Ellen Key

The sculptor Carl Milles and Ellen Key around 1915.

Ellen Karolina Sophie Key ( pronunciation : [ ˌɛlːən ˈkɛʝː ], born December 11, 1849 at Sundsholm mansion, Västervik municipality ; † April 25, 1926 in Strand house, Ödeshög municipality ) was a Swedish educationalist and writer .

Life

Ellen Key statue in Stockholm, created by Sigrid Fridman

Ellen Karolina Sophie Key was born on December 11, 1849 in Sundsholm (southern Sweden) as the first of six children. Her father, Emil Key (1822-1892), ran a manor. Her mother, Sophie Ottiliana Posse (1824-1884), came from a noble family. The parents devoted themselves to raising their children both lovingly and strictly. Luxury was foregone. Ellen was a reliable support to the parents in looking after their younger siblings. She did not go to school, but received private lessons at home , including from a German teacher. Ellen took a keen interest in history, philosophy, and aesthetic literature .

Emil Key, who co-founded the Swedish Peasant Party in 1867, became a member of the Reichstag in 1868. The family moved to Stockholm. Ellen Key's interest in political and social issues grew. She developed a strong sense of freedom and justice. In 1869, her first articles appeared in what was then a very renowned women's magazine , even though Ellen Key was only 20 years old.

Ellen Key taught history and poetry to children in village Sunday School . From 1875 she taught young women in history and literature at a kind of adult education center. In addition, she (with her father) made several trips in the following years, for example to Berlin , Dresden , Kassel , Vienna , Paris , Florence and Venice .

In 1878 she had to take up a regular job as a teacher at a private school in Stockholm for financial reasons . She taught girls of all ages there until 1898. In the autumn of 1879 she met the German biologist Ernst Haeckel in London . His commitment to the theory of evolution also influenced later works by Key on the subject of education and women. From 1883 until 1903, Ellen Key worked as a lecturer in literature and cultural history at the Stockholm Labor Institute .

Her mother died in 1884; the father suffered a stroke . Ellen Key lived through crisis-filled years. Their commitment to women's and children's rights increased. She often spoke to workers' and women's associations. In 1885 she became vice-president of a foundation for women working intellectually and artistically. Her father died in 1892.

In 1896 she published her book Abused Women's Power . In this treatise, which was also translated into German in 1898, she expressed the view that a woman's natural place is the house and that her only vocation is that of motherhood . Because of this, she met with rejection from determined women's rights activists. Her essays appeared in 1899 . Her work Barnets århundrade , published in 1900, was soon translated into several languages. The book The Few and the Many appeared in 1901.

Key's successful Barnets århundrade was published in German translation in 1902 by S. Fischer Verlag , Berlin, under the title The Century of the Child . In this work in particular, her intellectual engagement with Darwinism and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is expressed. In the first chapter on “The child's right to choose his or her parents”, she represents ideas that she derives from Darwinism and based on Nietzsche's “Also sprach Zarathustra”, which later recur in National Socialist theories: So the higher development of man through keeping the Races, the conscious formation of partners for healthy people to produce healthy children and finally the conscious selection of healthy children ( euthanasia ): “This is related to the development of new legal terms in these areas. While pagan society in its harshness exposed the weak or crippled children, the Christian society in "mildness" has gone so far that it turns the life of the mentally and physically incurably ill and deformed child into hourly torment for the child itself and its surroundings extended. In society - which, among other things, upholds the death penalty and war - the reverence for life is not great enough to allow such a life to be extinguished without danger. Only when only mercy gives death will the humanity of the future be able to show itself in the fact that the doctor, under control and responsibility, painlessly extinguishes such a suffering. ”Through the German translation of the book, her views were widely disseminated.

In 1903 Ellen Key retired to the countryside near her birthplace. However, she continued to cultivate lively cultural, political and literary contacts - among others with Rainer Maria Rilke , Martin Buber and Richard von Schaukal - and made several trips to other European countries, including the reform colony of Monte Verità near Ascona. In 1904 her book About Love and Marriage was published , in 1906 Der Lebensbelief. Reflections on God, World and Soul , 1907 Rachel. A biographical sketch . There was an encounter with Rainer Maria Rilke on Capri . In 1909 she published the treatise The Women's Movement , in 1911 the book Souls and Works and in 1913 the book The Young Generation .

On April 25, 1926, Ellen Key died on Lake Vättern near Ödeshög in the Strand house she designed and built between 1910 and 1912 .

In 1951, the Ellen-Key-Gasse in Vienna- Favoriten (10th district) was named after her and in 1998 the Ellen-Key-Schule was named after her in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain . There is also a school with her name in Graz .

On May 29, 2018, an asteroid was named after her: (18562) Ellenkey .

Fonts

• Abused Women's Power (1898), translated by Therese Krüger, 3rd edition, Berlin 1905.
• Recension av Protestantismens Mariakult . Nya Daligt Allehanda. Stockholm June 26th 1895.
• People. Character Studies by Ellen Key . (Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Elizabeth, née Barret, and Robert Browning) Berlin 1903.
• Essays (1899). Transfer from Francis Maro . 7th edition, Berlin 1907.
• Madame de Stael and Napoleon I. In: Die Waage, Wiener Wochenschrift . Vienna 1900, No. 29: 40–42, No. 30: 57–60.
• Hilma Strandberg . In: From foreign tongues . Berlin 1900: 332-334.
• Frida Stèenhoff . In: Documents of Women , Vol. 5, Vienna 1901: 250–254.
• The few and the many. New essays (1901). Transfer from Francis Maro. 2nd edition, Berlin 1901.
• Malvida from Meysenbug . In: Die Zeit , No. 388, Vienna 1902: 151–153.
• The century of the child . Transfer from Francis Maro. German first edition 1902, reissued: Weinheim and Basel 1992. ( online at Gutenberg-DE and online in the Internet Archive (transfer from Francis Maro, Berlin 1905))
• About love and marriage (1904). Transfer from Francis Maro. 5th edition, Berlin 1905.
• Love and Ethics (1905). Authorized translation by Francis Maro. Berlin 1911.
• Faith in life. Reflections on God, World and Soul (1906). 2nd edition, Berlin 1906.
• Nietzsche and Goethe . In: Die Neue Rundschau (Free Stage, Neue Deutsche Rundschau) , Berlin 1907: 385–404.
• Personality and beauty in their social and sociable effects. Essays (1907). Transfer by Francis Maro, 2nd edition, Berlin 1907.
• Rachel. A biographical sketch . Transfer from Marie Franzos. Leipzig, Haberland 1907.
• Three women's fates . 1908 ( Sofja Kowalewskaja , Anne Charlotte Leffler , Viktoria Benedictsson ), transfer from Marie Franzos. Berlin 1908.
• Mother and child . Berlin 1908.
• The women's movement . In: Die Gesellschaft, collection of social psychological monographs . Vol. 28/29, Ed .: Martin Buber , Frankfurt 1909.
• A portrait of a woman (Sophie Hoechstätter's biography about Frida von Bülow ) . In: Berliner Tageblatt , No. 392 of August 5, 1910.
• Björnson and Sweden . In: Hamburger Nachrichten of August 13, 1911.
• Selma Lagerlöf . In: Dresdner Latest News from June 4, 1911.
• Souls and works. Essays . Transfer from Francis Maro, Berlin 1911.
• A forerunner of scientific pacifism ( Gustav Björklund ) . In: Die Friedenswarte , Vienna 1912: 50–54.
• An international institute for the development of educational science . In: The monistic century . Ed .: Ostwald, Wilhelm, 1912: 468–474, 495–502.
• The young generation . Authorized transfer by Carl Morburger, 2nd edition, Munich 1913.
• Romain Rolland . In: Die Tat, social-religious monthly for German culture , 5th vol. Issue 7, 1913/14: 697–719.
• On the question of the future reconciliation of the peoples . In: Documents of Progress , 9th year, Bern 1916: 41–60 (contains , inter alia, the German translation of the foreword by Kriget , fredom och framtiden and the German translation of their well-known article in the Swedish forum of April 3, 1915).
• The war and the sexes . In: The new generation . Ed .: Helene Stöcker (contains the German translation of the 13th chapter by Kriget, fredom och framtiden ), Berlin 1917.
• The mothers petition . In: Die Tat, monthly for the future of German culture , issue 9, 1918: 647–652.
• How can the League of Nations come? In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of April 27, 1919.
• Florence Nightingale and Bertha von Suttner . Two women in a war against the war . Authorized translation by Felix Moeschlin, Zurich 1919.
• War, Peace and the Future . Translated by Hildegard Norberg (1916), reissued New York / London 1972.
• Minnen from and om Emil Key I-III . Stockholm 1915-17.

literature

• Louise Nyström-Hamilton: Ellen Key. A picture of life . Leipzig, E. Haberland, 1904.
• Katja Mann : Ellen Key. A life beyond pedagogy . Scientific Book Society , Darmstadt (series: Wissen) 2004 (comprehensive biography)
• The century of the child - at the end? Ellen Key and the educational discourse. A revision . Special issue of the journal engagement , Münster 1998 (= engagement. Journal for Education and School , issue 4/1998)
• Volker Ladenthin : The Century of Childhood . In: engagement. Journal for Education and Schools , Issue 4/1998, pp. 227–241

Web links

Commons : Ellen Key  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Ellen Key in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Ellen Key in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Works by Ellen Key in the Gutenberg-DE project

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ellen Key, The Century of the Child, Berlin 1902 [Authorized Transfer by Francis Maro], Chapter 1.