Anna von Wattenwyl

Von Wattenwyl was born in Lauenen in 1841 to an Irish mother, Anna Maria von Wattenwyl, and a Swiss father, Gottlieb von Wattenwyl.^[1] She was one of six children.^[1] Her father was the Reformed pastor of Reichenbach im Kandertal.^[1] Her family, an old patrician Bernese family, were part of the Swiss nobility.^[2] Her father's country estate, Schlingmoos, near Gurzelen, was a center of the Réveil movement.^[2][3]

When she was eighteen years old, von Wattenwyl travelled with her older sister to Paris and London, where they stayed with relatives.^[1][3] In London, she was introduced to The Salvation Army, an evangelical Methodist denomination and charitable organization.^[1] She joined the Salvation Army, much to the concern of her family and friends, as activities of the Holiness movement were forbidden in Switzerland.^[1] She became a pastoral assistant to the revivalist clergyman Franz Eugen Schlachter and worked as a translator for William Booth when he visited Switzerland.

In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, she worked as a hospital nurse.^[3]

Von Wattenwyl helped establish the organization in Switzerland, and founded a shelter for homeless people in Zürich.^[1] She was made an officer and promoted to the rank of colonel.^[1][3] She was later imprisoned for her work, which was still illegal at the time, and was the last Swiss Salvation Army officer to be sentenced to prison in Basel.^[1][3] In her later years, she founded an outpost for The Salvation Army in Gurzelen, near her family's estate.^[1] She served one term as the Army's Secretary of the Women's Social Work.^[3]

In 1921 she authored the book Einige Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben.^[4] She died on 12 January 1927.^[1] She is remembered in Barbara Traber's book 40 Important Berneses Women from Seven Centuries.^[1]