Berta Lungstras

Berta Lungstras (* December 21, 1836 in Wahlscheid ; † July 20, 1904 in Bonn ) was a Bonn women's rights activist who campaigned in particular for "fallen girls" , she took them in their homes with the concern of bringing them into a civil life traced back.

Life

Berta Lungstras was born in Wahlscheid as the daughter of the Protestant pastor Carl Lungstras and his wife, née Becker. The Becker family has occupied the pastoral position in Wahlscheid for seven generations (approx. 350 years). After the early death of her father, Berta moved to Bonn with her mother in 1858.

Berta Lungstras died unmarried on July 20, 1904. She was buried in the old cemetery in Bonn. Her grave is in the older part, on the left wall of the cemetery.

Services

Memorial plaque on the old sexton house in Wahlscheid

Berta Lungstras initially worked for a few years in the care of the elderly and the poor. In September 1873 she founded a home for "fallen girls" in Maxstrasse in Bonn with the help of donations from committed women from Bonn. This was a supply house for mothers with illegitimate children who were outcast and threatened to get off the rails. This facility was a scandal at the time. A few years later, she built a children's house (Wickelburg) and a home for alcoholic women in Weberstrasse in Bonn.

Their work was supported by patrons from the university and officers from the garrison, some of whom paid out of a guilty conscience. She was particularly pleased about donations from her home town of Wahlscheid, which the local teacher Wellenbeck collected for her work. The awareness of charity among the bourgeois population rose and so their work found increasing acceptance.

There were strict rules in the supply houses. Only so-called “first-time victims” were admitted; in the event of a further pregnancy, the women were no longer admitted. Lungstras' goal was to integrate women into a civil life. They should be enabled to do “decent” jobs, marry and raise families. In total, over 2,000 women and their children were accommodated and cared for in Berta Lungstras' houses. These facilities became a model for many other homes in Germany and neighboring countries.

In 1891 Berta Lungstras published an appeal for a legislative initiative according to which fathers of illegitimate children should be obliged to pay alimony. This appeal was signed by 16,000 Bonners and sent to the Empress and the Berlin Reichstag . But the Parliament declined to debate this issue.

Streets have been named after Berta Lungstras in Bonn since 1934 and in Wahlscheid since the 1980s. In Wahlscheid, the square in front of the Evangelical Saint Bartholomew Church has been named after it since its inauguration in 1990. There is a memorial plaque on the old sexton's house there.

literature

• Renate Hallet: Lungstras, Berta , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 376f.
• Charlotte Schumm-Walter, Berta Lungstras, a Rhenish woman's life in Christian care , Neuwied, 1931
• Siegfried Helser: How et fröhe woe . Lohmar, 1994
• Anja Bourgeois: Bonn city routes

Individual evidence

1. ^ Berta-Lungstras-Strasse in the Bonn street cadastre
2. ↑ Historical data of the Evangelical Church Community Wahlscheid at ev-kirche-wahlscheid.de ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive )