Fini pan

Fini Pfannes (born on December 8, 1894 as Josefine Proper in Piteşti , Romania ; died on December 20, 1967 in Frankfurt ) was a Romanian-German entrepreneur and housewife who was also socially and politically active.

Life

Josefine Proper was born as the daughter of the wealthy German exporter Nathan Proper in Romania and grew up in Brăila . After completing a commercial apprenticeship, she worked in his company and met Carl Pfannes during the First World War , whom she married in 1920 as his second wife; he had previously got a divorce for her. The couple lived together in Frankfurt am Main, where Carl Pfannes was the general agent for two publishers ( Knorr & Hirth , Vobach ).

Pfannes was a skilful cook and housekeeper, published cooking recipes in magazines soon after their marriage, was employed by Main-Gaswerke as an advertising consultant and cookery demonstrator and became an advertising manager with 30 employees. She was a co-founder of the Federation for People's Nutrition and marketed the idea of ​​a “business book for the housewife”, a preprinted household book . She also wrote numerous recipes for the later cookbooks and diet books.

In the 1930s, the converted Catholic was excluded from all existing offices, professions and contracts because of her Jewish descent. It was protected by influential relatives and survived the Second World War unscathed by its complete isolation from the environment. Her husband died in 1940.

In the post-war period , Pfannes organized an advertisement service which, after the currency reform in 1948, it expanded into a nationwide advertising platform for food and household appliance companies. In addition to running the Pfannes advertising service , she also published Das Frauenjournal and ran Hausfrauen-Verlag , which, with medical advice, published other cookery and diet books as well as brochures and advertising material. Fini Pfannes also became socio-politically active and was co-founder of the new German Housewives Association in 1946 . She had also belonged to the pre-war organization of the DHB. As managing chairman of the DHB, Pfannes was able to replace the president Emmy Lüthje in 1952, which led to a personal break (Lüthje founded the competing housewives' union ). During Pfannes' time as DHB President from 1952 to 1956, she succeeded in establishing the DHB in an advisory capacity in numerous consumer committees. In 1955 she was also vice-president of the working group of consumer associations and a member of the board of the association for the promotion of milk consumption e. V. In 1953 she received the Federal Cross of Merit .

In 1955, as DHB President, against resistance from her own ranks, she endeavored to professionalize the domestic worker profession and to achieve a collective wage agreement to improve the sometimes inhuman working conditions. Household helpers should, according to a proposal negotiated by DHB and women representatives of the NGG, be given the right to private life, regular working hours and social recognition. Since the majority of German housewives were not organized in the DHB, and also the Central Association of Catholic Women and Mothers' Communities and the Professional Association of Catholic House Helpers in Germany e. V. argued against this initiative, the project initially came to a standstill, but the ideas that were publicized were later taken up again by other sides. Furthermore, in the rearmament discussion, Pfannes strongly opposed the possibility of voluntary military service for women in order to retain young girls as low-paid household workers; She also argued with the image of the lightning girls who are not allowed to return. Finally, she proposed the establishment of a “ consumer ministry ” to encourage critical consumers and customer education. Pfannes sought direct contact with the federal government for these concerns and met federal ministers Ludwig Erhard and Franz-Josef Wuermeling , for example .

Due to the amalgamation of club and business interests, Pfannes came under fire, including from Rosine Speicher , who was then pushed out of the DHB board. At the general meeting of the DHB in June 1956, Fini Pfannes was almost refused discharge because of the incomplete disclosure of her business relationships. That is why she did not run again for election; Lotte Uekermann was her successor . She herself went back to the state level, where she remained president of the Hessian DHB state association from 1956 until the year she died.

Pfannes died childless in 1967 and bequeathed the majority of her considerable private fortune to the Fini Pfannes Foundation for the promotion of the home economics department, based in Frankfurt am Main.

Works (selection)

• Instructions for making cold dishes using the Kelvinator (around 1928)
• Healthy and Cheap: Modern Nutrition in Theory and Practice (1933)
• Food canning in the household (1933)
• Diet: The preparation of health food in the household (1933, collaboration: Lotte Knoll)
• Baking cakes, tarts, tarts and biscuits (1933/34)
• The kitchen , manual in 10 booklets (1952)
• Lots of favorite dishes: healthy, quick, festive, international. Swiss specialties. Milk / cream / yoghurt (1963, collaboration: Ida Lindauer)
• Good things for bad days. Diet cures at home (1966, dietetic editing: Heinz Willert)
• The right diet for every case (1973, dietetic editor: Heinz Willert)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fini Pfannes in the Munzinger archive , accessed on February 19, 2017 ( beginning of article freely available)
2. ^ Die Zeit , October 27, 1955: Woman portrait: The housewife
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Der Spiegel , December 14, 1955: The pearl in the shell (cover story)
4. ↑ Der Spiegel, June 6, 1956: Der Spiegel reported.
5. ^ Website of the Hessian regional association in the DHB household network

literature

• Elke Schüller, Kerstin Wolff , German Housewives Association, Landesverband Hessen eV (ed.): Fini Pfannes. Protagonist and bird of paradise of the post-war women's movement . Ulrike Helmer Verlag , Königstein / Taunus 2000, ISBN 3-89741-032-X .