Lisa Wenger

Lisa Wenger (born Lisa Ruutz; 23 January 1858 – 17 October 1941) was a Swiss painter and writer of children's books. During the 1930s she was one of the best known and most widely read authors in the country.

Life

Lisa Ruutz was born in Bern. Heinrich Ruutz, her father, owned a fabrics and textiles shop in Basel. She undertook artistic training successively in Basel, Paris and Florence, finishing off at the Fine Arts Academy in Düsseldorf. Her teachers in Basel, included Hans Sandreuter. In 1881 Lisa Ruutz opened a porcelain painting workshop, targeted on women and young ladies in Basel.

In 1890 she married Théo Wenger, the owner of a "steel goods" factory. That involved relocating to Delémont which at the time was still in the Canton of Bern (although the call for cantonal borders that more closely reflected language frontiers was already a longstanding cause of agitation). It was only on reaching the age of 46, after establishing herself at nearby Courtételle, that she embarked on the career for which she is today better remembered, as a children's author.

After 1919 Lisa and Théo Wenger became regular visitors to Carona (Lugano) in Ticino, members of the little informal summer season writers and artists' colony surrounding the author Hermann Hesse who moved to Lugano after the war. Their daughter Ruth Wenger (1897-1994) became a particularly welcome guest at the "Casa Costanza" (identified in less respectful sources as "the parrot house"). Eventually, in 1924, Ruth Wenger married Hermann Hesse. Ruth was twenty years younger than her husband and her first marriage was of short duration: the family attachment to Ticino appears to have lasted better, since it was at Carona that Lisa Wenger died in the autumn/fall of 1941.