Dorothea Hirschfeld

Dorothea Hirschfeld (born February 26, 1877 in Berlin , † June 12, 1966 in West Berlin ) was a pioneer of social work in Germany and a politician ( SPD ).

Life

Dorothea Hirschfeld was the daughter of the Jewish businessman Julius Hirschfeld († 1897) and his wife Anna geb. Stern († 1917). After training as a librarian, she worked at the Berlin Central Office for Poor Care and Charity from 1904 and was appointed managing director in 1911. During the First World War she worked in the National Women's Service .

In November 1916, together with Else Lüders , Gertrud Israel and Hedwig Wachenheim, she founded the German Association of Social Officers , of which she was a member. In 1918 Dorothea Hirschfeld became a member of the SPD. A year later she was one of the founders of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO). In 1919 she was the first woman to work for the Reich Ministry of Labor , where she headed the Department of War Widow and War Orphan Welfare from 1920 as a ministerial advisor , from 1927 to 1929 she was director of the newly established Reich Employment Agency and Unemployment Welfare Office, then again an advisor at the Ministry. From 1919 to 1920 she was Berlin city councilor for the SPD.

In 1925, she took over the management of the General Welfare Committee at AWO . Dorothea Hirschfeld turned against the thesis of the heredity of alcoholism or the innate urge to migrate among the homeless, which was also represented by social democratic health and social politicians at the time . On the other hand, she emphasized the social causes of these social problems. Like many social workers of her generation who did not have the opportunity to attend a technical school, Dorothea Hirschfeld attached great importance to the training and further education of those employed in welfare work. She worked as a teacher and member of the board of trustees at the welfare school of the AWO and, as a trained librarian, was committed to building the school library.

In April 1933 she was dismissed by the Reich Labor Ministry for anti-Semitic reasons . The German Association of Social Workers and the AWO were dissolved by the National Socialists . Unlike some of her relatives, whom she helped emigrate , Dorothea Hirschfeld did not leave Germany. She lived withdrawn in Berlin. She received only a small part of the pension she was entitled to. On October 3, 1942, at the age of sixty-five, she was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto . The family's property, consisting mainly of real estate, was confiscated in favor of the German Reich . Three weeks after Dorothea Hirschfeld's deportation, her sister committed suicide. A younger brother who was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1938 died as a result of his imprisonment. Dorothea Hirschfeld survived and returned to Berlin in August 1945.

From October 1945 to 1948 she worked as a consultant in the main administration for health care in the Soviet occupation zone . The re-established AWO appointed her to the board of trustees of the Social Pedagogical Institute .

Dorothea Hirschfeld died in Berlin-Tempelhof in 1966 at the age of 89 .

Honors

In 1952 she was awarded the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. One of the conference rooms in the Kurt-Schumacher-Haus , the seat of the Berlin SPD regional association, is named after Dorothea Hirschfeld .

Publications

• Women in the Poor and Welfare Work in Germany: Report on the occasion of the International Congress for Poor Care and Charity, Copenhagen 1910 . Self-published by the Central Agency for Poor Care and Charity, Berlin 1909.
• The institutional welfare in Germany: a proof of those German educational, therapeutic u. Nursing institutions that do not limit the admission of foster people to a local area. Duncker & Humblot publishing house, Leipzig 1910.
• Welfare and the Law on Employment Services and Unemployment Insurance. In: Arbeiterwohlfahrt 3 (1928): pp. 353–363
• From the poor to social welfare. Memories from my work in the Reich Ministry of Labor . In: New Beginning . Journal of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt. Bremen: 1954, p. 53.

literature

• Christine Fischer-Defoy [Ed.], Christiane Hoss: Put in front of the door: Berlin city councilors and members of the magistrate persecuted under National Socialism 1933-1945. Active Museum Association, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-018931-9 .
• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 2: Social politicians in the Weimar Republic and during National Socialism 1919 to 1945. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2018, ISBN 978-3-7376-0474-1 , pp. 80 f. ( Online , PDF; 3.9 MB).
• Elisabeth Lembeck: A forgotten pioneer: Ministerialrat Dorothea Hirschfeld. In: The participation of women in public administration in the Weimar Republic 1918–1933. Dissertation, Hanover 1991.
• Jürgen Nürnberger, Dieter G. Maier: Dorothea Hirschfeld: social officer, ministerial advisor and survivor of the Theresienstadt ghetto . Berlin 2019. (Jewish miniatures; 235). ISBN 978-3-95565-319-4 .
• Peter Reinicke : Hirschfeld, Dorothea , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 251f.

Web links

• Dorothea Hirschfeld's curriculum vitae on the website of the Independent Historical Commission for Research into the History of the Reich Labor Ministry 1933–1945

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gudrun Wedel: Autobiographies of women: A lexicon. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20585-0 . P. 349. Full text / preview in Google Book Search
2. ^ German professional association for social work eV: The long way to the unified association (PDF file). (PDF; 29 kB) In: dbsh.de. Retrieved April 5, 2013 . 
3. ^ Library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung: Netz-Quelle history and politics. In: library.fes.de. Retrieved April 5, 2013 . 
4. ^ Elisabeth Lembeck: Dorothea Hirschfeld. In: Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved April 5, 2013 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} SPD Berlin - Hirschfeld, Dorothea. (No longer available online.) In: archiv.spd-berlin.de. Archived from the original on February 2, 2014 ; Retrieved April 5, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.