page_title: Alwina Gossauer
section_title: Photographer and businesswomen
hierarchical_section_title: Alwina Gossauer / Photographer and businesswomen
caption_attribution_description: Alwina Gossauer's atelier, See-Quai Rapperswil (Switzerland)
context_page_description: Alwina Gossauer was a Swiss photographer and businesswoman. Born and raised in Rapperswil, as an adult she made Rapperswil again her home and became one of the first women professional photographers in Switzerland.
context_section_description: Under the name Alwina Kölla-Gossauer she published a newspaper advertisement in June 1868 which announced the continuation of the joint business. She rented the house Kunstgüetli on Seequai, at the pier of the present Zürichsee-Schifffahrtsgesellschaft (ZSG) probably to benefit from the excursion traffic and increasing tourism. There, she set up the photography studio "Photographie A. Gossauer", using her unmarried name   The family lived on the first floor, and on the ground floor the customers were served. From this point, Alwina led the business successfully as a freelance photographer and businesswoman, initially under the name of her husband, Kölla, later under her unmarried name Gossauer. Her field of activity were classic portrait photography, landscape photography and commissioned works for books, newspapers and magazines.
  After serving his prison sentence, her husband tried again as a photographer, on the other side of the Seedamm between the upper and Zürichsee, he established a studio on Richterswil lake shore in the Canton of Zürich, to comply with the condition of the ten-year deportation from the Canton of St. Gallen. His wife loaned him photographic equipment, and also due the local separation, their relationship deteriorated rapidly. In 1871 Alwina Gossauer filed for divorce against the will of her husband; the court decided in her favour. Their five children – aged between one and eleven – were attributed to her, and Alwina reverted to her maiden name Gossauer and added, as it was customary, the words divorced Koella (German: geschiedene Koella). Kölla did not pay alimony, sold his studio in Richterswil and the photographic equipment loaned from his wife, and in vain Alwina sued her ex-husband in the civil courts. Meanwhile, Kölla made himself scarce, as noted in the court records, and migrated finally to America around 1868.
caption: Kunstgüetli house in Rapperswil (September 2015)
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