Auguste Schmidt
Auguste Schmidt ( Friederike Wilhelmine Auguste Schmidt ; born August 3, 1833 in Breslau ; † June 10, 1902 in Leipzig ) was a German teacher and writer who founded the General German Women's Association (ADF) together with Louise Otto-Peters in 1865 . She was particularly committed to the education of girls and the rights of women .
Life
Auguste Schmidt was the daughter of a Prussian artillery captain who gave her and her two sisters a good professional education.
Auguste successfully attended a seminar for teachers in Poznan . After passing her final exam at the age of 17, she first worked as a teacher in Poznan and later at a private school in Upper Silesia. Then she got a job as the only scientific teacher at the municipal Magdalen School in Wroclaw . At the age of 28, Auguste Schmidt, who in the meantime had successfully passed the headmaster's exam , was promoted to director of Latzel's higher private daughter school in Leipzig . The head of the Steyber Educational Institute (Leipzig) later liked her lessons so much that she hired her as a teacher for literature and aesthetics. One of her students was Clara Zetkin , who later made a name for herself as a politician. In her pedagogical work Auguste Schmidt was supported by her widowed sisters, with whom she lived.
From 1864 the journalist and writer Louise Otto-Peters visited Auguste's house every Friday. In 1865 Auguste Schmidt, Louise Otto-Peters and Henriette Goldschmidt founded the Leipzig Women's Education Association . At the first German women's conference in Leipzig in October 1865, Auguste Schmidt, together with Louise Otto-Peters and Marie Loeper-Housselle (1837–1916), launched the General German Women's Association (ADF). At the founding meeting of the ADF, Auguste Schmidt gave a speech in which she took the view that the women's movement should fear less the resistance of selfish men than the indifference of women who felt happy and content in the state of eternal childhood and subordination. She said that the main problem with women is not knowing their own situation. From 1866 to 1902, together with Louise Otto-Peters (until 1895), she edited the ADF magazine entitled Neue Bahnen . The resulting moderate feminist magazine Der Frauenanwalt was later to be continued by Elsbeth Krukenberg-Conze . In 1869, Auguste Schmidt and the teacher Marie Calm (1831–1887) from Kassel took part in the founding of the Association of German Teachers . In 1890 she and Helene Lange founded the General German Teachers' Association (ADLV) in Friedrichroda . From 1894 to 1899 she acted as chairwoman of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF), an umbrella organization of the bourgeois women's movement, of which she was also one of the founders.
Her involvement in the women's movement left Auguste Schmidt little time to prove her talent for writing. Her literary works include the short stories Tausendschön and Veilchen , both published in 1868, as well as the short story From hard times , which came out in 1895. From 1895 she was solely responsible for the magazine Neue Bahnen .
At the age of 66 she retired from public life in 1900.
Her younger sisters Anna (co-founder of the house servants' association, founder of various women's organizations in Leipzig) and Clara (married Claus), like Auguste Schmidt, were very active in the ADF.
The leaders of the women's movement in Germany , illustration from Die Gartenlaube , 1894, Auguste Schmidt in the 2nd row in the middle
Auguste Schmidt grave in the New Johannisfriedhof in Leipzig, 1902
literature
- Astrid Franzke: Schmidt, Auguste Friederike Wilhelmine. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 179 ( digitized version ).
- Johanna Ludwig (ed.): Life is striving - the first Auguste Schmidt book. Speeches, lectures and documents of the honors on the 100th anniversary of the death of the pedagogue, publicist and women's rights activist Auguste Schmidt on 10/11. June 2002. Leipzig University Press, 2003
- "Bundle of energy" fights for women . (PDF) In: Leipziger Volkszeitung , July 29, 2008
Web links
- Literature by and about Auguste Schmidt in the catalog of the German National Library
- Lucia Halder: Auguste Schmidt. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
- Biography Auguste Schmidt Website of the city of Leipzig
- Biography, literature & sources on Auguste Schmidt FemBio of the Institute for Women's Biography Research
- Auguste Schmidt in Leipzig . (PDF; 38 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christine Susanne Rabe: Equality of man and woman: The Krause School and the bourgeois women's movement in the 19th century . Böhlau, 2006, p. 31ff.
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Schmidt, Auguste |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Schmidt, Friederike Wilhelmine Auguste |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German writer and co-founder of the German women's movement |
DATE OF BIRTH | August 3, 1833 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Wroclaw |
DATE OF DEATH | June 10, 1902 |
Place of death | Leipzig |