Association of Female Authors and Artists in Vienna

On the evening of April 1, 1885, a group of women who were active in artistic fields founded in Vienna the Verein der Schriftstellerinnen und Künstlerinnen in Wien (the Association of Female Authors and Artists in Vienna (VSKW). Their goal was to establish a social network for themselves that, aside from providing financial security in the event of need, illness or old age, could also offer a forum for promotion and support. The first section of this article explores the Associations cultural, economic and political relationships within the networks of the early, emancipation and social movements of the late 19th century. Based upon reports pertaining to the Association and on documents about or authored by its members from their personal archives (e.g. diaries and unpublished letters), the article focuses on the efforts of the members to achieve unity despite their extremely diverse social and artistic backgrounds, on their searches for internal and external orientation, on their successes, but also on their hindrances and failures. The articles chronological structure spanning 35 years of the Associations existence also establishes links: from its origins and the members primary goal of establishing the Associations pension fund and its rules and regulations, to the various conditions and possibilities of representing and integrating the VSKW and its members within the contemporary cultural, social and political groups and movements, to the gradual attrition process, which was an inevitable part of the events of World War I. The collapse of the old order after World War I simultaneously marked the end of the Associations history, which was homogenous, in terms of both its personnel and its programmes. A second section examines the lives of individual social activists who were members of the Association, exploring their connections with the VSKW and their personal surroundings in the context of a lifetime. The authors and artists who are the focus of this biographical section were chosen according to their accomplishments and their significance for the Association for example, women who helped found the Association or who served as its president. But they were also chosen for their (lack of) prominence every woman profiled in this section simultaneously constitutes a separate field of research, in which the (often missing) biographical data of the respective women was not only researched again or revised, but also new biographical details are presented about correlations that were previously supposed or were considered definite. A lexical directory of the 151 full members who joined the Association during the period researched by the author supplements the monographs; it features their personal information, as well as details the periods in which they were VSKW members and their functions.