Partner Flory Gate
Queer Places:
Kungsklippan 7, 112 25 Stockholm, Sweden
Lilla Björka, Berg, 360 30 Lammhult, Sweden
Lund Northern Cemetery
Lund, Lunds kommun, Skåne län, Sweden
Elin
Matilda Elisabet Wägner (16 May 1882 – 7 January 1949) was a Swedish
writer, journalist and feminist. From
1910 to 1922 she was married to the literary scholar John Landquist. She was a
Quaker during the last decades of her life, and was one of the portal figures
of the women's and peace movement. Wägner is usually one of the
so-called dozens of writers and was part of the Fogelstad Group. She has
become best known for her commitment to women's suffrage and for
co-founding Save the Children in 1919. Wägner became a member of the Society
De Nio in 1937 and of the Swedish Academy in 1944. She worked as a writer
at Tidevarvet (1923–1936).
Elin Wägner was born in Lund at Lund's private elementary school
(now Spyken) which was then located at Vårfrugatan, next to the city jail. She
was the daughter of the headmaster Sven Wägner and Anna Ekedahl, who was a
priest's daughter from Tolg in Småland and niece of the dean Esaias Ekedahl.
Furthermore, Elin Wägner was the sister of the journalist Harald Wägner and
aunt of Ria Wägner. Her mother died of cot fever when Elin Wägner was three
years old. Two years later, the family moved to Nyköping, where his father
received a rector's position at Nyköping's higher general grammar school. In
Nyköping he met Augusta Ulfsparre who became his wife in 1888. In 1897 his
father was appointed rector of Helsingborg Elementary Grammar School.
In Helsingborg Wägner started at appelgrenska elementary school for girls. At
school she participated in the school newspaper and seems to have written most
of the contributions herself. In 1899 she won an award for a short story
published in the youth magazine Linnéa. In the spring of 1900, she was
confirmed and employed at the rector's office as a writing assistant for her
father. Wägner continued to write small stories that were published under a
pseudonym in Helsingborgs-Posten. In the autumn of 1901, through her father,
she met the magazine's editor Gustaf E. Ericson, who allowed her to become a
reviewer in the magazine. In January 1903, she was hired by the magazine and
had to write both reportage, comics and short short stories, under signatures
such as Cafour, E. -er or Pytia. [1]
The 21-year-old Wägner was soon courted by a colleague at the newspaper,
Hjalmar Jönsson. It was a brief but heavenly affair between the two. Wägner
stayed in London in the spring and summer of 1904 to do freelance work, but
the assignments were few. In December 1904 she got through Gustaf Ericson work
at the magazine Vårt land in Stockholm, but she did not stay there for long.
Wägner got into a depression, apparently caused by the love affair with
Jönsson and an accident in which her half-sister Ruth drowned. She stayed with
her relatives in Småland. In her diary she dwelt on her experiences with the
unfaithful Jönsson, but also managed to write a few short stories that were
published in the weekly magazine Idun under the signature The Laughing Water.
The stories were collected in Wägner's debut book From the Earthmuseum. [2]
In early 1907, Wägner joined Idun's editorial office in Stockholm as an
editorial assistant for SEK 150 per month. In Idun she had to write articles
that could appeal to the magazine's female readers, but she also wrote for the
joke magazine Puck (the signature Manon) and from 1907 in Dagens Nyheter (the
signature Elisabeth). In Dagens Nyheter she wrote a letter
chronicle, Sommarflirt, and in November 1907 the magazine began to publish a
new serial by Wägner written in diary form, Norrtullsligans chronicle, with
partly the same personal set as in Sommarflirt. It was about the lives of
low-paid female clerks in Stockholm. According to Wägner herself, she wrote
each episode on Friday afternoons so that the episodes could be published in
the Sunday newspaper. [3]
Flory Gate & Elin Wägner
1920s feminists Left to right: Elisabeth Tamm, Ada Nilsson, Kerstin Hesselgren (sitting), Honorine Hermelin and Elin Wägner
At Idun, Wägner soon became editorial secretary and wrote his own articles
in the newspaper. She wrote about famous writers and painters, but also about
current social issues, especially about the situation of women. Perhaps most
important for Wägner herself was her interview with debater
Ellen Key in
January 1908. In the spring of 1908, she interviewed Signe Bergman, leading
representative of the National Association for Women's Political Suffrage. The
meetings with these two led Wägner to engage in the movement for women's
suffrage. In 1909, she represented the Swedish Women's Peace Association at
the International Women's Suffrage Alliance Congress in London. In the
magazine Idun, she defended women's self-determination in a debate against the
Swedish National Association for Custom culture. In the debate, Wägner was
personally singled out as a danger to youth morale by an anonymous writer. The
anonymous claimed to be a Swedish lady living in Yorkshire, but Wägner managed
to reveal that behind the signature "Young Mother in England" was hiding
Wägner's former fiance Hjalmar Jönsson. [4]
In 1908, Wägner had also started writing in Dagens Nyheter under the
signature Devinez (fra. "Guess who"), especially articles and texts that
touched on the situation of women. She used her experience in the newspaper
industry in her novel Pennskaftet, which was published in September 1910. The
novel is about a young female journalist who is drawn into the movement for
women's suffrage. In the novel's form, Wägner was also able to express her
opinion of sexual morality, clearly influenced by Ellen Key, for example, that
even women can have sexual relationships without being married. [5]
After marrying journalist John Landquist, Wägner threw himself into preparing
the International Women's Suffrage Alliance congress in Stockholm in June
1911. In connection with the meeting, she wrote lots of articles for both Idun
and Dagens Nyheter about the meeting. She portrayed the leading women of the
suffrage movement as Anna Howard Shaw and
the Hungarian Rosika Schwimmer. [6]
In 1911, Wägner began writing her next novel, Helga Wisbeck, about a female
doctor who renounces marriage and children in order to completely get up in
her profession. Helga Wisbeck was given the draw by two of Wägner's friends,
gynecologist Ada Nilsson and urologist Alma
Sundquist. [7]
In March 1914 Wägner co-founded the association Liberal Women with Emilia
Broomé as chairman and Wägner as secretary. The association was opposed to the
political right in parliament, which voted against women's suffrage and which,
through the peasant train, led the State Government to resign. Her
disappointment at the outbreak of The First World War, she portrayed in The
United Millions, where a young female journalist visits a world women's
meeting and where women members suffer from nationalist raves when the war
threatens and congress leads to nothing. In 1914 and 1915, Wägner devoted less
and less time to the magazine Idun, which became increasingly
defense-friendly, and in January 1916 she quit the magazine on the grounds
that she wanted to spend more time writing books. [8]
In 1910 Gustaf Fröding celebrated his 50th birthday and Wägner, now
editor-in-chief of Idun, wanted an article about him. She had previously met
Doctor of Philosophy John Landquist who had written a monograph about Fröding
and asked him to write an article. In August 1910, both were in the artist
colony of Arild near Helsingborg and there the two seem to have suffered a
lightning crush. In October they got engaged, married in November and moved in
together at Grev Turegatan in Stockholm. Wägner's closest relatives were not
present, by all accounts they were not pleased with her success as a radical
writer. [9]
The marital happiness seems to have been on the rise back in 1913. As a
writer, Wägner often received the inducement of events in her own life, and in
the 1913 in the novel Helga Wisbeck there is strong criticism of men and of
marriage. In a letter later, Wägner told us that her husband first raised the
issue of divorce in 1913. In 1916 they celebrated holidays in each direction.
Probably the issue of Swedish aid during the Finnish Civil War has been a
reason for disagreement. In December 1917, Landquist was fired from Dagens
Nyheter for his position on Finland and he signed a petition for gun help.
Wägner was by all accounts pacifist at this time. [10]
During his studies in Uppsala, Landquist had gotten to know the art
scientist Harald Brising and both Wägner and Landquist helped his wife Louise
Brising after Harald Brising's death in 1918. Between him and Louise Brising,
warmer emotions arose in 1919 or 1920. Wägner's preserved diary from 1919
shows recurring quarrels between the spouses. However, the divorce took a long
time. In January 1922 Wägner moved from the joint home on Nytorgsgatan in
Stockholm. Afterwards, the two claimed that infertility was a root cause of
the end of the relationship. Landquist married Louise Brising in 1925. [11]
The international suffrage movement meeting in 1915 was scheduled to take
place in Berlin, but was moved to The Hague because of the First World War.
Elin Wägner was among the members who came there in April 1915. Congress
decided to appoint delegations to seek out the heads of government of the
participating countries to make congressional demands for the immediate end of
the war. The various delegations were politely received in their home
countries, but this did not lead to any results. The international movement
was hit by internal quarrels and Wägner seems to have lost faith that women
could stick together to achieve results, either in terms of peace or voting
rights. [12]
Wägner's next book, The Success of the Jerneploog family (1916), is a
satirical depiction of Sweden in 1914 set in a small town; middle-class woman
Ingar starts an emergency relief committee and a cooperative business to help
the city's workers but is opposed in every way by the rulers of the city. The
novel Åsa-Hanna is set in Småland and is about Hanna who finds herself in a
moral dilemma between revealing what she knows about her husband's family's
criminal past or keeping quiet. [13]
In December 1919, Wägner was one of five people who founded Save the
Children. She then travelled to Geneva to participate in a congress that
coordinated the various national Save the Children committees into an
international federation. She travelled on to Vienna and Budapest and for
Dagens Nyheter she wrote articles about the enormous distress that reigned in
the defeated states after the war. She stayed in Vienna until July and used
the time to write the novel The Devastated Vineyard, about a love story
between a young Swede in Vienna and an Austrian officer. [14]
After the First World War, French troops had possessed the Rhineland and, in
accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, it would take until 1935 for all
foreign troops to leave the occupying area. The Swedish press reported that
the population was mistreated by French troops in Saarland- not least by
French black colonial troops who were said to be sexually assaulting German
women. [15] The
landowner Elisabeth Tamm at Fogelstad wanted to pay for an investigation that
could investigate these rumors and through her friend
Honorine Hermelin she
got in touch with Wägner. In February 1921 Wägner travelled to the Rhineland
with Gunnar Vall, vicar of Vingåker. They travelled along the Rhine to meet
people, and to assess how high the truth lay in what has come to be known as
the Black Shame of the Rhineland. [15] The
black shame received a lot of attention throughout Europe, and the racist
thought figures gained traction in left-wing political, feminist and
progressive contexts, not least through the English radical liberal Edmund
Morel. [16] Wägner's
and Valls' conclusion, however, is that the international furore surrounding
the black shame does not quite correspond to reality. [17] In
the final report Wägner and Vall formulate when they return to Sweden, report
on a journey within the areas of the Rhine 20/2 – 8/3 1921, they note that
"the so-called black issue cannot be seen in isolation but must be taken in
connection with the conditions at all. It is our impression that it is not,
after all, the issue at the top of the minds of the people." [18] The
report certainly also contains some racist stereotypes, but Wägner and Vall
note that the black soldiers have not been guilty of more abuse than white
soldiers, even that "the bad crimes are committed more by whites." [18] Wägner
and Vall also describe how they have seen several couples in love of different
skin color, and how they have met several who have married. [19]
The most important personal meeting for Wägner was with August Ritter von
Eberlein, expelled by the French from The Palatinate to Heidelberg where he
led some kind of spy agency, Die Pfalzenzentrale, which tried to keep track of
what was happening in the possessed areas. [20] Ritter
von Eberlein, who had a doctorate in history, was a German patriot who
disliked the Treaty of Versailles, democracy and the weak German government.
In 1938 he became part of Sturmabteilung, and he earned despite his advanced
age during World War II. However, he and Wägner seem to have found each other,
and Elin Wägner has in letters portrayed his interest in pedagogy, psychology
and women's issues. [21] From
Eberlein, Wägner received numerous reports of the advance of the French
troops, and she became a kind of spokesperson for Ritter von Eberlein. [20] Judging
by her diaries, she was soon courted by him too, and he professed her love. In
March, the investigation returned to Sweden, but during the rest of the year
Wägner travelled between Copenhagen, Berlin, Amsterdam and London to spread
information about the situation in the Rhineland. Her efforts do not seem to
have been any apparent effect in the Rhineland. [22] However,
Wägner and Ritter von Eberlein began a years-long relationship. There are many
letters from Ritter von Eberlein preserved in Wägner's collection of letters,
and they met regularly during much of the 1920s. However, the relationship
seems to have ebbed, and no letters from August Ritter von Eberlein are
preserved after 1929. [23][24] After
World War II, Wägner is contacted by Ritter von Eberlein's son Ludwig von
Eberlein, who was a journalist at Der Tagesspiegel. He told me that his father
was in a prison camp in Yugoslavia, and asked Wägner to send him supplies,
which Wägner seems to have done. [25]
Her brother Harald's marriage to Ellen Rydelius was by now over and Harald had
begun a relationship with a Swedish in Italy. The woman had given birth to a
boy, Giovanni, but it was not possible for her to take care of the boy, who
was now just over a year old. In the spring of 1921, Wägner took over
responsibility and the boy had to move home to her in Stockholm.
After his divorce from Landquist in January 1922, Wägner moved to fogelstad
manor outside Katrineholm, owned by Elisabeth Tamm, where Wägner stayed for
most of the year. There she wrote The Nameless, where Wägner, influenced
by Kierkegaard, wrote about the struggle between desire and duty. By 1919,
Wägner had co-formed a Swedish branch of the International Women's Association
for Peace and Freedom. Before its congress in The Hague in December 1922,
Wägner was instructed to travel around Saarland in order to give a statement.
The trip was made together with the English Marion Fox who was quaker and the
meeting with the Quakers made a big impression on Wägner. On 11 January 1923,
the Ruhr area was occupied by French and Belgian troops. Wägner travelled
around the obsessed area and quickly wrote a book on the subject, From the
Seine, the Rhine and the Ruhr. She met her Pfalzian contact man von Eberlein
in both 1923 and 1924, and the events she heard about eventually wrote a novel
about, The Five Pearls, in which a female Quaker becomes the mistress of a
exiled resistance fighter. The book was not a sales success, although Wägner
did a lecture tour, where she talked about the current situation in Germany.
She seems to have had enough of the peace work, because in a letter from June
1923 she writes: " I consider myself tohave fulfilled my duty, my penance in
Stockholm with everything I have done there for Fris. Women, the right to
vote, peace, etc. [26]
At Fogelstad, the Member of Parliament Tamm had gathered a group of women
around them who wanted to conduct popular education: now that women have been
given the right to vote to the second chamber, they must know what to use the
right to vote for. At Fogelstad she gathered women such as Honorine
Hermelin, Ada Nilsson, Kerstin Hesselgren and formed the Female Civic School
at Fogelstad, whose first course was held back in 1922. From 1925 onwards, the
business became regular. In the spring of 1923, Tamm wanted to start a
magazine for women, Tidevarvet, and pressed Wägner to take on the role of
editor-in-chief – she was the only one in the circle of women who had
professional experience from a newspaper. Wägner, however, did not want to
because she was busy with the novel Silverforsen. In July 1924, Wägner
nevertheless became editor-in-chief of Tidevarvet, which wanted to be a
political-cultural weekly newspaper. Co-workers in the magazine included the
theologian Emilia Fogelklou, the lawyer Eva Andén, author Frida Stéenhoff,
literary critic Klara Johanson and
Kerstin Hesselgren and Elisabeth Tamm. Wägner wrote cultural articles,
articles about pacifism and her own short stories went as serials. During her
time as editor-in-chief, Moa Martinson made her debut in the magazine. Between
Wägner and the publisher responsible Ada Nilsson, a dispute eventually arose
because Wägner also wanted to continue writing novels from her house in Lilla
Björka. The dispute with Nilsson and her relationship with Sigfrid
Siwertz made her depressed. Wägner stayed as editor-in-chief until the end of
1927. [27]
One of John Landquist's fellow students from the years in Uppsala was the
author Sigfrid Siwertz and Wägner must have met him on several occasions
during the marriage. In January 1925 Wägner had visited Siljansborg
outside Rättvik with her cousin Lisa Ekedahl, the publisher Tor Bonnier and
his wife Greta. There she met Siwertz and even this time it seems to have been
a flash inlove. Siwertz was certainly married, but his marriage was on the
rise. Shortly thereafter, Wägner had to travel to Paris, where her
brother Harald Wägner was terminally ill. The time Wägner and Siwertz had to
spend together must have been limited. After returning home two months later,
Wägner had to devote himself to his work as editor-in-chief
of Tidevarvet, while Siwertz lived far outside Stockholm, in the Stockholm
archipelago, with his children. Preserved letters suggest a romantic happiness
in the summer of 1925, hesitation and doubt in the fall when Siwertz traveled
away for six months to Africa. The relationship seems to have continued in
1926, until Siwertz in a letter in December 1926 made it clear that he was not
"the one you took me for" and ended the relationship. [28]
Both Wägner and Siwertz drew the stuff of their novels from their own lives
and their relationship can be followed in several novels. In his novel Jonas
and the Dragon (1928), Siwertz writes about a man who has a relationship with
an eagerly struggling feminist and doctor. In Wägner's Swallows Fly
High (1929) it's about a teacher who is betrayed twice by the same man. In her
novels Genome and Secretive (1937/1938), the male protagonist is clearly drawn
after Siwertz. Siwertz finally returned to their relationship, easily masked,
in the novel Glasberget (1952), about a glass artist who thinks back to his
life and the love of his life, a socially engaged woman. [29]
In 1923 Wägner had bought a plot of land in Berg in Småland where she had a
red cottage, Lilla Björka, built. In 1927 she became a permanent resident and
finished the Five Pearls. That novel received bad criticism, seemingly because
the reviewers did not understand that the fictional countries Plains, Treves
and Vinland are actually France, Germany and Palatinate. The novel also shows
Wägner's interest in the Quakers,whose activities she met in Palatinate. The
beginning of the 1930s meant that Wägner again raised the issue of women.
Within the Fogelstad group, the Finnish feminist Hagar Olsson had made a great
impression with his demands for a reshaping of the whole society. Wägner had
previously read Mathilde Vaerting's Männerstaat und Frauenstaat in which the
author interpreted ancient frescoes from an excavation in Crete as evidence of
female influence during the Minoan era. In her book Mütter und
Amazonen, Bertha Diener interpreted famous Greek legends, history, ethnography
and folklore as having once found a matriarchy in ancient Greece. Wägner also
read Johann Jakob Bachofen's Das Mutterrecht, who writes from European customs
about the "gynecocracy" of the ancient era, where motherhood was held too
sacred. The idea of a forgotten history of women influenced Wägner greatly and
in several books she writes about the female peculiarity. In his novel The
Dialogue, Wägner presents a group of men who want to hold on to their benefits
against a group of women on the rise and in passing raises questions about
maternity pay, the issue of abortion, the birth deficit and peace. Wägner took
up the idea of a special history of women in the cultural history book about A
Thousand Years in Småland with the story of Blenda from Blendasägnen, the
special inheritance law in Värend and important women in Småland's history.
During her childhood and upbringing, she had spent a lot of time in her
grandparents' home, from which she made significant impressions, especially in
the empathetic understanding of the Church tradition of Småland and the
perception of life in Värend, which she described in detail. Her grandfather
Jonas Ekedahl (1820–1899) was vicar of Tolg's pastorate north of Växjö, and
later Wägner bought his Little Björka. [30]
Wägner also raised the issue of the special nature of women in the 1941
debate book Alarm Clock. In the book, Wägner first presented a doctrine about
a matriary cal primed in ancient Greece. She was very inspired by the German
philosopher Bachofen's discoveries of a matriarchal society in Crete. Against
this is the powerless woman in modern society where women have been forced to
take their place at the machines and where women's suffrage makes no
difference on the whole. A humane society must be set up for women and their
children, Wägner says. She also sees a negative connection between violent
power and women's power; the greater the female influence, the less risk of
war. In letters, she wrote to her former husband John Landqvist complaining
about his benevolent attitude towards Hitler and Nazism: "[..] it is a
suffering to me that you salute him." The German revenge desire that Wägner
warned about in books and lectures became increasingly clear in the early
1930s. In July 1935, Amelie Posse of Tidevarvet issued a call for a female
general strike. Posse lived on an estate in the Sudeten area and told of how
the fear of war had increased. Posse's call was quickly received
when tidevarvet issued a petition for "women's weaponless rebellion against
war", formulated by Wägner: "It is not enough to require the men to lay down
their arms. At the same time, we must forcefully let them know that we are in
any case refusing to use the protective equipment they want to give us. We
don't believe in protective weapons, in gas masks and basements! We have seen
through the absurdity of the task of protecting us all. We will not be
involved in a cold-blooded selection of those who shall be saved." [31]
Women would refuse to take shelter in shelters or wear protective masks in the
event of a gas attack. The petition was called Ned with the weapons and eighty
women were elected to a women's assembly which in turn chose a delegation to
submit a decision to the League of Nations meeting in Geneva in September
1935. The delegation included Wägner, Andrea Andreen and Ada Nilsson. In
Geneva, the decision aroused no interest and President Beneš gave them only a
polite interest. The disappointment of not having achieved anything was partly
turned against Wägner, especially her idea of women's personal refusal to
protectthemselves. [...] I'd better retire. If I'm wrong, it doesn't matter." [32] The
failure took Wägner hard and she ended up in a crisis with stomach problems
and sleeping problems that stretched over a year. Wägner's religious beliefs
seem to have helped her, and her interest in the Quakers led her to join the
Society of Friends. [33]
Three friends came to mean a lot to Wägner during the decade. Emilia
Fogelklou, the first woman in Sweden to become a theology candidate, meant
a lot to Wägner's religious search but also to Wägner's interest in women's
history. Another close friend was the journalist Barbro
Alving, editorial secretary at Idun and then a journalist at Dagens
Nyheter. A third friend was Flory Gate who
became like a daughter for Wägner after she had moved with her children to
Berg and bought a farm. [34]
Another theme can be found in Wägner's writing from the 1930s; a kind of earth
romance, certainly influenced by the move to Lilla Björka. The natural
depictions are becoming more numerous, in the Swallows fly high a hard-working
crofter couple and in The Dialogue continues, the main character is a gardener
who ends up in parliament. In 1935, Wägner co-founded the Women's Organization
for World Order and at its 1937 conference in Bratislava she met the Swiss
peasant woman Mina Hofstetter, who ran a farm without livestock and a special
compost program. This had repercussions at home, as Flory Gates' agriculture
was at least partly driven by Hofstetter's thoughts and gave Wägner an
inclination to the book Peace with the Earth, in which she deals with
deforestation, artificial fertilization, mechanization of agriculture and
more.
Shortly after Selma Lagerlöf's death
in 1940, publisher Tor Bonnier had asked Wägner for a contribution to a
memorial album of Lagerlöf and soon the contribution developed into a whole
life drawing. Wägner got access to Lagerlöf's correspondence and when the life
drawing was published, it received good criticism, for example from the
literary critic Fredrik Böök and the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary
Anders Österling. When the philosopher Hans Larsson passed away in February
1944, his chair in the Academy became vacant and Wägner wrote to John
Landquist unless it was his turn to be elected. Instead, it was Wägner himself
who was elected in May of the same year. She became the second woman after
Selma Lagerlöf to be elected to the Swedish Academy. As a member of the
Swedish Academy, Wägner was progressive and it was at her suggestion that Gabriela
Mistral was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945. Wägner's belief
in pacifism and non-violence was fundamentally shaken when knowledge of the
Jewish Holocaust became known after The Second World War. In a letter to Mrs
Fogelklou, her doubts about the previous position are clear: 'We have
nevertheless calculated that there are certain limits that people cannot
cross. A people couldn't give in to exterminate an entire people." [35]
Wägner's last novel was Vinden vände bladen, a historical novel or a Småland
countryside chronicle that begins in the 18th century and ends in the 1930s.
For Wägner, the novel was a success, both with reviewers and at the
bookstores. Anders Österling had asked Wägner to write a monograph
about Fredrika Bremer. Wägner started work in early 1948, but she had stomach
problems which delayed the work. In October she went to the hospital in Växjö
and there doctors discovered a cancer ouster in her stomach. During surgery,
it was discovered that the swelling had spread and that the operation had
arrived too late. Wägner lived with her friend Flory Gate and despite her
weakness she wrote in the last about Fredrika Bremer. The funeral ceremony
took place at Berg Church on January 13, 1949. The coffin was buried at Norra
kyrkogården in Lund, where Wägner is buried next to his mother, Anna Wägner.
The journalist Barbro Alving, "Bang", planned to write a life drawing of Elin
Wägner and collected a lot of material, arranged month by month over Elin
Wägner's entire life. The task was too great for Bang and she left the
material to the authors Ulla Isaksson and Erik Hjalmar Linder, who wrote a
life drawing in two parts: Elin Wägner, Amazon with two breasts,
1882–1922 and Elin Wägner, daughter of mother earth, 1922–1949. Elin Wägner's
leftover papers were eventually handed over to the Collections of Women's
History at the University of Gothenburg. Flory Gate was one of the initiators
of the 1990 Elin Wägner Society. In 1994, the society was able to buy Lilla
Björka. [36]
There are about 70 literary signs in different places in Stockholm. [37] One
of them has a quote from "Norrtullsligan". It was set up in 1992
at Norrtullsgatan 10. Elin Wägner's fiction books deal with women's
rights, women's suffrage, peace issues, social issues and environmental
issues. The feminism she represents has been wrongly termed specific
feminism. Elin Wägner generally appears more like a similarity feminist, that
is, a person who focuses on men's and women's similarities and equal rights,
than her colleague Ellen Key. [38] Elin
Wägner was initially inspired by contemporary feminist Ellen Key, but did not
share Key's essentialist stance. The development appears among other things
in Genome (1937) and Secretive (1938). Wägner's feminism came to question
society fundamentally with its masculine-directed war as well as the
exploitation of the environment and people. The book Alarm Clock from 1941
shows this transformative position. The misconception of Wägner has been
pointed out in articles by Lisa Gålmark, see also Elin Wägner and Alva Myrdal
by Margareta Lindholm, Katarina Leppänen's thesis Rethinking Civilisation and
Boel Hackman on Elin Wägner and article about Elin Wägner and John Landqvist
by Crister Enander. Erik Hjalmar Linder, who was familiar with Wägner and much
later (together with Ulla Isaksson), came to write her life drawing, pointed
out in the 1950s that her feminism never turned its back on society and that
the idealization of femininity found in Alarm Clock above all should be
understood as a contrastive myth aimed at awakening an intense desire for
change in a raw contemporary state. [39]
In 2019, Skånetrafiken announced that a new train had been named Elin Wägner[40].
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Wylie