Westward. Encounters with Swiss American Women

“I was always nicely dressed. Pants, certainly not!” (1943)

Secondary school (grades 7 and 8) was easy for Rosa. As was the custom for a girl from a good family, Rosa then spent a year in a school for good housekeeping led by protestant deaconesses in Vevey. “These simple women did impress me. I admired them. They were quite strict, but fair, and they treated all of us in the same manner. I liked the fact that they did not just preach their strict rules, but practiced them in their own lives.”

Rosa had ambitious plans for herself. “I wanted to get somewhere in life.” In 1945 she entered the Handels-Töchterschule, a commercial school for female students, in Zurich. “English was my favorite subject, and I learned easily.”

In 1948 Rosa graduated first in her class with a diploma from the Handelsschule and obtained a well-paid job at the Swiss Bank Corporation. “The transition from school to the six-day workweek was difficult for me. Sitting quietly for an entire day at the desk in the office tired me out. I found it confining.” The restlessness of her youth became noticeable. Now it was Rosa who wanted to break away, away from Switzerland in order to conquer the world.