Else Wentscher

Else Wentscher (born January 31, 1877 in Wüstegiersdorf , † 1946 in Bonn ) was a German philosopher and educator .

Life

Else Wentscher, b. Schwedler, was born the daughter of a Silesian factory clerk who died early. As a widow, her mother ran the factory kindergarten. Her maternal grandfather, the orphanage director Kranz, had a great influence on her. Else attended the Augusta School in Breslau , after which she was accepted for a three-year training course at the Berlin “Stiftung Mädchenheim”, a seminar for the training of female teachers (graduated in 1896). In Berlin, Else Pfleiderer , daughter of the theologian Otto Pfleiderer, became her friend. In his house she met Max Wentscher, who had a doctorateknow whom she married in 1897. The first daughter was born in August 1898 and a second followed. Else Wentscher learned ancient Greek and Latin as an autodidact and, according to her own statements, read the original of the poet Homer . Inspired by her husband, she dealt intensively with the philosophy of Hermann Lotze . In Bonn she heard the lectures of her husband and other professors and lecturers. In 1901 she and her husband attended the Evangelical Social Congress in Dortmund for the first time, where they heard a lecture on the modern striving for education that Adolf von Harnack gave. In the same year she started her own publishing activity. From 1907 she also taught. Before 1926 she received the Dr. hc from the University of Bonn .

Wentscher's areas of expertise were ethics, women's education and the connection between English and German idealism.

In 1928, Wentscher translated On Liberty (1859) by John Stuart Mill into German; the book was published in the Philosophical Library series by Meiner-Verlag. Their translation is still used today. The philosopher Johannes Thyssen wrote the obituary for them .

Works (selection)

• Relative or Absolute Truth ?. Munich 1941
• The I as a soul unit. in: Archive for the History of Philosophy , 1937
• English ways to Kant. 1931
• The ethical foundations of Schleiermacher's pedagogy. Langensalza 1928
• Author of the lemmas Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill in: Pedagogical Lexicon. In connection with the Society for Protestant Pedagogy and with the participation of numerous experts ed. by Hermann Schwartz. Leipzig 1931 (4 volumes)
• Translation: John Stuart Mill: About freedom (Leipzig: Meiner 1928; new. Ed. Hamburg 2011).
• Benno Erdmann's position on Kant's ethics. in: Kant studies 32 (1927), p. 317ff.
• The history of the causal problem in modern philosophy. 1921
• English philosophy, its essence and its development. In: Handbook of Anglo-American Culture, ed. W. Dibelius. 1924
• German Influences in New English Philosophy. In: Knowledge 5 (1924)
• The problem of empiricism. Shown to John Stuart Mill. Bonn 1922.
• The will. In: From nature and the spiritual world. 1910
• Feeling and wanting. In: Women's Education 7/8. 1909
• Phenomenalism and realism. 1903
• The causal problem in Lotze's philosophy. 1903

literature

• Christian Tilitzki : The History of German University Philosophy . 2002
• Wedel, Gudrun: Lessons between work and profession: Insights into the life of women autobiographers from the 19th century. Vienna: Böhlau 2003.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Else Wentscher: Motherhood and intellectual work. In: Dt. Leaves for educational teaching 53 (1926), pp. 32–34.
2. ↑ Thyssen, Johannes: In memory of the philosopher Dr. hc Else Wentscher. In: Journal for Philosophical Research. Vol. 5, Issue 1 (1950), pp. 116ff

Web links

• In memory of the philosopher Dr. hc Else Wentscher. Article by Johannes Thyssen, Journal for Philosophical Research, Bonn 1950.
• Biography on Hautow.de, accessed on May 4, 2013.