A free woman
Vienna, Stockholm, India, Eckwälden: Elisabeth Sigmund has always started anew and has never strayed from her own path. She was a pioneer of natural cosmetics and so much more. They have never been interested in conventions. A life told in four stations.
Vienna: where the love for flowers grows
When does an idea fly into your head, settle in for a lifetime? This happened to Elisabeth Sigmund when she was inspecting her mother's dressing table. It must have been around 1920, when she was an elementary school child, smelling the china jar of almond paste and the witch hazel toner. The fascination with the mystery of plants and their ability to help people create beauty and well-being probably began sometime in those quiet moments. Something big grew out of it. A vocation.
The grandmother led the girl through her garden, told her about the flowers and gave her the recipe for the crème celeste, a face cream from her Bohemian homeland. In her father's study, Elisabeth discovered a notebook with pressed flowers and studied it over and over again. At the nursery across the street, she learned how to recognize shrubs by their scent. The pharmacist in the neighborhood showed her how to make emulsions, combining watery and oily components. Elisabeth put in rose petals and added essential oil. "I didn't like the creams that you could buy, so I wanted to mix them myself with ingredients that I liked," she says later.
But it was only when Elisabeth Sigmund, after two semesters of medical school, read sentences by Rudolf Steiner that her interest took on a new quality. Steiner wrote that what is beautiful is that which reveals its inner being in its outer form - words that combined their own impulses into a meaningful whole. From then on, for Elisabeth Sigmund, beauty was no longer something superficial. Her love of medicinal plants and aesthetics became the foundation of her cosmetics.
She took courses at cosmetics companies and looked for old medical books in the university library: "All my cosmetic experiments were always motivated by a medical interest in which medicinal plants are good for the skin and practically heal them." Her mother forbade her to discuss her profession with others to speak, which was "indecorous." That didn't stop Elisabeth Sigmund. She got on her motorbike, drove to monastery libraries in the country and did research.
Stockholm: the own natural cosmetics and the "Salong för Skönhetsvård"
It was not an easy new start in Stockholm, 1948. Elisabeth and her husband Karl had decided to emigrate, to start over. Her husband made his living as a gas station attendant, ultimately working as a driving instructor. She got to her feet, had her passion on her mind, continued to mix plant extracts with beeswax or almond oil - ingredients that she ordered in organic quality from Germany and Austria, she also ordered medicinal ampoules from WALA in Eckwälden, experimented with marshmallow roots and almond flour. Karl built equipment for filling. Your cosmetics should support the skin by stimulating its own regenerative powers. And the women to whom Elisabeth Sigmund gave the creations were actually enthusiastic. When Elisabeth opened a beauty salon, Salong för Skönhetsvård, she also treated her customers with a foot bath, facial gymnastics and stimulation of the lymphatic system. The women should relax completely. "There are two beauties, one inside and one outside," she explained of this holistic approach. She had made the dream work.
India: follow the longing, expand the cosmos
What made you travel to India for a year in 1961? The opportunity! Sigmund loved getting to know new cultures, she wanted to study Indian medicine, go to the big libraries. This combination of wanderlust and thirst for knowledge shows self-confidence, courage and great openness. A modern woman ahead of her time. Because a friend's son was in New Delhi, Elisabeth Sigmund had a port of call, was able to visit the country she had been excited about since reading books about it as a child. And even when everything went wrong at the beginning, the plane did not land in New Delhi but in Mumbai, the luggage was lost, she was alone on the street, Elisabeth Sigmund did not turn around. She spent hours in the university library, discovered medicinal plants that did not exist in Europe, went to markets, bought new plant ingredients, encountered other concepts. She had a doctor explain Ayurvedic medicine to her and learned about the nurturing effects of neem, the sacred Indian tree. Knowledge that would later flow into their recipes.
Eckwälden: natural cosmetics for the world
When Elisabeth Sigmund found out in 1962 that WALA was looking for beauticians to help them develop cosmetic preparations, she wrote an eleven-page letter. Weeks later she traveled to Eckwälden, spoke about her passion for the healing and aesthetic power of plants - and the WALA developers wanted to keep her there. Not only the visitors of a beauty salon in Stockholm should benefit from the ideas of this woman!
Five years later came the Dr. Hauschka Healing Cosmetics based on Elisabeth Sigmund on the market: Nourishing Face Milk, Rose Cream and Silk Powder . The cosmetics were in demand, and orders even came from South Africa.
It was that time again: Elisabeth Sigmund started afresh, moving to Eckwälden with her husband in 1969. Passion drove her. About new products, about lectures. She trained beauticians. "It is our face that we reveal first," she said. At the age of 99, shortly before her death in 2013, Elisabeth Sigmund was only seen with make-up on. She loved to wear Hauschka lipstick.
Casual and charming. Elisabeth Sigmund loved to wear Dr. Hauschka Lipstick No. 22 millionbells .
Author: Kirsten Küppers
Photographer: WALA historical archive
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