Europe’s first female professor
In 1909, Anna Tumarkin became the first woman in Europe to be appointed a university professor in her own right. She taught at the University of Bern for decades and garnered international respect as an academic.
Franziska Rogger
Franziska Rogger is a freelance historian.
Website: franziskarogger.com
The congress was a high-profile event, attended by eminent philosophers from Europe, the United States and Russia. Those who came together in Geneva thought of themselves as an intellectual brotherhood, a confraternité intellectuelle. The main topic of discussion was “Kant’s overwhelming greatness”. Social and commemorative events as well as excursions rounded out the programme. There was a noticeably large female presence in the audience, many of whom were members of the recently established Union des femmes de Genève, an organisation that formed the backbone of the early women’s movement in Geneva and Switzerland. Yet Tumarkin was the sole speaker who happened to be both female and a genuine philosopher. Only one other woman gave a talk, but she was a literary scholar.
Anna Tumarkin was born in 1875 in the Tsarist Empire. As a woman who was both Jewish and Russian, her life was never going to be easy. Having already decided at an early age to dedicate her life to philosophy and learning, she faced major social obstacles. Although universities in Europe and the Ivy League schools in the United States admitted very few, if any, women at the time, Tumarkin was forced to leave her hometown of Chișinău (in present-day Moldova) at the tender age of 17 in order to study in Switzerland. Compared with the rest of Europe, Switzerland took a relatively progressive stance towards female education and women were able to study there from the 1860s under certain conditions.
During her 45 years at the University of Bern from 1898 to 1943, she progressed from highly regarded member of the teaching staff to associate professor of philosophy. Her main interests lay in aesthetics and epistemology. She helped 13 students, 8 male and 5 female, to gain their doctorate and oversaw numerous other philosophical works.
Tumarkin’s importance as an academic is evidenced not merely by her achievements at the University of Bern, but also by the fact that she delivered talks at other International Congresses of Philosophy (including those in 1908 and 1937). Despite all the adversities she faced as a woman, immigrant and female academic, she left behind a body of philosophical work that remains influential today ‒ especially in its analysis of a specifically Swiss philosophy.
