Anna von Gierke

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Anna von Gierke

Anna Ernestine Therese von Gierke (born March 14, 1874 in Breslau , † April 3, 1943 in Berlin ) was a German social worker and politician of the DNVP .

family

Berlin memorial plaque on the house at Carmerstrasse 12 in Berlin-Charlottenburg
Grave of Gierkes

Anna Ernestine Therese, called Nanna, was the eldest of six children of the lawyer, legal historian and social politician Otto von Gierke (1841–1921), who is considered to be the founder of cooperative law in Germany, and his wife Lili von Gierke, née. Loening. On the occasion of his 70th birthday, her father, Otto Gierke, received the hereditary nobility . Her mother, Lili von Gierke, was involved in voluntary welfare work a. a. in the “Elisabeth Women's Association”, which was highly regarded at the time, and looked after poor women who had recently given birth and their babies. She still had two sisters and three brothers: Her sister, who was six years younger than her, was the social worker Hildegard von Gierke , her brother, born in 1875, was the law professor Julius von Gierke, and her brother, born in 1877, was the pathologist Edgar von Gierke .

Life and socio-educational work

After attending secondary schools in Heidelberg and Berlin , she worked as a helper in the “ youth home ” founded by Hedwig Heyl in Charlottenburg and in 1892 took over the management of the girls' day care center. In 1898 Hedwig Heyl appointed her head of the “Jugendheim” association founded in 1894, after spending a few months in the renowned Pestalozzi-Fröbel-Haus in Berlin deepening her experience in kindergarten education and housekeeping. She conducted the first training courses for the helpers in the after-school care centers, which were gradually set up at all Charlottenburg schools, hired school carers and organized school meals in Charlottenburg. In 1907 Anna von Gierke had a conversation with the former mayor of Charlottenburg, Mr. Paul Mattig, which was crucial for her social work:

“He suggested to Anna von Gierke that they build a central building for the Charlottenburg youth homes and train leaders and helpers for working with children for their plans. He explained that the city of Charlottenburg would donate the property if Anna von Gierke raised the money to build the house. He said optimistically that she would probably manage it and get it for free ... 1909 construction could begin ... In November 1910 the festive, radiant inauguration ceremony took place with hundreds of happy children, employees and guests. Even the Empress Auguste Viktoria came as a guest of honor. "

In 1911 Anna von Gierke opened the social education seminar in the “youth home” . The training prepared for two professions, that of the after-school care worker and that of the school carer, which quickly found recognition and dissemination throughout Germany. Over the years, the school maintenance in Charlottenburg moved more and more from the club work in the youth home to the city administration.

In 1912 she was a co-founder of the Association for School Child Care, of which she soon became chairman. While traveling on behalf of the Prussian Ministry of Culture, she has been inspecting after-school care centers in the Prussian government districts since 1914. In 1915, at the suggestion of Hedwig Heyl, she founded the Charlottenburg Housewives Association, in 1918 she became a member of the board of directors of the Bund, later the Reich Association of German Housewives' Associations . In 1917 she was appointed as an expert for child welfare in the War Office in Berlin and now continued her day care trips as inspection trips on behalf of the War Office.

From 1925 she was one of three chairmen of the 5th welfare association, from which today's German Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband emerged.

Together with Martha Abicht , Anna von Gierke founded the Finkenkrug youth home in Falkensee, west of Berlin-Spandau, in an idyllic landscape in 1921 . The facility, in which schoolchildren, employees and children found relaxation and were trained in horticulture and agriculture, became a model for other similar institutions. From 1923 onwards, Anna von Gierke had published many of her ideas for social reform in the specialist periodical social work she founded , an organ for all socially active women. In 1931 she became a board member of the Federation of German Women's Associations .

In 1933 she was dismissed from all offices and deprived of her rights because of her " half-Jewish " descent. Isa Gruner , former student and later work companion, remembered this unpleasant time in a lecture:

“The 'justification' in quotation marks was: 'Anna von Gierke's mother is Jewish'. And although her father was the eminent legal scholar Otto von Gierke, professor at the Berlin University Aryan, this fact did not change anything. SS Mann Spiewok, appointed by the National Socialist People's Welfare, became the provisional chairman of the youth home, the seminars were led by a teacher SS Mann Rees, who had absolutely no idea of ​​socio-educational professions, and an SS man Grosse was responsible for the administration ... For Anna von Gierke's exclusion from her work, from all responsibility, from all her planning and doing, meant a fundamentally different life. "

Anna von Gierke was still in close contact with her “youth homes”, had a lunch table and looked after people in need, regardless of their age, religion or origin. She helped illegally living Jews (some of whom found refuge in the Finkenkrug youth hostel; M. B.) and also brokered food stamps, changing accommodation and connections to saving foreign countries .

Anna von Gierke got involved within the Confessing Church . A Bible study group was set up in her spacious apartment at Carmerstrasse 12, which always met on Wednesdays. They also met every second Thursday for a religious, historical or political lecture. In her house u. a .: Alice Salomon , Elly Coler , Isa Gruner , Idamarie Solltmann , Gertrud Bäumer , Hermann Maas , Martin Niemöller , Helmut Gollwitzer , Romano Guardini , Theodor Heuss and his wife Elly Heuss-Knapp , Agnes von Zahn-Harnack , Elisabeth Schmitz , Elisabeth Schiemann , Fritz Klatt , Maria Schlueter-Hermkes and Elisabeth von Thadden (who rented Anna von Gierke's house), all men and women who were a thorn in the side of the Nazi rulers.

The Anna-von-Gierke-Ring in Hamburg-Neuallermöhe is named after the social worker . In Berlin-Charlottenburg, the Gierkeplatz and the adjacent Gierkezeile are a reminder of her. Anna von Gierke found her final resting place in the cemetery of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church . Her grave has been dedicated to the city of Berlin as an honor grave since 1965 .

MPs

Anna von Gierke was a member of the Weimar National Assembly in 1919/20. There she was chair of the Committee on Population Policy. In her speech of October 18, 1919, she vehemently criticized the social policy expressed in the draft budget with the following words:

“We have no trust in this government and must remain in our fundamental opposition. (...) We cannot go along with the rush, (...) with which social policy is now being driven, a hate speech that sometimes makes some people feel as if not factual, but political reasons are decisive for new laws, (...) as if there were some kind of fear behind the legislators, as if they were in a sledge behind which wolves hunt, to which they have to throw one valuable asset after another (...) just to catch their breath. "

When she was not re-elected in the 1920 Reichstag election because of her “non-Aryan” origins, she ran - unsuccessfully - on a list of women she had set up .

Publications (selection)

  • The Charlottenburg youth home. Berlin 1910, OCLC 255242108 (30 sheets).
  • 25 years youth home and 5 more years. 1894-1924. Fänger and Heimann, Berlin 1924, OCLC 312286218 (64 pages).
  • After-school care within the framework of youth welfare care. In: German Archive for Youth Welfare (Ed.): Schoolchildren Care in Day Care Centers and Day Care Centers. Berlin 1930, pp. 16-23.
  • (with Martha Abicht , Alice Bendix ) 10 years of the Finkenkrug youth home (Osthavelland). o. O., 1932, DNB 573460167 (11 pages)

Literature (selection)

  • Agnes von Zahn-Harnack : Anna von Gierke on her sixtieth birthday. In: The woman . Vol. 1933/34, pp. 332-334.
  • Anna von Gierke: on her 100th birthday March 14, 1974. [3 lectures] / [Anneliese Buß; Gerda Zerulli; Isa Gruner] Fruck, Berlin [1974], OCLC 251651942 .
  • Marie Baum : From a picture of Anna von Gierke's life. In: Education for Girls and Women’s Work. Issue 2/1952, ISSN  0460-4903 , pp. 1-12.
  • Lexicon of women in two volumes. Volume I: A-H. Zurich 1953, column 1230.
  • Hildegard von Gierke : Our parents' house. 1960 (private print).
  • Ilse Reicke : The great women of the Weimar Republic (= Herder library. Volume 1029). Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1984, ISBN 3-451-08029-X , pp. 43-46.
  • Gabriele Hohenbild: Anna von Gierke: The pioneer of socio-educational work. In: Ilse Brehmer (Ed.): Motherhood as a profession? Centaurus-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Pfaffenweiler 1990, ISBN 3-89085-258-0 , pp. 228-235.
  • 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 .
  • Manfred Berger : Forgotten women of social education (= theory and practice of social education. / TPS extra. Volume 9). Luther-Verlag, Bielefeld 1992, DNB 943361095 , pp. 30-38.
  • Ursula Köhler-Lutterbeck, Monika Siedentopf: Lexicon of 1000 women. Dietz, Bonn 2000, ISBN 3-8012-0276-3 , p. 120.
  • Ann Taylor Allen: Feminism and Motherhood in Germany. 1800-1914. From the American by Regine Othmer. Deutscher Studien-Verlag, Weinheim 2000, ISBN 3-89271-880-6 , pp. 300–304 (original title: Feminism and motherhood in Germany. 1800–1914 ).
  • Manfred Berger: A woman's life in social responsibility: Anna von Gierke. In: Forum Woman and Society. Issue 5/2001, ISSN  1434-0267 , pp. 19-22.
  • Gudrun Sieber: Anna von Gierke. Life and work. Augsburg 2005 (unpublished master's thesis).
  • Susanne van Steegen: Social work and women's movement - Anna von Gierke, for example. Munich 2007 (unpublished diploma thesis).
  • Negotiations of the constituent German National Assembly (stenographic reports). Berlin 1920.
  • Hildburg Wegener: Anna von Gierke: social pedagogue between conservative politics and free welfare. Sulzbach / Ts. 2009, ISBN 978-3-89741-279-8 .
  • Manfred Berger:  Gierke, Anna Ernestine Therese v .. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 23, Bautz, Nordhausen 2004, ISBN 3-88309-155-3 , Sp. 517-527.  ( Article / beginning of article in the Internet archive ) .
  • Manfred Berger: Women in social responsibility: Anna von Gierke. In: Our youth . 2001, issue 9, pp. 386-389.
  • Erika Paul: Between social history and place of refuge. The Finkenkrug youth home and its brave women. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-942271-84-4 .
  • Peter Reinicke : Gierke, Anna von. In: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work. Lambertus, Freiburg 1998, ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 199 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ On family genealogy : Von Gierke ( Memento of April 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). In: von-gierke.de, accessed on April 18, 2018 (entry: "ANNA (Nanna) Ernestine Therese").
  2. ↑ Quotation from Isa Gruner's lecture, given in 1978 to guests and employees of the “Berliner Frauenbund 1945”, p. 3 f. (Document archived in the Ida-Seele archive ).
  3. ↑ Quotation from Isa Gruner's lecture, given in 1978 to guests and employees of the “Berliner Frauenbund 1945”, p. 5 (document archived in the Ida-Seele archive ).
  4. ↑ Gabriele Hohenbild: Anna von Gierke: The trailblazer of the socio-educational work. In: Ilse Brehmer (Ed.): Motherhood as a profession? Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, Pfaffenweiler 1990, ISBN 3-89085-258-0 , pp. 228–235, here p. 234.
  5. ↑ Gierkeplatz. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert ).
  6. ^ Protocols to the Reichstag, 1919 / 20.5. National Assembly. 102nd meeting. October 18, 1919. p. 3243 ( reichstagsprotlog.de ).
personal data
SURNAME Gierke, Anna von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social worker and politician of the DNVP
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1943
Place of death Berlin