Gertrud Bäumer

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Gertrud Bäumer
Chairman of the first German women's congress in Berlin in early March 1912. Back row from left: Elisabeth Altmann-Gottheiner , Martha Voss-Zietz, Alice Bensheimer , Anna Pappritz . Front row from left: Helene von Forster , Gertrud Bäumer, Alice Salomon .
Ladies election - banner women to vote, Gertrud Bäumer can be seen on the far left.

Gertrud Bäumer (born September 12, 1873 in Hohenlimburg ; † March 25, 1954 in Gadderbaum ) was a German suffragette and politician . From 1919 to 1932 she was a member of the German Democratic Party and in 1920 became the first woman in Germany to be a ministerial advisor in the Interior Ministry of the German Reich .

Life

childhood and education

Gertrud Bäumer came from a pastor's family. The great-grandfather, Wilhelm Bäumer (1783–1848), was a pastor in Bodelschwingh near Lütgendortmund . As a church politician, he campaigned for the continuation of the presbyterial-synodal constitution in the Prussian province of Westphalia, founded in 1815, and throughout Prussia. Wilhelm Bäumer, who corresponded with Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), thus belonged to the larger overall context of ecclesiastical and political early constitutionalism .

After the early death of her father Emil (1845-1883), ten-year-old Gertrud moved into her grandmother's house with her mother Caroline, née Schede (1850-1929), and her two siblings. In her memoir, Bäumer describes the emptiness in her mother's life and her economic dependence on relatives as a painful but instructive experience. Regarding the desolation in the grandmother's house, she writes: “Was this women's life - this spiral around your own axis?” According to her own statement, her decision to take up a job was therefore made early on: “I wanted - and had to - for economic reasons - Become a teacher."

Gertrud Bäumer at the elementary school in Kamen in 1894

She attended the “ Höhere Töchterschule ” in Halle (Saale) and then completed the teachers ' seminar in Magdeburg . From 1894 she taught at elementary schools in Halberstadt , Kamen and Magdeburg and was thus able to support her mother financially. Soon afterwards, through an older colleague, she established contacts with the General German Teachers' Association (ADLV), whose chairwoman Helene Lange made a great impression on her both professionally and personally. In 1898 she moved to Berlin to take the senior teacher exam, which was a prerequisite for admission to studies. The woman studying at that time was in Prussia only possible with special permission of the individual professors; the enrollment of women was not officially approved until 1908.

Bäumer financed her studies herself, among other things by publishing work for the women's movement; she did not receive any support from the Hoffmann family scholarship, which was granted to every male student of her relatives.

At the University of Berlin she studied theology, German studies, philology and economics and received her doctorate there in 1904 on Goethe's Satyros .

Helene Lange and the work for the women's movement

Bäumer, like many women of the time, came to the bourgeois women's movement through her job as a teacher , which initially saw itself as a women's education movement. In Berlin she came into closer contact with Helene Lange, who was considered the undisputed leader of the teachers' movement. When, shortly after her arrival in 1898, Bäumer heard from an acquaintance that Lange was increasingly hampered in her work by an eye disease, she offered herself as an assistant. Not only did a lively joint journalistic work develop very quickly, but also an intensive friendship, which resulted in a life community that lasted until Helene Lange's death in 1930.

Lange soon recognized the intellectual potential and above-average performance of the young Gertrud Bäumer and made the decision to build her up as her successor. Last but not least, Bäumer quickly rose to board functions of the Federation of German Women's Associations ( BDF ). In 1910 she replaced Marie Stritt as chairwoman, held the office until 1919 and after this time remained the undisputed most influential figure in the association. During the war, she played a key role in the development of the National Women's Service , a charitable organization that sought to coordinate the food supply and the voluntary war effort of women within industry and business.

Her main work for the women's movement extended to work within the BDF and the monthly magazine Die Frau , which is considered to be the mouthpiece of the bourgeois women's movement. In addition, in 1916, together with Marie Baum , she took over the development and management (until 1920) of the institution of the Social Women's School and Institute of Social Education in Hamburg , a higher technical school for welfare workers. The intensive and close cooperation with the former students led to repeated meetings of the former circle in the following years.

The politician

Gertrud Bäumer was one of the representatives of difference feminism who ascribed the task of contributing to the humanization of life to the established “female principle”. Politically she identified with the social liberalism of Friedrich Naumann , with whom she worked closely from 1906; from 1912 she was editorially responsible for the culture section of his magazine Die Hilfe, founded in 1894 . After his death in 1919, she temporarily became the sole editor . With Naumann, too, she was not only linked by a working group, but also by an intense friendship.

After the Prussian association law was changed in 1908 (which until then had banned women from joining political parties), Gertrud Bäumer and Helene Lange joined the Liberal Association , in which Naumann had also been active since 1903. The Liberal Progressive People's Party (FVP) later emerged from the Liberal Association .

In 1919 Bäumer founded the German Democratic Party (DDP) together with Naumann and others , of which she was deputy chairman from 1920 to 1930. In 1919 she entered the Weimar National Assembly and had a mandate from 1920 to 1932, including from 1930 to 1932 as a member of the German State Party (DStP) , in which the German Democratic Party had been absorbed shortly before. She no longer ran for the 1932 Reichstag elections. In 1920 she was also appointed to the Reich Ministry of the Interior as a ministerial advisor, where she was responsible for the departments of youth welfare and schools. In addition, from 1926 to 1933 she was a delegate of the Reich government to the League of Nations in Geneva .

The author

In 1933, after she had been removed from her political office by the National Socialists , Bäumer turned to historical studies, travel and writing. In the autumn of 1933 she wrote her political autobiography Lebensweg durch eine Zeitwende , which she apparently understood as an “intellectual confrontation with National Socialism”. At the beginning of 1934 she moved with her second partner Gertrud von Sanden (1881-1940) to Gießmannsdorf in Silesia (today Gościszów) . In a letter to her uncle Werner Schede , she addressed the dilemma that her continued work under the National Socialists would have posed her:

“So I am dismissed with my pension and also taking into account my previous teaching days. Personally, that's the cleaner solution for me. If I were in office, I would now have to B. to make the dispositions about the Jewish children in the schools or the imminent disposition for the history lesson, by which everything that has happened since the collapse is to be defamed [OK]. That would actually be impossible for me myself. "

- Letter of April 28, 1933

Despite the ban on speaking against her in 1939 , she continued to give lectures, especially in Protestant circles. "Your home became a meeting place for friends and a refuge for the persecuted." Against the sharp criticism of fellow campaigners such as Dorothee von Velsen , Anna Pappritz and Marie-Elisabeth Lüders , she also decided to continue to publish her magazine Die Frau in collaboration with Frances Magnus-von Hausen , even if she made bigger and bigger concessions over time towards the inclusion of National Socialist content.

Gertrud Bäumer's position on National Socialism before 1933

Up until 1933, Gertrud Bäumer had published her daily political essays mainly in the magazine Die Hilfe . In this journal, which was closely linked to the DDP and saw itself as a forum for the national-social circle around Naumann, increasing attention was paid to the phenomenon of the emerging National Socialism.

In the autumn of 1923 in Bavaria increasing rumors of a "march on Berlin" (on the model of Mussolini's March on Rome ) and conspiracy plans between Hitler and parts of the Army command aware, Gertrud Baumer called the events in Bavaria as

“Unscrupulous struggle for power by people to whom the empire is only worth something as much as they rule in it, today as it was before the world war. And the well-behaved and gullible bourgeoisie runs after them and, with the tribute of their sufferings, disappointed hopes and good patriotic feelings, turns a coup of the old 'society' into a popular movement. "

When the so-called Hitler putsch actually took place on November 9, 1923 , she commented with resigned words:

"Worse than this tragic-comic trickery game is the fact that this class offensive has also penetrated republican parties and broken or at least paralyzed their strength for the defense of the republic. The economic rulers in Germany are, at best, Republicans of reason. "

With the increasing success of the “movement” she warned that “the political victory of this wave of sentiment […] would be the German collapse. More dangerous than these moods themselves is the fact that even those who do not share them do not see all their dangerousness. "

She called Hitler's Mein Kampf an "astonishingly confused book"; their verdict against National Socialism remained negative:

"National Socialism, whatever its value may be, is more destructive than constructive as long as its leaders act irresponsibly: irresponsible in the disparagement of their opponents, irresponsible in the demagogically falsified representation of the German situation and the Power relations, irresponsible in the unscrupulous 'appeal to the bastard in people', as was rightly said in the Reichstag, irresponsible in the unrestrained exploitation of incapacity and in the abuse of decent and pure powers. "

She herself hoped for a renewal of the center , although she was aware of the fact that due to the fact that the parties were divided, a common political profile of the “center” could hardly be realized. For them, however, the basis always had to be “the preservation of civil liberty in the spirit of the imperial constitution”. However, it did not reject all ideas and goals of National Socialism from the outset. She recognized very well that the National Socialists were not only successful because of their "technique of mass processing". The conglomerate of ideas as presented in Nazi ideology appealed to a variety of different interests. There could be no discussion about the inhuman anti-Semitism and the “internal political atrocity propaganda” of this party, which wanted to be a “movement”. However, it is undisputed that the NSDAP was able to fill a deficit in party politics, even if it was only through promises. Bäumer took the mental crisis, which in their opinion was revealed in the successes of the National Socialists, seriously. A reform of parliamentarism was important to her, as, in her opinion, it threatened to develop more and more into small-faith interest-specificism.

The semantic proximity of the terms “ national-social ”, as the Help Circle called itself , and the “National Socialist” concept of the NSDAP led to a very special focus on this party. Gertrud Bäumer saw the essential difference, however, in the fact that Naumann “combined National Socialism with democracy” and was carried on in this sense. The "Epigone [n] à la Hitler", which Bäumer described as "hysterical whiskers", made them angry in view of their "economic-political petty bourgeois phantasy":

“If what today is called National Socialism, at the same time flattened and run down, would remain claplessly below the level at which the old National Socialists worked, then there would have to be serious youth who are looking for a goal and a way in dark times to find a connection here - transforming and redesigning some individual items, but following the general idea that lifts socialism out of the Marxist constriction and grasps it from within as the task of creating the nation. "

When she had to watch the spectacle of the NSDAP MPs moving in in party uniform at the opening of the Reichstag on October 13, 1930, she wrote: “A heated protest arises in one against the will to violence, which is expressed in a prestigious manner in this troop's dress . ”Gertrud Bäumer rejected a substantive dispute or even a collaboration with the National Socialists. Rather, it is important to fight

“... against a power that wants to replace the citizen with the political soldier at the expense of respect for the living conscience of the individual and through the forcible suspension of all other views - something essentially un-German, un-Germanic. Only through the ruthless fight against this new German-Völkisch edition of an outrageous Byzantinism will the real and powerful of the movement be freed from an evil and very unracial alloy! "

Bäumer's critical but ultimately smoothing attitude towards National Socialism is symptomatic of her reformist and state-supporting approach: Her endeavors were aimed at improvements within systems, whatever systems they are. In the time of National Socialism, however, she accepted compromises that most of her fellow campaigners in the women's movement were no longer acceptable.

National Socialism, World War II and the Post-War Period

After her impeachment in 1933 and moving to Gießmannsdorf together with Gertrud von Sanden, she devoted herself more to her literary work and in the following years went on study trips to Switzerland and Italy with Ludwig Nießen and von Sanden's daughter Isabel Hamer . In 1936, she wrote her extensive work Adelheid - Mother of the Kingdoms . Until recently, Bäumer had believed that, despite considerable concessions to censorship and other press requirements, the woman could still convey remnants of female -motivated content with the publication - an optimism that hardly any of her former companions shared. Companions such as Anna Pappritz , Marie-Elisabeth Lüders , Alice Salomon and Dorothee von Velsen accused her, in addition to self-censorship, of not separating herself, or only inadequately, from National Socialist anti-Semitism. In 1944 she and Frances Magnus-von Hausen finally stopped appearing for the woman due to a lack of paper .

Honorary grave of Helene Lange in the cemetery Heerstrasse in Berlin-Westend with a memorial inscription for Gertrud Bäumer

In the winter of 1945 Bäumer fled to Saalfeld / Saale (Körnerstraße 6) and on to Bamberg with the grandson of their partner, who had since died . She tried to take part in the political rebuilding of the Federal Republic and in particular in the rebuilding of a women's movement, but had to realize that, especially in post-war women's organizations, her slow behavior during the National Socialist era was interpreted as opportunism and her view of women's politics as out of date was true. She was also active in the founding group of the Christian Social Union (CSU). Bäumer gave a few lectures, especially on theological and historical topics, but soon began to suffer from atherosclerosis , which gradually made public activity impossible for her.

Gertrud Bäumer moved to Bad Godesberg with her sister Else Bäumer (1875–1959) in 1949 . At the beginning of 1954 she was transferred to the Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten in Bethel (Bielefeld), where she died on March 25th. She is buried in the local cemetery.

On the grave monument of the honorary grave of the state of Berlin for Helene Lange in the cemetery Heerstraße in Berlin-Westend , an inscription in memoriam of Gertrud Bäumer commemorates .

Honors

Gertrud Bäumer on a West German postage stamp

Numerous schools were named after Gertrud Bäumer, including:

Streets were also named after her, for example in her birthplace Hagen - Hohenlimburg , as well as in Munich , Wiesbaden , Lünen , Tübingen and in Troisdorf near Bonn. In 1974 the Deutsche Bundespost issued a special stamp with the portrait of Gertrud Bäumer.

Fonts

  • Handbook of the women's movement. Part I and II (edited by Helene Lange). Moeser, Berlin 1901. Available on the Internet at: https://archive.org/stream/handbuchderfrau04ratgoog#page/n8/mode/2up .
  • The higher education institutions and the girls' school system in the German Reich (with Conrad Rethwisch and Rudolf Lehmann ). Asher, Berlin 1904.
  • History of high school courses for women in Berlin . Moeser, Berlin 1906.
  • From the child's soul . Voigtländers Verlag, Leipzig 1908, together with Lili Droescher .
  • Women's movement and sexual ethics. Contributions to the modern criticism of marriage . Salzer, Heilbronn 1909.
  • The social idea in the worldviews of the 19th century. The main features of modern social philosophy . Salzer, Heilbronn 1910.
  • The woman and the spiritual life . CF Amelangs Verlag, Leipzig 1911 (→ summary of the description by Elisabeth Siewert .)
  • The German Women's Congress. All lectures (editorship), Teubner, Leipzig 1912.
  • The woman in national economy and state life of the present . DVA, Stuttgart / Berlin 1914.
  • Studies on women . Herbig, Berlin 1921.
  • The mental crisis . Herbig, Berlin 1924.
  • Fundamentals of Democratic Politics , G. Braun, Karlsruhe 1928.
  • German school policy , G. Braun, Karlsruhe 1928.
  • Home chronicle during the world war . Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1930.
  • Sense and forms of spiritual guidance . Herbig, Berlin 1930.
  • New humanism . Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1930.
  • Life path through a turning point . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1933.
  • Men and women in the spiritual development of the German people . Winderlich, Tübingen 1934.
  • Adelheid - mother of the kingdoms . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1936.
  • The park - story of a summer . Herbig, Berlin 1937.
  • Wolfram von Eschenbach . Cotta, Stuttgart 1938.
  • The King's Mountain - The Epic of the Longobard People . Bruckmann, Munich 1938.
  • The Power of Love - The Way of Dante Alighieri . Bruckmann, Munich 1941.
  • The knightly human being - the Naumburg donor figures in 16 color photos by Walter Hege . FAHerbig Verlagbuchhandlung Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin oJ (1941).
  • Frau Rath Goethe - The wisdom of the mother . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1949.
  • The three divine comedies of the West. Wolfram's Parsifal. Dante's Divina Commedia. Goethe's Faust . Regensberg, Münster 1949.
  • Ricarda Yikes . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1949.
  • Otto I. and Adelheid . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1951.
  • The royal head. A story . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1951.
  • In the light of memory . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1953 (autobiography).
  • One week in May - seven days of the young Goethe . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1944.
  • Life's like love band. Letters . Edited by Emmy Beckmann, Wunderlich, Tübingen 1956.
  • Portrait of lovers - form and change of woman . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1958 (The fate of important women - from Heloise and Vittoria Colonna to Lou Andreas-Salomé and Eleonora Duse).
  • Eleonora Duse . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1958 (portrait of the Italian actress with whom Bäumer was personally known).

Literature about Gertrud Bäumer (selection)

  • Marie Luise Bach: Gertrud Bäumer. Biographical data and texts for a personality picture. With a foreword by Line Kossolapow . Deutscher Studien Verlag, Weinheim 1989.
  • Manfred Berger : Who was ... Gertrud Bäumer? , in: Sozialmagazin 2001 / H. 7-8, pp. 6-9.
  • Maximilian Buchka: Bäumer, Gertrud. In: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work. Lambertus, Freiburg i.Br. 1998. pp. 64-68.
  • Ingeborg Drewitz : Gertrud Bäumer (1873–1954). In: Hans Jürgen Schultz (Ed.): Women. Portraits from two centuries. Kreuz Verlag, Stuttgart 1987.
  • Orla Maria Fels: The German bourgeois women's movement represented as a legal phenomenon in the appearance of Gertrud Bäumer. Photo print, Stuttgart 1959.
  • Margit Göttert: Power and Eros: Women's Relations and Female Culture around 1900 - a new perspective on Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer. Ulrike Helmer, Frankfurt / M. 2000.
  • Susanne Maurer , Wolfgang Schröer: "I circle around ..." The educational theory of the middle based on the example of Gertrud Bäumer. In: Liegle, Treptow (Hrsg.): Worlds of education in pedagogy in early childhood and in social pedagogy . Lambertus, Freiburg i.Br. 2002.
  • Angelika Schaser : Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer. A political community . 2nd revised and updated edition, Böhlau, Köln u. a. 2010. ISBN 978-3-412-09100-2 .
  • Angelika Schaser : Bäumer, Gertrud . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 35-37 .
  • Caroline Hopf, Eva Matthes (eds.): Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer. Your commitment to the education of women and girls. Commented texts. Julius Klinkhardt Publishing House, Bad Heilbrunn 2001.
  • Caroline Hopf, Eva Matthes (eds.): Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer. Your contribution to the upbringing and educational discourse from the Wilhelmine Empire to the Nazi era. Commented texts. Julius Klinkhardt Publishing House, Bad Heilbrunn 2003.
  • Ulrike Prokop : The longing for national unity. On the conservatism of the bourgeois women's movement before 1933. In: Gabriele Dietze (ed.): Overcoming speechlessness: Texts from the new women's movement. Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1979.
  • Ulrike Prokop: Elements of female authoritarianism. The longing for the “national community” in the bourgeois women's movement before 1933. In: Christel Eckhart, Dagmar Henze (ed.): Dead ends of self-assertion. Feminist analyzes of right-wing extremism and violence. Jenior & Pressler, Kassel 1995.
  • Gabriele Starke: Gertrud Bäumer's work in women's politics 1910–1933. Dissertation from the Faculty of Philosophy and History, Leipzig 1933.
  • Kurt Tucholsky alias Ignaz Wrobel: Old Bäumerhand, the horror of democracy . Commentary on the introduction of the law to protect young people from trash and dirty writing . In: Die Weltbühne , December 14, 1926, No. 50, p. 916.
  • Marianne Weber : From yesterday to tomorrow. A gift for Gertrud Bäumer. Hans Bott, Berlin 1933.
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .

Web links

Commons : Gertrud Bäumer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Exhibition of women's election on 100 years of women's suffrage in the Historical Museum Frankfurt am Main from August 30, 2018 to January 20, 2019.
  2. ^ Albrecht Geck: Schleiermacher as a church politician. The debate about the reform of the constitution of the church in Prussia (1799-1823), . In: Unio et Confessio . tape 20 . Bielefeld 1996, p. 221-231 and 261-265 .
  3. ↑ Gertrud Bäumer: Life through a turning point . Tübingen 1933, p. 101, ISBN 3596237386 .
  4. ↑ Gertrud Bäumer: Life through a turning point . Tübingen 1933, p. 96.
  5. ↑ Ludwig Gerstein : How are we related to each other? . Munich 1971, p. 87.
  6. ↑ cf. Angelika Schaser: Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer. A political community . 2. through and actual Edition, Böhlau, Cologne 2010 ISBN 978-3-412-09100-2
  7. ↑ cf. Sabine Hering: The war profiteers - practice and ideology of the German women's movement in the First World War. Pfaffenweiler 1992, ISBN 978-3-890-85368-0 .
  8. ↑ Marie Baum: Review of my life . Heidelberg 1950, p. 209 ff.
  9. ↑ Gertrud Bäumer: Life through a turning point . Tübingen 1933, p. 250 ff.
  10. ↑ Biographical summary of the German Historical Museum .
  11. ↑ Vogel 1973, p. 398.
  12. ↑ Bundesarchiv Koblenz, NL 1076 Bäumer.
  13. ↑ Schumacher 1991, p. 47.
  14. ↑ Vogel 1973, p. 398.
  15. ^ Marie-Elisabeth Lüders: Do not be afraid. Political and personal issues from more than 80 years. Cologne u. Opladen 1963, pp. 140 f., ISBN 978-3-322-98441-8 .
  16. ↑ Broszat, Frei: 1989, p. 182ff.
  17. ^ Die Hilfe , November 1, 1923, p. 368.
  18. ^ Die Hilfe , December 1, 1923, p. 403.
  19. ^ Die Hilfe , March 5, 1932, p. 221; Highlighting in the original printed blocked.
  20. ^ Die Hilfe , September 20, 1930, p. 937.
  21. ^ Die Hilfe , March 26, 1932, p. 309.
  22. ^ Die Hilfe , June 18, 1932, p. 578.
  23. ^ Die Hilfe , June 18, 1932, p. 579.
  24. ^ Die Hilfe , September 20, 1930, p. 937.
  25. ^ Die Hilfe , September 20, 1930, p. 938.
  26. ^ Die Hilfe , June 1, 1929, p. 268 ff.
  27. ^ Die Hilfe , August 15, 1924, p. 267; Highlighting in the original printed blocked.
  28. ^ Die Hilfe , August 15, 1924, p. 266.
  29. ^ Die Hilfe , August 15, 1924, p. 268 f.
  30. ^ Die Hilfe , October 18, 1930, p. 1033.
  31. ^ Die Hilfe , July 16, 1932, p. 676.
  32. ↑ Angelika Schaser : Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer. A political community . 2nd revised and updated edition, Böhlau, Köln u. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-09100-2 , pp. 268-284.
  33. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 483.
personal data
SURNAME Bäumer, Gertrud
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German women's rights activist, politician (DDP, DStP), MdR, social worker
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Hohenlimburg
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1954
Place of death Gadderbaum