Jeanne Hersch

Jeanne Hersch was a Swiss philosopher of Polish-Jewish origin, whose works dealt with the concept of freedom. She was the daughter of Liebman Hersch.

Education and career

Hersch was born in 1910 in Geneva, Switzerland. She later studied under the existentialist Karl Jaspers in Germany in the early 1930s. She taught French, Latin, and Philosophy in the International School of Geneva, the world's first international school, for 33 years.
From 1942 to 1946, she participated in the doctoral colloquium of the philosopher Paul Häberlin, the predecessor of Karl Jaspers, at the University of Basel. Häberlin's Lucerna Foundation supported her doctoral thesis with a scholarship.
In 1956, she was appointed to a professorship at the University of Geneva, one of the first women to hold such a post at a Swiss university, holding the post until 1977. From 1966 to 1968, Hersch headed the philosophy division of UNESCO and was a member of its executive commission from 1970 to 1972.
In 1968 she edited Le droit d'être un homme, une anthologie mondiale de la liberté in French, an anthology of writings on human rights, republished in French in 1984 and 1990.
In 1987, she received the Einstein Medal.

Honors and Awards

1936: Prix Amiel from the University of Geneva for her first book L'illusion philosophique.
1941: Prix littéraire de la Guilde du Livre for her novel Temps alternés
1947: Prix Adolphe Neuman d'esthétique et de morale
1970: Ida-Somazzi-Preis