1. Clara Ragaz was one of the most noted Swiss feminist pacifists of the first half of the twentieth century.
15 Facts About Clara Ragaz
1. 2.
Clara Ragaz was a founder of the Swiss Federation of Abstinent Women, an organization that supported the temperance movement in Switzerland.
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Clara Ragaz served as the co-International chair of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom from 1929 to 1946.
4.
Clara Ragaz studied to be a teacher, completing her training in 1892 at the normal school in Aarau.
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Clara Ragaz taught in a Sunday school and became involved in missionary work, which is how in 1893 she met the social activist Leonhard Ragaz, whom she married in 1901.
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Clara Ragaz took a teaching position in the Engadin valley, while her husband served as the chief Protestant cleric of Chur between 1902 and 1906.
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In 1908, they moved to Zurich, where Clara Ragaz continued teaching and her husband was engaged as a professor of theology at the University of Zurich.
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In Zurich Clara Ragaz joined the buyers' collective known as the Social Buyers' League, which aimed at improving the situation of workers through conscious buying methods of consumers, and remained a part of the group until 1915.
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In 1909, Clara Ragaz served as the director of the Swiss Home Works Exhibition, which featured spinning, straw works, cobbling and other handcrafted items created by women, but discussed the problems of working women, unsanitary conditions and child labor practices.
10.
In 1915, Clara Ragaz co-founded the Committee for a Lasting Peace and would serve as its president until 1946.
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Clara Ragaz was the opening speaker for the Congress of Zurich, alongside renowned feminist Jane Addams.
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Clara Ragaz continued to work with the international WILPF in Geneva.
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Clara Ragaz translated the work Religious Foundations of the Social Gospel by Walter Rauschenbusch, one of his most influential books, into German in 1922.
14.
In 1929, Clara Ragaz succeeded Jane Addams as one of the co-International Chairs of the WILPF.
15.
Clara Ragaz remained active in the pacifist movement until the war ended.