A Little History #10: Gertrud Lutz — A Messy Affair and an Unexpected Career

Gertrud Frankhauser

In 1948, Gertrud Lutz-Frankhauser became UNICEF's first woman to head a country office—in today's terms, the first woman Representative. She had already led a life of humanitarian service during the war and would now go on to new challenges with UNICEF.

One reader of the 2021 version of this article commented: "This story should be a documentary. There are heroes. Give them what they deserve: recognition. This woman deserves it."

In previous articles, we explored the post-WWII political currents that shaped UNICEF's birth. Here we turn to the people who built it—starting with a woman whose humanitarian conviction, field commitment, and quiet resilience became the organisation's defining values.

Note: The historical sources use variant spellings of both names—Carl (Karl) and Gertrud (Gertrude). This article follows the most common historical usage: Carl and Gertrud.

Her husband would later be hailed as a great hero and called 'the Swiss Schindler', a diplomat who had taken extraordinary risks during the Holocaust to save many thousands of people at risk of deportation to the death camps. She was at his side throughout those difficult years, but would remain in his shadow until a shock discovery and a final parting launched her own career.

Carl in 1924 at George Washington University

Office Romance in St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri was an unlikely meeting place for two young Swiss far from their homeland. Carl Lutz came from a poor mountain village around Appenzell and in 1913 moved to the US Midwest. The area around St. Louis had a large Swiss community and Carl found work as a laborer. He managed to save up money and enrolled at Wesleyan University in 1918. In 1920 he moved to Washington, D.C. where he finished a degree in law and history in 1924. While in Washington he established a relationship with the Swiss Embassy and in 1933 was assigned to their trade and consular affairs office in St. Louis.

Gertrud was a recent Swiss emigrée from a village near Fribourg who had studied commerce. At age eighteen she decided in 1930 to move alone to the United States. She eventually found clerical work at the consulate. An office romance followed and they married in 1935.

Even before they could take their honeymoon, the Swiss transferred Carl to Jaffa and later to Jerusalem in British-controlled Palestine. In addition to normal consular duties, Carl also managed Switzerland's various 'foreign interests' sections. Among these countries was Germany—a special challenge for the Swiss. Thousands of German Jews lived in Palestine, and after the so-called Nuremberg laws of 1935, they became stateless in German eyes whilst remaining 'Germans' in British eyes. When war broke out in 1939, the British moved many of them into camps for 'enemy aliens'.

Carl and Gertrud in Palestine

It was here that Gertrud first showed her unyielding humanitarian streak. Learning that British forces had locked up mothers and newborn babies in a makeshift camp in Bethlehem, the young diplomat's wife did not wait for official channels. Without telling Carl, she marched straight into the office of the British High Commissioner in Jerusalem. When the High Commissioner meekly protested that there might be spies among the internees, Gertrud looked him in the eye and asked: "Nonsense. And what about the babies—are they spies, too?" She refused to leave until he promised to release the mothers and children. A few days later, they were freed.

Budapest During the Holocaust

With war now fully underway, Carl was posted briefly to Berlin in 1940, where he again ran a foreign interests section, this time representing Yugoslavia. Gertrud remained in Palestine, continuing her aid work for growing numbers of refugees. They reunited in Budapest in 1942, where Carl found himself the sole diplomat representing fourteen countries at war—the United States, United Kingdom, and others. He worked from the empty shell of the former US embassy.

Gertrud and Carl in Budapest

By early 1944, as Germany prepared to invade Hungary, Carl used his position to issue tens of thousands of protective letters to Jews seeking escape. Even after Germany took control in March 1944, he continued issuing protection letters and designating 76 houses as 'under Swiss diplomatic protection'.

Meanwhile, Gertrud carried on her aid work in the city even as hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were deported to the death camps—over 430,000 in the two months following the German occupation alone. During the Soviet blockade of Budapest at year's end, Carl and Gertrud hid over 50 people in the embassy basement. By war's end, they had helped more than 62,000 Jews escape Hungary.

The Swiss government viewed Carl's actions as a misuse of his diplomatic status. He was recalled and given an official reprimand—a fact that later became a serious embarrassment for the government. Attitudes shifted quickly after the war, and the Swiss promoted Carl as a hero. Little was mentioned of Gertrud's role.

A Messy Affair Leads to a Friendly Divorce

Magdalena Grausz

The way her work was obscured by Carl's likely would not have troubled Gertrud, but what she discovered did. During the chaos of Budapest's final months, Carl had been carrying on an affair with Magda Grausz, a 33-year-old Hungarian Jewish woman whose 6-year-old daughter Agnès had been born in Britain—making her an enemy national as well as Jewish. Carl had classified Magda as a "housekeeper" in the British embassy residence, conferring diplomatic protection on both mother and child. But the protection came at a price to his marriage. A contemporary account captured the painful reality:

"Lutz does not hide his feelings for Magda very well and, in the evening, brings her bouquet to the servant quarters and a second identical one to his wife Trudi one floor above. His helpful wife, who stands firmly on the grounds with both feet, and who also helps Lutz in his work wherever possible, must have become wise to the situation before long."

— Tom Topol, Passport

In 1945, Gertrud and Carl separated. After the war ended in 1946, they agreed on what they called a "friendly divorce." Carl married Magda and adopted Agnés. Little is recorded about Magda's first husband, who had 'gone underground' and somehow survived the war.

For Gertrud, the separation marked a decisive break. Up to this point, Carl's life had been her life—his posting had been her posting, his work had been her work. Now she was suddenly on her own, with three decades of field experience but no formal qualifications or employment history.

Gertrud in Finland working for Don Suisse

Yet the crisis became her liberation. Within weeks of the separation, Gertrud returned to what she knew best—humanitarian work. In January 1946, she joined Don Suisse, a Swiss relief organization assisting civilians in war-devastated countries. Her own words capture the purpose that animated this new chapter:

"It was thus obvious that I wanted to devote all my time and strength towards helping children and mothers. In January 1946 I joined Don Suisse, a semi-official relief organization created to assist civilian victims in war devastated countries. Don Suisse sent me to Sarajevo, where I had the function of distributing badly needed clothing and shoes to the population of war-devastated villages throughout Bosnia (in cooperation with the Yugoslav Red Cross). From there I was transferred to Finland (late summer 1946 until spring 1947) cooperating with Suomen Huolto, and as of May 1947 I represented Don Suisse in Poland. Shortly before Don Suisse ceased to exist (late 1948), I met Al Davidson, then Director of UNICEF's European Office, who invited me to join UNICEF, my having had war- and post-war experience in various types of emergency programmes."

— Gertrud Lutz-Frankhauser, Interview with Reinhard Freiberg, 1984

From Don Suisse, she would eventually make her way to UNICEF—and to her life's most consequential work.

First Woman Chief of Mission

Whilst working in Poland, Gertrud met Albert Davidson, former Chief Counsel of UNRRA. Davidson had played a crucial role in finding a way by which UNICEF could be created quickly and then ensuring that UNRRA's unspent funds went to UNICEF rather than returning to member states. Davidson became head of UNICEF's Paris office in 1947. After observing Gertrud's work in Poland, he recruited her to lead UNICEF's office there.

Gertrud Lutz-Frankhauser thus became the first woman to serve as a UNICEF Representative—or, as it was called then, 'Chief of Mission'. She headed UNICEF Poland from 1947 until the office closed under pressure of the communist authorities in 1951. These were not easy years for UNICEF or other foreign aid agencies in Poland. From the beginning of 1947 the country was firmly under communist control. The government held a strong anti-Western and anti-UN stance. Most foreign NGOs were forced to close soon after the new authorities took charge. Yet Gertrud became known both in Poland and within UNICEF for running an excellent programme and maintaining warm relations where other agencies could not.

Poland: Building While Others Departed

Under Lutz's leadership, UNICEF Poland expanded its child-feeding project from 400,000 children in 1947 to over one million by 1950. In response to appalling TB rates among children, UNICEF worked with the Polish government and the Danish Red Cross to equip health centres, provide X-ray equipment and antibiotics, and support an anti-rickets campaign.

"With a few exceptions,.... the contacts with the Government were very friendly and effective throughout the lifetime of the Mission. On arrival of the first shipment in October 1947, there was a tremendous welcome by high officials from various ministries. However, 1950 was a somewhat trying period. Contrary to previous years, it seemed to become more and more difficult for Polish officials .... we were going through a period when journalists and officials had little choice, Now, this is the official side, but what about the human side?"

"While there was no mass starvation, the great majority of Polish children were underweight. Lack of adequate food, in addition to most unsatisfactory housing conditions, greatly increased the tuberculosis rate. Tuberculosis among children was then appallingly frequent, and the disease was reported to be spreading alarmingly among the youth and middle-aged people. Hence, these children needed food and medical attention, and it became imperative to cooperate with other organisations, in particular the Danish Red Cross in its BCG vaccination mass campaign. Moreover, UNICEF supported the anti-rickets campaign and granted fellowships to young doctors... the feeding programme benefiting around four hundred thousand children at the outset,... gradually expanded, reaching, by 1950, over one million children through maternal and child health centres and schools. Complying with the Government's request, UNICEF participated in the setting up of five milk powder factories which, as far as I know, are still fully operating. In addition, UNICEF also supplied equipment for milk collecting centres, pasteurisation units, and so on. The BCG vaccination ... called for UNICEF assistance in the setting up of health centres... and UNICEF supplied, among others, 140 x-rays, streptomycin, etc."

— Interview with Reinhard Freiberg, 1984

The most substantial achievement was helping Poland re-establish its dairy industry, which had been largely destroyed in the war. UNICEF helped equip milk-collection points, pasteurisation and milk-drying plants. By the time the programme closed at the end of 1950, the refurbished milk industry had allowed Poland to end its dependence on imported American dried milk. Forty years later, those plants were still operating.

UNICEF Establishes Offices in Latin America

By late 1949, the opportunities for UNICEF action in Europe and China were ending, yet the needs of children in many other parts of the world—particularly Latin America—were serious and growing. In February 1949, Brazil had been the first Latin American country to make a formal request for UNICEF assistance. Recognizing the shift, Maurice Pate sent UNICEF's second Chief of Mission in China, Dr. Leo Eloesser, to explore programme possibilities across the region in early 1950. 

Brazil signed a Basic Agreement with UNICEF in June 1950.  Brazil's delegation to the UN was among the most vocal in calling for UN agencies to expand their focus beyond Europe and Asia. Indeed, when Eleanor Roosevelt herself argued for UNICEF's disbanding in the 1950 Third Committee meeting, it was Brazil who argued forcefully for the organisation's extension and expansion.

UNICEF's Brazil office opened not in Rio de Janeiro but in the northern city of João Pessoa—placing the mission close to the country's region of greatest need: the north and northeast. As the programme expanded to cover more states, the office was later moved to Rio de Janeiro in September 1951.

Brazil: A New Challenge

When Gertrud returned to the Paris office in 1951, she was recovering from a serious back problem. When her health had improved somewhat, Davidson proposed several other posts before she agreed to go to Brazil. When she arrived in October 1951, Dick Heyward welcomed her at the airport. She had a brief turnover with Sotomayor, to understand the challenges ahead.

A Mexican paediatrician, Dr. Martinez Sotomayor, had been appointed as the first UNICEF Chief of Mission in Brazil. However, Sotomayor found travelling through the northeast hard on his health. He asked for a replacement less than a year into the post. Gertrud later offered a sympathetic assessment: he was "no doubt, a good paediatrician, but he had been used to working in a well set-up children's clinic in Mexico City, and seemed to be totally unaware of what was awaiting him on his travels through the backlands of the northeast of Brazil."

With her experience establishing supplementary feeding, milk plants and TB control programmes, she was the perfect successor. She travelled extensively in the interior, riding in jeeps and ancient, bumpy Douglas DC-3 aircraft. The programme had very little cash, which she used for training of government logistics personnel and an innovative project for training rural teachers. What the programme did have was large quantities of milk-powder from Canada and the US. She spearheaded massive child nutrition and feeding campaigns in the drought-affected northeast. These campaigns laid a basis for other efforts to bring mothers to MCH centres and children to schools.

"I emphasise that nothing can surpass the value of breast-feeding and that this had already then been fully recognised! Strangely enough, however, this was a real problem in the Northeast of Brazil, in the sense that most mothers could breast-feed for a very short period only, often less than one, and seldom more than three months. Personally, I cannot help but wonder whether the periodic droughts over many generations, all along subjecting the entire population to most serious privations (hunger), could not be partly responsible for this incapacity of mothers to breast-feed over a normal period. As a result of this situation hundreds of babies fall prey to dehydration and death usually occurs within a day or two unless immediate medical care in the form of rehydration can be provided. It was like a bait inducing mothers to go to MCH centres for orientation and inducing children to attend school. On my many trips to the farthest corners of the assisted States and Territories my satisfaction was great in finding that, in spite of so many adverse factors, UNICEF supplies were reaching beneficiaries according to plan. At times I could, nevertheless, not help but feel that all of us, on the so-called 'donating' side, are a bunch of jokers, when on the one side insisting—as indeed UNICEF should—that supplies reach the most needy in the poorest areas, while at the same time expecting that warehousing, distribution, and accounting records meet our high standards from the outset."

— Interview with Reinhard Freiberg, 1984

She mastered Portuguese, noting with a smile that some of its nasal sounds reminded her of her native Bernese German dialect. Her work was so highly regarded that the Brazil Herald dubbed her "the angel" of Brazil when she departed, and she was made an honorary citizen of several Brazilian states.

She would continue as UNICEF Representative in Brazil for thirteen years—from 1951 to 1964—her longest and most successful international posting.

An Uncomfortable Regional Director Encounters Three Women

In the early 1950s, as UNICEF expanded across Latin America, it was organizing new offices in Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru alongside the Brazil operation. Gertrud Lutz may have been UNICEF's first woman representative, but she was not the only formidable woman building the organisation's Latin American presence.

Alice Shaffer was a social worker from Chicago who had headed the office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Berlin in 1939.  She is remembered for having come face-to-face with Adolf Hitler one day in the a hospital.  We have no record of what they said to each other.  When World War II broke, Shaffer left Germany and worked in Paraguay and Cuba to develop child welfare services. After the war she joined the AFSC project in Gaza which was partly funded by UNICEF.   In July 1949, Alice Shaffer became Chief of Mission for the UNICEF area office in Guatemala, covering Central America and the Caribbean—a role she held until 1958. She then travelled for UNICEF formulating child services in Africa and Asia, and in 1966 returned to Latin America, eventually replacing Gertrud Lutz as representative in Brazil until her retirement in 1969.

Cordelia Trimble took charge of the Ecuador office in 1951. Like Shaffer, Trimble came from the American Friends Service Committee project in Gaza. She brought to her work a steely determination honed through difficult humanitarian service. While working in Ecuador, Trimble married Arthur Robinson, who was also working in Latin America for UNICEF. Robinson later joined the regional office in Beirut as Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

In 1952, as Gertrud was settling into Brazil, a Frenchman, Robert Davée, was appointed Regional Director for Latin America. The Regional Office, initially established in Lima, moved to New York in 1957 and oversaw several countries, including direct supervision of the representatives in Brazil, Ecuador and Guatemala. Davée held the position until 1962.

"In the fifties and sixties, two other women were heading UNICEF offices—Alice Shaffer in Mexico and Cordelia Trimble, who then married Arthur Robinson, in Ecuador. As a somewhat amusing factor, I might add that Mr. Robert Davée, a Frenchman, was then Regional Director and said to be somewhat reluctant to working with women in leading positions. Yet, it so happened that precisely in his area, three of the four then so-called 'Chiefs of Mission' were women! I believe that Robert Davée soon realised that all three women held him in very high regard, striving as he was to give their best for the welfare of children. After a few minor initial difficulties, there never arose any real problems, and reciprocal respect and affection soon held the floor. Once, however, Robert said to me: 'Gertrud, I have difficulty in telling you off because you are a woman.' When I said: 'My dear Robert, just go ahead, please,' he merely replied, 'Well, just now I cannot think of anything.' That concluded the matter."

— Interview with Reinhard Freiberg, 1984

After a few minor initial difficulties, she noted, there never arose any real problems. By all accounts, Gertrud, Shaffer and Trimble simply got on with their work—establishing programmes, navigating local politics, building relationships with governments and communities. If Davée had misgivings about women in field leadership, the evidence of their competence and results gradually spoke for itself.

Turkey: Malaria Eradication

In 1964, Gertrud accepted a transfer to Turkey reluctantly. She had spent thirteen highly successful years heading the UNICEF mission in Brazil and feared her departure would disrupt the momentum of her work there. The Brazil Herald captured her legendary status with a farewell: "The angel flies to Turkey."

The priority defining her work in Turkey proved to be a massive UNICEF malaria eradication campaign, particularly urgent in the country's remote eastern regions and Kurdish provinces. The campaign quickly encountered a critical obstacle: of the 400 Willys Jeeps supplied as kits and assembled in Istanbul, roughly 100 were not operational. The local drivers, given no maintenance training, had been left to decipher repairs using English-language manufacturers' manuals—an impossible task in regions where English was rarely spoken and literacy itself was limited.

Gertrud moved with characteristic practicality. She arranged hands-on vehicle maintenance courses for drivers and mechanics and had the technical documentation translated into Turkish.

Biafra: UN Opposition and ICRC Stalling

After more than a decade in the field, Gertrud's commitment to field-level work remained unwavering. As she reflected: even decades into her career, she was "fundamentally a field person, feeling closest to the people in poor areas of the countries I had been assigned to" — having spent "years and years...at the end where UNICEF was rendering its assistance." Yet duty called her to Geneva in a different capacity.

When Gertrud arrived in Geneva as Deputy Regional Director for Europe and North Africa from her post in Turkey, she stepped into one of UNICEF's most fraught crises. The Nigerian civil war and the impending famine in Biafra were claiming thousands of children's lives, yet the international response was paralyzed by conflicting pressures. Dick Heyward was deeply troubled—both by reports of killings and starvation, and by the unwillingness of Secretary-General U Thant, UN agencies, and the International Committee of the Red Cross to act decisively. U Thant had increasingly sided with the Nigerian government, ordering UN agencies to provide assistance only with written agreement from Lagos.

The ICRC itself seemed trapped by institutional logic. As a body designed for international conflicts, not civil wars, it lacked both precedent and mandate for this crisis. Moreover, the ICRC and the League of Red Cross societies possessed severely limited capacity for locating and delivering relief aid in active conflict zones. Heyward assigned Gertrud as UNICEF's liaison with the ICRC, betting that her Swiss nationality and past associations with the organisation would move them to act. In order to be closer to the inner workings of ICRC she moved from Paris and established a satellite office in Geneva. The assignment reflected both the gravity of the crisis and Heyward's confidence in her ability to navigate institutional resistance in service of urgent humanitarian need. Charles Egger would later join her as UNICEF's chief link with ICRC throughout the Biafran crisis, but it was Gertrud who bore the initial burden of galvanizing a reluctant institution.

Switzerland: Home and Final Years

After retiring from UNICEF in 1971, Gertrud might have faded into quiet life at home. Instead, she continued to represent UNICEF in international meetings and the Swiss National Committee in national events. Then—unexpectedly—she entered Swiss politics.

Switzerland had only recently embraced women's political participation, and when Gertrud was elected to a town council in 1972, she became the first female politician in her canton of Bern. As the sole woman among her male colleagues, she brought the same quiet competence and determination that had defined her thirty years in the field. Later, when she found that her work as a Councillor competed with her work for UNICEF, she withdrew from electoral office, choosing where her impact could be greatest.

Gertrud Lutz-Frankhauser died on 29 June 1995, remembered as one of UNICEF's most decorated and respected pioneers. Throughout her career—from Budapest's embassy basement to Brazil's remote interior, from Poland's communist winters to Geneva's institutional struggles—she had demonstrated that field commitment, humanitarian conviction, and quiet resilience could overcome institutional resistance and transform the lives of vulnerable children across the globe.

Note: The 2021 article "In Latin America It Was the Women Who Led" covers some of the same story.   The story of Alice Shaffer and Cordelia Trimble also features in a coming article on Count Folke Bernadotte and his role in UNICEF's first assistance to a project in Gaza. For more on the Biafra crisis see The Begins War Begins and UNICEF Responds and Biafra; UNICEF and the SG