Heidi Witzig
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Heidi Witzig (born 1944), formerly known as Heidi Schäppi-Witzig and now as Heidi Witzig Vetterli,[1] is a Swiss historian with a focus on women's history. She published pioneering works on women's history, and is a co-initiator of the Grandmother's Revolution. In 2021 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Lausanne.
Witzig was born in 1944 in Zürich.[2] She is the daughter of an office furniture manufacturer.[3] She grew up in Frauenfeld in the canton of Thurgau.[3] She studied history and art history at the universities of Zurich and Florence and earned a doctorate in Zürich with a work about the early Italian Renaissance in 1978.[2] She subsequently worked as a documentalist at Schweizer Fernsehen DSR.[4] She has been a freelance historian since 1986, with a focus on Alltagsgeschichte and women's history.[2] Her works were "motivated for a long time by the anger against the unequal treatment of women".[3] Witzig co-wrote a pioneering source book about women's history in Switzerland alongside historian Elisabeth Joris, which was published in 1986.[5] Witzig's 2000 book Polenta and Paradeplatz: Regional Everyday Life on the Way to Modern Switzerland 1880-1914 was also considered pioneering.[6] Witzig was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Lausanne in 2021.[7]
Around 1982, she became a Socialist municipality councillor in Uster, canton of Zürich.[8][9]
As a co-initiator of the GrossmütterRevolution ("Grandmothers' Revolution"), she engages in favour of "women in retiring age for a maturity in dignity and social protection for all".[10]
Heidi Witzig is a widowed mother of a daughter.[2]
