Rosika Schwimmer

Rosika Schwimmer (Hungarian: Schwimmer Rózsa; 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. 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.