Gertrud Dyhrenfurth

Gertrud Dyhrenfurth (* July 19, 1862 on the Jakobsdorf manor in Lower Silesia; † June 20, 1946 in Bassum ) was a German social scientist who primarily dealt with the social issue in the countryside.

Life

Family origin

Dyhrenfurth was the youngest of three children of Ludwig Robert Dyhrenfurth (1821–1899) and his wife Marie, b. Beyersdorf. The family belonged to the wealthy Jewish upper class and educated middle class. Many members of this class, including Ludwig Robert Dyhrenfurth, converted to Christianity in the 19th century. The Jakobsdorf estate, on which Gertrud Dyhrenfurth spent most of her life, was bought by her father in 1852.

Time in Berlin

At the end of the 1880s Dyhrenfurth went to Berlin and attended a secondary school for girls there. It was here that she began to deal with the issue of women and made contact with the bourgeois women's movement, so in 1893 she co-founded the girls' and women's groups for social aid work . The aim of these groups was to train middle-class girls and women for voluntary assistance in various areas of welfare work. Dyhrenfurth was also active in the Evangelical Social Congress and in the Association for Social Policy . She was friends with Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne, among others . Since the end of the 1890s she was also an active member of the Patriotic Women's Association and the German Lyceum Club in Berlin. From 1894 Dyhrenfurth's first essays appeared in economic journals. Before that, she had undertaken a six-week study trip to England, where she got an idea of ​​the conditions there for women workers in the textile factories. After her return, she was admitted to the Berlin University as a guest student, where she only stayed two semesters. Even without a university education, she sought contact with scientists, such as the economist Max Sering . In the 1890s, Dyhrenfurth dealt primarily with the group of homeworkers in her investigations and her socio-political commitment. She did not want to abolish home work, but to improve working conditions. It was not least thanks to her suggestion that the first home workers' union was founded in October 1900.

Return to the parental property

Dyhrenfurth's father died in 1899. She subsequently ran the Jakobsdorf estate together with her brother Walter. The social question in the countryside and in particular the situation of women workers in agriculture came to the center of her scientific work. Several studies were carried out on this. On her own estate, she also took care of the social and cultural issues of her workforce in a very practical way. This meant that the social conditions were much better here than in the surrounding Silesia. However, she did not want the existing social inequality to be touched. From 1902 Gertrud Dyhrenfurth was also an active member of the German Association for Rural Welfare and Home Care. During the First World War she wrote several articles in the magazines "Die Gutsfrau" and "Land und Frau", she organized war courses for women in the country and took on various tasks in the war welfare department.

Weimar Republic and National Socialism

In the first democratic elections after the war, Gertrude Dyhrenfurth provided campaign support for the German National People's Party (DNVP) . Since her brother died in 1919, she now had to take over the entire management and administration of the estate. So she hardly had any time for scientific work. Because of her work over the past few years, the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen awarded her an honorary doctorate on June 3, 1921. She was one of the first women to receive an honorary doctorate. In the following years, Dyhrenfurth set up various training institutions for girls and women on her estate.

Although Dyhrenfurth was “half-Jewish” according to the National Socialist definition, she herself was initially an enthusiastic supporter of National Socialism, from which she hoped that her social ideas would be realized. The educational institutions on the estate were redesigned in the National Socialist sense or taken over by Nazi organizations. How and whether Dyhrenfurth's attitude towards National Socialism changed is unknown. She herself was only affected by the anti-Semitic measures after the "Aryanization" and therefore transferred her share of the property to Kurt von Tippelskirch , who lived with his wife permanently in Jakobsdorf from 1938 onwards. Gertrud von Dyhrenfurth survived the war relatively unscathed. At the end of the war, she stayed on the estate and did not flee. Kurt von Tippelskirch was taken prisoner by Russia, Gertrude von Dyhrenfurth was expelled from Poland together with relatives in 1946. They had to go west in a freight car. Gertrude von Dyhrenfurth died a few days after arriving in Bassum near Bremen at the age of 84.

Technical articles and books (selection)

• The union movement among English women workers . In: Archives for social legislation and statistics , Vol. 7 (1894), pp. 166–214.
• A look inside the union movement of English workers: a travel study . In: Yearbook for Legislation, Administration and Economics in the German Empire , Vol. 19 (1895), pp. 917–941.
• The reports of the female factory inspectors in England . In: Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics , Vol. 3,9 (1895), pp. 594–603.
• Miss Collet's report on commercial women's labor . In: Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics , Vol. 3,12 (1896), pp. 867-878.
• Female trade inspectors . In: Ethische Kultur , Vol. 4 (1896), 13, pp. 99-100.
• The house industrial workers in the Berlin blouse, petticoat, apron and tricot manufacture , Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot 1898 (political and social science research; 15th volume, 4th issue = 67th issue).
• The program of the trade union of homeworkers in Germany [lecture] , Breslau: Favorke, 1903.
• Family and club obligations: Lecture ... held on March 21, 1905 on the occasion of the 2nd Association Day of the Union of Homeworkers in Germany in Berlin , Berlin: Vaterländische Verlags- und Kunst-Anstalt [1905].
• The female homework: Lecture given in Breslau on May 26th, 1904 . In: Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics , Vol. 3.29 (1905), pp. 21–42.
• together with Robert Wilbrandt u. a .: Pictures from the German homework , Leipzig: Dietrich 1906.
• A Silesian village and manor: history and social constitution , Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot 1906 (political and social science research; 25th volume, 2nd issue = 117th issue).
• Collective Bargaining Offices for the House Industry , Berlin: Union of Homeworkers 1908.
• together with Anna Schmidt and Alice Salomon: Home work and wages: three lectures , Jena: Fischer 1909 (writings of the Standing Committee for the Promotion of Workers' Interests; 1).
• The program of the trade union of homeworkers in Germany: fixed on the 4th Association Day in Berlin in February 1913 , Berlin: Vaterländische Verlags- und Kunst-Anstalt 1913.
• Results of a study on the working and living conditions of women in agriculture
  • Vol. 1: The effect of economic and social conditions on women's life, Jena: Fischer, 1916.
• The fatherland and the German housewives: Lecture for family evenings and war cooking courses in the countryside , Berlin: Deutsche Landbuchhandlung 1916.
• together with Margret von der Betten: Women's work in rural welfare , Berlin: Dt. Landbuchhandlung 1920 (yearbook for welfare work in the countryside; vol. 2, no.4).

literature

• Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 142.
• Marion Keller: Gertrud Dyhrenfurth . In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon , Vol. 38, Herzberg: Bautz, Sp. 326–352.
• Marion Keller: Pioneers of empirical social research in the Wilhelminian Empire , Stuttgart: Franz Steiner 2018, ISBN 9783515119856 , pp. 126–226.