Clara Ragaz

Clara Ragaz (30 March 1874 – 7 October 1957) was one of the most noted Swiss feminist pacifists of the first half of the twentieth century. She was a founder of the Swiss Federation of Abstinent Women, an organization which supported the temperance movement in Switzerland. She served as the co-International chair of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) from 1929 to 1946.

Early life
Clara Nadig was born on 30 March 1874 in Chur, in the Grisons canton of Switzerland to Christina (née Plattner) and Johann Josua Nadig. She studied to be a teacher, completing her training in 1892 at the normal school in Aarau.

Career
Nadig first taught in England and France before returning to Switzerland and marrying the social activist Leonhard Ragaz in 1901. She took a teaching position in the Engadin valley, while her husband served as the chief Protestant cleric of Chur between 1902 and 1906. In 1902, she was one of the founders of the Swiss Federation of Abstinent Women (), an arm of the international temperance movement in Switzerland. In 1907, she joined the feminist organization Union for the Advancement of Women (), when the couple were in Bern and her husband served as a pastor for the Basel Minster. In 1908, they moved to Zürich, where her husband was engaged as a professor of theology at the University of Zurich. Ragaz continued teaching in Zürich and joined the buyer's collective known as the Social Buyer's League () and remained a part of the group until 1915.

In 1909, 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 also discussed the problems of working women, unsanitary conditions and child labor practices. In 1913, she joined the Socialist Party of Switzerland and along with her husband practiced religious socialism, believing that Christian faith required a social conscience that focused on helping working class people. In 1915, Ragaz co-founded the Swiss section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and would serve as its president until 1946. That same year, she published Women in Peace from a talk she had given. In 1919 began working with the international WILPF in Geneva and attended the WILPF Congress held in Zürich. In 1921, she published a translation of Tagore as Educator by Emma Pieczynska-Reichenbach. That same year, her husband quit his university job and the couple moved to the Aussersihl district to live among the workers there. They were committed to the social welfare of the working class and Ragaz began giving lectures at the Social School for Women ().

Ragaz translated the work Religious Foundations of the Social Gospel by Walter Rauschenbusch, one of his most influential books, into German in 1922. In 1929, Ragaz succeeded Jane Addams as one of the co-International Chairs of the WILPF. Because of the volume of work to be done, it was decided that the responsibilities Addams had carried were to be shared with Gertrud Baer and Emily Greene Balch. That same year, she was appointed as the vice president of the boarding school at the Social School for Women and served in that capacity until 1946. Ragaz, Baer, and Balch, who was later replaced by Kathleen Innes steered the WILPF during the difficult war years, when defending borders and simultaneously advocating an anti-war stance often were at odds. Both she and her husband resigned from the socialist party in 1935 over the stance of national defense. She remained active in the pacifist movement until the war ended.

Death and legacy
Ragaz died on 7 October 1957 in Zurich. In 2015, a lecture series honoring her pacifist work was presented by the Association of Eastern Swiss Women in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

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Category:1874 births
Category:1957 deaths
Category:People from Chur
Category:Swiss women's rights activists
Category:Pacifist feminists
Category:Swiss pacifists
Category:Women's International League for Peace and Freedom people
Category:Socialist feminists