Katharina Muff

Katharina Muff, summer 1949

Katharina Muff-Arenz (born March 17, 1868 in Altbüron , canton Lucerne ; † November 14, 1951 in Olten , canton Solothurn ) was a Swiss social democrat and women's rights activist .

Life

Katharina was born as the daughter of the small farmer Josef Imbach in Altbüron in the Lucerne hinterland. She was the oldest of 13 siblings, but only six of them survived the first few years of life. As a girl from a poor background, she was only allowed to go to school for four and a half years, and when she was not even 13 she worked as a nanny for a farmer in Fischbach for a year . Afterwards she worked as a "goods maid" in Wauwil , where she had to help with the peat extraction , and later as a maid in Fischbach and Reichental (today in Reiden ). This difficult and deprivation-rich youth was formative for her later political work.

At the age of 21 she moved to the canton of Solothurn, where she worked as a waitress in the Kurhaus Froburg above Olten. Here she met her first husband, the gardener Heinrich Arenz from Bonn . The couple married on September 2, 1890, moved into a house on Hausmattrain in Olten and jointly ran their own nursery with plantations in the nearby kindling. Katharina soon became a sought-after seed dealer in the surrounding markets. The childless couple adopted a foster daughter (Emma Breitler-Dennler, 1896–1978) and raised her.

Katharina Muff's house on Hausmattrain in Olten, summer 1949

She was widowed at the age of 53 and remarried. She also continued her seed business at the side of her second husband, the locksmith Jakob Muff. Her husband took care of her when the first signs of illness appeared and she found it difficult to walk; but then she was widowed again when Jakob died of pneumonia after 27 years of marriage. She endured outside help with difficulty in her own home, and so her foster daughter - now widowed herself - moved back to Olten with the two younger of her four children and looked after them during the last years of her life.

politics

In addition to her work, Katharina Muff never failed to continue her education with books and to keep herself up to date through newspapers. In Switzerland at the end of the 19th century, she saw a lot of poverty and hardship among the working population - a condition that, according to her firm belief, could only be eliminated through socialism. In 1911 she founded the “Socialist Women's Group Olten”, of which she was president. In 1923 she was the founder and until 1930 president of the «Proletarian Women's Association of the Canton of Solothurn», from 1930 to 1939 she was president of the cantonal SP women's group. From 1927 to 1937 she was a member of the central board of the Swiss SP women's group. She published regularly in the feminist magazines “Die Vorkampfin” and “Die Frau in Leben und Arbeit” as well as in the newspaper “ Das Volk ”, and she gave lectures and speeches in lively and popular language.

In her time, Katharina Muff was the most prominent champion for political and social equality between men and women in the canton of Solothurn. She enjoyed a great reputation as a courageous woman, not only among her social-democratic fellow fighters, but also among women of bourgeois sentiment who valued her direct and honest nature.

swell

• Rosmarie Kull-Schlappner: Solothurn women: feminine work under the sign of Solothurn. Dietschi, Olten 1972, p. 120f (bibliography: information from Gertrud Witta, canton president of the socialist women's groups in the canton of Solothurn)

literature

• Jean-Maurice Lätt: 120 years of the labor movement in the canton of Solothurn: For a democratic world based on solidarity. Chronos, Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-905278-64-2 , pp. 124, 318.

Web links

• Jean-Maurice Lätt: Katharina Muff. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .