Rosika Schwimmer (; 11 September 1877 – 3 August 1948) was a Hungarian-born pacifist, feminist, world federalist and women's suffragist. A co-founder of the Campaign for World Government with Lola Maverick Lloyd, her radical vision of world peace led to the creation of several world federalist movements and organizations. Sixty years after she first envisaged it, the movement she helped to create indeed took a leading role in the creation of the International Criminal Court, the first permanent international tribunal tasked with charging individuals with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Schwimmer was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1877, she graduated from public school in 1891. An accomplished linguist, she spoke or read eight languages. In her early career, she had difficulty finding a job that paid a living wage and was sensitized by that experience to women's employment issues. Gathering data to provide statistics on working women, Schwimmer came into contact with members of the international women's suffrage movement and by 1904 became involved in the struggle. She co-founded the first national women's labor umbrella organization in Hungary and the Hungarian Feminist Association. She also assisted in organizing the Seventh Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, hosted in Budapest in 1913.
The following year, Schwimmer was hired as a press secretary of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in London. When World War I broke out, she was branded an enemy alien and left Europe for the United States, where she spoke on suffrage and pacifism. She was one of the founders of the Woman's Peace Party and the organization which would become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
In 1915, after attending the International Congress of Women in The Hague, she worked with other feminists to persuade foreign ministers in Europe to support the creation of a body to peacefully mediate world affairs and was instrumental in convincing Henry Ford to charter the Peace Ship. From 1916 to 1918, Schwimmer lived in Europe working on various plans to end the war. In 1918, with the establishment of the First Hungarian Republic, she was appointed the first woman diplomat, as Hungarian Minister Plenipotentiary to Switzerland.Hungary, in Jus suffragii, 1918, p. 33: "It is reported that Frau Rosika Scwimmer has been appointed Hungarian Minister to Switzerland". When the Republic was toppled by a coup d'état, she fled to the United States, renouncing her Hungarian citizenship.
Applying for naturalization, Schwimmer was rejected on the basis of her pacifism. The case was overturned on appeal in 1928, and the following year the appeal was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the decision United States v. Schwimmer. For the remainder of her life, she remained stateless. Unable to work because of ill-health and a smear campaign, she was supported by loyal friends.
In 1935, Schwimmer and Mary Ritter Beard established the World Center for Women's Archives to create an educational reference for women's history and document the individual and organizational achievements of influential women. She was one of the first world federalists, proposing a world government in 1937. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1948, she died before the committee decided not to award it that year. In 1952, naturalization laws in the United States were changed to allow for conscientious objection.
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 () 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, , 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.
In 1911, she performed at the Stockholm Opera and other important venues in Stockholm. The same year, she married a journalist, Pál Bédy and took his name (Bédy-Schwimmer) but he either died in 1912, or they divorced in 1913. After their breakup she removed his surname and returned to using Schwimmer, keeping the fact that she had ever been married a life-long secret.
In 1913, she helped the Feminist Association organize the Seventh Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance which ran from 15 to 21 June in Budapest. Garnering support from both the national and city government, the convention was the first such large-scale event to be held in Austria-Hungary, attracting around 3,000 international delegates. Schwimmer arranged for university students to provide translation services and presented an update on the progress of suffrage in Hungary. Trips were also organized to Debrecen, Nagyvárad (today Oradea) and Szeged, as well as smaller villages, so that the feminists could see more of the country. The behavior of the feminists at the conference significantly changed the stereotypes that had previously been ascribed to women's rights advocates. After the close of the conference, Schwimmer changed the name of the Feminist Association's journal to A Nő (The Woman). In August 1913, she attended the Universal Peace Congress in The Hague, which deepened her interest in pacifism.
By this time, Schwimmer had traveled widely throughout Europe on lecture tours. An extrovert and experienced journalist, she knew how to appeal to her audience. Known for her comedic wit and clever satire, she was able to convince men to support women's rights and caused women to laugh at men using pointed attacks laced with humor. Thanks to her strong, energetic personality, which some described as stubborn, she often went beyond the limitations women were expected to observe. She was an "uncompromising pacifist", a humanist, and an atheist. With her Jewish heritage and foreign status, she often experienced anti-Semitic and xenophobic attacks. She smoked and drank wine, which was unusual at the time, and wore loose-fitting, corsetless dresses with her trademark pince-nez glasses. Of stocky build, she typically wore her black, frizzy hair in a bun at the nape of her neck. She described herself as a "very, very radical feminist" and was known to elicit either love or hate from others—"frequently people did both at different times".
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.