Barbara Renz

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Barbara Klara Renz (born December 12, 1863 in Altenstadt ; † April 1, 1955 in Dillingen an der Donau ) was an ethnologist , religious scholar and Catholic women's rights activist .

Life

Born in Altenstadt as the tenth of eleven children of the farmer Karl Anton Renz, she learned six languages ​​independently and graduated from high school in 1887 . She had to do this in Zurich because women in Bavaria had not yet been admitted to the school-leaving examination .

She then studied philosophy , literature and psychology at the Sapienza University of Rome , while making a living from private tuition. She was then allowed to wear her Roman doctoral degree in Bavaria , even though she was not allowed to work at a university.

In 1892 she emigrated to the USA in the hope of employment, but learned there that this would only be possible after five years of receiving American citizenship. After this waiting period, during which she mostly worked as a private teacher, she decided to return to her home country in 1898.

Then she got involved in the bourgeois Catholic women's movement in Munich , with like-minded people like Ellen Ammann , Pauline Countess Montgelas and Marie Zettler , for women's education and gave lectures on philosophical, social-charitable and political topics.

Even before her stay in the USA , she had met Princess Therese of Bavaria , with whom she was from now on a lifelong friendship. Both women were self-taught and campaigned for the right of women and girls to education. Both were also interested in cultural studies . When Barbara Renz planned to publish an ethnographic magazine, the princess contributed to the financing. Many of the illustrations in Renz's publications also come from the Wittelsbacher's collection .

In 1901 she applied for a traineeship at the Bavarian Court and State Library in Munich. In 1902, against the will of the library director, she was admitted to the unpaid traineeship on a trial basis. There was an excited press discussion about this penetration into a traditional male bastion.

In 1902 she accompanied her brother, the theologian Franz Renz (1860-1916), to Münster , where he was offered a professorship at the university. Barbara Renz founded a branch of the Catholic Women's Association there and was given permission to give evening lectures at the university.

Then she moved with her brother to Breslau , where she re-edited the ethnographic studies of Hermann Heinrich Ploss The Child in Customs and Customs of the Nations . After the death of her brother she returned to Dillingen an der Donau. Here she founded the local Catholic Women's Association , was elected to the Dillingen City Council as a member of the Bavarian People's Party in 1925, and gave lectures on ethnology, women's education and politics.

She criticized the incipient National Socialism and denounced the fact that it pushed women out of public life. After Adolf Hitler came to power , however, she withdrew and died at the age of 91 in Dillingen.

Services

Barbara Renz excelled in three different specialist areas. She expressly advocated equality for women in society and in the Catholic Church, in particular for the right of girls and women to education and study.

With her brother Franz she belonged to Catholic modernism , a movement which questioned the infallibility of the Pope and which did not see the Christian faith in contradiction to modern scientific knowledge.

She dealt with the recurring symbolism of the tree and snake in the myths of various peoples. In particular, she devoted herself to the question of why the symbol of the snake, which was known in pre-Christian and non-Christian cultures as an image of positive power, creativity and sexuality , appears for the first time in the Bible (1 Mos 2 and 3) as the epitome of evil.

She researched this topic for over thirty years, but due to lack of financial resources, she was only able to summarize in the concise dictionary for sexology (to which Sigmund Freud also contributed) and publish the first part as a book in 1930.

Fonts

  • A Swabian philosopher on both sides of the ocean . Collected lectures, Dillingen: Tabor 1900.
  • Völkerleben in Wort und Bild, Vol. 1: The Indian's family, friend and enemy: in 7 illustrated sketches , Münster: Aschendorff 1907.
  • The child in the customs and traditions of the peoples: Ethnological studies by Heinrich Ploss. 3rd, completely revised and greatly increased edition after the author's death, ed. by Barbara Renz. Leipzig: Greaves 1911.
  • Tree and snake . In: Concise Dictionary of Sexual Science: Encyclopedia of the natural and cultural science of human sex education. Edited by Max Marcuse. New edition with an introduction by Robert Jütte . [Reprint of the 2nd, greatly increased edition published in 1926.] Berlin: de Gruyter 2001. ISBN 3-11-017038-8
  • The oriental snake dragon. A contribution to understanding the snake in biblical paradise , Augsburg: Haas & Grabherr 1930.

literature

  • Manfred Berger : Women in Social Responsibility . Barbara Clara Renz. In: Christ und Bildung , 47. (2001 / Heft 3.) p. 27.
  • Manfred Berger:  Barbara Renz. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 20, Bautz, Nordhausen 2002, ISBN 3-88309-091-3 , Sp. 1209-1216.
  • Hans Böhm: Franz Seraph and Barbara Clara Renz . In: Yearbook of the historical association Dillingen an der Donau . Dillingen 1978. pp. 140-177.
  • Annemarie Kaindl: "The woman as a royal librarian". The pioneer in academic library service, Barbara Renz, and the beginnings of women's library work at the court and state library a hundred years ago . In: Bibliotheksforum Bayern, Vol. 12, 2018, pp. 197–201 ( online ).
  • Marie-Theres Wacker: Dr. phil. Barbara Klara Renz (1863–1955): a Catholic interpreter of the Bible between ethnology, religious philosophy and the dispute for women's right to education . In: Lectio difficilior: European electronic journal for feminist exegesis, 2013, 2, pp. 1-45 ( online ).

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