Elena

HELMINA VON CHÉZY (née von Klencke, von Hastfer during her first marriage, 1783-1856) was a German author, journalist, translator, playwright, and publisher of the journal Französische Miscellen (French Miscellanea, 1803-07). In 1800, she moved to Paris following the invitation of Madame de Genlis and worked there as a correspondent for several German journals, including Eunomia, Europa, and Journal des Luxus und der Moden. As a military hospital nurse, she witnessed the German campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars and openly criticized the miserable conditions; she was subsequently charged with libel but acquitted. DID YOU KNOW that her grandmother was Anna Louisa Karsch (1722-91), a German poet who, together with Sophie von La Roche, is considered to be among the first financially independent authors in Germany? WITHOUT HER, the cross-cultural exchanges between France and Germany would lack an important mediator. She promoted the writings of French women by discussing and translating them. WHAT IF Chézy’s writings were read not only as a travel guide but as architectural evidence? Her descriptions document the domestication of the Alps through road construction and territorial control, while also showing the aesthetic elevation of architecture through its Alpine context. SPATIAL AGENCY critic, historian, surveyor SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN H. v. Chézy, ‘Französische Möbel- und Zimmereinrichtungen’, Französische Miscellen, 4.3 (1803), pp. 128–39 H. v. Chézy, Leben und Kunst in Paris seit Napoleon dem Ersten, 2 vols (Weimar: Verlag des Landes-Industrie-Comptoirs, 1805-06) Image: Louis Wallee, Mondsee Abbey, ca. 1838 (Wikimedia Commons) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger, @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

HELMINA VON CHÉZY (née von Klencke, von Hastfer during her first marriage, 1783-1856) was a German author, journalist, translator, playwright, and publisher of the journal Französische Miscellen (French Miscellanea, 1803-1807). In 1800, she moved to Paris following the invitation of Madame de Genlis and worked there as a correspondent for several German journals, including Eunomia, Europa, and Journal des Luxus und der Moden. As a military hospital nurse, she witnessed the German campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars and openly criticized the miserable conditions; she was subsequently charged with libel but acquitted. DID YOU KNOW that her grandmother was Anna Louisa Karsch (1722-91) a German poet who, together with Sophie von La Roche, is considered to be among the first financially independent authors in Germany? WITHOUT HER, the cross-cultural exchanges between France and Germany would lack an important mediator. She promoted the writings of French women by discussing and translating them. WHAT IF Chézy’s writing had been read as spatial analysis? Smell, for example, might have entered urban discourse earlier as evidence of infrastructure, density, and social order. She might also have contributed to transnational comparisons of urban waste disposal systems. SPATIAL AGENCY critic, historian, surveyor SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN H. v. Chézy, ‘Französische Möbel- und Zimmereinrichtungen’, Französische Miscellen, 4.3 (1803), pp. 128–39 H. v. Chézy, Leben und Kunst in Paris seit Napoleon dem Ersten, 2 vols (Weimar: Verlag des Landes-Industrie-Comptoirs, 1805-06) Image: Thomas Girtin, View of the Gate of St. Denis taken from the Suburbs, Paris, 1802 (Wikimedia Commons) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger, @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

FRIEDERIKE BRUN (née Münter, 1765-1835) was a German author and salonnière. Born in Thuringia, she grew up in Copenhagen after her father became pastor of the German Church there. She established influential salons both in Copenhagen and at her country estate Sophienholm, which became cultural centers where writers, thinkers, diplomats, and aristocrats met. Between 1789 and 1810 she travelled extensively across Europe, particularly in Switzerland and Italy, where she lived for several years. She published her poetry in Musen-Almanach and in the Horen. DID YOU KNOW that she was amongst the most widely read travel writers in her time? WITHOUT HER, we would lack a detailed account of how geopolitical conflict reshaped everyday movement, labour, and material conditions in European cities. WHAT IF Brun’s repeated visits to the same cities were read comparatively as spatial testimony? Her writing traces how political decisions affected the material and social fabric of cities. SPATIAL AGENCY historian, critic SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN F. Brun, Tagebuch einer Reise durch die östliche, südliche und italienische Schweiz (Kopenhagen: Friedrich Brummer, 1800) F. Brun, Episoden aus Reisen durch das südliche Deutschland, die westliche Schweiz, Genf und Italien, 2 vols (Zürich: Orell, Füßli und Compagni, 1806) F. Brun, Sitten- und Landschaftsstudien von Neapel und seinen Umgebungen in Briefen und Zuschriften entworfen in den Jahren 1809-1810 nebst spätern Zusätzen (Leipzig: Hartleben’s Verlags-Expedition, 1818) Image: View of the entrance to the Port of Marseille, 1816 (Wikimedia Commons) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger, @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

CLEMENTINE VON BRAUNMÜHL (1833-1918) was a German art teacher and the first woman to hold the position of docent at the Kunstgewerbeschule (school of arts and crafts) in Munich, where she taught drawing classes. She was a strong advocate for women’s rights and education, co-founded the Munich Association of Female Artists and taught art history at its ‘ladies’ academy’, which had notable students including Käthe Kollwitz and Gabriele Münter. Von Braunmühl published articles on architecture and art in the journal Neue Bahnen, as well as in the Süddeutsche Bauzeitung. DID YOU KNOW that she founded an organisation to advocate for the establishment of a girls’ school for higher education? WITHOUT HER, women in Bavaria and beyond would have faced greater barriers to professional artistic education and recognition. WHAT IF von Braunmühl’s work in art and architectural history and theory had been equally recognised beyond gendered confines? Her legacy might have shaped mainstream art historical curricula and firmly established women’s voices in these disciplines much earlier. SPATIAL AGENCY theorist, historian, educator SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN C. von Braunmühl, ‘Die Kunstgewerbliche Praxis der Frau’, Neue Bahnen. Organ des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins, 14.3 (1893), pp. 108–09 C. von Braunmühl, ‘Populärwissenschaftliche Plauderei über Architektur und Kunst’, Süddeutsche Bauzeitung: Fachorgan für Baubehörden, Architekten, Ingenieure, Baubetriebsleiter, 3.2 (1893), pp. 10–12 Image: German living room, Münchner Kunstgewerbe-Ausstellung 1876 (Bayrische Staatsbibliothek) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger, @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

EMILIE VON BERLEPSCH (née von Oppel, later von Harms, 1755-1830) was a German author and salonnière, who was born in Gotha and partly raised in Weimar. Beginning in 1783, she published anonymous travel accounts in the Hannoverisches Magazin. After separating from her first husband, Berlepsch spent time in Switzerland before travelling to Scotland in 1799. Following her second marriage, she lived for several years near Lake Zurich before returning to northern Germany. Throughout her life, she established reading circles and salons and maintained a wide intellectual network across German and Swiss cultural circles. DID YOU KNOW that Berlepsch travelled to Scotland also to ascertain whether or not Ossian, the purported ancient Gaelic author, had really existed? WITHOUT HER, the Scottish Highlands might have remained a distant elsewhere for German audiences. Berlepsch’s writing contributed to establishing how unfamiliar environments could be ordered, valued, and discussed within existing aesthetic and cultural registers. WHAT IF Berlepsch’s travel writings were read as spatial translation and perceptual instruction? By framing unfamiliar environments with known aesthetic, climatic, and cultural reference points, her texts guide readers toward a particular mode of seeing landscape. SPATIAL AGENCY critic, theorist, historian SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN E. v. Berlepsch, ‘Ueber Holstein. Aus den Briefen einer Hannoverischen Dame’, Hannoverisches Magazin, 7 (1783), pp. 97–155 E. v. Berlepsch, Sammlung kleiner Schriften und Poesien (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1787) Image: J.M.W. Turner, Ben Lomond Mountains, Scotland, c. 1802 (Wikimedia Commons) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger, @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

MARY ANN BARKER (née Stewart, later Broome, 1831-1911) was a British writer and journalist whose publications describe settler colonial life within the British Empire. Born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, and educated in London, she grew up within the imperial elite as the daughter of the colony’s last island secretary and a former enslaver. After her second marriage to Frederick Napier Broome, a colonial administrator, they moved to New Zealand, where they ran a sheep farm for three years. She later accompanied her husband to Natal, Mauritius, Western Australia, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago. She worked as a correspondent for The Times and edited the family journal Evening Hours. DID YOU KNOW that, by the age of twenty-one, she had crossed the Atlantic five times? WITHOUT HER, we would lack an early account of how illness and bodily vulnerability expose the limits of domestic space designed for healthy bodies. WHAT IF Barker’s observations on illness had been read as a critique of domestic interiors? Architectural arrangements might have been examined earlier for how they accommodate – or fail to accommodate – bodies rendered vulnerable by illness. Her attention to comfort, health, and accessibility could be analysed alongside the racialised limits of whose bodies colonial domestic architecture was designed to protect and nurture. SPATIAL AGENCY surveyor, critic, historian SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN M.A. Barker, Station Life in New Zealand (London: Macmillan and C., 1870) M.A. Barker, Houses and Housekeeping (London: William Hunt and Company, 1876) Image: Larousse universel en 2 volumes (Paris, 1922) (Wikimedia Commons) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

THERESE VON ARTNER (1772-1829) was a Hungarian-German poet and playwright. She is primarily known for her poetry which she partly published under her pen name Theone. While growing up, she received drawing instruction and learned French and Italian. After the death of her father, a major-general in Austrian service, she lived with Countess Maria von Zay von Csömör and participated in her literary circle. Her poetry appeared in journals such as Aglaja, Minerva and Iris, edited by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. She was a close friend of the author Caroline Pichler, to whom she dedicated her travel account, and Marianne von Tiell, with whom she published a collection of poems. DID YOU KNOW that her epic Die Schlacht von Aspern, inspired by Austria’s 1809 victory over Napoleon at Aspern-Essling, was banned from publication, after Austria was later defeated and forced into alliance with France? WITHOUT HER, we would lack an architectural account of urban fabric that is attentive to daily practices, climate, and seasonal adaptation rather than to design and style only. WHAT IF her travel writing had been read as architectural or art historical evidence? Facades might have been described more consistently through use and everyday practice, rather than primarily through style. SPATIAL AGENCY critic, historian Image: John Ruskin, Casa Contarini Fasan, Venice, 1841 (Wikimedia Commons) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

BETTINA VON ARNIM (née Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano, 1785-1859) was a German writer, publisher, visual artist, composer, and social activist. She spent part of her childhood with her grandmother, Sophie von La Roche, in Offenbach and Frankfurt am Main. In Dies Buch gehört dem König, formally dedicated to the Prussian king, Arnim included a statistical report by a Swiss teacher on the living conditions of impoverished people. After the failed German revolutions of 1848, she called for the abolition of the death penalty and for political equality for women and Jewish citizens. DID YOU KNOW that Arnim prepared a publication intended to document the precarious living conditions of the poor? The project was prohibited under Prussian censorship, as Arnim was suspected to have played a role in the Silesian weavers’ uprising. WITHOUT HER engagement and activism to document and fight against poverty, we would lack the knowledge of the lived realities of lower classes. WHAT IF Arnim’s publications had been read as critiques of carceral architecture? Her analysis of isolation, silence, and enclosure exposes how spatial design functions as a tool of psychological punishment, producing despair rather than reform and challenging the era’s optimism about prison-building. SPATIAL AGENCY critic, surveyor SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN B. v. Arnim, Goethe’s Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde: Seinem Denkmal, 3 vols (Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmler, 1835) B. v. Arnim, Gespräche mit Dämonen. Des Königsbuches zweiter Band (Berlin: Arnim’s Verlag, 1852) Image: Das neue Männerzuchthaus Bruchsal, nach dem System der Einzelhaft in seinen baulichen Einrichtungen (Carlsruhe, 1854) (ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Rar 9896) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

Elena Rieger, Friederike Riedesel: Enactments of Home During the American Revolutionary War In: Women Writing Architecture 1700-1900: Expanding Histories Edited by Anne Hultzsch and Sol Pérez Martínez, gta Verlag ‘Friederike Riedesel (1746–1808) was a German baroness who accompanied her husband Friedrich Riedesel, during his service for the British Empire in the American Revolutionary War between 1776 and 1783. Her reports, in the form of letters and diary entries, were published in 1800 as 𝘋𝘪𝘦 𝘉𝘦𝘳𝘶𝘧𝘴-𝘙𝘦𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘯𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢: 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘰𝘯 𝘙𝘪𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘭 (The Professional Journey to America: Letters from 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘯 Riedesel), which appeared in several editions, including the release of an English translation in 1827. While her account is highly regarded among military historians, especially for its insights into the Battle of Saratoga, it has not yet been considered relevant to architectural history. …’ @mvdrlc @annehultzsch @sol_perezmartinez Book available soon in print and as open access PDF from @gtaverlag Image: Jane Braddick Peticolas, 𝘝𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘍𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘎𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘯, 1825 (via Wikimedia Commons) #EUfunded #ETHzurich #architecture #architecturalhistory #intersectionality #feministresearch #ercwowa #feminism #equality #decolonialism #WoWAOutput

Our new series focuses on the WoWA reading group, which we started in 2022. We will introduce you to the readings from each session, curated by one of our members. In the slides, you will find the readings along with selected quotes. The first set of readings were selected by Elena Rieger, a PhD student and member of the WoWA Project. Her PhD focuses on the writings of German women as critics, theorists, and recipients of the built environment from 1700 to 1900, with a focus on their embodied experiences. The readings she chose explore topics related to home, including belonging, displacement, and migration. What makes a home? We read a chapter by English and women's studies scholar Susan Stanford Friedman, in which she focuses on Virginia Woolf's domestic writings. Friedman argues that narratives revolving around home also inform us about the geopolitical dimension, and should not be disregarded if we want to develop a systematic methodology for understanding the geopolitical axis of difference. In the chapter ‘Home and Away: Narratives of Migration and Estrangement’, feminist writer Sara Ahmed poses the question of what makes a home, and what happens when home is not a place of comfort but of trauma. Ahmed reflects on home through the lenses of migration and displacement. Finally, we read filmmaker, feminist, and post-colonial theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha exploring identity and language in the context of migration. Sources: Friedman, Susan Stanford. 1998. ‘Geopolitical Literacy: Internationalizing Feminism at “Home”–the Case of Virginia Woolf’. In Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter, 107–31. Princeton: University Press. Ahmed, Sara. 2000. ‘Home and Away. Narratives of Migration and Enstrangement’. In Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality, 77–94. London: Routledge. Minh-ha, Trinh T. 2005. ‘Other than Myself/My Other Self’. In Travellers’ Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement, 8–26. Routledge. Text by Elena Rieger @mvdrlc Design by Miranda Reynolds #architecturalhistory #intersectionality #ERCWoWA #feministresearch #Readingwith #EUfunded #ETHZurich #feministreadings

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#ig_ometry#minimal_perfection#soulminimalist#minimalzine#minimalistgrammer#architecture_minimal#facadelovers#rsa_minimal#9minimal7#tv_simplicity#ihaveathingforshadows#minimalmood#minimalint#ic_minimal#geometric#abstract#ihaveathingforwalls#minimal_lookup#minimalint#architecture_minimal#lucecurated#unlimitedminimal#monochrome#ihaveathingforshadows#arkiminimal#minimal_hub#ig_minimalshots#minimalism42#great_captures_minimal#arkiromantix