Networks and contacts
The importance of Ellen Key’s networking and contacts through her whole life cannot be overestimated. She had connections with many important writers and intellectuals of her time. These relationships helped spread her ideas across Europe and beyond, and also helped her develop new thoughts through discussions and exchange. Her contacts were upheld primarily by letter exchange and long-lasting journeys all over Europe.
In her youth an important network were the intellectuals and politicians around her father, MP Emil Key, whom she met in Stockholm. With one of her close friends, Anna Whitlock, she founded the Whitlock school, where several of the young female pupils later on also became her close friends. In the 1880’s she founded together with her culture radical friends the organization “Nya Idun” and in the beginning of the 1890’s she co-founded “Tolfterna”, an association for working class women. During the 1890’s her most important network was “Vännerna” (“The Friends”), consisting of her intellectual friends. After 1910 and her long-lasting journeys she kept up her many contacts by letter and by receiving guests at her newly built home Strand.
In Germany and Austria-Hungary Ellen Key became hugely popular before the First World War. Her books, quickly translated into German, spoke especially to women and young people. Thousands attended her lectures during her European tours, and many admirers wrote to her seeking guidance. For many Germanophone women, Key became a motherly role model at a time of change for female identity. Through letters and personal encounters, she offered encouragement often building lifelong bonds with her followers. Although her popularity faded after World War I, Ellen Key left a lasting impact on the people she inspired and on debates about education, love, and women’s roles in society.
The period when Italian interest in Ellen Key’s writings about women and society was most lively coincides more or less with her long sojourns there during the first decade of the 20th century. She travelled to different places in Italy, saw art, enjoyed nature and met many interesting people. Among these we find Sibilla Aleramo, Ada Negri, Laura Orvieto, and the sisters Paola and Gina Lombroso. Key gave lectures for the Unione Femminile and became good friends with its founder, Ersilia Majno, who also invited Key to be the honorary chair of the large women's congress in Milan in 1908, organised by the association.