Maja Wicki-Vogt

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Maja Wicki-Vogt

Maja Wicki-Vogt (born January 4, 1940 in Lucerne , died June 23, 2016 in Zurich ) was a philosopher , publicist , psychoanalyst and trauma therapist . She was committed to human rights and published numerous philosophical, biographical and political texts in anthologies and magazines.

biography

Career, family, journalistic and journalistic activity

Maja Wicki-Vogt was the eldest of seven children of the spouses Eugen Vogt and Hedwig nee. Wickart. In and around the family, people lived according to Catholic-conservative ideals. Accordingly, after completing secondary school, she had to continue further training in Catholic daughter boarding schools in Valais and central Switzerland, which she resolutely resisted. She managed to complete the remainder of high school at the Lucerne Cantonal School, which was then only reluctantly open to female youth, where she graduated in 1959 with the Matura type B (Latin and new languages).

She then studied at the interpreting school at the University of Geneva and in 1961 obtained her translation diploma (German, French and Spanish, specializing in literature). She began studying philosophy at the Universities of Geneva , Madrid and Barcelona . Even then she was involved in social work.

At the age of 22 she married a classmate from high school, the law student André A. Wicki, who later became a successful Zurich business lawyer. According to the ideas and circumstances of the time, it was not possible to continue studying philosophy. She worked as a translator , teacher , journalist , publicist and film editor . She gave birth to twins one year after the marriage and three more children over the next seven years, one of whom died immediately after birth. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1985.

In 1977 she resumed studying philosophy at the University of Zurich . In autumn 1983 she did her doctorate with Hermann Lübbe after submitting a thesis on existential philosophy: Simone Weil. A logic of the absurd (Haupt Verlag Bern, 1983). Minor subjects were general constitutional law and human rights ( Werner Kägi ) and political science / sociology ( Daniel Frei ).

Maja Wicki-Vogt specialized in existential philosophy , political theory , social philosophy , social analysis and philosophy of language . She completed additional studies in psychology at the University of Zurich and trained as a psychoanalyst (PSZ Psychoanalytical Seminar, Clinical Psychology University of Zurich) and in trauma therapy for victims of torture (University of Bern). She had her own practice in Zurich for psychoanalysis and trauma therapy .

For many years she developed a journalistic and journalistic activity in the field of social analysis and cultural criticism , human rights , minority and immigration rights , women's politics , economic and media ethics , dictatorial violence and war and psychoanalytic trauma therapy. She worked as a freelance journalist BR (for Weltwoche and numerous other media), as a member of the editorial team ( Tages-Anzeiger , Magazin des Tages-Anzeiger , MOMA [1994-2000], Cash etc.). She was also active as an author and editor of books, always in connection with practical studies at home and abroad (e.g. poverty conditions in Switzerland, living conditions of asylum seekers in transit centers, women's uprising against the Mafia in Sicily, torture and litigation contexts in Turkey, expulsion of the Muslim minority in Bulgaria, social and political conditions in Romania after Ceausescu etc.). She worked for the Swiss television DRS (today SFR) ( Sternstunde Philosophie , educational magazine Trend , film editing). She worked on numerous programs on Radio DRS / SFR. She was co-founder and co-editor of the monthly magazine for new politics MOMA and participated in the establishment of the forum against racism.

Wicki-Vogt received a habilitation grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation . In 1999 she suffered a stroke , lost her speech and only recovered from it with great effort and only after a long time. She limited her artistic skills to designing her personal environment; However, she brought her intellectual abilities to the public in a combative manner. At the age of 76 - in the middle of her unabated activity - she suffered a subacute heart attack , which she initially paid no attention to; Despite her life-threatening illness, she continued to work, but then succumbed to it after two weeks of artificial coma. Her last review - about the novel Herzvirus by Bettina Spoerri - was published on July 7, 2016 in WOZ 27/2016. Maja Wicki-Vogt's urn is buried in the common grave at the Manegg cemetery in Zurich.

Swiss Refugee Aid (SFH)

From 1992 to 1995 Maja Wicki-Vogt was press spokeswoman and head of the refugee policy department at Swiss Refugee Aid. She headed the psycho-social (cross-agency and inter-cantonal) coordination group she had set up to record and meet the psycho-social needs of those temporarily displaced from the war in Yugoslavia , who received no public support in this regard due to their non-recognized refugee status. She was responsible for media and concept work at SFH. She dealt with the practical effects of Swiss asylum and refugee policy, non-compliance with human rights and racism. Under these aspects, it promoted the cooperation of the aid organizations, etc. It ensured broader public relations work (reports, conferences, public discussion panels, design and distribution of brochures, etc.). She fought against unreasonable deportations, coordinated medical and psychotherapeutic care for war casualties, established family partnerships, etc.

Swiss Recovery Foundation (SRF)

Maja Wicki-Vogt was the founder and president of the SRF Foundation, which has been helping penniless or in difficult circumstances, traumatized, mentally ill, distressed and otherwise needy people since 2001. This also includes refugees who seek asylum in Switzerland.

Lecturing

Maja Wicki-Vogt was a lecturer for philosophy, social analysis and political theory, social philosophy, feminist theory and philosophy of language at the universities of Zurich, Bern , Geneva and Lucerne , where she also led seminars. She was a lecturer for university further education in Bern and Lucerne and in the postgraduate master's program for cultural management in Basel. She was also a lecturer at the universities of applied sciences for social work in Zurich and Rorschach / St. Gallen as well as at numerous private academies: Paulus Academy , Boldern, ICZ College Zurich, Jewish College Bern etc. as well as at public cultural and educational institutes etc. She received lecture invitations from universities abroad: Konstanz , Harvard Cambridge Mas., Columbia NY and others For many years she gave lectures at the adult education center in Zurich and taught at Zurich high schools, at the municipal evening school for foreign workers and she was a co-designer of the Cafés philosophiques in Bern, Basel, Friborg, Lucerne, Solothurn, Winterthur and Biel.

Fight for human rights

Maja Wicki-Vogt was politically committed to the protection of human rights with lectures, lectures, books and pamphlets, the organization of demonstrations , in networks she established and above all with countless tireless and relentless personal interventions for the benefit of people who were looking for her help or whose helplessness and need for help she perceived.

Based on the reappraisal of the injustice that had been done to the Jews in Europe, she vehemently advocated the rights of women, adolescents and families. She fought for the rights of the persecuted and displaced, the Palestinians , the physically and mentally disabled Bosnians, the Roma and the refugee families in the country of refuge.

She pursued her humanitarian goals by building networks and setting up forums: with Esther Spinner, among others, the “Network Writing Women”, with Barbara Elsasser the commitment to “ATD Fourth World”, for over ten years on the board of the “Forum against Racism », 1997 together with the human rights activist Anni Lanz through the publication of an anthology of escape and exile stories from the former Yugoslavia, in 2008 with the ethics professor Simone Zurbuchen through analysis and criticism of the Swiss asylum and immigration law in a colloquium entitled« Injustice must not Law become »at the University of Freiburg i. Ue. In favor of refugees, she launched - spontaneously and with the support of Afra Weidmann, the Swiss Observatory for Asylum and Aliens Law and Solidarité sans frontières - further actions.

Central terms in the thinking and acting of Maja Wicki-Vogt

Since her dissertation on the logic of the absurd , Maja Wicki-Vogt has dealt with the “creative reason of the thinking heart”. In her scientific research, but also in her therapeutic work and her political struggle, she wanted to expose the ability of people, «against the constraints of internal and external conditions, against the pressure of society, against education, power structures and profit calculation, against the trend and to determine one's own actions against the current ». In their actions, there was no gap between publication and everyday solidarity. She researched and demonstrated how fear “cannot be overcome by adapting to the fearful causes, not by submitting to violence”. She showed and lived according to the fact that the circle of fear and violence is interrupted by supporting the ability to get to the bottom of the causes and to learn to think and act freely even in contradictions and under practical constraints. Thus, on the level of society in the chaos of differences, an unconstrained “dynamic of agreement to realize community interests” wanted to be found and realized. Not least from her own experience as a result of her stroke, she devoted herself to the fight against speechlessness in the figurative sense. She lent her intercession to the speechless. She struggled for a reason that also includes the forgotten. To her, want, fear and injustice were unbearable and unacceptable. Human dignity demands a self-determined life in peace and security. She wanted to strengthen her fellow human beings internally and in their external living conditions and enable them to live independently.

In 1991 she published a book on Women's Strike Day under the title When women want everything starts rolling . It contains contributions from more than sixty photographers as well as cultural workers and women's rights activists.

Publications

Books

  • Maja Wicki: Simone Weil , A Logic of the Absurd. Dissertation. Paul Haupt Verlag, Bern / Stuttgart 1983.
  • Maja Wicki-Vogt: Creative Reason. Courage and tragedy of modern thinkers. Edition 8 Verlagsgenossenschaft, Zurich 2010. (The book received considerable attention and was discussed several times.)
  • Maja Wicki-Vogt: inheritances without a will. About freedom and lack of freedom in personal becoming. Contributions to a dialogic culture. Edition 8, Zurich 2014. (The author examined the biographies of Sigmund Freud , Arnold Zweig , Franz Kafka , Walter Benjamin and Ludwig Wittgenstein .)

Book contributions

  • Maja Wicki: About the necessary and unnecessary contradictions of a free society. In: Willi Goetschel, John Cartwright and Maja Wicki-Vogt (eds.): Paths of contradiction. Festschrift for Hermann Levin Goldschmidt . Paul Haupt Verlag, Bern / Stuttgart 1984, pp. 41–82.
  • Maja Wicki: Jewish thinking in a denied tradition. In: Heinz Robert Schlette, André-A. Devaux (Ed.): Simone Weil. Philosophy - Religion - Politics. Josef Knecht Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1985, pp. 137–157.
  • Maja Wicki: Simone Weil. Working-class culture as a revolutionary design. In: Erhard R. Wiehn (ed.): Jews in the sociology. Hartung-Gorre Verlag, Konstanz 1989, pp. 289-300.
  • Maja Wicki: Not what men are and have, but more and different. About role models, revolutionary spirit and luck. In: this: When women want, everything starts rolling. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 1991, pp. 168–178.
  • Maja Wicki: "The revolutionary act is to say aloud what is": About political muteness and political language. Three examples of women around the French Revolution - outside of Switzerland. In: Manuel Eisner, Beat Fux (Ed.): Political Language in Switzerland. Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich / Cologne 1992, pp. 87-107.
  • Maja Wicki: Ethics with Karl Jaspers and Hannah Arendt . In: Annemarie Pieper (Ed.): History of the newer ethics. 2 volumes. A. Francke Verlag, Stuttgart 1992.
  • Maja Wicki: Contradiction in practice: Rosa Luxemburg , Simone Weil , Hannah Arendt. In: Willi Goetschel (Ed.): Perspektiven der Dialogik. Contributions from the Zurich Colloquium on the 80th birthday of Hermann Levin Goldschmidt. Passagen Verlag, Vienna 1994.


Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maja Wicki-Vogt on the Edition 8 website, accessed on October 28, 2016.
  2. ↑ Maja Wicki: «Heart Virus» - Everything about her mother. In: Die Wochenzeitung , July 7, 2016, accessed on October 28, 2016.
  3. ↑ Thomas Barfuss, Stefan Howald Maja Wicki - The power of thinking. WOZ No. 15/2010 of April 15, 2010, accessed on October 28, 2016.
  4. ↑ Document de travail de l'IIEDH , No 16a.
  5. ↑ From the exposé of Balthasar Wickis on the occasion of the farewell party for Dr. phil. Maja Wicki-Vogt from July 8, 2016, Offener St. Jakob, Zurich
  6. ^ Book on the publisher's website, accessed on October 28, 2016.
  7. ↑ Brigit Keller: The complex connection between life and work. In: New ways. Petra Mühlhäuser: The "hidden story". In: St. Galler Tagblatt from January 26, 2010.
  8. ↑ Brigitta Klaas Meilier: Review in Theory Critique , November 3, 2014, accessed on October 28, 2016.
  9. ↑ Monika Fischer: Living with an inherited life. Review in: Zenit ( Pro Senectute magazine , Canton Lucerne) 1/14, p. 8 ff.
  10. ↑ Valeria Heintges: Unasked, we are heirs and heirs. In: Tagblatt of April 29, 2015, accessed on October 28, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Wicki-Vogt, Maja
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wicki, Maja
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH 4th January 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Lucerne
DATE OF DEATH June 23, 2016
Place of death Zurich