Charlotte Meentzen
Berta Emilie Charlotte Meentzen (born June 15, 1904 in Leipzig ; † February 26, 1940 in Dresden ) was a German entrepreneur in the field of cosmetics development on a purely natural basis with her own recipes as well as cosmetics production and sales throughout Germany . She is considered one of the first pioneers for the modern organic and natural cosmetics market in Europe, has developed a training system for beauticians and founded her own school for this purpose. She was the author of several works in this field.
Life
Charlotte Meentzen was the second daughter from the first marriage of the writer Theodor Meentzen (1875–1963), who came from Butjadingen in the Wesermarsch , with Iphigenie, born in Eisenberg-Moritzburg . Eichhorn (1877-1945). In 1908 the family moved from Leipzig to Eisenberg-Moritzburg on the grandparents' farm and in 1940 to Auer near Moritzburg. Charlotte spent her childhood together with her sister Gertrud Meentzen in the natural surroundings of Moritzburg on the farm of their herbalist mother. The mother and grandmother awakened a love of nature in the girls and made them familiar with the power of herbal ingredients and natural medicine . Charlotte attended the "Hoffmannsche Höhere Lehranstalt" in Radebeul, a private school. She followed the trend towards closeness to nature, simplicity and a healthy lifestyle that began in the Weimar Republic and was supported by her father, who was a free thinker . Together with her mother, she accompanied her father several times on his lecture tours through Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Around 1928 she went to Austria and trained as a beautician in Graz . She turned to the idea of natural beauty and strived for the realization of her vision of putting medicinal herbs in the service of beauty, of making cosmetic beauty and care products as natural products from plants, which were intended for both an upper class of the population and a broad mass of Should be accessible to consumers. These goals corresponded to the life reform movements that began increasingly at the beginning of the 20th century, which increasingly prevailed with the dress reform , the naturopathic movement , nutrition reform , vegetarianism , physical exercise and sports movement, nudism up to the Bauhaus movement . Charlotte Meentzen always strived for her own independence as a woman and remained unmarried. She had a son Geert-Dietrich, who was born on August 31, 1939. Charlotte Meentzen died in Dresden on February 26, 1940 at the age of only 35. She was buried in the family grave in Moritzburg cemetery.
Act
Charlotte Meentzen's life, like that of her sister Gertrud, was shaped by a strong pioneering spirit. With her deep knowledge of relationships in nature, her passion and her thirst for research, she set the trend for innovative thinking . The idea of wholeness in beauty care went for the first time of her with her progressive movements from, to develop an overall concept that combines beauty and health.
In 1930 she started working in Dresden. Since the 1st International Hygiene Exhibition Dresden in 1911, the city has been known colloquially as the "City of Health". The exhibition focuses on cosmetics, clothing and body care at that time were already trend-setting for the whole of Germany. The numerous natural health resorts and spa houses in Dresden , such as B. the Lahmann sanatorium in the district of Weißer Hirsch , which had also devoted themselves to the holistic nature of treatments, contributed to this name. The German Hygiene Museum , founded in 1912 after the first hygiene exhibition by the Dresden entrepreneur Karl August Lingner as a “public education center for health care”, opened as a monumental new building on the occasion of the second international hygiene exhibition in 1930 to pioneer public health education. Meentzen, with her vision and philosophy of beauty through natural substances and medicinal herbs , integrated herself into this objective .
Charlotte Meentzen planned to marry her sister Gertrud. Seltmann-Meentzen, (born June 14, 1901 , † January 14, 1985 ) to found an innovative company. Dresden offered good conditions. The idea of the two sisters was quite courageous, because they wanted to revolutionize the cosmetics industry of the time by founding their own company in which natural products for beauty care were to be manufactured. Their mission statement under the motto Back to nature should be realized with a highly effective cosmetics with natural ingredients developed by them.
Company foundation
On June 15, 1930, on the day of her 26th birthday, Charlotte Meentzen, with the generous support of her family, founded her first own beauty salon as "Charlotte Meentzen - Institute for Beauty Care" on Prager Strasse 44 in Dresden, in a prime business location. In the same year, she and her sister Gertrud Seltmann-Meentzen founded the production company "Charlotte Meentzen, Laboratory for Natural Cosmetics, Manufacture of Pharmaceutical-Cosmetic Products". The laboratory was located in the back building at Prager Straße 24. Sister Gertrud Seltmann initially only worked in the background as an authorized signatory at the O. Baer paint factory in Radebeul . The "School for Natural Cosmetics" was founded in 1931 and attached to the institute.
Charlotte Meentzen was the first German beautician and manufacturer of natural products to appear with this overall cosmetic concept. She realized her vision of individual skin care based on herbal active ingredients, always taking into account the wholeness of each individual personality. She revolutionized the cosmetics industry with her self-created recipes on a purely plant basis. Lecture trips to spas also popularized her concern. Their success was unstoppable and the new trend took off. The success of their work led to the expansion of the company and required restructuring. Charlotte Meentzen moved the business premises of her institute to Prager Str. 38. From that point on, her brother-in-law, Felix Otto Seltmann, was responsible for the “Laboratory for Natural Cosmetics”, Prager Str. 24. Her sister Gertrud officially joined the company as an authorized signatory. From then on, she leased the production facility "Charlotte Meentzen - Laboratory for Natural Cosmetics", Prager Str. 24, for three years to her sister Gertrud and her husband, the businessman Felix Otto Seltmann. Charlotte, as the daring visionary and strategist, had with Gertrud the capable and clever clerk at her side, and the development of the company achieved a further boom. What was new for a woman at the time was that Charlotte Meentzen used her own name as a brand name and label .
Cosmetics School
As early as 1931, Charlotte Meentzen had expanded her corporate concept and founded the "School for Natural Cosmetics" in order to realize her vision by training beauticians at this private school to use herbal ingredients in cosmetic practice and to be able to spread her holistic ideas in a targeted manner. The successful overall corporate concept of Charlotte Meentzen included the combination of theory and practice in the training center, which was still unusual at the time. One of her new strategies was the delegation of graduates from her school directly to cosmetic salons, perfumeries and drug stores outside the company. So she set up her own sales system “on site” by means of inexpensive sample treatments according to the specially developed Meentzen concept and sales offers for her products.
Each graduate had to go through several seminars. With these intensive training courses, Meentzen laid the foundation for the continued success of her “Charlotte Meentzen” brand and its distribution. The beauticians learned to rely on the new insights into the healing power of nature and to use the wide range of natural cosmetics. Even after their training they carried on the Meentzen spirit and applied the new innovative treatment methods of Charlotte Meentzen. She was the first beautician who had developed her own treatment concept for facial massages, the later famous "Charlotte Meentzen System" as a massage technique recognized to this day, which consists of 28 hand movements of the relaxation and nerve pressure point facial massage and thus belongs to the holistic nature of her concept. Charlotte Meentzen thus became one of the first German cosmeticians and manufacturers of natural products who successfully realized her vision of individual skin care based on herbal ingredients, taking into account the holistic nature of the treated personality, even against the resistance of long-established companies and opinions.
After Charlotte's death, the cosmetics school was successfully continued from 1940 by Gertrud Seltmann-Meentzen, until 1964 a state directive ordered the closure of all private schools.
Works
As early as 1934, Charlotte published several informational brochures on the topics of beauty and health care for women and mothers on a purely plant basis. With her book "Medicinal herbs in the service of beauty", she was one of the first authors to use her knowledge, advice and extensive knowledge of natural cosmetics and her conviction of the connections or the balance between nature, mind, beauty and relaxation for well-being, also published. This book could only be published in 1941, after her death, at the instigation of Gertrud Meentzen-Seltmann and is still considered a standard work in natural cosmetics today.
Honors
At the award ceremony on June 21, 2018 in the German Historical Museum in Berlin, the company received the award in the “Industry Excellence in Branding / Beauty & Care” category for its excellent brand management and successful packaging relaunch .
On February 26, 2020, the 80th anniversary of Charlotte Meentzen's death, a memorial plaque was inaugurated at the former Meentzen-Villa Wiener Straße 36 in Dresden as part of a ceremonial commemoration for the sisters and entrepreneurs Charlotte Meentzen and Gertrud Seltmann-Meentzen. Members of the Meentzen and Seltmann families as well as representatives of Charlotte Meentzen KRÄUTERVITAL KOSMETIK Radeberg GmbH took part. This memorial plaque was initiated by the Landesfrauenrat Sachsen e. V. as part of the project Frauenorte Sachsen .
Fonts
- The beauty care of the German woman . Series of training booklets of the Nazi women's association, No. 7. FE Fischer, Leipzig 1934. OCLC 72620007 .
- Medicinal herbs in the service of beauty: A guide to natural beauty care . Verlag für Biologie Duberow, Berlin 1941. OCLC 705387777 .
- Beauty through skin care with Charlotte Meentzen . 12 sheets of illustrations. Published by Dresden Charlotte Meentzen, Kräuter-Vital-Kosmetik 1961. OCLC 72257678 .
- Does motherhood harm beauty? BA NSD47 / 6. NSFK, January 15, 1934
literature
- Klaus Gertoberens: Saxon personalities made history. Dresden: Edition Sächsische Zeitung SAXO'Phon, 2011, ISBN 978-3-938325-84-1 .
- Well-known Saxons: Charlotte Meentzen. on Sachsen.de (online resource)
- Eva-Maria Bast, Elena Oliveira, Melanie Kunze: Dresden women: Historical life pictures from the city on the Elbe. Bast Medien, Überlingen 1981.
- Renate Schönfuß-Krause: Charlotte Meentzen and Gertrude Seltmann - two Saxon power women and entrepreneurs from Dresden had a vision - their successful legacy has been continued in Radeberg since 2002 . In: Radeberger . Independent local newspaper. Volume 30, issues 08 of February 28, 2020 online resource (PDF 6.4 MB) and 09 of March 3, 2020 online resource (PDF 6.0 MB).
- Theodor Meentzen: Biography From the life of a socialist and free thinker , Moritzburg 1963. Unpublished manuscript in private ownership
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Renate Schönfuß-Krause: Charlotte Meentzen and Gertrude Seltmann - two Saxon power women and entrepreneurs from Dresden had a vision - their successful legacy has been continued in Radeberg since 2002 . In: the Radeberger. Independent local newspaper . Volume 30, No. 08 . Radeberg February 28, 2020 ( die-radeberger.de [PDF]).
- ^ Eva-Maria Bast; Elena Oliveira; Melanie Kunze: Dresden women: Historical life pictures from the city on the Elbe. Bast Medien, Überlingen 1981.
- ^ Official guide through the International Hygiene Exhibition Dresden 1911 and through Dresden and the surrounding area. Berlin (Rudolf Mosse) [1911], p. 13
- ↑ a b c Historic Addressbooks Dresden . ( Online resource ).
- ↑ a b History of Charlotte Meentzen Herbal Vital Cosmetics . ( Online resource ).
Remarks
- ↑ The year of birth on the family tombstone is incorrectly stated as 1874.
- ↑ Contrary to many publications and sources, the correct first name is not Gertrude, but Gertrud (see Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Dresden, file 11384, no. 4524)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Meentzen, Charlotte |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur, beautician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 15, 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Leipzig |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 26, 1940 |
| Place of death | Dresden |