Meta von Salis

Barbara Margaretha "Meta" von Salis-Marschlins (3 January 1855 – 15 March 1929) was a Swiss suffragette and historian, as well as a regular correspondent of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Early life and education Meta von Salis was born in 1855 on her family's estate, Marschlins Castle, in Igis, Graubünden. Her parents were Ursula Margaretha and Carl Ulysses Adalbert von Salis-Marschlins (1795–1886), a Swiss naturalist. botanist, politician, lawyer and military officer. She attended a girls' school in Friedrichshafen, Germany from 1863 to 1868, and then attended another girls' school in Rorschach, Switzerland until 1871.

After leaving school, she worked as a governess for numerous wealthy families in Germany, England and Ireland before enrolling at the University of Zurich in 1883 to study history and philosophy. She received a PhD in 1887 for a thesis about Agnes of Poitou, making her the first Swiss woman to receive a doctorate degree. She said she was not interested in completing the degree for its own sake but rather "in the interests of the women's question". Disillusioned with the Swiss democratic process, she then moved to the Italian island of Capri with her longtime friend Hedwig Kym (1860-1949) (Swiss poet and women's rights activist), a daughter of Andreas Ludwig Kym (1822-1900) (professor of philosophy at the University of Zurich). Following Hedwig Kym's marriage in 1910 to Swiss politician and attorney Ernst Feigenwinter (1853–1919), von Salis continued to live with the couple in their Basel home from 1910 until her death in 1929.

In her later life, she mostly retreated from the feminist movement and instead most of her writings focused on German nationalism and conservative race theory.