Mentona Moser
| Mentona Moser | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Luise Moser 19 October 1874 Badenweiler, German Empire |
| Died | 10 April 1971 (aged 96) Berlin, East Germany |
| Nationality | Swiss/German |
| Occupation | social worker, writer, communist functionary |
| Years active | 1899-1933 |
Mentona Moser (19 October 1874–10 April 1971) was a Swiss social worker, communist functionary, and writer. Though born of wealth, Moser became convinced based on her family history that the idle social life led by nobles was unhealthy. After studying in London and being involved in the settlement movement, Moser returned to Switzerland and founded an Association for the Blind, a service to help tubercular patients, a women's school to teach social work practices and helped the city of Zürich found workers' cooperatives. When her mother, cut off the stipends from her inheritance, Moser helped found the Swiss Communist Party and began working at Pro Juventute as a manager of maternal and infant care. She was a suffragist and established one of the first birth control clinics in Zürich.
After coming in to her inheritance in 1925, Moser worked to establish an international children's home in Russia. She moved to Berlin and participated in communist opposition to both the National Socialist Party and fascism. When Hitler rose to power, her remaining inheritance was confiscated and she fled back to Switzerland where she worked until the end of World War II as a writer. In 1950, she was invited to become an honorary citizen of the German Democratic Republic because of her dedication to communism and development of social programs. She was awarded both the Clara Zetkin Medal and the Patriotic Order of Merit by East Germany.
Luise Moser, as she was baptized, was born on 19 October 1874 in Badenweiler of the German Empire to the Baroness Fanny Louise von Sulzer-Wart of Winterthur, Switzerland and Swiss watchmaker and industrialist Heinrich Moser from Schaffhausen. Though named after Mentone a municipality along the Franco-Italian border, where her parents had happily spent some time, the Lutheran clergyman, who baptized the child refused to register her name as Mentona. Her maternal grandfather, Baron Heinrich von Sulzer-Wart had inherited his title from her great-grandfather, Johann Heinrich von Sulzer-Wart, who had been awarded a peerage for service to Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria. When her parents married in 1870, the union created scandal because Fanny was 23 and Heinrich 65, though both were from the upper echelons of society. Her father, had made a fortune creating an inexpensive watch of good quality for sale in the Russian market before opening a second successful factory in Switzerland. He had five children by his first wife, who had died twenty years before his remarriage. The elder children did not accept Fanny and when Heinrich died four days after Moser was born, Moser's mother was accused of killing him. Fanny became the wealthiest woman in Eastern Europe and though two autopsies showed no foul play in the death, suspicion continued. She had a mental breakdown, and was one of the five women included in Freud's Studies on Hysteria, which launched his career.
...
Wikipedia