Emma Pieczynska-Reichenbach

Emma Pieczynska-Reichenbach (born April 19, 1854 in Paris , † February 10, 1927 in Le Mont-sur-Lausanne ) was a Swiss abolitionist and women's rights activist .

Life

Emma Reichenbach became an orphan at the age of five. She grew up with foster families in Geneva and Neuchâtel . As soon as she was old enough, she traveled to Paris , where she met and married the Polish intellectual Stanislas Pieczynski . In 1875 she followed him to Poland . Horrified by the poor level of education among girls in Poland, she taught reading and writing. In 1881 she returned to Switzerland for a cure. In Leukerbad she met the American doctor and suffragette Harriet Clisby , who introduced her to the ideas of the women's rights movement.

After her divorce, she took her Matura in Geneva and studied medicine at the University of Geneva from 1885 . In 1889 she traveled to the USA, where she first met the organized women's movement. In 1891 she returned to Switzerland and resumed her studies. In Bern she met Helene von Mülinen , whose partner she became. The two women lived in the Wegmühle (Bolligen) until 1918 , in a country house that became a meeting place for the women's movement. Pieczynska spent the next five years, from 1919 to 1924, together with v. Mülinen, at Wylerstrasse 10 in Bern.

She took part in the First Swiss Congress for the Interests of Women in Geneva. Due to deafness caused by illness , she was unable to do a doctorate. Her thesis , a work on sex education , she published in 1898 under the title L'école de la pureté (The School of Purity).

At about the same time she met Josephine Butler , the founder of the International Federation for the Abolition of Prostitution , and was soon elected to the board of the association. In 1891 she founded the Union des femmes de Genève (Geneva Women's Union).

Together with von Mülinen and others, she founded the Federation of Swiss Women's Associations (BSF) in 1900 . In 1906 she was involved in the founding of the Swiss Consumer League and in 1915 the National Education Commission .

Works

• L'école de la pureté, 1898
• La fraternité entre les sexes, 1906
• Tagore Educateur, 1921 [German. Translation: Tagore as an educator, 1923]
• Pages choisies, 1938

literature

• Anne-Marie Käppeli: Pieczynska, Emma. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Doris Brodbeck: Hunger for Justice. Helene von Mülinen (1850–1924), a pioneer of women's emancipation. Chronos, Zurich 2000, ISBN 3905313537
• Anne-Marie Käppeli: Sublime croisade. Ethique et politique de feminisme protestant, 1875-1928. Zoé Geneva 1990, pp. 79-102.