**A woman travelling alone in a Fiat was enough to cause a stir in Turkey during the 1960s.** Private archive Hortensia von Roten

One woman’s intrepid trip to the Bosphorus by Fiat

In 1960, feminist Iris von Roten drove all the way to Turkey on her own. It was a trip that would straddle the boundaries between conservative role models and an exotic sense of freedom.

Noëmi Crain Merz

Noëmi Crain Merz is a historian, university lecturer and curator.

At the end of May 1960, a small car boarded the ferry in the southern Italian seaport of Brindisi. The woman who had driven her little Fiat all the way from Basel was lawyer and author Iris von Roten. Armed with the "desire to enact a feminist experiment", a camera, and pen and paper, the 43-year-old was on her way to Turkey, an unfamiliar country in which she would stay for six months and write her second book. Her first, Frauen im Laufgitter ["Women in the Playpen"], had appeared 18 months earlier, causing a veritable furore and unleashing a storm of indignation. Fighting to gain political rights was one thing but, in 1958, writing about menstruation, the pain of childbirth, satisfying sexual relations and the advantages of free love was deemed scandalous. Even the Bund Schweizerischer Frauenvereine, the Federation of Swiss Women's Associations, "vehemently" distanced itself from the book, claiming that it blatantly flew in the face of the ethical objectives pursued by women's organisations in Switzerland. Following the defeat of the 1959 referendum on voting rights for women, von Roten followed up this feminist text, to which she had devoted ten years of her life, with the sarcastically formulated Frauenstimmrechtsbrevier ("Guide to women's suffrage").

**Iris von Roten at work, circa 1950.** Private archive Hortensia von Roten

Iris von Roten's book Frauen im Laufgitter ["Women in the Playpen"], published in 1958 — **Iris von Roten's book *Frauen im Laufgitter* ["Women in the Playpen"], published in 1958.** Swiss National Museum

She was now ready to move on to something new. "Write the book as long as you are passionate about feminism," her husband Peter von Roten had advised her in 1948 during her time studying in the United States. "After that, you can write another one about your new passion." That new passion had now been aroused – and it was once again closely bound up with her feminism. "It was a sheer lust for life that made me a feminist," she would later say. "Everything my heart desired: wild adventure, far off countries, great trials of strength, independence, freedom ‒ in short, the spice of life ‒ seemed to be the preserve of men, in words, deeds and writing." Other women could stay in their playpens if they wished – Iris von Roten believed in crossing frontiers, be that in gender roles or at state borders. She travelled on her own to a country in which "men's lives and men's lives only" were visible, stayed in hotels where she was the only female guest, and went into cafés that women would not normally dare to enter. In Turkey, she found the division between the male and female spheres which she had criticised in Switzerland extended to every area of life, including the privacy of one's own home.

**Peter von Roten encouraged his wife to write about her passion for feminism. This snapshot of the couple was taken in Leuk in 1947.** Private archive Hortensia von Roten / Photo: Hans Baumgartner

The republic founded by Kemal Atatürk was only six years younger than its Swiss visitor. The country had been modernised and steered towards a secular political system since the 1920s, sparking an accompanying upturn in women's liberation. Von Roten was impressed by the role women played in the labour force but angered by their exclusion from public life. Although less sexualised than their Western counterparts, she found women ‒ in what was entirely a man's world ‒ to be even more objectified. Emancipation seemed to her to be part of the "Europeanisation programme" imposed on the country by "politicians with Western leanings". She searched in vain for any women brave enough to campaign for emancipation in their own right.

**Iris von Roten liked to travel with her camera. She annotated this picture "between Eskişehir and Kütahya, summer 1960".** Private archive Hortensia von Roten

As a Western woman, von Roten enjoyed a special status. She was able to move about freely and come into contact with men as an equal. The woman in the Fiat caused quite a stir. "Even in the side streets" people came running, she found herself surrounded, stared at, her car touched and stroked. Everyone wanted to know the answer to two questions: her nationality, and where 'monsieur' was. The idea that she was travelling alone simply appeared "beyond all imagination". The question about "the man, the husband without whom a woman is supposed to be just as helpless in the world as without feet" was often asked repeatedly by the same person, as if they could not believe the answer.

Her interest in foreign countries and people was unbridled, her curiosity about other cultures enormous. She enthused about encounters with unknown individuals, the hospitality, honesty and warmth of the people. She liked being able to take time for conversations, to be fully present in the moment, even striking up chance acquaintances with people she met in the street. People here did not seem to derive their sense of self from their work and how well they performed it. As von Roten wrote, they were unaware of the "poison chalice of having to prove one's worth" and did not engage in competitive struggles that tainted their ability to be sociable.

**Iris von Roten on the road in Turkey.** Private archive Hortensia von Roten

However, she also documented some negative experiences: hotel rooms with doors that couldn't be locked, the roof of her car being prised open, some of the vehicle's upholstery disappearing at the repair shop. Incidents like these did nothing to curb her enthusiasm. The woman with a strong aesthetic sensibility and an "unquenchable yearning for beauty" that she even went so far as to compare with "thirst and hunger" enjoyed the oriental world and loved visiting mosques, ancient historical sites and bazaars selling exotic fabrics and rugs.

On returning to Switzerland, disappointment awaited the author: despite having agreed to do so, her publisher now refused to print her account of the trip. Her travelogue Vom Bosporus zum Euphrat ["From the Bosphorus to the Euphrates"] did not appear until five years later. After that, she continued travelling but no longer took the trouble to record her impressions in writing. In the years that followed, she visited Yugoslavia, Tunisia, Morocco (via Spain) and Syria, returning to some places on more than one occasion, but always making the journey alone by car.

**The Galata Bridge in Istanbul, photographed by Iris von Roten, 1960.** Private archive Hortensia von Roten

Health problems and the rise of mass tourism put an end to Iris von Roten's great passion for travelling a good 20 years later. She returned, disenchanted, from a 1984 trip to Tunisia. It was to be her last. Motorways, tunnels, heavy traffic and lorries had taken the shine off being on the road. "The passion has gone out of travelling by car." She was also disappointed in Tunisia itself: the North African country had become too noisy, too crowded. As someone used to travelling on her own she abhorred tour groups, yet she had inadvertently become part of the "tourist ghetto machine". Where were the independence and freedom she had always sought and found on her journeys? "My God, I have well and truly outlived the age of dignified travel," she wrote at age 67. Direct contact with the locals, genuine encounters – the tourism boom had put paid to all that. As well as to her exclusivity. Von Roten was an individualist who never aspired to be part of the crowd.

More of: 20th / 21st century Tourism Women in history Article

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