Rosika Schwimmer

Early years

Rózsa Schwimmer was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, on 11 September 1877 to Bertha (née Katscher) and Max Bernat Schwimmer. The eldest of three children, she was raised in an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Temesvár, Transylvania (today Timișoara, Romania). Her father was an agricultural merchant, involved in trading grain, horses and other products, who also ran an experimental farm. Her maternal uncle, Leopold Katscher, was a noted writer and peace activist, and also friend of Bertha von Suttner, who was a strong influence on Schwimmer. Translating Suttner's anti-war texts became her first political influence. She attended primary school briefly in Budapest and after the family moved to Transylvania was educated in a convent school. Graduating from the public school in 1891, she studied music and languages at the music school in Szabadka (today Subotica). Though she only attended eight grades, she spoke English, French, German, and Hungarian, and was able to read Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, and Swedish. In 1893 and 1894, she took evening classes at a business school until her father's bankruptcy forced the family to return to Budapest.

Career

Early career and politicization

Schwimmer first worked as a governess, and then had several short-term jobs in Temesvár and Szabadka. In 1895, she found work as a bookkeeper and correspondent clerk. She began working for the Nőtisztviselők Országos Egyesülete (National Association of Women Office Workers) in 1897 and by 1901 had become president of the organization. Having experienced the difficulty of finding a job which paid a living wage, in an era when women were discouraged from seeking economic independence, Schwimmer chose to make a real difference for working women. Finding no acceptance or interest in addressing the issues women laborers encountered from national trade unions, she began collecting data to compile statistics. She wrote to the Department of Commerce to acquire data on women's employment and sought archived copies of Nemzeti Nőnevelés (National Women's Education), the most important journal of the era which analyzed the condition of women in education and labor. To compare the situation in Hungary with that of working women elsewhere, Schwimmer began writing to international feminist organizations to collect statistics on women's working conditions in other countries.

Through her correspondence to collect data, Schwimmer came in contact with influential figures of the international women's movement, like Aletta Jacobs, Marie Lang and Adelheid Popp, who encouraged her to found a women's organization that would unite various associations dealing with varied women's issues. When she lost her job at the National Association of Women Office Workers, Schwimmer began working as a journalist in late 1901. She wrote for Export Review and then was employed at Lloyd's News Agency, before becoming a regular contributor to international feminist magazines. She also worked as a translator, creating Hungarian versions of such works as Women and Economics by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In 1903, she co-founded with Mariska Gárdos, the Magyarországi Munkásnő Egyesület (Hungarian Women Workers Association), the first national women's labor umbrella organization. The following year, as part of the press, she attended the inaugural conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. She was asked to speak at the conference on labor conditions of industrial workers in Hungary. While there, she met many of the leading feminists of the international movement. Attracted to her charismatic personality, American suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt recruited Schwimmer to help in the efforts for women's suffrage. The two developed a deep friendship with Catt mentoring her younger companion.

Upon her return home, Schwimmer co-founded the Hungarian Feminist Association (Hungarian: Feministák Egyesülete (FE)) with Vilma Glücklich. They were joined by other prominent feminists like Eugénia Miskolczy Meller. The radical organization set out to work for gender equality in all aspects of women's lives, including education, employment, access to birth control, reform of laws governing married women's socioeconomic status, enfranchisement, and women's inheritance rights, as well as curtailing child labor. In 1907, to counteract the unfavorable press they received from the media at large, the Feminist Association founded the journal A Nő és a Társadalom (Women and Society), with Schwimmer as editor-in-chief. It published articles on careers, child care, domestic work, labor, legal issues and sexual abuse. She gained national prominence that year for a dispute with law professor and MP, Károly Kmety, who introduced a measure to implement stricter limits for women's admission to higher education. Kmety dubbed educated women as "female monsters", who aimed to destroy families. Schwimmer's rebuttal to his claims disclosed the fact that Kmety's wife had graduated from a normal school. Though she had won the argument, criticism of the Feminist Association continued.

Internationalism

Schwimmer's international contacts resulted in an invitation for her to become the press secretary of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, leading her to move to London for the job. She also worked as a correspondent of various European newspapers. When World War I broke out, she could not return home and began to agitate for the end of hostilities. She resigned from her post with the Suffrage Alliance, fearing her nationality would cause problems for the women's movement and her own ability to continue pressing for peace. Branded as an enemy alien in 1914, she left Britain to tour the United States and press for an end to the war. Schwimmer spoke in 22 different states, urging women to press for diplomatic mediation of the European conflict. She met with President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, but was unsuccessful in her attempts to organize a neutral conference to bring both sides of the conflict together.

Schwimmer took part in the formation of the Woman's Peace Party in 1915, becoming a secretary of the organization. Because of the war, the biennial conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was postponed. Chrystal Macmillan proposed that suffragists should hold a conference to discuss international peace principles and Aletta Jacobs suggested that the Netherlands, as a neutral nation, could host the event. Schwimmer was asked to secure Catt as the chair of the conference but, unable to convince her, she approached social reformer, Jane Addams, who agreed to serve as conference chair. At the International Congress of Women, held in The Hague from 28 April, Schwimmer and Julia Grace Wales, a Canadian academic, proposed a "continuous conference of neutrals" between governments be formed to mediate conflicts and restore peace. During the conference the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace was established, which would become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Schwimmer was selected as one of its board members.

After the conference closed on 3 May 1915, Schwimmer, Addams and Jacobs, along with Macmillan, Emily Greene Balch, Mien van Wulfften Palthe and others, formed two delegations of women who met with European heads of state over the next several months. The women secured agreement from reluctant foreign ministers, who overall felt that a mediating body would be ineffective. In spite of their hesitancy, the ministers agreed to participate, or at least not impede, the creation of a neutral assembly, if other nations agreed and if U.S. President Woodrow Wilson would initiate its establishment. In the midst of the war, Wilson refused. By the time Schwimmer returned from Europe in the fall, sentiment had changed in the United States and many feminists believed that pacifism would hurt the cause for suffrage. Disagreeing with them, Schwimmer did not think the struggle for women's rights should focus solely on attaining suffrage. She strongly believed broader changes were needed and women's voices were crucial for ending violence against humanity. She also felt that neither Catt nor Addams worked hard enough to secure the broad support needed for peace work from reform-minded women. Determined to continue pressing for a mediation conference, she decided that if politicians and feminists would not act, it would fall on individuals to work to end the war.

Statelessness

Schwimmer renounced her Hungarian citizenship and arrived in the United States on 26 August 1921, first settling in Winnetka, Illinois, near Chicago with Lloyd. She had every intention of resuming her journalistic and lecturing career, but soon found she was blacklisted. In 1919, New York State had launched the Lusk Investigation to examine the activities of radical people and organizations liable to threaten the nation's security. They included educators, journalists, reform organizations and religious institutions. Feminists and pacifists were branded as subversives; in particular, the women involved in the creation of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom were accused of a lack of loyalty because of their international focus and for leaning toward communism. As Schwimmer was one of the founders, she was listed as a dangerous element in the Lusk Report. Military officials and right-wing women's organizations, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, joined in the Red Scare tactics to focus suspicion on the activities of pacifists and suffragists.

Catt and Addams both drew criticism from anti-radical groups and because of her link to them, Schwimmer, and those who associated with her, became targets for those seeking to attack leaders in the feminist movement. Schwimmer was accused of having prevented the United States from preparing sooner for the war, was called a spy, and her peace initiatives were twisted from being humanitarian missions into strategic plots to aid the Germans and their allies. Other distortions accused her of having been a diplomat in Kun's brief communist regime and a member of an international Jewish conspiracy. To prevent the attacks leveled at Schwimmer from harming the campaign for suffrage, Catt distanced herself, causing her pain and a feeling of abandonment. The Jewish community which had welcomed her before the war largely blamed Schwimmer for Ford's anti-Semitic campaign published between 1920 and 1922 in The Dearborn Independent, though Ford "never indicated that Schwimmer played any such role".

In 1924, Schwimmer applied for naturalization as a U.S. citizen. When she completed the questionnaire, she left both the question about whether she had registered for the draft and whether she would take up arms in defense of the country blank, assuming they did not apply to women. After review, her file was returned to the Chicago office with a directive for Schwimmer to answer if she would bear arms. Against the advice of Fred Schlotfeldt, the District Director of Naturalization, Schwimmer, believing that no woman would be compelled to fight in the United States and that honesty was required in completing the form, answered that she would not personally take up arms. Two years later, her second interview was called and she explained in detail that defending the country did not necessarily require her physical action, but instead could be a verbal or written defense of principles. She was also questioned about her atheism, her views of nationalism, and her commitment to pacifism. Schwimmer responded that faith was a personal choice and in line with the idea of separation of church and state. She also stated that nationalism was a choice, that she had given up her Hungarian citizenship to pursue U.S. naturalization, and she reiterated that she would not compromise her pacifism.

Later life

Having been denied citizenship, Schwimmer became stateless and remained so throughout the remainder of her life. She proposed that the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom host a conference to address the issue of a lack of nationality. The event was held in Geneva in 1930 and she drafted a plan for world citizens to be internationally recognized. Because of poor health, which included complications from diabetes, and an inability to work, she was supported by loyal friends. In the early 1930s, she moved to New York City, where she lived with her sister, Franciska, a pianist, and her secretary, Edith Wynner. In 1935, she formed the World Center for Women's Archives with Mary Ritter Beard. The purpose of the archive was to document the individual and organizational achievements of influential women as an educational reference for women to study the history other women. Schwimmer received an honorary World Peace Prize in 1937, organized by Catt, Albert Einstein, Sylvia Pankhurst, Romain Rolland, Margaret Sanger, and others, which provided her with a prize of $7,000.

Also in 1937, Schwimmer formed the Campaign for World Government with Lloyd, the first World Federalist organization of the 20th century. The purpose of the organization was to establish world governance with a constitution, elected representation, a supranational legal system to resolve conflicts between nations, and an International Criminal Court to address human rights issues. Schwimmer was one of the pioneers who backed creation of the International Court of Justice as a means to provide equal participation and protection for all people regardless of ethnicity, race, or gender. Between 1938 and 1945, Schwimmer campaigned to help European colleagues, such as Helene Stöcker, escape from Nazi Germany. In 1946, United States v. Schwimmer was overturned in Girouard v. United States, which determined that the Supreme Court had used an incorrect rule of law in Schwimmer, as well as in the cases United States v. Macintosh, 283 U.S. 605 (1931) and United States v. Bland, 283 U.S. 636 (1931). In 1948 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but had little chance of obtaining it, in spite of support from backers in Britain, France, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, and the United States. No prize was given that year, the Nobel Committee concluding that "no one living deserved it", an allusion widely considered to be referring to the death of the Mahatma Gandhi.

Death and legacy

Rosika Schwimmer died of pneumonia on 3 August 1948 in New York City. She was buried the following day at Ferncliff Cemetery. She is remembered as one of the primary spokespersons for Hungarian women in the era before World War I and as the co-founder of the Hungarian suffrage movement. Schwimmer's unpopularity during her lifetime discouraged scholarship. Historians in the 21st century have begun to analyze her life and reassess her import. After the World Centre for Women's Archives closed in 1940, Schwimmer's papers have been held in various archives including the Benson Ford Research Center in Dearborn, Michigan, Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, the Peace Collection at Swarthmore College, and in the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection of the New York Public Library.

Schwimmer's story illustrates the profound changes that occurred in the United States in the interwar period. Although she was never granted American citizenship, her life paralleled shifts in American society and values. Upon her arrival in the United States there was optimism that World War I could end quickly. When she returned in 1921, her pacifism was seen as a sign of disloyalty. A rising conservatism affected feminist groups and transformed them.

Although the Peace Ship mission was largely seen as a failure, it changed the war press coverage in Europe, which to that point had been highly censored. The conference that was established in Stockholm in February 1916 served as a clearinghouse for discussing the war and how to end it. It also helped neutral nations avoid bowing to the pressure to enter the war. Her citizenship case became the basis for a lengthy campaign to change the naturalization laws to recognize that philosophical or religious belief were inadequate reasons for denial of citizenship. In 1952, the law was finally changed to allow conscientious objectors to take an oath that they agree to serve in a non-combatant capacity.