Amalie Struve

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Amalie Struve

Elise Ferdinandine Amalie Struve (nee Siegrist, later Amalie Düsar , 1845–1847 Amalie von Struve ; born October 2, 1824 in Mannheim , Baden ; died February 13, 1862 in New York ) was a radical democratic German revolutionary of the March Revolution of 1848 / 49, early women's rights activist and writer .

Life

Elise Ferdinandine Amalie Siegrist was born out of wedlock to Elisabeth Siegrist and the officer Alexander von Sickingen in Mannheim. 1827 was by her stepfather Frederick Düsar , a language teacher adopted . He made it possible for her and her brother Pedro to have a good education, so that she could later contribute to the maintenance of the family as an educator and teacher for German and French.

Marriage to Gustav von Struve

Gustav Struve

On November 16, 1845, Elise Ferdinandine Amalie Düsar married the lawyer and radical democratic politician Gustav Karl Johann Christian von Struve , who broke up with his family from the Russian aristocracy as a result of this at the time improper marriage. In 1846, the couple switched from the Protestant denomination to German Catholicism , which aimed to unite Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism and modern science, due to their position in life reform. In 1847 Gustav von Struve gave up his title of nobility.

Amalie Struve was initially best known as the wife of Gustav Struve and by her active, fighting and agitational support of his revolutionary activities in the March Revolution of 1848/49 in Baden at his side.

March Revolution / Baden Revolution 1848/49

After the liberal February revolution in France in 1848 , which led to the overthrow of the citizen king Louis Philippe and the proclamation of the second republic, the revolutionary spark also spread to the states of the German Confederation .

During the March Revolution , the rebels strove for a unified German state and liberal reforms. In the Grand Duchy of Baden, the demand for a republic was represented most consistently by revolutionary protagonists such as Friedrich Hecker and Gustav Struve, who had a relatively broad base in the Baden popular associations (cf. Baden Revolution ). However, they were unable to assert themselves in the Frankfurt pre-parliament , which was supposed to prepare the elections for a national assembly , with their radical, even early socialist demands. Thereupon she and her followers tried to put their ideas into practice with a republican uprising, starting from Constance / southwest Germany.

Entry of a column of rioters under Gustav Struve in Lörrach on April 20, 1848 on the way to support the Hecker platoon in the battle of Kandern . (Oil painting by Friedrich Kaiser )

Amalie Struve was actively involved in these campaigns from the start. She was part of the so-called Hecker Zug , which was defeated and wiped out by the regular military on April 20, 1848 in a battle on the Scheideck near Kandern . She then went into exile in Switzerland with her husband and Friedrich Hecker . Unlike Hecker, who viewed the revolution as a failure, the Struve couple returned to Baden. With other supporters, they tried again in Lörrach in September 1848 in the so-called Struve Putsch to proclaim a republic. Here and on other relevant occasions, Amalie Struve was particularly keen to inspire and mobilize women for the revolutionary ideas.

Both Gustav and Amalie Struve were sentenced to prison terms in different trials after the suppression of the Struve Putsch - in the battle for Staufen . From September 1848 to April 1849, Amalie Struve was a prisoner in solitary confinement in the “ Freiburg Tower” for 205 days. Immediately after her release, she began to agitate for the revolutionary uprising again. This time, the imperial constitution campaign was about saving the revolutionary achievements as a whole, after an imperial constitution drawn up by the Frankfurt National Assembly, the so-called Paulskirche constitution , was rejected by the most powerful individual states of the federal government, first and foremost Prussia and Austria - and thus the March Revolution was in danger of failing .

In some states, in addition to the Kingdom of Saxony also in Baden, the May uprisings of 1849 occurred , in which attempts were made to recognize the constitution - at least in the individual states.

With her agitation, Amalie Struve played a major role in the mutiny of the Baden garrison in the Rastatt fortress on May 11, 1849 . In the subsequent uprising in Baden, her husband was released from prison. This uprising initially had the success that Grand Duke Leopold von Baden was driven to flight on May 14, 1849 and a Baden republic was proclaimed on June 1, 1849 under the provisional government of the left-liberal politician Lorenz Brentano .

To suppress the republican uprising, Prussian troops advanced against Baden. Brentano, who tried to rely on negotiations, delayed arming the people, whereupon he was overthrown by Gustav Struve and other radicals. But the Baden Revolutionary Army was unable to prevail against the experienced Prussian military in the bitter fighting that followed, in which Amalie Struve also took part. The last revolutionaries were finally trapped in the Rastatt fortress and had to surrender on July 23, 1849 . The Baden Revolution and with it the March Revolution as a whole failed.

The last few years: exile and literary work in the USA

Many revolutionaries were executed or sentenced to long prison terms. Amalie and Gustav Struve, like some other prominent companions, were able to go into exile, which led them first to Switzerland and then to England . There Amalie Struve wrote down her experiences from the revolution in a book that appeared in Hamburg in 1850 under the title “Memories from the Baden freedom struggles” .

In 1852 the couple emigrated to the USA and settled in New York State . In the USA, the Struves belonged to the so-called " Forty-Eighters ", as the immigrants of the March Revolution were called there, who were mostly known for being politically active in the "New World" and for promoting democratic ideals.

Amalie Struve worked primarily as a writer in her new home. Among other things, she was not only a literary advocate for the American women's movement . She wrote novels and articles on women's suffrage , educational issues and the education of girls and women . She also wrote about the French Revolution compared to the Baden Revolution, the Reformation in France, England and Germany and the fate of emigrant families in the United States.

She died in New York in 1862 at the age of only 38 after the birth of their third daughter.

After her death

Her husband Gustav, who had fought as a soldier on the side of the Union troops (the army of the northern states) in the first years of the American Civil War , returned to Germany a year later after his amnesty in Baden. He died in Vienna in 1870.

Works

  • Historical time images. I. Westminster . Franz Schlodtmann, Bremen 1850 digitized
  • Historical time images. II. Heloise Desfleurs . Franz Schlodtmann, Bremen 1850 digitized
  • Historical time images. III. The fall of Magdeburg . Franz Schlodtmann, Bremen 1850 digitized
  • Memories from the Baden freedom struggles. Dedicated to German women . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1850 digitized
  • A proletarian. Revolutionary novel . In: Social Republic. Organ of the Free Workers . New York 1858 No. 1-20
  • The prison guard's daughter . In: Social Republic. Organ of the Free Workers . New York 1859
  • Monica Marcello-Müller (Ed.): Women's rights are human rights! Writings of the revolutionary and writer Amalie Struve . Centaurus-Verlag Herbolzheim 2002 ISBN 3-8255-0341-0 ( Women in History and Society. Edited by Annette Kuhn and Valentine Rothe , Volume 37)

literature

  • Marion Freund: Amalie Struve (1824–1862). Revolutionary and writer - her double struggle for freedom and women's rights. In: Helmut Bleiber, Walter Schmidt, Susanne Schötz (eds.): Actors of upheaval. Men and women of the revolution of 1848/49. Volume 2. Berlin: Fides-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-931363-14-7
  • Struve, Amalie . In: Gudrun Wedel: autobiographies of women. A lexicon . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2010, p. 833 digitized
  • Renate Büntgens: Biography Amalie Struve (1824–1862) . In: “You will set yourself a glorious monument for eternity”. How women supported the revolution in 1848/49 . Offenburg 1999.
  • Irmtraud Götz von Olenhusen: Gustav Struve - Amalie Struve. Prosperity, education and freedom for all . In: Sabine Freitag (Ed.): The Forty-Eight. Life pictures from the German revolution 1848/49. Munich, 1998.
  • Daniela Weiland: History of women's emancipation in Germany and Austria. Biographies-Programs-Organizations , Düsseldorf 1983.
  • Marion Freund: “Let the throne glow in flames!” Women writers and the revolution of 1848/49 . Helmer, Königstein / Taunus 2004 (Freiburg (Breisgau), Univ., Diss., 2004) ISBN 3-89741-146-6

Web links

Wikisource: Amalie Struve  - Sources and full texts

See also

Individual references / comments

  1. ↑ Killy LiteraturLexikon. Authors and works from the German-speaking cultural area . 2nd, completely revised edition Walter de Gruyter, 2011, p. 359 f.
  2. ↑ Familysearch, accessed August 27, 2013
  3. ^ Gustav Struve: History of the three popular surveys in Baden 1848/1849 ; Freiburg, 1980, p. 67f., Quotation: “ In order to establish contact with the Hecker band as quickly as possible, the Weisshaar-Struve Colonne, about 700 strong, moved the following morning, Maundy Thursday, April 20 to Loerrach. There should be rest. "
  4. ↑ Willy Real: The Revolution in Baden 1848/49 (Stuttgart, 1983), Fig. 3 (between pp. 64 and 65)
personal data
SURNAME Struve, Amalie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Siegrist, Amalie; Dusar, amalia; Struve, Amalie von; Siegrist, Elise Ferdinandine Amalie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German radical democratic revolutionary of the March Revolution, women's rights activist, writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim , Baden
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1862
Place of death New York City