Thomasius Club: Larissa Schüller – Frauen in den Schaltzentralen

In the organizer's words:

The telephone came into the world with a bang. From 1900 onwards, it opened up completely new possibilities for talking to each other and exchanging information over long distances. However, the connections between people and the nationally organized telephone networks were still made by hand - mostly by young women.

As telephone operators, they not only connected people with each other. They regulated, optimized and stabilized a complex triangle of language, technology and people. The telephone exchange became a field of experimentation: a place where a pragmatic understanding of language, communication and human interaction was developed.

The Thomasius Club asks Larissa Schüller - author of the book "Kommunikationsarbeit in Telefonzentralen" - how these women of communication have shaped our world of communication and how their work continues to have an impact today.

Larissa Schüller was a research assistant at the German Department of the University of Zurich, where she completed her doctorate in cultural analysis with her project, which was located between history and linguistics. She has been a research assistant at the University of Teacher Education Zug since 2025.

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The interview was conducted by Thomas Schmidt-Lux and Ringo Rösener.