Alice Bensheimer

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 .

Alice Bensheimer (born May 6, 1864 in Bingen as Alice Coblenz , † March 20, 1935 in Mannheim ) was a German women's rights activist and long-time secretary of the Federation of German Women's Associations (BDF).

Life

Alice Bensheimer was the daughter of the Jewish wine merchant Zacharias Coblenz and his wife Emilie, née Meyer from Bingen. Their course of education has not been handed down, but is likely to have corresponded to the privately organized half-education of higher daughters at the time. In 1885 she married the Mannheim publisher Julius Bensheimer . Apparently soon after her two children had outgrown the high-care age, she turned to social, municipal and women's political tasks. First active primarily in Mannheim, she became increasingly involved in the BDF at the national level from the turn of the 20th century. She was a member of the Progressive People's Party (FVP) and the German Democratic Party (DDP). Her husband Julius Bensheimer was a well-known left-liberal local politician and publisher (including Neue Badische Landeszeitung ). One of her sisters was the poet Ida Dehmel . With the triumphal march of National Socialism, the proud Mannheim native and Jewish woman with a passion for women fell silent. A merciful death in 1935 spared her the confrontation with the persecution to which the Jewish bourgeoisie, previously well integrated in the city, was soon exposed.

Act

In 1896 she founded the Women's Association Caritas, a women's organization that performed social tasks in the local Jewish community. She was the sister association of the August Lamey Lodge. A year later, Bensheimer was likely to have been one of the founding members of the Mannheim branch of the Frauenbildung - Frauenstudium association, an association that was particularly active in southern Germany and advocated the opening of grammar schools and universities to girls. Politically in the sense of the supra-regional bourgeois women's movement, Alice Bensheimer becomes tangible from 1899 when she became a poor carer and a member of the municipal commission for the poor and youth welfare office. In 1905 she took over the office of secretary on the board of the BDF. She held this office until 1931 and also worked as an editor of the BDF news paper . In addition, she was a poor carer in Mannheim and a member of the municipal poor and youth welfare office, a member of several other local associations of the civil women's movement and the Baden women's association . During the First World War, she took over the management of the War Welfare Center in Mannheim and she was also the chairwoman of the Mannheim emergency community in the Weimar Republic until 1933. Alice Bensheimer herself started or supported numerous local and national social initiatives. In 1916, the Mannheim association for women's education - women's studies succeeded in founding the social women's school for the training of welfare workers and related women's professions, with Elisabeth Altmann-Gottheiner as the lecturer at the commercial college as executive chairwoman and Marie Bernays as director. Alice Bensheimer engaged in intensive networking in the women's movement and cooperated with the state-affiliated Badischer Frauenverein as well as with the social democratic women's movement, which was viewed suspiciously in the German Empire. She was convinced that women's interests should take precedence over political camps, and advocated female engagement in social issues as a school and pioneer for women's suffrage. On the occasion of the 300th birthday of her hometown Mannheim, she wrote in the Neue Badische Landes-Zeitung : “Well, you understood the demands of the time, you allowed your girls to participate in the fight against poverty and misery, limitation and ignorance. More frankly than other cities you have allowed these work-happy women to appear equal to men, not subordinate. Let this be my wish: continue to use the labor that your women have offered you! Do not see in them only mothers of the house, see in them also mothers of the city! You will thrive twice, you city of jubilation, if men and women look after you and look after you! "

Works

• "Rosengarten-Blätter: Bazar 1903, compiled in favor of the bazaar from original articles by Alice Bensheimer", Mannheim 1903.
• “The organization of the Badischer Frauenverein, lecture given by Alice Bensheimer, Mannheim, at the international women's congress in Berlin”, on June 13, 1904, Mannheim 1904.
• "Social welfare", in: Mannheim since the establishment of the empire. 1871–1907, presented by the Statistical Office on behalf of the city council, Mannheim 1907, pp. 424–439.
• “The woman in the service of the community”. In: Die Frau 15 (1908), pp. 193-199.
• “Practical tips for drafting petitions”, in: Yearbook of the Women's Movement 1912, Leipzig and Berlin 1912, pp. 201–204.
• "The Organization of the Federation of German Women's Associations". In: Yearbook of the Women's Movement 1913, Leipzig and Berlin 1913, pp. 83–87.
• Apartment and wife: five lectures by Marie Baum, Maria Kröhne, Alice Bensheimer, Dorothea Staudinger and City Councilor Flesch , 1913.
• "Activity report of the Federation of German Women's Associations from July 1, 1918 to October 1, 1919". In: Yearbook of the Federation of German Women's Associations 1920, Berlin 1920, pp. 1–5.
• “Activity report of the Federation of German Women's Associations from October 1, 1919 to October 1, 1920. In: Yearbook of the Association of German Women's Associations 1921”, Berlin 1921, pp. 1–11.

literature

• Gertrud Bäumer : "Alice Bensheimer". In: Die Frau 41 (1933/34), p. 551.
• Paulina Brunner : Julius (1850–1917) and Alice Bensheimer (1864–1935): Promoters of the emancipation of Jews and women. In: Wilhelm Kreuz (ed.): Jewish students of the United Grand Ducal Lyceum - Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium Mannheim, Mannheim 2014, pp. 51–62.
• Emma Ender : Alice Bensheimer. In: Die Frau 42 (1934/35), p. 426 f.
• Sylvia Schraut : Chances and Limits of Communal Engagement of the Civic Women's Movement in the Wilhelmine Empire: The Example of Alice Bensheimer (Mannheim), in: Ernst Otto Bräunche (ed.): Stadt und Demokratie, Ostfildern 2014, pp. 179–194.
• Karl Otto Watzinger : History of the Jews in Mannheim 1650-1945. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-17-008696-0 , pp. 80-81.
• Karl Otto Watzinger: Bensheimer, Alice . In: Badische Biographien NF Volume 3. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-17-009958-2 , pp. 38-39