ARH/ERHFA Video Essay No. 5 (Abstract, Script and Sources, PDF)

Title	What a life!
Subtitle	Mina Hofstetter - an ecofeminist pioneer of organic farming
Authors	Peter Moser, Andreas Wigger
Publication	2024

Abstract

The female farmer Mina Hofstetter worked on the Stuhlen farm on Lake Greifensee near Zurich from 1915 until the 1950s. Hofstetter became famous because she adopted a vegan diet from the early 1920s, ran her family farm without livestock, gave lectures in Switzerland and abroad, and ran introductory courses on organic farming. Together with the writers Elin Wägner and Anna Helene Askanasy-Mahler and the journalists Elisabeth Thommen, Irene Harand and Ellen Hoerup, Mina Hofstetter was also involved in the Women's Organisation for World Order, which was founded in 1935. She also explained her activities in letters, articles and brochures, which the Archives of Rural History published for the first time in August 2024.

Script

00:12

“If you walk from Zurich to Greifensee,” wrote Paul Häusle from the ‘Verein für Volksgesundheit’ in 1941, “you pass the small hamlet of Stuhlen. Situated on terraces, it consists of only a few houses. Few people realise that there is a farm here that has often been a destination for travellers from afar, and that researchers, reformers and philosophers from all over the world have stopped there.”

It was here, on the Stuhlen farm, that Mina Hofstetter worked from 1915 until the 1950s. Hofstetter became famous because she adopted a vegan diet from the early 1920s, ran her family farm without livestock, gave lectures in Switzerland and abroad, and ran introductory courses on organic farming. She also explained her activities in letters, articles and brochures, which the Archives of Rural History published for the first time in August 2024.

1. Childhood, youth, starting a family and acquiring the Stuhlen farm

01:20

Mina Hofstetter was born in 1883 in Stilli near Brugg in the canton of Aargau, Switzerland. Her father was a fisherman and raftsman; her mother and grandmother grew vegetables, potatoes and grain. When Mina Hofstetter wrote about her childhood, suffering and illness took centre stage. As a child, she repeatedly asked herself: “Why are we ill, why do most people have to work all their lives and remain poor? And why is there something unspeakable between men and women that is dragged through the mud?”

After completing her schooling, she moved first to Geneva and then to Berlin, where she worked as a maid and learnt how to run a household. Back in Aargau, she married the carpenter Ernst Hofstetter, with whom she raised seven children. In 1915, in the middle of the First World War, the Hofstetters bought the Stuhlen farm, in particular because Mina wanted to do more agricultural work. After the move, her husband immediately had to return to active service in the army. “There I was with five small children, the oldest of whom was not yet 8, the youngest 1½ years old, all of whom had whooping cough. Ten head of cattle were bellowing in the barn. It was the end of October, there were still turnips to be harvested in the field, 20 loads of manure to be tedded and lots of other things to do”. For Mina Hofstetter, the most difficult work was in the barn. “I was terrified of the cows, and until I dared to milk, groom and feed a cow, I was almost sweating blood”. She perceived the keeping of animals as enslavement of the animals, which also led to the enslavement of humans because they had to feed and look after the animals several times a day.

2. Health crisis and nutritional reform

03:27

When Mina Hofstetter was pregnant for the sixth time in 1918, she suffered severe bouts of influenza and a nervous breakdown. As no medicine could help her, she began to scrutinise her diet. After reading the book ‘Moderne Rosenkreuzer’ by Surya, she stopped eating pork. And her encounter with the ideas of the ‘life reformer’ Werner Zimmermann led her to start eating a raw food diet. Looking back, she wrote that the radical change in her eating habits had transformed her from a “poor, suffering cripple to a healthy person” in three months. The raw food gave her a “courage to face life” that enabled her to leave the filth of cattle farming and the misery of slavery. She turned to arable farming and gardening with “joy and vigour”.

As radically as Mina Hofstetter's ideas of a healthy diet differed from conventional eating behaviour, Hofstetter implemented them in her family in a prudent and pragmatic manner. She began with her youngest daughter Elisabeth, who was born in 1923 and later married the butcher Hans Schaer. In 1924, Mina Hofstetter wrote in the magazine TAO, which was published by Werner Zimmermann: “Give the child fruit to suck and chew as soon as it shows a craving for solid food, more and more often”, then the child will live on raw food.

The new dietary regime was more difficult to implement for the older children and her husband. Ernst continued to eat meat and usually had lunch with his son Karl's family, with whom he ran a carpentry business based on the farm Stuhlen. The children and guests, on the other hand, were fed vegan meals in Mina's household.

Light, air and sunbathing were also part of the ‘life reform’ movement. This was practised on the Stuhlen farm as well as on Monte Verità or the Zürichberg. However, course participants who bathed naked in the Greifensee caused offence with the authorities. Therefore, in 1925, the Hofstetters built a simple wooden house, called ‘Lichtwärts’. Ten years later, they also built the ‘Seeblick’, a stately course and recreation building for the many people who attended courses on Stuhlen.