Helene Simon

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Helene Simon , also Henriette Simon , (born September 16, 1862 in Düsseldorf ; died December 8, 1947 in London ) was a German sociologist and co-founder of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt .

Life

Helene Simon was the daughter of the Düsseldorf banker Jacob Simon and Amalie Gompertz and grew up in a time when the middle class had daughters for marriage or for housekeeping in the parental family. Therefore, she lived with her parents until she was 34. When they moved from Cologne to Karlsruhe, in 1896 she took the chance to go to England to practice sociological studies there, if only for a year. Through the mediation of Eduard Bernstein in London, she made a lifelong friendship with Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb and became a member of their Fabian Society . In 1897, together with Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne , she was admitted to the economics lectures of Gustav Schmoller at the University of Berlin , but was unable to pursue a formal degree and basically remained an autodidact and private scholar.

Around 1898 she investigated in Schwelm , Westphalia , where her sister Elise Meyer had married, the abuses of the local textile industry. She drew attention to the labor commitment of women and children, excessively long working hours and a lack of health care in the article "The band knitters in and around Schwelm" (magazine " Soziale Praxis ", volume 8, 1898/1899). From 1919 she lived again in Schwelm for a few years.

In the years up to 1914 she published a large number of magazine articles on social issues, which appeared in SPD and trade union magazines such as Die Gleichheit and Die neue Zeit , as well as several books and book articles. She translated basic contributions by English social politicians into German. In 1905 Simon published the first German-language biography about the British social referent Robert Owen . The book was the result of her work in England and is still considered the standard work on Owen to this day. She published other biographies on William Godwin , Mary Wollstonecraft , Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne and Albert Levy . In 1904 she gave a lecture at the International Women’s Congress in Berlin on workers protection laws . In 1911 she was a committee member in the Society for Social Reform .

During the First World War , she became a full-time member of the executive working committee of “War Survivors and Damaged Welfare”, the only time she was employed as an employee. She was a functionary in the National Women's Service . Together with Ernst Francke , she had published the journal Soziale Kriegshinterbliebenenfürsorge since January 1917 .

After the war she became a member of the SPD in 1919 and again worked as a freelance writer. She played a key role in building up the workers' welfare organization founded by Marie Juchacz in 1919 and her welfare school. In 1922 she was honored with an honorary doctorate from Heidelberg University . Her last publications were made in 1932. After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, condemned to be speechless, she stayed in Germany until 1938, until after the Reichspogromnacht she was forced to emigrate to England with her sister Klara Reichmann. Her niece Frieda Fromm-Reichmann had emigrated in 1933.

David Lloyd George : Better Times , translation Helene Simon (1911)

Fonts

  • with Adele Gerhard : Motherhood and intellectual work. A psychological and sociological study based on an international survey with consideration of the historical development . Berlin: G. Reimer, 1901
  • Robert Owen. His life and its significance for the present . Jena: G. Fischer, 1905 (2nd edition 1925)
  • School and bread . Hamburg, Leipzig: L. Voss, 1907
  • William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. A biographical-sociological study . Munich: O. Beck, 1909
  • The proportion of women in German industry according to the results of the occupation census of 1907: lecture, go to d. 2. Conference on Funding d. Worker interests . Jena: Fischer, 1910
  • Lloyd George : Better times . Translation Helene Simon. Foreword by Eduard Bernstein . Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1911
  • The school lunch in Greater Berlin . Jena: Fischer, 1912. (Writings of the Society for Social Reform; H. 41 = Bd. 4, H. 8)
  • The youth law. A sociological attempt . In: Schmollers Jahrbuch , vol. 39, Munich 1915, pp. 227–281.
  • Robert Owen and Socialism. Selected from Owen's writings and introduced by Helene Simon . Berlin: Cassirer, 1919.
  • General youth welfare and warrior child welfare . In. The War Disabled and Warrior Relatives Care, Vol. 5, 1920/21, No. 8, pp. 246-254.
  • Task and goals of modern welfare . Stuttgart: Dietz, 1922 (23 pages)
  • Agricultural child labor. Results of a survey by the German Child Protection Association on child country work in 1922 . Berlin: FA Herbig, 1925
  • Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne: a collection of time and life images . 2 volumes. M. Gladbach: Volksvereins-Verlag, 1928
  • Albert Levy. Work and personality. Berlin: Emil Ebering, 1932

literature

  • Manfred Berger : Who was ... Helene Simon ?, in: Sozialmagazin 2003 / H. 4, pp. 6-8
  • Walter A. Friedländer : Helene Simon. A life for social justice. Workers' Welfare Main Committee, Bonn 1962.
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Vol. 1: Politics, economy, public life . Saur, Munich 1980, p. 700.
  • Sabine Klöhn: Helene Simon (1862–1947). German and British social reform and social legislation as reflected in their writings and their work as a social politician in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1982.
  • Marina Sassenberg: Simon, Helene (Henriette). In: Jutta Dick, Marina Sassenberg (ed.): Jewish women in the 19th and 20th centuries. Lexicon on life and work. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, ISBN 3-499-16344-6 , pp. 347-349.
  • Hans Pfaffenberger : Helene Simon In: Hans Erler , Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich , Ludger Heid (eds.): “The world was created for me.” The intellectual legacy of German-speaking Judaism. 58 portraits. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-593-35842-5 , pp. 314-323.
  • Hans Pfaffenberger : Helene Simon. In: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work. Lambertus, Freiburg im Breisgau 1998, ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 552-553.
  • Wolfgang Ayaß : Helene Simon. In: Neue Deutsche Biografie, Vol. 24, 2010, p. 433 f.
  • Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 2: Social politicians in the Weimar Republic and during National Socialism 1919 to 1945. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2018, ISBN 978-3-7376-0474-1 , p. 179 f. ( Online , PDF; 3.9 MB).

Web links

Commons : Helene Simon  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marina Sassenberg: Helene Simon, 1862–1947 , at: Jewish Women's Archive
  2. ↑ Gerd Helbeck: Jews in Schwelm . Association for local history Schwelm, 2nd edition 2007, p. 56
personal data
SURNAME Simon, Helene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Simon, Henriette
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1947
Place of death London