Clotilde Apponyi

Clotilde "Klotild" Apponyi (1867-1942) was a Hungarian women's rights activist and diplomat.

She was the daughter of the Austrian politician count greve Alexander Mensdorff-Pouilly and Alexandrine Dietrichstein, and married in 1897 to the Hungarian politician count Albert Apponyi.

She was president of the Klotild association for the selling of women's work from 1908, president for the alliance of Hungarian women's associations (MNSz) from 1910, board member of the Catholic protection society for women from 1913, president for the Maria Dorotea association for women teachers from 1930, as well as for numerous other charitable associations. As president of the MNSz, she addressed the Hungarian parliament in favor of women's suffrage in 1912, and supported this reform in public in 1918. After World War I, she, as president of the MNSz, became the spokesperson of the non-socialist women's associations of Hungary in oppose to the leftist MANSz under Cecile Tormay. In 1929, she protested against the suggestion to abolish women's right to run for office, and in 1939, she did the same against the suggestion to ban married women from holding office as civil servants.

During the World War I, she was an informal diplomat for Hungary in Switzerland, and she served as a sub delegate to the League of Nations in Genva in 1928-34, and as a delegate for Hungary in 1935-37.

References

Francisca de Haan, Krasimira Daskalova & Anna Loutfi: Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms in Central, Easterna and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th centuries Central European University Press, 2006

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