When women acquired the right to vote in Sweden in 1919, a group of intellectuals, including Adanin Nilsson (doctor), Onorin Hermelin (educator and teacher), and Erin Wegner (author) organized a course for women in political participation at a mansion outside Stockholm. This course has evolved into the Fogelstad Citizen School for Women.
From 1925 to 1954, the mission was to educate students as autonomous members of society, and Foglstad played a central role in the Swedish women’s movement. in Ord & Bildhistorian Lena Eskillson outlined how Vogelstad changed the lives of a generation of Swedish women. He learned “the labour of one’s hands, heart, heart, between the heart, between the domestic and society, between individuals and groups.”
To ensure education freedom, Fogelstad’s board of directors never asked to seek public funds and instead raised personal donations to offer scholarships to students in need. The classes ranged from political theory, philosophy, psychology, history to literature, rhetoric, sports and music. The political process of role-playing at different levels of society also played a central educational role.
Just as important as class was social activities, such as meals, coffee breaks, parties, excursions, and birthday celebrations. In the evening, students were chosen to sit in designated chairs and tell their peers about themselves, their work, or their hometown.
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Eskillson describes the school’s choir to the individual voices that came together in friendship, a symbol of Vogelstad’s fundamental values. The school gave women a place to exchange ideas, develop friendships and build confidence. As one student said, “The Star of Hope is brought so close to Earth that even the most stubborn pessimists can reach it.”
Working Class Feminism: More Martinson
Ebba Witt-Brattström explores the profound influence of the Fogelstad School on Moa Martinson (1890–1964), one of the greatest Swedish writers of the 20th century. Born in 1890 to an unmarried tailor, Martinson wrote groundbreaking prose from the perspective of a feminist working class. Her eyesight was already well known in the left-wing press when she first arrived at Fogelstad. After committing suicide in a drowsing accident and losing her husband to two of her youngest sons, the school board became a support network with her close friends.
Fogelstad co-founder Elin Wägner compiled the paper Tidevarvetrealising that Martinson’s radical voice was exactly what the school needed. For the first time, the bourgeois student was able to read about the “Proletariat of the Proletariat.” Paria, the wife of the unemployed. Martinson used money made from articles to buy his cottage to speak with humor about working class poverty and brutal misogyny (the board also funded the typewriting course).
Along with other scholarship students, Martinson described rewarding interactions across the social class. “There was a huge gap in my education, literature and academics. But there was a gap in the minds of educated women. And so was it equal when it comes to society and anonymous people.” Students said, “buttoned, shy woman” quickly became “comrades” to Martinson. Many of the women in Fogelstad later appeared in her most beloved novels.
Artistic Modernism: Siri Derkert
AnnikaÖhrner portrays the artist Siri Derkert (1888–1973), perhaps the most prominent figure coming out of Fogelstad’s school. A typical Swedish modernist, Delcart created some of Stockholm’s most famous works of public art and was the star of the Nordic Pavilion at the 1962 Venice Biennale. Derkert first came to Fogelstad in 1943 and returned every year until it closed in 1954, lectured on art history and teaching drawing.
The most important paintings of her career explore and explore the practicable aspects of what she saw in Fogelstad, the moment when a woman fills a room. Derkert’s notes from the era include “Songs and Laughter – Temper and Silence – Choir: Songs by Jonas Love Almqvist – the softest song. The auditorium became an instrument with sun spots, yellow squares engraved on the floor. Patterns on the ceiling, the sun spots gleaming on the nose – hands, body.
Fogelstad’s oil paintings, drawings and collages laid the foundation for a 145-meter-long mural at the Ostermarstrug Metro station in Stockholm. Darkert’s black abstract drawings on raw concrete were the exact opposite of the aesthetics of the time. Women’s Liberation and Peace are the comprehensive themes of complex compositions that combine traces of music, women’s songs, dances and lyrics. International. Combining daily life, childhood, love, parents and peace messages, Fogelstad is at the heart of his work.
Sámi Rights: Karin Stenberg
Another contemporary of Fogelstad was Sámi’s author and teacher Karin Stenberg (1884–1969). This was a central politician in Sweden in the early 20th century and led the struggle for Sami’s rights. In “Letter” to Stenberg, Susanne Ewerlöf reflects on communication with our predecessors and speculates the role of art in reclaiming what was lost through colonization and elimination.
“Hello, Karin!” she wrote: The situation is one of violent amnesiasms, and it is through links to these broken pasts that my despair and engagement were born.
Ewerlöf shares Stenberg’s contributions to life and movement. Most importantly, her political pamphlet from 1920, entitled “This is our wish: An appeal from the Sámi people to the Sweden state.” The pamphlet criticized Sami’s colonial narrative as “ethnographic objects” and how it enabled state violence through policies of coercive assimilation and experimental experimentation in racial biology. “We, Sami, want to live as Sami in our Father’s land,” reads the pamphlet. “We want to live our natural life in peace, in comfort and upwards, just as our father wanted.”
Ewerlöf tells Stenberg how her legacy has become cherished and how the pamphlet was republished 100 years after the original publication. Ewerlöf saddens Stenberg’s wishes have not been accepted and instead look back at a century of racist oppression and destruction in Sámi Lands. But Ewerlöf finds hope in the role of art.
Review by HelgaEdström
Source: Eurozine – www.eurozine.com
