dorothea Association) in 1891.13 According to Érdujhelyi, the “association’s soul and president is Adél Nemessányi,”14 and it operated within her school. 15 Érdujhelyi describes the goals of the association as furthering ideas pertaining to women’s education, including women’s self-education, and raising a general interest in girls’ education through lectures and reunions. He gives 101 as the total number of members.16 The association further helped organize female teachers.17 Although not a political women’s association, it can certainly be considered a forerunner of the latter, along with other early women’s associations in Hungary that promoted women’s employment and fought for their professional and educational rights.18 For all these efforts to develop girls’ education and raise women’s social status through four decades of pedagogical work, in 1913 at a public ceremony in Újvidék, Nemessányi was awarded the Emperor’s Gold Cross of Merit, the highest recognition bestowed upon a public sector worker in the Monarchy. In his laudation, the mayor underlined that Nemessányi chose the “most difficult and bumpy career,” but that as her life’s goal she had followed “the highest calling … the care for the nation’s most precious treasure and hope,” namely, the “education of the Hungarian youth.” In her response, Nemessányi emphasized her modest and quiet ways in approaching her teaching career while extending the merit of the award to her colleagues who labored in the field of girls’ education.19

What transpires from the above exchange at Nemessányi’s award ceremony is the dominant discourse surrounding acceptable and desirable female behavior and roles in society. The link between women’s work as educators for the sake of the nation is made clear. As a matter of fact, nineteenth-century and, in some cases, already eighteenth-century feminism in Hungary and in other parts of East Central Europe often used the argument of the necessity of furthering women’s education for the benefit of the nation.20 In the case of Nemessányi, the distinguished award to honor her work in this direction is an obvious proof of appreciation and approval by the highest authorities. Nemessányi’s response corroborates the ideal of womanhood at the time: modesty and a quiet demeanor. We can assume, however, that her work and professional success required other, more “masculine” qualities as well, such as persistence and assertiveness, and that her work as an educator of girls in itself was a break with traditional feminine roles. She chose to live an independent life and became a highly successful professional in her field at a time when school principals were mostly men.

If we look at Nemessányi’s pedagogical articles, we find further evidence that she was far from simply accepting and fitting into the dominant social norms and expectations placed on a woman and a female teacher. The fact alone that she was, according to Attila Nóbik, one of the only two female teachers to publish in the Hungarian periodical Család és iskola (Family and School) already speaks volumes.21 Nóbik attributes this fact to her status as principal, which bestowed a relative level of power upon her. In her article published in Család és iskola in 1889, Nemessányi praises the advantages of public over private education with the argument that public education often has to correct what home education and upbringing fail to accomplish. At the same time, Nemessányi criticizes the shortcomings of public education and argues for better private education for children of both sexes.22

In her article “Néhány szó a tanítónő munkájáról s díjazásáról” (A few words about the work and remuneration of female teachers), which was published a year later in the periodical Felső Nép- és Polgári Iskolai Közlöny (Higher Elementary Schools’ Bulletin), Nemessányi specifically discusses the position of female teachers. She refutes some arguments put forth in an earlier article by a certain János Vécsey. The latter defended lower pay for female teachers, basing his arguments on commonly held contemporaneous stereotypes regarding female teachers’ and women’s work in general, namely, that such work was allegedly easier and that more money in a woman’s pocket would only lead to her choosing a more vain and luxurious lifestyle. In her skillfully formulated counter-arguments, Nemessányi convincingly demonstrates the exact opposite. Not only does a woman teacher spend as much time and effort on her work as her male counterpart but she also spends as much if not more time on her professional development. Being excluded from the male clubs and casinos, where male teachers can exchange ideas, female teachers have to acquire the same information and knowledge from multiple sources (which is not only more costly but also more time-consuming), such as membership in diverse professional organizations and subscriptions to various professional journals. Regarding Vécsey’s argument about the “double-dipping” of married female teachers, Nemessányi convincingly demonstrates the opposite, stating that married women in the profession are few and far between (she herself remained single). The point on which she agrees with Vécsey is that female teachers with children of their own should leave the profession, as they would not be able to respond successfully to the demands of this double burden.

Nemessányi’s attack on the gender double standards of her time becomes particularly obvious when she defends the necessity for female teachers and women more broadly to dress fashionably while still keeping necessary decorum. Striking a humorous tone, she contends that while there may be some vain younger women in the teaching profession, vanity is by no means limited to the female sex: “there are plenty of dandies among our male colleagues who pay meticulous attention to ensure that each and every piece of their clothing follow the latest fashion.”23 She goes one step further in her thinly veiled attack on the gender double standard when she dismantles the stereotype of the old-fashioned (commonly referred to as the “old maid”) female teacher who is ridiculed for her unfashionable clothes. With a touch of irony, Nemessányi acutely pinpoints that, unlike what society preaches as the desirable “modest” female behavior, in reality, the well-dressed girls attract all the attention: “the well brought-up, demure young girl may wish to ponder how much the highly praised theory diverges from practice.”24

Nóbik rightly comments that such tone in a pedagogical article by a female teacher was rather unusual for the time. The Hungarian pedagogical journals under his scrutiny lacked any sign of a struggle for the equality of female teachers. The dominant tone was one of adapting and fitting in, not one of fight. Thus Nemessányi, while leading a lifestyle that on the surface fit the mold of the appropriate behavior for a woman and female teacher, distinguished herself not only with her extraordinary accomplishments in a traditional, still very patriarchal society but also with the tone of her articles. For these reasons, Nemessányi can be called an early feminist in the overall rather conservative society of Southern Hungary in which she lived and worked for many decades.

During the same period, women of other ethnicities were also active in Novi Sad. Milica Tomić, Nemessányi’s coeval, was born in Novi Sad/Újvidék in 1859 and died there at the age of 85 in 1944. Her name is relatively well known today in the history of early Serbian feminism,25 although she still has not received her due recognition. She came from a prominent Serbian family originally from Croatia. Her father was Svetozar Miletić, a respected Serbian politician and intellectual who served as mayor of Novi Sad on two occasions. Svetozar Miletić is recognized as one of the leading figures in the Serbian nationalist fight in the Habsburg Monarchy.26 Milica thus grew up in a family where she was sensitized to the burning issues of her time, “in an atmosphere of national and political strife.”27 As the daughter of an enlightened family, she received her education in Novi Sad, Pest, and Vienna and was fluent in several languages. She became politically involved already at the age of 18 due to her father’s arrest. She was even granted an audience with Emperor Francis Joseph and facilitated her father’s release. In 1844, she married another Serbian nationalist, Jaša (Jakov) Tomić, who became the founder of the Narodna slobodoumna stranka (People’s Freethinker Party), which would later become the Radikalna stranka (Radical Party).28 He was imprisoned for six years in 1890 for a “crime of honor,” i.e. killing an earlier love interest of his wife.29 He became editor of the journal Zastava (Flag), the “most influential daily within the Serbian community in Austria-Hungary,”30 in which Milica also published some early political writings. Both Milica’s father and husband were progressive men when it came to women’s rights, and they supported women’s education and emancipation.

Tomić’s activism in relation to women’s political rights, however, took off only at the beginning of the twentieth century. While Nemessányi’s work centered around women’s education and the raising of their social status, Tomić, likely due to her early sensitization to the Serbian national question and her involvement in Serbian nationalist circles, was more focused on women’s political rights. In 1905, she founded the circle Poselo Srpkinja (Social gathering of Serbian women), later renamed Posestrima.31 This circle was closed to men. Only women could attend, which in itself was a feminist statement, namely, the creation of a “safe space” and a reading room for women. While the members performed some traditionally female activities, such as knitting, they also discussed many pertinent questions. In 1910, they had 96 members, a number that tripled to 300 by 1919 (the activities stopped during World War I). Politics was very much a part of these discussions. Posestrima put together a library that collected books and periodicals. This circle thus became an important driving force behind Serbian women’s emancipation and modernization in Vojvodina.32 Moreover, it also maintained a fond for charitable donations for the poor and the sick.33 Its profile was thus emancipatory, political, and charitable at the same time.

Tomić closely followed the fight for women’s rights in Hungary and other countries, and she became an ardent supporter of female suffrage. In 1911, she founded the progressive women’s magazine Žena (Woman) and served as its editor, becoming the first Serbian woman in such a role.34 The magazine existed until 1921 with a pause during World War I. Initially, the topics discussed concerned women’s education and their social position in Serbian society to give more and more space to discussions of women’s suffrage and political rights. In 1911, Tomić published a major article in reaction to what she called a step back rather than a step forward regarding Serbian women’s education in Vojvodina, namely the majority vote passed by the Serbian National Church Assembly (Srpski narodno-crkveni sabor)35 to cancel their financial support for Serbian girls’ secondary schools.36 This decision took immediate effect for the secondary schools in Sombor (Zombor) and Pančevo (Pancsova), but implementation was postponed for another two years for the school in Novi Sad following a petition signed by 5,000 Serbian women and presented by the Dobrotvorna Zadruga Srpkinja Novosatkinja (Novi Sad Serbian Women’s Philanthropic Association). In her criticism of this decision, Tomić lists the progress and efforts made in the past 40 years to further women’s education (citing, among other prominent promoters of such rights, her father, Svetozar Miletić), and she outlines the dominant arguments in this process that linked the necessity of women’s education to the Serbian national cause. “The question of higher education for the female youth is a question of cultural and hence also political survival and evolution of the Serbian nation.”37 With Miletić’s words, she insists on the importance of these schools to allow for the education of Serbian girls in their home country rather than sending them abroad so as to preserve their national feelings and educate them to become good Serbian patriots and defenders of their national traditions that they would pass down as mothers to their children. Despite her patriotic feelings and engagement, in other publications, Tomić was critical of the backward position of Serbian women in Hungary. She attributed this backwardness to Serbian patriarchal culture, poor hygiene in the lower classes, superstition, and other factors which, taken together, led to high mortality rates within Serbian families.38 Ultimately, however, she stayed true to Serbian national values and cautioned against a takeover by “foreign, particularly western, customs,” which would have led to a “neglect of one’s own folk tradition … one’s own nation.”39 At the same time, she was equally critical of the impact of the long Ottoman occupation on the Serbian nation, and she recommended striking a balance between these foreign influences with the ultimate goal of refining but not neglecting one’s own culture and customs.40

The magazine Žena reported regularly on women’s activism in other countries and in other parts of the Dual Monarchy in particular. By 1912, the focus became women’s suffrage. Thus the April 1, 1912 issue contained a number of short reports over several pages: one on the fight for women’s suffrage in Austria; 41 one summing up the arguments in favor of women’s suffrage by Countess Teleki (known also by her pen name, Szikra) in Budapest;42 another one about women’s fight for suffrage in Russia;43 one about Sweden;44 another one about England;45 and even one about China, where women had just acquired the right to vote.46 The report about Countess Teleki includes information about countries where this right had already been granted, citing Norway, Finland, several US states, and Australia. The same text announces the 7th Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, which would be held the following year (1913) in Budapest.47 We can see that Tomić and her editorial team were very much interested in promoting information regarding women’s voting rights in their own country, which at the time was still Hungary, as well as in other states worldwide, with an emphasis on those that had already granted such rights or were about to (such as Sweden). This focus reflects Tomić’s political ideas beyond the Serbian national cause, and can be considered a shift to a more radical feminism in Vojvodina, even if the tone in which these feminist ideas would be formulated in future articles of the journal was at times tempered so as to please a wider readership.

Two more issues of the magazine also published in 1912 (June and September) featured major articles on women’s suffrage. While the September issue praises the work of Hungarian women’s organizations, in particular the activism of the Budapest-based Feministák Egyesülete (Feminist Association), the June issue, in an article titled “On Women’s Right to Vote,” reports extensively on the visit by prominent Budapest-based feminist and leader of the Feminist Association, Rózsa (Rosa or Rosika) Schwimmer to Novi Sad as part of a large assembly organized jointly by the Serbian Radical Party, the Social-Democratic Party, and the Hungarian Independence Party.48 The meeting was held bilingually in Hungarian and Serbian. Tomić, who corresponded with Schwimmer, notes that while both the Serbian Radical Party and the Social-Democratic Party included women’s suffrage in their program, the Hungarian Independence Party failed to do so. She comments that, in this respect, the Novi Sad Serbs were more advanced than the Hungarians. The article closes with the following conclusion: “The question of women’s right to vote has become part of the agenda in every way and nothing will take it off the agenda anymore. The fact that in many countries this right has been adopted is a testimony to the direction humanity has taken.”49 This sense of enthusiasm, kindled by the hope that women in Hungary, at least some women, may soon gain the right to vote, would give way to a major disappointment a few years later. On July 16, 1918, Žena reported that the Hungarian Parliament (the last one to convene in Austria-Hungary), with a vote of 161 to 65, had struck down the proposal to extend the right to vote to a limited number of women. The tone of the article is clearly one of disillusionment.50

The end of World War I soon brought about major shifts regarding women’s political rights. With the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary lost many of its territories to the south, and Vojvodina became part of the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. This decision had been initiated in Novi Sad on November 25, 1918 at the Great National Assembly of Serbs and other Slavs living in the Bácska, Banat, and Baranya regions of Southern Hungary. Milica Tomić was one of six women deputies to take part in this Assembly.51 However, whereas in truncated post-Trianon Hungary women were finally given the right to vote in 1920 (albeit with certain limits), the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes did not extend this right to its female population. Women in Yugoslavia would only gain the right to vote in 1945. We can thus see that while women’s educational rights in the Dual Monarchy had made some progress by the early twentieth century, when it comes to political rights before and after World War I, despite women’s activism across ethnic, regional, and national boundaries, decisions in this area were made as part of much larger political agendas.

While in recent years, Novi Sad has given some official recognition to Adél Nemessányi by naming a small street after her in the district of Veternik as Ulica Adel Nemešanji, Milica Tomić has yet to be granted such recognition. To date, the only mention of this great daughter of her city is a small commemorative plaque on the house where she lived.52 The online article that presents the monograph on Tomić published in 2018 states that the lack of public recognition (except in small academic and feminist circles) and the still prevailing perception that she stood in the shadow and worked under the influence of two famous men, may be due “to a certain skepticism, an incredulity that back in that time and culture, such a high degree of female individuality, such a brilliant polemical spirit and courage were at all possible.”53

Crossing Borders within the Dual Monarchy

Jelica Belović-Bernadžikovska54 was about a decade younger than Nemessányi and Tomić. Her life and work have been much more studied and recognized, with biographies and bibliographies published already during her lifetime as well as in recent years.55 She was born in 1870 in Osijek (Croatia-Slavonia) and died in 1946 in Novi Sad. Like Tomić, she too was educated in several European cities, including Zagreb, Vienna, and even Paris. Thanks to her multiethnic family background (her mother was an ethnic German and her father of Montenegrin background), she grew up speaking several languages. Both her parents were teachers, and her mother began tutoring children following her husband’s untimely death in 1875 when Jelica was only five. According to an article published in 1925, Belović-Bernadžikovska was fluent in nine languages. The same article presents her as an “embroiderer and ethnographer, an exceptionally educated lady.”56 She was a very prolific writer. In addition to 800 articles in German pertaining to feminism and women’s education, she published more than thirty books in several languages. Some of these publications appeared under pseudonyms.57 During her lifetime, she was recognized internationally as an outstanding researcher, in particular for her tireless work on collecting and preserving women’s embroidery techniques unique to the lands of the South Slavs, with an emphasis on Serbian women. Her most important publication in this area was the almanac Srpkinja: Njezin život i rad, njezin kulturni razvitak i njezina narodna umjetnost do danas (The Serbian woman: her life and work, her cultural development, and her folk art to date), published in 1913 in Sarajevo. Her reputation spread across Europe, and she received numerous accolades from professors and other intellectuals beyond Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, i.e. Germany, France, and Italy (she was even invited to work in Rome).58 She is deemed to have “contributed a great deal to the education and cultural life of women in Bosnia Herzegovina,”59 where she moved in 1895 after having been active as a teacher in other towns of the Monarchy, i.e. Zagreb and Osijek in Croatia and Ruma in Vojvodina.60

At the time, Bosnia-Herzegovina had been under Austro-Hungarian occupation since 1878. Jelica Belović worked in Mostar, where she married Janko Bernadžikovski, an Austro-Hungarian civil servant of Polish background with whom she had two children. In Mostar she also became involved in the circle around the literary magazine Zora (Dawn), in which she published, among other works, some important articles on women’s emancipation. From Mostar she went to Sarajevo and then to Banja Luka, where she became principal of the girls’ secondary school. Belović-Bernadžikovska very much embraced the idea of Yugoslavism, i.e. the unity of Serbs and Croats. She was also friends with the Bosnian Muslims. For displaying pro-Serbian feelings, she was chastised by the Austrian authorities and forced to retire from teaching in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 (another source cites 1902).61 This was one of the reasons why she sometimes used pseudonyms in her publications. The family moved to Sarajevo and later to Zagreb. In 1910, Belović-Bernadžikovska participated in the pan-Slavist congress in Prague with an exhibition of women’s embroidery from Bosnia-Herzegovina. After World War I, she moved to Novi Sad, where she taught at a co-ed school until her retirement in 1936.62 She remained in Novi Sad until her death ten years later. Among her many contacts with famous people all over Europe, she knew and/or corresponded with other early feminists from the South Slavic world, such as Slovenian-Yugoslav writer, editor, and activist Zofka Kveder; the forgotten Croatian feminist Franjka Pakšec; and Novi Sad-based Savka Subotić, one of the leading members of the Dobrotvorna zadruga Srpkinja Novosatkinja (Novi Sad Serbian Women’s Philanthropic Association).63 Her reputation as a researcher, writer, and feminist led to an invitation, in 1922, by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom to attend their assembly in The Hague in December of that year. Apparently, she was denied permission to travel.64

Her ideas regarding women’s emancipation, judging by the articles she published on these questions, can be qualified as coming from a position of cultural feminism fused, not unlike Tomić’s more radical feminism, with nationalism. Two articles stand out in this respect, both published in the Mostar-based periodical (edited by Serbian poet Jovan Dučić) Zora in 1899, “Moderne žene” (Modern Women) and “Žena budućnosti” (The Woman of the Future).65 Both articles thematize similar issues, first and foremost the need to improve women’s education and their personal development. Women are seen as different from men but in a positive and empowering light, which was a position typical for contemporaneous cultural feminism. In “The Woman of the Future,” Belović-Bernadžikovska conveys her wish to see women become stronger and more enlightened in order to be able to face life’s battles, but ultimately mainly for the sake of offering their husbands a wiser, more educated and interesting wife who can understand matters of the world beyond her household duties. “Life is so much more different next to a woman with an educated mind and heart […] who is also interested in the bigger questions of the human race, in the public matters of the homeland, but first and foremost in the spiritual life of her nation.”66 She expresses ideas often found in the writings of feminists from the Slavic (here Serbian) nations of the Monarchy, with their aspirations for national independence (also seen in Tomić), namely, defining women and the need for their education for the sake of family and nation. Belović-Bernadžikovska also demonstrates her familiarity with developments regarding the international women’s movement when she refers to American women as “the leaders in the modern fight for women’s rights.”67 In her praise of American women as beacons who show the rest of the world “what woman can [do],”68 she selects from among all women’s associations the “mothers’ clubs,” where American “mothers meet and they deliberate on the happiness and salvation of their loved ones, of their homes, of their children.”69 Thus, in demonstrating familiarity with feminist developments in the West, Belović-Bernadžikovska is careful not to overstep the boundaries of her general position concerning women’s place in the Serbian and Bosnian society of her time as first and foremost in the service of their husbands, families, and nation.70

An Early Feminist Writer from Austrian Occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina

Of the four examples of early feminists from various regions across the southern periphery of the Dual Monarchy, Nafija Sarajlić (born Hadžikarić, 1893–1970) came from the most socially conservative background. As a young Muslim woman in Habsburg-occupied Ottoman Bosnia-Herzegovina, she was an exception in that her father, a Sarajevo-based tailor who made uniforms for the Habsburg officials, allowed his daughters to be educated, an act for which he was attacked by the townspeople (his shop was stoned).71 Sarajlić attended the Sarajevo Muslim Female School established by the Habsburg authorities in 1897. This school and others fostered the education of Muslim girls “in a province where more than eighty percent of the population was still completely illiterate”72 and where opposition to girls’ education beyond religious schools was still very strong among the Muslim elites.73 Against such public opposition, both Nafija and her four sisters graduated from the Girls’ Teacher Training School.74 Nafija Hadžikarić married the writer Šemsudin Sarajlić, who was much more conservative than her father and pressured his wife to abandon the teaching profession after only three years. For a short while, Nafija Sarajlić remained active in public life as a writer and published about 20 short stories in the Muslim newspaper Zeman and later in Biser, where her husband was also a contributor.75 However, after their eldest daughter died, she withdrew from a writing career as well. She gave in to patriarchal pressure to devote herself entirely to her family.76 She maintained one creative public outlet, however, in the privacy of her home by teaching illiterate female neighbors and tutoring children.77 Today, she is praised by critics as “a precursor of modern short prose”78 and as the “first woman prose writer in the Muslim community,”79 and she is claimed by both the literary and national history in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Sarajlić’s short pieces are not only innovative in form. In her short prose, she broached topics such as women’s education, modernization, her own triple burden as a mother, wife, and aspiring writer, religion, and ethnic relations. Her first piece, entitled “Rastanak” (The farewell), and published when she was only 19 years old, was inspired by her experience as a teacher who tried to offer, in her spare time, additional content for her more advanced female pupils, such as ethics and reading, only to be met with reprimand by the Muslim authorities, “in front of the children.”80 In fact, what she describes in this short piece is her last day at the school, a tearful departure that, in her own words, “had been the most difficult one in my entire life.”81 What she does not say out loud to her pupils but puts down on paper is a powerful statement that can be read as an allegory for women’s fight for a more advanced education and emancipation against strong patriarchal opposition: “We are much too idealistic and the contact with the dark world defeats us. But if we are strong and if we want to serve our profession, we have to fight against the difficulties, trusting in success no matter how strong and difficult the resistance may be!”82

In another short prose from the series “Themes,” she presents an autobiographically inspired situation from the space of the home where an aspiring writer struggles to satisfy the demands of her household duties while also finding time to devote to writing, all the while seeking her writer husband’s approval. The first-person narrator manifests a remarkable assertiveness in the face of the husband’s arrogance as he rebukes her initial attempts to draw his attention to her sketches: “One can write but only when it is justified, in a professional, not a primitive way using the same old patterns like everyone else.”83 Eventually, she breaks through his wall of sexist prejudice and he reads her pieces while adding some critical comments encouraging her to continue. With one obstacle out of the way (her husband’s approval), the narrator still ends the piece on a tone of despondency, aware of the fact that not only does she lack a room of her own so necessary for the completion of creative tasks but also receives only verbal support from her husband: “I have strung together a few themes that could be expanded if I only had more leisure time, but right now, that is unattainable for me.”84 It is remarkable that Sarajlić’s words have lost nothing of their relevance for women in the twenty-first century, who, regardless of their background, still very often have to fight the same battles between double and triple burden.

Despite the difficulties and societal constraints that Sarajlić faced as an educator and aspiring writer, she succeded in contributing to a shift in women’s education outside of a narrowly confined space set by rigid religious, cultural, and gender standards. She left behind an albeit small but significant body of writing through which she further paved the way for the emerging new Muslim woman in this geographic space.

Conclusion

The above analysis of the lives and work of four women from the southern peripheries of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy allows us to draw some conclusions regarding the development of women’s social activism and creative output in this region. Despite their different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, they were united by their exceptional education and their presence as a public voice, be it via teaching, publishing, or editorial activities. Nemessányi’s path gradually took her from further north in Hungary to the south, where she became a pathbreaker as the first female principal of a Hungarian language girls’ secondary school in Novi Sad/Újvidék and the founder of the local branch of the Maria Dorothea Association. Today, her life and work are studied as that of a pioneer of women’s secondary education in Vojvodina. Milica Tomić’s educational path initially took her from the south to the north to both big centers of the Monarchy, from where she returned to her native Novi Sad to advance both women’s and the Serbian national cause as the first female editor of a women’s journal in this region. Jelica Belović-Bernadžikovska went the furthest north and west in her quest for knowledge, and she was the most internationally recognized, published, and connected, as well as the most nomadic early feminist, living between various towns along the southern periphery of the Monarchy, all the while embracing the Serbian national cause. Because of her work across borders, however, today Belović-Bernadžikovska is claimed by Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian feminist history. Nafija Sarajlić remained geographically confined to her native Sarajevo but still exhibited a remarkable level of modernity and emancipatory awareness which, while recognized today within the context of Bosnian Muslim history, is relevant far beyond cultural and geographic boundaries.

Through the personal and professional lives of these remarkable women we can discern connections in their feminist activism that transgress ethnic, regional, and national borders. The role of magazines and women’s articles in spreading ideas regarding their educational and political rights, influenced by international developments, needs to be emphasized as well. Finally, women’s literary output and its role in furthering ideas of women’s emancipation cannot be left out of the picture. In the overall conservative social environment across this geographic area, which shaped what women were (and were not) able to do, no women’s associations with the explicit goal of demanding political rights existed at the time. Nevertheless, this ethnically varied sample of women pioneers from the parts of the Dual Monarchy that later became Yugoslavia demonstrates that a feminist awareness regarding developments in women’s advancement in East Central Europe and beyond was very much present, and that these and other women from this multiethnic and culturally complex region greatly contributed to the improvement of women’s image, education, and social status, leaving an imprint on and an important legacy for future generations.

Bibliography

Journal articles

Belović-Bernadzikowska, Jelica. Bijelo roblje [White slavery]. Koprivnica: Knjižara Vinka Vošickog, 1923.

Belović-Bernadzikovska, Jelica. “Žena budućnosti” [The woman of the future]. Zora, no. 8–9, 1899, 290–92.

“Biračko pravo ruskom ženskinju” [Russian women’s right to vote]. Žena, April 1, 1912, 248.

“Biračko pravo ženskinja u Engleskoj” [English women’s right to vote]. Žena, April 1, 1912, 248–49

“Grofica Teleki o ženskom pravu glasa” [Countess Teleki on female suffrage]. Žena, April 1, 1912, 247–48.

Nemessányi, Adél. “A magántanítás előnye” [Advantage of private tutoring]. Család és Iskola, no. 15, 1889: 172–73.

Nemessányi, Adél. “Néhány szó a tanítónő munkájáról s díjazásáról” [A few words on the work of a woman teacher and her remuneration]. Felső Nép- és Polgári Iskolai Közlöny, June 15, 1890, 278–89.

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Secondary literature

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Dojčinović, Biljana and Ivana Pantelić. “Early Modern Women Intellectuals in 19th Century Serbia: Milica Stojadinović, Draga Dejanović and Milica Tomić.” In Women Telling Nations, edited by Amelia Sanz, Francesca Scott, and Suzan van Dijk, 121–34. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

Érdujhelyi, Menyhért. Újvidék története [History of Novi Sad]. Újvidék: Agapé, 2002. Reprint of the first edition 1894.

Giomi, Fabio. “Daughters of Two Empires: Muslim Women and Public Writing in Habsburg Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878–1918).” Aspasia 9 (2015): 1–18. doi: 10.3167/asp.2015.090102

Györe, Zoltán. “Újvidék urbanisztikai és demográfiai fejlődése 1867-től 1918-ig” [Urban and demographic development of Novi Sad from 1867 to 1918]. In Fejezetek az ezeréves magyar-szerb együttélés történetéből, 170–200. Újvidék: Forum, 2020.

Hawkesworth, Celia. Voices in the Shadows: Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia. Budapest: Central European UP, 2000.

Jelkić, Dušan. Četrdeset godina književnog rada Jelice Belović-Bernadžikovske [Forty years of literary work of Jelica Belović-Bernadžikovska]. Sarajevo: Obod, 1925.

Memija, Emina. “Medaljoni života Nafije Sarajlić” [Medallions of life by Nafija Sarajlić]. In Iz bosanske romantike; Teme / Šemsudin Sarajlić, Nafija Sarajlić, edited by Emina Memija and Fahrudin Rizvanbegović, 247–58. Sarajevo: Preporod, 1997.

Nóbik, Attila. “Feminization and Professionalization in Hungary in the Late 19th Century: Women Teachers in Professional Discourses in Educational Journals (1887–1891).” Espacio, Tiempo y Educación 4, no. 1 (2017): 1–17.

Nóbik, Attila. A pedagógia szaksajtó és a néptanítói szakmásodás a dualizmus korában [The pedagogical press and the professionalization of national teachers in the Dual Monarchy]. Szeged: Szegedi Egyetemi Kiadó, 2019.

Nóbik, Attila. “Gyermekek a dualizmus iskolái és a család hatókörében” [Children in the sphere of influence of schools and family in the Dual Monarchy]. Iskolakultúra 12, no. 3 (2002): 16–20.

Noizz. “Ljudi ne prestaju da komentarišu film Ime naroda, a ovo je priča o Milici Tomić koja je oduševila sve” [People cannot stop commenting on the film The Name of the Nation, which is a testimony to Milica Tomić, who inspired everyone]. February 28, 2021. Accessed August 10, 2024. https://noizz.rs/kultura/ko-je-bila-milica-tomic-cerka-svetozara-miletica/cz004l4

Omeragić, Merima. “The Muslim Women’s Question and the Emancipatory Potential of Nafija Sarajlić’s Literary Work in the South Slavic and European Context.” Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest 55, no. 1 (2023): 87–111.

Ózer, Ágnes. “Adalék Újvidék nőtörténetéhez” [Contributions to women’s history in Novi Sad]. Létünk 37, no. 1 (2007): 40–44.

Ózer, Ágnes. “Az újvidéki szegény sorsú nők védelmezőjéről” [On the protector of poor women in Novi Sad]. Magyar Szó Online, September 28, 2023. Accessed June 30, 2024. https://www.magyarszo.rs/vajdasag/ujvidek/a.296508/Az-ujvideki-szegeny-sorsu-nok-vedelmezojerol

Pantelić, Ivana, Jelena Milinković, and Ljubinka Škodrić. Dvadeset žena koje su obeležile XX vek u Srbiji [Twenty women who marked the 20th century in Serbia]. Beograd: NIN, 2013.

Reynolds-Cordileone, Diana. “Reinventions: Jelica Belović-Bernadzikowska’s Ethnographic Turn.” Central and Eastern European Online Library, 2019. Accessed August 22, 2024. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=817461

Sarajlić, Nafija. “The Farewell.” In Shaking the Empire, Shaking Patriarchy: The Growth of a Feminist Consciousness across the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, edited by Agatha Schwartz and Helga Thorson, 246–47. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 2014.

Sarajlić, Nafija. “Themes.” In Shaking the Empire, Shaking Patriarchy: The Growth of a Feminist Consciousness across the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, edited by Agatha Schwartz and Helga Thorson. 248–50. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 2014.

Schwartz, Agatha. Shifting Voices: Feminist Thought and Women’s Writing in Fin-de-Siècle Austria and Hungary. McGill-Queen’s UP, 2008.

Stajić, Vasa. Građa za kulturnu istoriju Novog Sada: iz magistratske arhive knj. 2 [Material on the cultural history of Novi Sad: from the city archives, vol. 2]. Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1951.

Stojaković, Gordana. “Tények, amelyek a 19. század közepétől a 20. század közepéig meghatározták az újvidéki, a vajdasági magyar nők emancipációjáért vívottküzdelmet” [Facts defining the struggle of Novi Sad and Vojvodina Hungarian women’s emancipation from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century]. In Vajdasági magyar nők élettörténetei, edited by Svenka Savić and Veronika Mitro, 9–16. Novi Sad – Újvidék: Futura publikacije, 2006.

Stojaković, Gordana. “Adel Nemešenji.” ŽeNSki muzej. Accessed July 10, 2024. https://zenskimuzejns.org.rs/adel-nemesenji-2/

Stojaković, Gordana, ed. Znamenite žene Novog Sada [Famous women of Novi Sad]. Vol. 1. Novi Sad: futura publikacije, 2001.

Tomić, Milica. “On Women’s Right to Vote.” In Shaking the Empire, Shaking Patriarchy: The Growth of a feminist Consciousness across the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, edited by Agatha Schwartz and Helga Thorson, 279–84. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 2014.

Vojvodina uživo. “Novi Sad iz ženskog ugla: Časopis koji je bio posvećen ženama, a nastao je pre više od jednog veka” [Novi Sad from a female perspective: a magazine dedicated to women created more than a century ago]. May 12, 2024. Accessed August 14, 2024. https://vojvodinauzivo.rs/novi-sad-iz-zenskog-ugla-casopis-koji-je-bio-posvecen-zenama-a-nastao-je-pre-vise-od-jednog-veka/

Zdero, Jelica. “Belović-Bernadzikowska, Jelica (1870–1946).” In A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Francisca de Haan, Krassimira Daskalova, and Anna Loutfi, 51–53. Budapest: Central European UP, 2006.

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1. 1 Novi Sad is the Serbo-Croat name of the city, Újvidék the Hungarian. Both are still used officially today in Vojvodina.

2. 2 She is included in the Croatian encyclopedia under “Belović-Bernadzikowska, Jelica.”

3. 3 Ózer, “Adalék,” 40. All translations from non-English sources are by me.

4. 4 An earlier version of this publication came out in Serbo-Croatian in 2001.

5. 5 While different spellings of the name (Nemassányi, Nemešenji) can be encountered in various publications, the correct form can be deduced from the birth certificate published online in Stojaković, “Adel Nemešenji”: Adela Nevena Nemessányi. I therefore use this spelling throughout this article.

6. 6 Stojaković, “Tények,” 12.

7. 7 Stojaković, “Adel Nemešenji.”

8. 8 Ibid. Stojaković wrongly calculates her age in 1933 at 96.

9. 9 Ózer, “Az újvidéki.”

10. 10 Stojaković, “Adel Nemešenji.”

11. 11 Érdujhelyi, Újvidék története, 360.

12. 12 Stajić, Građa, 165. The numbers refer to a report from 1877 quoted by the author.

13. 13 On the national level, the founder of the Hungarian Maria Dorothea Association was Mrs. Gyula Sebestyén (née Ilona Stetina, 1855–1932) in 1885. According to Attila Nóbik, it became “one of the most important cultural organizations representing women’s interests.” Nóbik, “Feminization,” 8.

14. 14 Érdujhelyi, Újvidék története, 329.

15. 15 Stojaković, “Tények,” 11.

16. 16 Ibid., 330.

17. 17 Ózer, “Az újvidéki.”

18. 18 Schwartz, Shifting Voices, 20–21.

19. 19 Ibid.

20. 20 See Schwartz, Shifting Voices, 36–37; Schwartz and Thorson, Shaking the Empire.

21. 21 Nóbik, A pedagógiai szaksajtó, 58. Nóbik further notes that no church or state-run pedagogical magazines featured any woman authors. The only notable exception among those he examined was Nemzeti Nőnevelés (National Women’s Education). It was not only the sole pedagogical periodical run by a woman editor (Gyuláné Sebestyén Ilona Stetina) but it also featured a high number of female authors, reaching 40 percent by 1891 (57).

22. 22 Nemessányi, “A magántanítás előnye” quoted in Nóbik, Gyermekek, 18.

23. 23 Nemessányi, “Néhány szó," 284, quoted in Nóbik, A pedagógiai szaksajtó, 60.

24. 24 Ibid.

25. 25 In 2018, a little-noticed monograph about Tomić was published under the title Milica Miletić Tomić – Pouke i polemike, edited by Vera Kopicl (Savez feminističkih organizacija (re)konekcija, 2017). It contains a selection of Tomić’s writings published in various periodicals.

26. 26 In 1939, the city of Novi Sad erected a monument to Svetozar Miletić on the main square in front of City Hall. The monument is the work of famous Croatian-Yugoslav-American sculptor Ivan Meštrović. Grad Novi Sad, April 6, 2009. https://novisad.rs/lat/spomenik-svetozaru-mileticu.

27. 27 Dojčinović and Pantelić, “Early Modern Women,” 129.

28. 28 Schwartz and Thorson, Shaking the Empire, 72.

29. 29 Noizz, “Ljudi ne prestaju” states that the murder was the result of a shooting incident. According to Pantelić, Milinković, and Škodrić, it was death by stabbing. Dvadeset žena, 19.

30. 30 Dojčinović and Pantelić, “Early Modern Women,” 129.

31. 31 A term difficult to render in English, it is sometimes translated as “blood sister.” In Serbian culture, people can select a close friend who is not a blood relation as an elected brother or sister (“pobratim” and “posestrima”).

32. 32 Dojčinović and Pantelić, “Early Modern Women,” 130.

33. 33 Pantelić et al., Dvadeset žena, 20–21.  

34. 34 Ibid.

35. 35 These assemblies were held regularly in Karlovac near Novi Sad, and were the most important political institution of Serbs living in the Monarchy.

36. 36 Tomić(a), Milica Jaše, “Naše više devojačke škole,” 374. The form of Tomić’s name used is that of the genitive case of a woman’s family name based on her husband’s first and last name, in this case Jaša Tomić, which becomes Jaše Tomića in the genitive. This is a reflection of a deep-seated patriarchal gender structure in which the woman’s name essentially states that she is the property of her husband.

37. 37 Ibid., 371.

38. 38 Stojaković, Znamenite žene, 52.

39. 39 Dojčinović and Pantelić, “Early Modern Women,” 132.

40. 40 Ibid.

41. 41 “Pobornice za žensko pravo glasa u Austriji,” 247.

42. 42 “Grofica Teleki o ženskom pravu glasa,” 247–48.

43. 43 “Biračko pravo ruskom ženskinju,” 248.

44. 44 “Žensko pravo glasa u Švedskoj,” 248.

45. 45 “Biračko pravo ženskinja u Engleskoj,” 248–49.

46. 46 “Pobornice ženskog prava glasa u Kini,” 249–50.

47. 47 “Grofica Teleki o ženskom pravu glasa,” 247. On the Congress, see Schwartz, Shifting Voices, 55–56.

48. 48 This article was translated into English in Schwartz and Thorson, Shaking the Empire, 279–84.

49. 49 Ibid., 284.

50. 50 “Žensko pravo glasa,” 369.

51. 51 Pantelić et al., Dvadeset žena, 20. 

52. 52 Noizz, “Ljudi ne prestaju.”

53. 53 Admin, “Monografija.”

54. 54 Bernadzikovska, Bernadzikowska, and Bernadžikowski are also spellings of her name used in different sources.

55. 55 In 2023, her memoirs were published in Sarajevo, Memoari Jelice Belović Bernadžikowski, edited by Enes S. Omerović and Tomas Jacek Lis and supported by Bosnian and Polish funds.

56. 56 Zrnić, “Jelica Belović-Bernadžikovska,” 9.

57. 57 Hawkesworth, Voices, 138.

58. 58 Jelkić, Četrdeset godina, 28.

59. 59 Hawkesworth, Voices, 138.

60. 60 Zdero, “Belovic-Bernadzikowska,” 51; Jelkić, Četrdeset godina, 4.

61. 61 Jelkić, Četrdeset godina, 5; Reynolds Cordileone, “Reinventions.”

62. 62 Zdero, “Belovic-Bernadzikowska, Jelica” 53.

63. 63 In 1911, Rózsa Schwimmer invited Savka Subotić to give a lecture in Budapest, but we have no information as to whether Subotić followed up on this invitation (Schwartz and Thorson, Shaking the Empire, 72–73).

64. 64 Jelkić, Četrdeset godina, 22.

65. 65 See Schwartz and Thorson, Shaking the Empire, 88.

66. 66 Belović-Bernadzikovska, “Žena budućnosti,” 292.

67. 67 Belović-Bernadzikovska, “Modern Women,” 145.

68. 68 Ibid.

69. 69 Ibid.

70. 70 Belović-Bernadžikovska’s embracing of Serbian nationalism (despite her own hybrid ethnic heritage) is also evident from some of her later, post-Monarchy writings. In her book Bijelo roblje (White slavery), published in 1923 (thus already in Yugoslavia, and when she lived in Novi Sad), one that was inspired in part by Freud’s theories on human sexuality, she expresses negative and highly stereotypical views on Hungarian women, for example. She deems them of light morals, and because of their “hot” temperament expressed in their “passionate dancing” and in “promiscuous Hungarian operettas and songs,” she considers Serbian women’s contacts with Hungarian women in Vojvodina detrimental for the Serbian girls’ (allegedly higher) morality (50).

71. 71 Omeragić, “The Muslim Women’s Question,” 95.

72. 72 Giomi, “Daughters of Two Empires,” 5.

73. 73 Omeragić, “The Muslim Women’s Question,” 95.

74. 74 Ibid.

75. 75 Giomi, “Daughters of Two Empires,” 8.

76. 76 Omeragić, “The Muslim Women’s Question,” 103.

77. 77 Ibid., 104.

78. 78 Schwartz and Thorson, Shaking the Empire, 89.

79. 79 Isaković quoted in Hawkesworth, Voices, 256.

80. 80 Sarajlić, “The Farewell,” 246.

81. 81 Ibid., 247.

82. 82 Ibid.

83. 83 Sarajlić, “Themes,” 248.

84. 84 Ibid., 250.