Gertrude Guillaume-Schack

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Gertrud Schack von Wittenau, around 1867

Gertrude Guillaume-Schack (born November 9, 1845 in Uschütz , Silesia ; † May 20, 1903 in Surbiton , Great Britain ) was an activist of the International Workers' Association ( Second International ) and committed women's rights activist ; the focus of her work was in Germany, where her name is usually Gertrud Guillaume-Schack .

Life

Gertrud Countess Schack von Wittenau married the artist Édouard Guillaume, brother of the anarchist James Guillaume, in Les Verrières in the canton of Neuchâtel in 1877 and went to Paris with him. After 2 years she got a divorce and returned to Germany. There she founded a "German Culture Association" on March 7, 1880, as a branch of the international abolitionist federation that had been founded five years earlier by Josephine Butler . Josephine Butler was the leading figure in the Ladies' National Organization , which opposed the British Contagious Diseases Acts , legislation that cemented the existing double sexual standards. The Kulturbund organized many events at which Gertrud Guillaume was the first woman to speak publicly and in front of a large audience, especially female workers, about sexuality and "immoral things" and addressed the misery of prostitutes. The moral police often banned their events for "causing public nuisance". Since she increasingly emphasized the connection between female poverty and prostitution, she moved closer to the SPD, in which August Bebel addressed something similar.

In 1886 and 1887, Guillaume-Schack founded the association to represent the interests of women workers in St. Gallen , Winterthur , Zurich , Bern and Basel , which promotes the interests of workers from service professions (maids, laundresses, straighteners, cleaning women, home workers, etc. ) should perceive. In Germany, something similar happened on her initiative, with camouflage clubs being used because of the political repression. This is how a Central Health and Funeral Fund for women and girls in Germany was set up in Offenbach . At the end of 1885 this fund had over 15,000 members in 166 branches. Despite some setbacks, the fund remains. After the suppression of the workers' associations, it remained the only supraregional organizational bond for women workers.

In 1883 she sent a petition to the German Reichstag to abolish the regulation of prostitution as an institution incompatible with the high task of the state.

In 1885 Guillaume-Schack launched the magazine Die Staatsbürgerin for the members of the fund in Offenbach am Main ; but after only six months this periodical was officially banned "for inciting class hatred". After the newspaper was banned, newsletters were issued. The newspaper published statistical material on the situation of workers, questionnaires and survey results, but also novels. The Countess argued sharply against the ban or restriction of women's work planned in the Reichstag and also in the SPD. When she was convicted more and more often and was finally expelled from Germany on the basis of the socialist laws, the “law against the publicly dangerous endeavors of social democracy”, she went to London. Between June 1885 and January 1887 she was in correspondence with Friedrich Engels .

There she joined the Socialist League for three years in 1887 . She has also worked for other radical organizations. In the last years of her life she became a member of the theosophical movement in London.

Guillaume-Schack died in 1903 in Surbiton, Great Britain, at the age of 58.

Works

  • A word on the question of morality. Lecture given in Berlin on May 14th, 1880. Dollfuss, Berlin 1881 (The public morality, booklet 1) (4th edition, 1881) Digitized
  • About our moral conditions and the endeavors and work of the British Continental and General League. Lecture by Guillaume-Schack on March 23, 1882 in Darmstadt, held and prohibited by the police there. Dollfuss, Berlin 1882 Contains: The trial in Darmstadt against Mrs. Guillaume-Schack. Stenographic report digitized
  • Ed .: The Citizen. Organ for the interests of the workers and the Central Health and Funeral Fund for women and girls in Germany. C. Ulrich, Offenbach 1886 Numbers 1-24, January 3, 1886 to June 13, 1886.

literature

  • Gertrud Guilleaume-Schack . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism. Deceased personalities . Vol. 1. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, pp. 108-109.
  • Hartwig Gebhart, Ulla Wischermann (Ed.): "The Citizen". Offenbach 1886 - Faithful reprint of Germany's first workers' magazine. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10694-7
  • Ulla Wischermann: Guillaume-Schack, b. Schack from Wittenau . In: Manfred Asendorf, Rolf von Bockel (eds.): Democratic ways. German résumés from five centuries. JB Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 1997, ISBN 3-476-01244-1 , pp. 223-224
  • Ute Gerhard: women's movement and feminism. A story since 1789. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-56263-1 , pp. 60f.

See also

archive

proof

  1. ^ German translation of the Zs title "La Citoyenne", 1881-1891 ed. by Hubertine Auclert , the creator of the term “feminism” as a contrast to the “masculinism” that shaped the Third French Republic
  2. ↑ There are a total of ten letters from her to Engels in the [IISG] in Amsterdam, as well as a letter concept from Engels to her (draft around July 5, 1885). Printed in: Marx-Engels-Werke . Volume 36, p. 341.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Guillaume-Schack, Gertrude
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schack von Wittenau, Gertrud (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German women's rights activist, Swiss activist of the International Workers' Association
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1845
PLACE OF BIRTH Uschütz , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH May 20, 1903
Place of death Surbiton , UK