Hedwig Dohm

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Hedwig Dohm (around 1870)

Marianne Adelaide Hedwig Dohm (née Schlesinger; born September 20, 1831 in Berlin ; † June 1, 1919 there ) was a German writer and women's rights activist . She was one of the first feminist theorists to attribute gender-specific behaviors to cultural imprinting rather than biological determination .

Life

Berlin memorial plaque on Friedrichstrasse 235 in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Hedwig Dohm was the fourth of 18 children of tobacco manufacturer Gustav Adolph Gotthold Schlesinger and his wife Wilhelmine Henriette Jülich. Like nine of her siblings, she was born out of wedlock because her parents were only able to marry in 1838, after the death of her paternal grandfather. This had threatened his son disinheritance if he should marry Jülich, who was also born out of wedlock. Hedwig Dohm's father came from a Jewish family and converted to the Protestant faith in 1817 ; from 1851 he was allowed to use the family name Schleh.

The family's daughters were only allowed a limited education, while the sons were allowed to attend grammar school. At the age of 15 Hedwig Dohm had to leave school and instead help with the family's household. Three years later she was able to attend a teachers' seminar. In 1853 she married Ernst Dohm , editor-in-chief of the satirical magazine Kladderadatsch , with whom she had five children between 1854 and 1860. The only son Hans Ernst (* 1854) died at the age of eleven, their four daughters Gertrude Hedwig Anna (1855–1942), Ida Marie Elisabeth (* 1856), Marie Pauline Adelheid (* 1858) and Eva (* 1859, 1. Marriage Max Klein , 2nd marriage Georg Bondi ) received a solid education and professional training.

Hedwig Dohm was the grandmother of Katia Mann , the wife of Thomas Mann , and the physicist and astronomer Hans Rosenberg, and the great-grandmother of the German-Swiss journalist and writer Eva Maria Borer .

The Dohm couple frequented intellectual circles in Berlin. Hedwig Dohm was suitable knowledge for their first release , the Spanish national literature in its historical development from 1867 self-taught on.

In the first half of the 1870s, the first four feminist books by Hedwig Dohm appeared, in which she called for complete legal, social and economic equality between women and men. She also demanded the right to vote for women back in 1873, as one of the first in Germany. These four essays - one of them is Der Frauen Natur und Recht - made her famous in one fell swoop, but also met with fierce criticism, not only among the “gentlemen's rights activists”, but also among the ranks of the bourgeois women's movement of the time, Dohm's radical theses went far. Middle-class women focused on the demand for improved schooling for girls and the care of single mothers. At the end of the 1870s, Dohm published several comedies , all of which were performed in the Berlin Schauspielhaus .

Her husband Ernst Dohm died in 1883 after a long illness. After his death, Hedwig Dohm began to write short stories and novels. When the radical wing of the women's movement gained strength at the end of the 1880s, it turned to political publications in newspapers and magazines again. In addition, she was co-founder of several radical clubs, u. a. of the Reform Women's Association (later the Women's Education Association - Women's Studies ), which campaigned for comprehensive educational reform and women's studies . She joined Minna Cauer's radical association Frauenwohl and at the age of 74 she became a member of the founding assembly of Helene Stöcker's Association for Maternity Protection and Sexual Reform . Until her death in 1919, she published several volumes of essays and almost a hundred articles in newspapers and magazines, in which she commented and positioned herself on current debates in literature and politics.

The new tombstone for Hedwig Dohm in the old St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof in Berlin, photographed in 2009

During the First World War (1914–1918) Dohm was one of the few intellectuals who spoke out against the war from the start; she was critical of “ Hurray patriotism ”. In her last writings, most of which she published in explicitly pacifist media such as Franz Pfemfert's Die Aktion , she identified herself as an uncompromising pacifist. She lived to see the introduction of women's suffrage in Germany in 1918.

Hedwig Dohm died at the age of 87 on June 1, 1919. She is buried in the Old St. Matthew Cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg . The journalists Bund has built there a memorial with a new grave stone on 22 September, 2007. In August 2018, the Berlin Senate decided to honor Hedwig Dohm as a person of particular importance for Berlin with an honorary grave. The inauguration took place on March 24, 2019 in the presence of the District Mayor of Tempelhof-Schöneberg , Angelika Schöttler, and other representatives from politics and the journalists' association.

Create

Hedwig Dohm was an early thought leader in feminism . She called for the same education and training for girls as for boys. She was convinced that economic independence was the only way for women to no longer necessarily end up in “marriage prison”, but to be able to voluntarily decide for or against - thanks to economic independence - an equal partnership with a man.

In addition to demands for equal training and female employment, she spoke out vehemently in favor of women's suffrage.

Helene Lange judged in 1925: "The disrespect and self-confidence with which Hedwig Dohm used her witty pen against the men was too unfamiliar to many women who were still completely 'in the fear of the Lord'."

In The Antifeminists of 1902, Hedwig Dohm uses humorous language to uncover the ideologies of the masterminds and opinion makers of her own time and exposes their contradictions and fear of the female sex as a stupid defense of claims to power.

In The Mothers of 1903, Dohm addresses the mother's love, which, in her opinion, is not a natural instinct, but is trained and - in the absence of other fields of activity for women - is cultivated. So that mothers can continue to pursue their jobs , she suggests that housework and child-rearing should be done by institutions.

Appreciation

Hedwig-Dohm-Strasse, Berlin

Fonts

Sociopolitical writings

First edition of Die Antifeministen

Dohm also authored nearly 100 articles, reviews, and social research and polemics for newspapers and magazines.

Prose texts

Stage works

  • The soul saver . Comedy 1876. online
  • From the Asra tribe . Comedy 1876
  • A shot in the black . Comedy 1878
  • The knights of the golden calf . Comedy 1879

Edition Hedwig Dohm

Editors Nikola Müller & Isabel Rohner. Transformer, Berlin

  • Selected texts. A reading book for the anniversary of the 175th birthday with essays and features, novels and dialogues, aphorisms and letters , 2006, ISBN 3-89626-559-8 .
  • Sibilla Dalmar , annotated new edition with contemporary reviews. 2006, ISBN 3-89626-560-1 .
  • Fates of a soul , annotated new edition with the contemporary reviews. 2007, ISBN 3-89626-561-X .
  • Christa Ruland , annotated new edition with the contemporary reviews. 2008
  • Letters from the Krähwinkel , 100 letters published for the first time. 2009

literature

Web links

Commons : Hedwig Dohm  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Hedwig Dohm  - Sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Hedwig Dohm  - Quotes


About Hedwig Dohm

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hedwig Dohm's father was born Echanan Cohen Schlesinger and was a Jewish religion from Frankfurt am Main . It was not until 1817 that he changed his name in Berlin. From: Heike Brandt: Human rights have no gender - The life story of Hedwig Dohm . Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim and Basel 1995, ISBN 978-3-407-80688-8 , p. 7.
  2. ↑ Hedwig Dohm's mother came from a poor family and was born out of wedlock in Berlin in 1809. The only thing known about the grandfather is that he was said to have been of French nationality. From: Heike Brandt, ibid.
  3. ↑ Eckart Roloff : A strong voice for women. Hedwig Dohm. In: Michael Haller, Walter Hömberg (eds.): “I won't let my mouth shut down!” Journalists as pioneers of freedom of the press and democracy . Reclam Verlag, Ditzingen 2020, pp. 114–117, ISBN 978-3-15-011277-9
  4. ↑ Graves of honor for well-known and deserving personalities. August 23, 2018, accessed March 26, 2019 .
  5. ^ Inauguration of the honorary grave for Hedwig Dohm - Journalistinnenbund. Retrieved March 26, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Helene Lange : Memoirs. At work in the Gutenberg-DE Herbig project, Berlin 1925.
  7. ↑ Hedwig Dohm: The anti-feminists in the Gutenberg-DE project
  8. ↑ Hedwig Dohm: The mothers in the Gutenberg-DE project
  9. ↑ Reingard Jäkl: The most radical of all women . In: Gigi . Magazine for Sexual Emancipation, September 2007.
  10. ↑ Inauguration ceremony of the vocational school center - award for sustainability . In: hedwig-dohm-schule.de , 2013, accessed on February 15, 2018.
  11. ↑ Brandt in the translator database of the VdÜ , 2019
personal data
SURNAME Dohm, Hedwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dohm, Marianne Adelaide Hedwig (full name); Schlesinger, Hedwig (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin , Kingdom of Prussia
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1919
Place of death Berlin , German Empire