Charlotte Paulsen

Charlotte Paulsen

Charlotte Paulsen (born Thornton; born November 4, 1797 in Othmarschen , † November 15, 1862 in Hamburg ) was a German social reformer and women's rights activist .

Childhood and youth

Charlotte grew up as the fourth of 14 children of the wealthy banker John Thornton (1764-1835) and his second wife Maria Elisabeth Grupen, a daughter of the Consistorialrat Crupen from Celle. The Thornton family was of English descent and Charlotte's father, together with his partner, John Power, handled the financial transactions between Hamburg and English partners. Charlotte was raised largely by governesses and learned English, French, and social behavior according to the requirements of her class. Charlotte herself once said she was raised to be a "decent figure". In childhood she was spared the sight of poverty and misery; so she did not find out that more than half of all Hamburgers lived on the verge of subsistence.

After the French moved into Hamburg, the city was incorporated into the French Empire in 1810 (see also Napoléon Bonaparte ). Since Charlotte's father had business connections with England, he was suspected of being a conspirator by the French . He avoided deportation by paying a large ransom . When in March 1813 the French withdrew before the advancing Russian troops, Charlotte fell in love with the aide of General Tettenborn , who was staying at the Thorntons. A quick engagement with the young adjutant, Herr von Lachmann, followed, but was soon broken up again because the father accused the young man of being “easy-going”. Shortly afterwards the French returned to Hamburg and the Thornton family fled to relatives in London. In retrospect, Charlotte described her stay in London as the heyday of her life. Charlotte was popular and raved about for her beauty.

When the family returned to Hamburg in 1814, living conditions had changed significantly. Due to financial hardships (which were largely due to the continental blockade), Charlotte was married to the agent Andreas Christian Paulsen, who was twenty years older than her 17th birthday. On October 1, 1815, the only child of this convention toe was born, the daughter Elisabeth. Andreas Paulsen offered Charlotte material security and was otherwise a sensitive and tolerant husband. Charlotte became a loving mother who taught her daughter personally and continued her education. She led a harmonious family life. The daughter married the pharmacist Julius Lorentzen in 1832.

Time influences

The son-in-law became an important interlocutor for Charlotte, who gave her the first impulses of democratic thoughts and ideas and stimulated her to think about the current situation and about theological and philosophical questions. After the early death of her son-in-law (1837) and some of her grandchildren, Charlotte and her husband adopted another daughter, little Marie, whose upbringing Charlotte devoted herself intensively to.

It was not only the Biedermeier period , but also the pre-March period . After the Paris July Revolution of 1830 , a wave of protests swept through Germany. Citizen protests and philosophical freedom programs followed, politically thinking women were carried away by this wave of democratic and emancipatory protests. Charlotte Paulsen was also influenced by it and felt the urge to “do more”. She decided to join the female association for poor and sick care , which was founded by Amalie Sieveking after the cholera epidemic in 1832 , but was rejected by this because of her too "free-thinking" ideas.

social commitment

So Charlotte Paulsen finally joined the women's association of the lodge “Zur Brudertreue an der Elbe”. Shortly afterwards, in 1848, she also became a member of the "German Catholic Congregation". This association was one of the free religious groups who wanted to practice an active Christianity that was not bound to the denomination on a grassroots democratic basis, through the participation of all community members, especially through the participation of women . In this community she met Emilie Wüstenfeld , Bertha Traun (see Bertha Ronge ) and their sisters Margarete and Amalie as well as Johanna Goldschmidt . A particularly friendly relationship developed with Emilie Wüstenfeld.

After the failure of the 1848 revolution , women decided to educate a new, free generation through conscious child-rearing . Friedrich Froebel had called on German women to found general German kindergartens as early as 1840, thus giving the impetus for the kindergarten movement , which was supported by democratic circles and of great importance for the bourgeois women's movement . At this time, “preservation schools”, day-care centers for children , were also established.

In addition, Charlotte Paulsen founded the women's association for poor relief in March 1849 . She collected money from the wealthy hamburgers, made it possible for poor couples to get married, provided the sick and those who had recently given birth with soup and arranged jobs. Amalie Sieveking, however, saw Charlotte Paulsen as a competitor and described her as immoral and unbelieving.

Tomb in the Heckengarten open-air museum , Ohlsdorf cemetery

Since there was no general compulsory schooling in Hamburg at that time , the women wanted to found their own school so that the poor children could also attend school. The women taught groups of over 20 children, but this was forbidden a short time later due to the lack of a teaching license. In order to be able to continue the lessons, they reduced the groups to 12 children and taught them in private apartments provided by the wealthy. Now the women were accused of not giving religious education in school courses , whereupon they defended themselves by pointing out their basic principle of religious independence. After much back and forth, the women managed to find a teacher with the necessary license to open a school. Now there was no longer any objection. In 1856 the school "An der Fuhlentwiete" was reopened with 60 children.

Charlotte Paulsen continued to work with all her might for her poor association, but at the same time stood up for religious and political freedom and was an advocate of women's emancipation . After the death of her husband, her financial resources were exhausted. She lived with the children in the detention center for some time until she moved into a small apartment on the Mundsburg. Simply dressed, she wandered the streets almost every day to help the poor and other needy people. So she went down in Hamburg's memory as "Mother Paulsen". After her death in 1862 she was buried in a coffin in the St. Gertrudenkirchhof.

Charlotte Paulsen's greatest wish to create a joint educational institution for small children and schoolchildren could only be fulfilled after her death: on November 3, 1866, this institution was opened. As a reminder and a sign of veneration, this house was given the name of the founder of the women's association "Paulsenstift". In this tradition, the Charlotte-Paulsen-Gymnasium in Hamburg-Wandsbek bears her name today .

Texts

• The second citizen kindergarten , in Hamburger Nachrichten , July 27, 1850, page 3, digitized
• The undisturbed peace and quiet and a people's kindergarten , in Hamburger Nachrichten , June 2, 1849, page 6, digitized

literature

• Festschrift for the centenary of the Charlotte-Paulsen-Schule, grammar school for girls , Hamburg-Wandsbek 1966 (Hamburg State Archive)
• Inge Grolle : The free-thinking women. Charlotte Paulsen, Johanna Goldschmidt, Emilie Wüstenfeld. Edition Temmen , Bremen 2000, ISBN 3-86108-770-7 .

Web links

• Charlotte Paulsen Heimatmuseum Wandsbek
• The Paulsenstift school ( memento of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) by Inge Grolle
• Charlotte Paulsen women's biographies at the State Center for Civic Education Hamburg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ according to the tomb inscription: "1798", see enlargement of the photo on the right