Else Falk

Else Falk (born on 25. April 1872 as Else choice in Barmen , died on 8. January 1956 in São Paulo was) a German women's rights activist and social politician in the Weimar Republic . She was the founder and active member of Cologne women's and welfare associations and sponsor of numerous social projects. From 1919 to 1933 she was chairwoman of the city ​​association of Cologne women's associations . Because of her Jewish religious affiliation , she was forced on March 22, 1933 to resign from the chairmanship of the city association.

Live and act

Else Wahl was the fourth of seven children to the Jewish commercial councilor Hermann Wahl and his wife Henny in Barmen. The father ran the textile business S & R Wahl here, was a sponsor of the Barmer Bergbahn and founder of the local synagogue community. At the age of 22, Else married the Bergheim lawyer Bernhard Falk in Barmen . After her husband was admitted to the Cologne Higher Regional Court , the family moved to Cologne in 1898 (Christophstrasse 39). The family frequented the circles of Rhenish assimilated Judaism , including in the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith from 1893 . Her husband was involved in the National Liberal Association of Coeln and was elected to the Cologne city ​​council in 1908 .

Before the First World War to Else Falk sat - along with Pink Bodenheimer , Matilda of Mevissen and Klara Caro of the Cologne local group - Prussian national association for women's right to vote for the suffrage of women. In 1914 Else Falk was elected treasurer of the National Women's Community. During the First World War, she initiated numerous social projects, in particular to alleviate the hardship of war invalids and widows with their children. In 1918, for example, she set up the first public library for the blind in Cologne and ran a shoemaker's workshop in order to secure an income for war invalids . In order to increase the stock of books for the library for the blind, she and a group of women punched out books in Braille .

Call of the German Democratic Party for the implementation of women's suffrage, signed and a. by Else Falk (1919)

In 1919 she was elected chairwoman of the Cologne Women's Association, in which up to 20,000 Cologne women were organized, a function that she would hold until March 1933. She was part of the organizing committee that organized the 1921 Reichstag of the Federation of German Women's Associations in Gürzenich, Cologne .

During the hyperinflation , after the departure of the Quakers , who initially helped to ensure the food supply in Cologne after the First World War , she organized the food distribution in the association for children's meals in the city association in order to provide needy families with food. Large parts of Cologne's population became impoverished as a result of hyperinflation. In order to relieve the misery of impoverished widows in particular, she advocated building apartments for small pensioners. In the following ten years, four old people's homes were built on her initiative. In 1923 she got involved - together with Josephine Erkens - for the establishment of the Cologne women's welfare police . This more socially oriented institution had a shop in Cologne, in which the social help offers were advertised. In addition to women from Cologne, English women officers also served in the first women's welfare police in the British zone of occupation .

From 1925, Else Falk and Alice Neven DuMont published the news paper of the City Association of Cologne Women Associations , which provided information on topics and events specific to women as a weekly supplement in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . In the same year she founded the Cologne branch of the 5th Welfare Association , an amalgamation of Cologne institutions of voluntary welfare , which she chaired from 1930.

In the second half of the 1920s, Else Falk devoted herself to caring for working mothers. Women who are less well off, exhausted and overworked should be given the opportunity to recover in maternal cures . To this end, she founded the Association for Mothers Recreation and Training and Local Recreational Care for Mother and Child. The construction of various facilities, such as the rest home for working people in Hummelsheim (1927) and the professional women's house at Bornheimer Strasse 4 in Cologne-Zollstock (1930) go back to her initiative. Recreational gardens for women were set up in Cologne-Brück . In order to honor their commitment to the welfare of women, the dormitory for working women in Zollstock was renamed the Else Falk House shortly after the inauguration . As early as 1927, she supported Hertha Kraus in setting up the Riehler Heimstätten old people's and infirmary homes , which were converted from former barracks buildings.

Another concern of Else Falk was the fight against alcohol abuse , as it was the cause of domestic violence and further impoverishment of families in many working class families. In 1927 she co-founded the GOA in Cologne . In addition to restaurants where no alcohol was served, the GOA initiative used vehicles to supply events, factories and construction sites with inexpensive, healthy food. She also advocates the establishment of so-called refreshment rooms in university and court canteens.

In 1927, along with Alice Neven DuMont, numerous artists and patrons of the Cologne Society, she was one of the founding members of the Cologne branch of the GEDOK artists' association . In addition to social project work in Cologne, Else Falk was active in numerous supraregional associations and political organizations in leading positions or on the board, including the General German Women's Association , the working group of the city associations of Rhineland and Westphalia, the Rhenish-Westphalian women's association and the federal government German women's clubs.

After women were admitted to political parties, Else Falk was chair of the National Liberal Women's Group. In 1918 she joined the newly founded, left-wing liberal German Democratic Party . She represented the interests of women and the poor population of Cologne in committees of the Cologne city council.

Concerned about the political development in Germany, she was one of the co-signatories of an appeal by the Cologne women's associations against Hitler's election as Reich Chancellor in 1932 . In the same year she joined the German State Party, which was newly founded in 1930 from the German Democratic Party. Here she was as the main shop steward for the constituency elected Cologne-Aachen.

Just two weeks after the Reichstag elections in March 1933 , Else Falk, a Jew, was forced to resign from the chair of the Cologne women's associations, which she held for 13 years. Alice Neven-DuMont took over her duties, and on July 18, 1933 she incorporated the mothers' recovery association founded by Else Falk into the National Socialist Women's Association .

Despite the increasing marginalization, Else Falk continued to work for the Jewish artists who were excluded from GEDOK because of their religious affiliation. From 1934 to 1938 she headed the Jewish Art Association in Cologne. After 1933, Bernhard and Else Falk were forced to change apartments in Cologne several times. During the November pogroms in 1938 , the Falk family's apartment was completely devastated. In the spring of 1939 the family emigrated to Belgium . Friends of the family gave the family shelter in Brussels at 41 rue du Beffroi and protected them from access by the Gestapo . Her husband Bernhard died on December 23, 1944 in exile in Brussels, which had been liberated by the Allies in September 1944 . After she no longer had any family ties to Cologne after the war, she settled with her son in Brazil. She died in São Paulo at the age of 83.

Private life

On April 3, 1894, Else Wahl married the Bergheim lawyer Bernhard Falk in Barmen . From this marriage four sons were born. The eldest son Alfred (born 1895) died in January 1917 as an officer in Manfred von Richthofen's hunting squadron . The second son Fritz (born 1898), who was married to Margarethe Oevel , worked as a doctor of law at the Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf . On December 11, 1933, after his work permit was withdrawn and increasingly marginalized and humiliated, he committed suicide .

Her son Ernst (1901–1978) also worked as a lawyer with a doctorate and, like his parents, had to emigrate to Belgium in 1939. He later fled to South America via France and settled in Brazil. His mother followed him after her husband's death to spend the rest of her life in São Paulo. The youngest son Hermann (born in 1905) also received his doctorate and emigrated to Sydney in 1932.

Honors

As early as 1930, the house for working women built by Wilhelm Riphahn and the Association of Post and Telegraph Officers at Bornheimer Strasse 4 in Cologne-Zollstock was named after Else Falk. During her last stay in Cologne - she visited the city in 1952 at the invitation of Konrad Adenauer - a memorial plaque was erected on this building and a celebratory meal was given in her honor.

On the initiative of the Cologne Women's History Association , a street in Cologne-Longerich today commemorates the social politician. At the suggestion of the Cologne Women's Association (AKF Cologne) , the city of Cologne decided in July 2019 to award a prize for outstanding work for women and equality, which is named after Else Falk. This prize was awarded for the first time on March 6, 2020: to Frauke Mahr from Cologne's Lobby for Girls eV association

literature

• Rosemarie Ellscheid : The city association of Cologne women's associations. A chapter on women's movement and contemporary history from 1909–1933 . Cologne 1983
• Sully Roecken: The city association of Cologne women's associations and its affiliated associations . In: Kölner Frauengeschichtsverein (Hrsg.): “10 o'clock punctually Gürzenich” - women in Cologne that were moved for a hundred years . Agenda-Verlag, Münster 1995, ISBN 3-929440-53-9 , 183-219
• Irene Franken: Else Falk - a source of women's energies. In: Irene Franken (ed.): Women in Cologne - The historical city guide , JP Bachem, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7616-2029-8 , pp. 265-267

Web links

• Frauengeschichtsverein.de: Else Falk
• Working group of Cologne women's associations: Else Falk

Individual evidence

1. ↑ also incorrectly published in some sources on April 20 and 24, 1874
2. ↑ Hermann Wahl. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved July 12, 2017 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
3. ↑ Ulrich Föhse: The election in Barmen . In: Supporting Association of the Old Synagogue Wuppertal eV (ed.): This is where Ms. Antonie Giese lived - The history of the Jews in the Bergisches Land . Wuppertal 1997, p. 44-47 .
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Irene Franken: Else Falk - a source of women's energy . In: Women in Cologne - The historical city guide . Bachem, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7616-2029-8 , pp. 265-272 .
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Sully Roecken: Else Falk . In: Kölner Frauengeschichtsverein (Hrsg.): "10 o'clock punctually Gürzenich" - A hundred years of moving women in Cologne. Agenda-Verlag, Münster 1995, ISBN 3-929440-53-9 , p. 220-222 .
6. ↑ Irene Franken: Women's Welfare Police . In: Women in Cologne - The historical city guide . Bachem, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7616-2029-8 , pp. 52 .
7. ↑ ^{a b} The Else Falk House at Bornheimer Straße 4. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on July 14, 2017 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
8. ↑ Sully Roecken: The Urban Community of Cologne women's clubs and its affiliated clubs . In: Kölner Frauengeschichtsverein (Hrsg.): "10 o'clock punctually Gürzenich" - A hundred years of moving women in Cologne . Agenda-Verlag, Münster 1995, ISBN 3-929440-53-9 , p. 207-213 .
9. ↑ Irene Franken: Gedok . In: Women in Cologne - The historical city guide . Bachem, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7616-2029-8 , pp. 187-189 .
10. ↑ Anja Katzmarzik: International Women's Day: Three impressive Cologne women in history . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . ( ksta.de [accessed on July 14, 2017]).
11. ^ Volker Stalmann: Bernhard Falk (1867–1944) - Liberal, Jew and German patriot . In: Eckart Conze, Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, Jürgen Frölich, Ewald Grothe, Joachim Scholtyseck, Erich Weede (eds.): Yearbook on Liberalism Research . 2014, ISBN 978-3-8329-7692-7 , pp. 161-193 .
12. ^ Dieter Marc Schneider, Louise Forsyth: Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933-1945 . 1: Politics, economy, public life. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1980, ISBN 978-3-11-097028-9 , pp. 166 .
13. ↑ Klaus Luig: ... because he is not of Aryan descent. Jewish lawyers in Cologne during the Nazi era . Ed .: Cologne Bar Association. Otto Schmidt, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-504-01012-6 , p. 174-177 .
14. ^ Ulrich S. Soénius (Ed.), Jürgen Wilhelm (Ed.): Kölner Personen-Lexikon. Greven, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 , p. 148.
15. ^ Introduction of a women's prize in Cologne, here: ELSE-FALK-Prize. Retrieved February 9, 2020 . 
16. ^ Else Falk Prize of the City of Cologne. City of Cologne, accessed on February 9, 2020 .