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Rather hospital than monument

18. March 2019 | Martina Gosteli | Keine Kommentare |

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Anna Heer at the first Swiss Women’s Congress in Geneva in 1896

The second half of the 19th century was a period of important world and national exhibitions. To this day, the Eiffel Tower commemorates the great event of 1889. For the Women’s Congress in Geneva, which took place as part of the second Swiss national exhibition, however, those responsible were less inspired by Paris than by the World Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. There, for the first time, a women’s pavilion designed by a female architect could be seen.

On behalf of the Federal Council, Eduard Boos-Jegher from Zurich had visited the event. On his return, he and his wife Emma, a well-known women’s rights activist, decided to organize a Swiss women’s congress. It was to be a national exchange of ideas. Men and women had their say. The speakers demanded for example more positions for women in the administration and that women were no longer excluded from health insurance, which was common practice at the time.

Conference proceedings. Anna Heer’s speech is entitled «Ausbildung in Krankenpflege» (Main Library – Medicine Careum).

Ambitious goals

These demands seem modest in the 21st century. However, the introductory lecture by the Geneva director of education gives an idea of how bold they were for their time. He feared «exaggerations» such as the introduction of women’s suffrage. American demands to allow women in all professions also frightened him. This would only result in a general decline in salaries, he said. After all, he supported a better education for girls, «not to prepare women for the struggle for survival, but above all to preserve the character for which nature has predestined them.»


Following Florence Nightingale

Anna Heer, a thirty-three-year-old doctor from Zurich, presented her vision against this socio-political background. Following the English example, she wanted to promote nursing as a profession for women. She addressed the audience: «One would like to entrust one’s patients to the «trained hand» of the British «nurse», educated according to the ideas of Florence Nightingale. «The easiest and safest way for us to achieve our ideal of nurse training would be to seize the opportunity ourselves and found a nursing school with an associated hospital.» This hospital would be «founded and run by women» and would be «open to suffering women from all parts of the country.»


Living monument

Other congress participants in Geneva also presented their ideas. Particularly, some Bernese women wanted to make a statement in collecting money for a monument in honor of Gertrud Stauffacher, which would stand as a kind of counterpart to the Tell monument in Altdorf, unveiled the year before. Anna Heer picked up on the idea and gave it a new turn. «Today, it was suggested that we should erect a monument to honor a brave woman. May the spirit of the generous Mrs. Stauffacher turn her favor to our cause and transform a stone statue into a monument of active charity.» Rather a hospital than a work of art!

Collection box, Schweizerischer Gemeinnütziger Frauenverein (University of Zurich, Medical Collection)

Cooperation with the Swiss Charitable Women’s Association

Anna Heer was aware that her plans could only be implemented with broad support. She appealed directly to the middle-class women of the Swiss Charitable Women’s Association (Schweizerischer Gemeinnütziger Frauenverein), with whom she had been in close contact for the last two years. «It would be best if the task of promoting the cause of nursing education everywhere in the fatherland were taken over by the Swiss Charitable Women’s Association, which has already worked for it. The nurses need such support from women who have education and time.»

With a high level of personal commitment in fundraising and with charity events throughout Switzerland Anna Heer and the Swiss Charitable Women’s Association managed to raise the necessary financial resources. Only five years after Anna Heer’s appearance at the Women’s Congress in Geneva, the nursing school and the associated women’s hospital were opened in Zurich.

Text: Verena E. Müller

All quotes: Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Schweizerischen Kongresses für die Interessen der Frau abgehalten in Genf, im September 1896, Bern: Steiger 1897.

Abgelegt unter: ExhibitionsHistory of Medicine
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