Yella Hertzka

In 1903, Hertzka became one of the twelve co-founders of the Neuer Wiener Frauenklub (New Vienna Women's Club), which was originally founded as an apolitical salon and literary association for women.[6][10] Initially the president was Helene Forsmann, succeeded by Dora von Stockert-Meynert.[10] Hertzka became involved in the international women's rights movements in 1904 and attended the Berlin Congress of the International Council of Women,[6] where she established friendships with several prominent feminists, including Käthe Schirmacher and Helene Stöcker.[9] From 1905, the club focused on attaining women's suffrage and campaigned against laws prohibiting women from political participation.[11] Hertzka became president of the Neuer Wiener Frauenklub in 1909 and remained in the position until 1933.[10] She participated in the Vienna Voting Rights Conference of 1913 and led the Commission for Horticulture and Small Animal Breeding of the Federation of Austrian Women's Associations, until the commission dissolved in 1918.[6] A committed pacifist, when war was declared in 1914, Hertzka and the Neuer Wiener Frauenklub formally opposed the conflict.[12] The club sent a delegate, Francis Wolf Girian, to the Hague Congress held in 1915.[13]

1921 WILPF Executive Committee: Left to right, front: Cornelia Ramondt-Hirschmann, Gabrielle Duchêne, Lida Gustava Heymann, Hertzka, Jane Addams, Catherine Marshall, Gertrud Baer. Back: Emily Greene Balch and Thora Daugaard.

Because the International Women Suffrage Alliance conference to be held in Berlin had been cancelled, a committee of Dutch women, led by Aletta Jacobs, proposed that the Netherlands, as a neutral country, could host a meeting to allow women to maintain their solidarity.[14] From this congress, the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace, which would become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), was formed.[15] The Austrian members of the committee, Leopoldine Kulka and Olga Misař, were chosen.[16] When the war ended, Hertzka attended the 1919 WILPF convention in Zürich, along with Kulka and Elsa Beer-Angerer.[17] There, she persuaded the WILPF members to hold the next biennial convention in Vienna.[6] Returning home, she and Kulka founded the Austrian WILPF chapter in 1920.[6][18] The following year when Kulka died, Hertzka became president of the Austrian section of the WILPF.[19][20] She was the primary coordinator and organizer for the third WILPF congress in Vienna, working with Emily Greene Balch, international organization's Secretary-Treasurer.[21][22][23] Shortly after the event, the Austrian WILPF branch split along ideological grounds. Those who felt nationalist goals were more important than international objectives and absolute pacifism left the organization.[24][25]

Hertzka attended all of the WILPF congresses held between 1919 and 1946, participating as a group leader, organizer, or speaker.[6] In 1919, she traveled to Scandinavia, lecturing in Norway and Sweden about the WILPF and seeking support for prisoners of war held in Siberia and Turkestan. From there she traveled on to London, Paris, and Switzerland. Continuing this mission,[26] she went to the United States the following year and successfully secured American help in negotiating the return of war prisoners from Siberia, as well as financial concessions enabling Austria to secure a loan from the League of Nations.[27][28] She became a member of the international WILPF's executive board in 1921.[29] In 1924, she became chair of the East European Commission for WILPF,[6] and two years later was appointed to serve on the International Advisory Council of the National Woman's Party.[30] In the 1930s, she chaired the Economic Commission of the WILPF, interacting with members of the International Labour Organization.[31] In Austria, Hertzka's public appearances and activities were increasingly limited as a result of rising antisemitism.[32] In March 1938, all Jewish members of the Neuer Wiener Frauenklub were expelled. In November the club was dissolved when Germany annexed Austria and implemented policies to ban women's organizations involving political activities.[10][33] The same year, Hertzka ended her service as president of the Austrian chapter of the WILPF, when the organization was banned by the Nazi regime.[33][34]

Hertzka and Salka Goldman co-founded the Cottage Girls' Lyceum in the Cottage Quarter of Döbling, in 1903.[21] The school moved several times in the early years of its operation. In 1904, it was located on Prinz Eugen Straße and moved again in 1905 to Gymnasium Straße.[35] Donating the buildings for the school, Hertzka also did various administrative tasks. The school was designed to give girls the opportunity to attain secondary schooling and gain professional training.[36] In the early years of its operation, however, completing the courses and passing the final examination only allowed graduates to participate in the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Vienna as extraordinary students. During the 1913–1914 term, Goldman adopted the advanced courses required for the reform-realgymnasium examination, which qualified graduates for standard university admission.[35] Around this time, as their pro-German nationalist leanings surfaced, Hertzka distanced herself from both Goldman and Schirmacher, with whom she had maintained a correspondence for over a decade.[37]

Two of the duplex homes in the Villenkolonie im Kaasgraben, 1917

In 1908 and 1909, Hertzka attended the Rheinische Obst- und Gartenbauschule für Frauen (Rhineland Fruit and Horticultural School for Women) in Bad Godesberg near Bonn, Germany, and completed advanced training in horticulture.[2][38] She returned to Austria determined to establish a Höhere Gartenbauschule für Frauen (Higher Horticultural School for Women), but it would be several years before she did so.[2][20] Hertzka often hosted garden parties, attended by many internationally known composers such as Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Ernst Krenek, Gustav Mahler, Darius Milhaud, and Arnold Schönberg.[21] To foster their work, she called on Josef Hoffmann to design an artists' colony in Kaasgraben, near her home in Grinzing.[4][21][39] She helped Hoffmann plan the colony and financed the undertaking.[40] The colony had four duplex units, a relatively recent housing innovation in Vienna at the time.[41] Completed in 1912, the Villenkolonie Kaasgraben (Kaasgraben Villa Colony) attracted many artists and intellectuals as residents, including the secretary general of the Vienna Concert Hall, Hugo Botstiber; economist Adolf Drucker; composer Egon Wellesz and his wife, art historian Emmy; and Hans Vetter,[36][39] an architect and co-founder of the Austrian Work Association.[42][43]

Students working in Hertzka's gardening school in 1926

In 1913, Hertzka founded the first secondary horticultural school for girls in Austria-Hungary, also located in Kaasgraben, part of Grinzing in the Döbling district. She served as director of the school until 1938.[2][20][21] The school offered training in horticulture and landscape architecture, opening the fields to women/[44] It also gave general business and law courses,[2] requiring students to grow and market their produce.[45] Besides practical work in the garden and greenhouse, students attended lectures on botany, drawing, geology, landscaping, growing flowers and vegetables, and soil science.[2][45] The program was accredited by the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture and diplomas were issued to students who successfully completed an examination.[45] When war broke out the year after her school had opened, Hertzka offered the gardens of the school to other secondary schools and helped train them to operate community gardens throughout Vienna to combat food shortages and malnutrition for the duration of the conflict.[36] The school offered the rare opportunity for women to achieve economic independence with training in horticulture and gardening or landscape architecture in Austria-Hungary in the early decades of the twentieth century.[2][45] Until 1921, it was closely affiliated with an adjacent home economics school run by Marie Wettstein, a colleague in the WILPF before the organizational dispute.[24]

Students working in Hertzka's greenhouse in 1926

In 1920, the alumni of the Higher Horticultural School for Women founded the networking organization Verein der Grinzinger Gärtnerinnen (Association of Grinzing Women Gardeners) to help each other secure employment, share professional and training information, and promote women gardeners.[46] From 1926, the alumni association was open to woman gardeners throughout Austria, regardless of where they had trained.[47] Although Hertzka was not a Zionist, many of her students were young women preparing to move and work in Palestine.[20][47][48] Among them were Irene (née Pick) Aloni, Grete Blumenkranz, Elisabeth Boyko, Hanka Huppert-Kurz, Grete Salzer, Michal Selzer (formerly known as Felicia Sonnenschein), Gerti (née Brechner) Stern, and Lily Venezianer.[49][50] Beginning in the early 1930s, Hertzka opened her home to refugees fleeing pogroms in other parts of Europe.[51] As a member of the organization Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (Jewish Community of Vienna), when Germany annexed Austria, she organized training courses at her school for Jews wishing to emigrate and provided secret refuge while they made arrangements to escape the country.[51][52] Activist friends, such as Balch and Helene Scheu-Riesz, found potential employment positions and were willing to assist her in relocating to the United States. Hilda Clark made a similar proposal to help Hertzka arrange limited residency in Britain, but she chose not to accept these offers of help.[52] Rather than face the risk that her school would be Aryanized, she gave the facility to her friend, composer Maria Hofer in 1937. She was forced to leave her home in Kaasgraben in early 1938.[51]