Georgine Gerhard

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former daughter school Basel

Georgine Gerhard (born August 18, 1886 in Basel ; † December 21, 1971 there ) was a Swiss teacher , women's rights activist and founder of the Basel section of the Swiss Aid for Emigrant Children (BHEK) .

Life

Georgine Gerhard grew up in Basel's Gellert district as the third of five children. Her father was authorized in the ribbon factory of the brothers Sarasin. Her parents came from teaching families in Baden and had moved to Basel in 1882. After attending the Free Protestant School and the Daughters School, she studied at the teachers' college, which she graduated in 1906.

After a stay in England and France, she taught at the daughter's school in Basel from 1909 . Increasing hearing loss forced her to give up teaching in 1919 and take on the office of school secretary and career counselor there, which she held until her retirement in 1942.

Experience with the British women's suffragette movement led her to participate in the founding of the Association for Women's Suffrage in Basel and the surrounding area in 1916, when she was president from 1917 to 1922 and 1935–1941. She had close contacts with the first leading women's rights activists such as Rosa Göttisheim and Emma Graf . 1918–1928 she was on the central board of the Swiss Association for Women's Suffrage (SVF) and as its delegate in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) . From 1920–1933 she ran the secretariat of the Swiss Teachers' Association and was involved in the editing of the “Yearbook of Swiss Women”.

In the 1930s she was president of the Basel branch of the Swiss branch of the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom (IFFF) . She represented a Christianity inspired by religious socialism and Quakerism and advocated an international solution to the refugee problem and a liberal asylum policy.

In the interwar period , she was a member of the Family Allowances Commission of the Federation of Swiss Women's Associations (BSF) and the Family Protection Commission of the Swiss Non-Profit Society, dealing with family policy and calling for equal pay and the introduction of family allowances.

In 1933 she was a founding member of the Comité d'aide aux enfants des émigrés allemands, Swiss section, and in 1934 she founded the Basler Aid for Emigrant Children (BHEK) (from 1935 Swiss Aid for Emigrant Children (SHEK)). The SHEK relief organization, where she was President of the Basel Section with Nettie Sutro-Katzenstein on the board, supported children of German parents who had emigrated to France and, from 1934–1939, spent two to three months in Switzerland for around 5,000 Jewish children. The women of SHEK looked after these children in the sense of charitable help and maternal love, they did not care about political programs, but worked together with all those willing to help and provided suitable recreational and vacation spots for their protégés.

Gerhard used her international network with women from Quaker circles and also presented himself to the Federal Council, to delegates of the League of Nations or to the head of the Federal Aliens Police, Heinrich Rothmund , in order to stand up for the refugees and especially the refugee children. In November 1938, she and Nettie Sutro-Katzenstein succeeded in obtaining a special permit for 300 Jewish children from Frankfurt, Konstanz and other communities in southern Baden (300 children campaign). Because the Second World War broke out, the children could not stay in Switzerland for six months, as planned, but for six years, which was life-saving for them.

In the spring of 1940 the SHEK joined the Swiss Working Group for War Damaged Children (SAK) (from 1942 Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross ). She was active in refugee care until 1945. 1940–1954 she was Vice President of the Working Group on Women and Democracy and from 1947 a member of the UN study commission for women's issues . Between 1939 and 1948, the SHEK looked after around 5000 Jewish refugee children, most of them illegally entered. The SHEK ran its own homes and in 1944 created a central home commission, which was chaired by Gerhard.

Towards the end of the war she tried to find a new destination or home country for all refugee children. She stayed in close contact with her former refugee children until her death, was a co-founder of the interdenominational Swiss children's village Kiriat Yearim in Jerusalem and visited her former protégés in Israel in 1948 and in the United States in 1964.

Honor

  • In 1961 she was awarded an honorary doctorate in medicine by the University of Basel for her work in refugee aid .

Publications

  • The teacher relationships in Switzerland . Basler Druck- und Verlaganstalt, Basel 1928
  • The economic provision of the family . Basler Druck- u. Publishing house, Basel 1929
  • with Rosa Göttisheim: 40 years of the Swiss Teachers' Association . Publishing house E. Eichenberger, Zurich 1933
  • Refugee fates. Homeless from country to country . Verlag Haupt, Bern 1937

literature

  • Netti Sutro-Katzenstein: Youth on the run, 1933–1948. 15 years in the mirror of the Swiss Aid Organization for Emigrant Children. With a foreword by Albert Schweitzer . Europa-Verlag, Zurich 1952.
  • Antonia Schmidlin: Another Switzerland. Helpers, children of war and humanitarian policy 1933–1942. , Dissertation, Chronos Verlag, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-905313-04-9 .
  • Sara Kadosh: Jewish Refugee Children in Switzerland 1939–1950. In: Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, edited by Elisabeth Maxwell and John K. Roth. London 2001
  • Aurel Waeber: Georgine Gerhard. Fighter for justice . In: Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian aid to children and official refugee policy 1917–1948. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2010, ISBN 3-7965-2695-0 .
  • Aurel Waeber: Georgine Gerhard (1886–1977). Refugee aid, women's movement, social policy. A Basel biography . Licentiate thesis, University of Basel 2004.
  • Hans-Hermann Seiffert: My beloved children. The letters of the Konstanz Jewess Hella Schwarzhaupt from internment in Gurs and Récébédou to her children . Hartung-Gorre Verlag, Konstanz 2013, ISBN 3866284861 (The two younger children of the Schwarzhaupt family were able to survive thanks to the 300-child campaign)
  • Salome Lienert: We want to help where there is need. The Swiss Aid Organization for Emigrant Children 1933–1947 . Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2013, ISBN 978-3-0340-1157-0
  • Serge Nessi: The Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross 1942–1945 and the role of the doctor Hugo Oltramare . Preface by Cornelio Sommaruga . Karolinger Verlag, Vienna / Leipzig 2013, ISBN 978-3-85418-147-7 (French original edition: Éditions Slatkine , Genève 2011, ISBN 978-2-8321-0458-3 ).
  • Aurel Weber: Georgine Gerhard and her work. A Basel biography. In: Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde , Vol. 106, 2006, pp. 199–204. ( e-periodica.ch )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Independent Expert Commission Switzerland (UEK) - Second World War: Switzerland and the refugees at the time of National Socialism , Zurich 2001, p. 85
  2. ↑ Urs Knoblauch: Switzerland as the guardian of the humanitarian tradition. For the exhibition Humanitarian Switzerland 1933–1945. Children on the run , at the University of Bern, 2004
  3. ↑ Antonia Schmidlin: A woman from Basel saves 300 Jewish children. Retrieved July 25, 2019 .
  4. ^ Aurel Waeber: Georgine Gerhard. Fighter for justice . In: Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian aid to children and official refugee policy 1917–1948. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2010, ISBN 3-7965-2695-0
personal data
SURNAME Gerhard, Georgine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss educator
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1971
Place of death Basel