Helene Lange

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Helene Lange.
Photography: Atelier Elvira , Munich before 1899
“The leaders of the women's movement in Germany” in Die Gartenlaube , 1894, Helene Lange in the middle row 2nd from right
Commemorative stamp from 1974
Berlin memorial plaque on the house at Kunz-Buntschuh-Strasse 7, in Berlin-Grunewald
Bust of Udo Reimann (1995) on Cäcilienplatz in Oldenburg
Title page of the "Yellow Brochure" (1887)

Helene Lange (born April 9, 1848 in Oldenburg ; † May 13, 1930 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( DDP ), educator and women's rights activist . From 1919 to 1921 she was a member of the Hamburg Parliament .

childhood and education

Helene Lange came from a medium-sized family in Oldenburg. Her parents were Johanne, geb. tom Dieck , and her husband, the businessman Carl Theodor Lange. When she was six years old, her mother died and in 1864 her father died. The following year she therefore lived as a pensioner in the house of the pastor and writer Max Eifert in Eningen under Achalm . Here, after her father's liberal upbringing, she experienced for the first time the subordination of women to men and the deliberate exclusion as a woman from intellectual discourse. On the other hand, the spiritual atmosphere of the rectory also aroused their desire for scientific and systematic training. The time in the Eningen pastorate is therefore a formative experience for Lange with regard to her future as a women's rights activist.

Lange then spent 1866 in his grandfather's house in Oldenburg without the possibility of further intellectual education. She was not discouraged by the rejection of her request to the guardian to be allowed to take the teacher’s examination and in the subsequent period until she came of age, she worked as a teacher in an Alsatian boarding school and as an educator in the family of an Osnabrück factory owner. She was also self-taught in preparation for the teacher’s exam, which she passed in Berlin in 1871 without difficulty. Since throughout the 19th century in Germany girls and women were excluded from acquiring a university entrance qualification or studying at a university due to the applicable legal situation, Helene Lange was only able to pursue her private studies in Latin , history and history thanks to a small inherited fortune To continue philosophy in Berlin. She then worked as a private tutor . From 1876 she worked as a teacher and head of the seminar class at the Crainschen Anstalt , a private high school for girls in Berlin with an attached teacher seminar . She taught in almost all subjects and levels, most recently as the head of the teachers' seminar. The limitation of educational and career opportunities for women in the German Empire , which she herself experienced , formed the starting point for her involvement in the bourgeois women's movement since the mid-1880s . She first gained notoriety when, in 1887, she and five other women submitted a petition to the Prussian Ministry of Education and the Prussian House of Representatives , in which a greater participation of women in the middle and upper grades of the girls' schools as well as state training institutions for upper grade teachers were called for. However, the application was rejected.

Publications and impact through association activity

As a companion to the petition, she published the higher girls 'school and its provision in 1887 , in which she sharply criticized the education of girls at the "higher girls' schools". This letter became known as the " Yellow Brochure ". In 1890 she founded the ADLV ( General German Teachers' Association ) in Friedrichroda together with Auguste Schmidt and Marie Loeper-Housselle . Since girls were not yet allowed to attend grammar schools in Prussia at that time, she founded real courses for girls in 1889 on a private initiative with the help of a sponsoring association in Berlin-Schöneberg , which were replaced by grammar school courses in 1893 . The first six students of these high school courses passed their final exams at the Royal Luisen High School in Berlin in 1896 .

From 1893 Lange was on the board of the General German Women's Association, from 1902 as first chairwoman. From 1894 to 1905 she was on the board of the Federation of German Women's Associations and chairwoman of the General German Teachers Association.

Lange began to suffer from an eye disease around 1899. At that time she met her future partner, Gertrud Bäumer (1873–1954), who initially supported Lange in her work as an assistant and who was later built up by Lange as her successor. Together they edited the handbook of the women's movement (1901–1906) and published the magazine Die Frau (1893–1944).

Meaning and philosophy

Lange taught as a teacher in Berlin since the 1870s. She campaigned for equal educational and professional opportunities for women and is considered to be one of the most important representatives of the “moderate” wing of the early German women's movement. She called for the introduction of women's suffrage at an early stage, but over time, presumably for tactical and pragmatic reasons, deferred the issue and instead advocated a gradual expansion of the participation of women, initially in local government. However, contrary to numerous claims to the contrary, it never deviated from the fundamental conviction that only full civic equality could be the goal. At the same time, she was of the opinion that the struggle for better education and better job prospects for girls and women, as well as for the betterment of women in civil and marriage law, should have priority over the demand for voting rights.

Your feminism was shaped differentially . She emphasized the "difference between the sexes" and considered motherhood (not motherhood !) To be the condicio sine qua non of femininity. By this she meant that women had an influence on the community that was thought to be specifically female. This influence should be expanded in order to correct undesirable developments in a one-sidedly male-dominated world. Lange saw the areas of responsibility for women initially in the educational, social and medical areas (where professional fields had already opened up for women), although she never ruled out greater participation of women in other areas. However, in the 1920s she moved away from the concept of “spiritual motherliness”, which she had coined for this purpose, because she considered it to be misleading. In particular, it was not understood that she explicitly thought of “spiritual” or “organized motherhood” as a concept for the participation of childless women in the promotion and further development of the community, and that it should by no means only be about raising children.

For a long time she was a German patriot , whose coffin was covered with a black, red and gold flag, according to her wishes , and who counted among her youth heroes Theodor Körner , Giuseppe Garibaldi and Christian August von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg . For her, the colors black-red-gold symbolized not only the nation, but were also the colors of unity and democracy for the woman born in 1848.

Political commitment

After the Reichsvereingesetz of 1908 had given women access to political parties, Lange joined the Liberal Association (FVg) together with Bäumer and other leading women's rights activists , which in 1910 became part of the Progressive People's Party (FVP). She belonged to the circle around Friedrich Naumann . After the First World War , Lange was one of the co-founders of the German Democratic Party (DDP), for which she moved into the Hamburg citizenship in 1919 as senior president and later became its honorary chairman. When Bäumer was appointed ministerial advisor to the Reich Ministry of the Interior in 1920 , Lange moved back to Berlin with her. Lange, who was now over 70 years old and weakened by illness, hardly appeared in public after that and withdrew to an advisory role for her successors.

Death and grave

Honorary grave of Helene Lange at the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend

After being bedridden for a long time, Helene Lange died on the evening of May 13, 1930 at the age of 82 in Berlin. Gertrud Bäumer stayed on the deathbed until the end. The funeral service took place on May 17, 1930 in the Wilmersdorf crematorium .

Lange's grave is located in the state-owned cemetery in Heerstraße in Berlin-Westend . On the large, cube-shaped tombstone made of bush-hammered granite from the Fichtelgebirge , donated by the General German Teachers' Association and created by the sculptor Ernst Gorsemann , the motto is: "You have to believe, you have to dare". Another inscription commemorates Bäumer, who is buried in Bielefeld .

By decision of the Berlin Senate , the last resting place of Helene Lange (grave location: 5-A-1) has been dedicated as an honorary grave of the State of Berlin since 1956 . The dedication was extended in 2016 by the now usual period of twenty years.

Honors

  • In 1923 Helene Lange received an honorary doctorate from Tübingen .
  • In 1925 she was elected honorary chairman by the DDP party congress .
  • In 1928 she received honorary citizenship of the city of Oldenburg. Today there are schools in numerous cities that bear the name Helene-Lange-Schule .
  • Since 2009, the University of Oldenburg has awarded the Helene Lange Prize annually to young female scientists in the natural sciences and technology.

Works

  • Schiller's philosophical poems. An introduction to their basic ideas , Oehmigke, Berlin 1886.
  • The woman. Monthly magazine for the entire women's life of our time . 1. (1893/94) - 51. (1943/44). Organ of the Federation of German Women's Associations. Herbig Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-89131-042-0 .
  • Development and status of the higher girls' school system in Germany, ed. on behalf of the Royal Prussian Ministry of Spiritual, Educational and Medical Affairs, R. Gärtner's Hermann Heyfelder publishing house, Berlin 1893; Digitized by the German Research Foundation
  • Women's suffrage. In: F. Ortmans (Ed.): Cosmopolis - an international monthly review. Book III. July August September. 1896. London a. a., 1896, pp. 539-554. ( Digitized and full text in the German text archive ).
  • The ultimate goal of the women's movement . Berlin 1904. ( Digitized and full text in the German text archive ).
  • Handbook of the women's movement. Volumes 1–5: Volume 1, 1901, Volume 2, 1901, Volume, 3 1902, Volume 4, 1902, Volume 5, 1906. (New edition: Harald Fischer Verlag, 1996, ISBN 3-89131-138-9 ) on the Internet available at: https://archive.org/stream/handbuchderfrau04ratgoog#page/n8/mode/2up .
  • The parliamentary defeat of women's suffrage in England . In: Die Frau 15 (1907), pp. 420-423. ( Digitized and full text in the German text archive ).
  • The women's movement in its modern problems. Leipzig 1908 (new edition: Tende Verlag, Münster 1983, ISBN 3-88633-915-7 ).
  • A sample of women's passive suffrage . In: Die Frau (1918), pp. 353–354. ( Digitized and full text in the German text archive ).
  • Life memories. Herbig Verlag, Berlin 1921.
  • Fight times. Essays and speeches from four decades. 2 vol., Berlin 1928.
  • Letters. What i loved here. Edited by Emmy Beckmann and Gertrud Bäumer. Wunderlich, Tübingen 1957.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Helene Lange  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Helene Lange  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of high school courses for women in Berlin , W. Moeser Buchdruckerei, Berlin, 1906, p. 55 .
  2. ^ Gisela Bock : Women's suffrage - Germany around 1900 in a comparative perspective. In: History and Emancipation. Festschrift for Reinhard Rürup , ed. v. Michael Grüttner u. a., Frankfurt a. M. and New York 1999, pp. 95-136.
  3. ↑ See Angelika Schaser : Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer. A political community . 2. through u. update Cologne et al. 2010, p. 83f. ISBN 978-3-412-09100-2 .
  4. ↑ Cf. Gertrud Bäumer: Lebensweg durch einer Zeitenwende , Tübingen 1933, p. 386. Lange had always rejected the colors black-white-red.
  5. ↑ Dr. hc Helene Lange † . In: Vossische Zeitung . Wednesday, May 14, 1930, morning edition, p. 3.
  6. ↑ Memorial service for Helene Lange . In: Vossische Zeitung . Saturday, May 17, 1930, evening edition. P. 3.
  7. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 490.
  8. ↑ Birgit Jochens, Herbert May: The cemeteries in Berlin-Charlottenburg. History of the cemetery facilities and their tomb culture . Stapp, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-87776-056-2 . P. 216.
  9. ↑ Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection: Honorary Graves of the State of Berlin (Status: November 2018) (PDF, 413 kB), p. 49. Accessed on November 20, 2019. Recognition and further preservation of graves as honorary graves of the State of Berlin (PDF , 205 kB). Berlin House of Representatives, printed matter 17/3105 of July 13, 2016, p. 1 and Annex 2, p. 9. Accessed on November 20, 2019.
  10. ↑ Angelika Schaser: Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer. A political community. (= L'homme writings. 6). 2., through u. update Edition. Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-09100-2 , pp. 261f.
  11. ^ Lothar Albertin / Konstanze Wegner (edit.): Left-wing liberalism in the Weimar Republic. The governing bodies of the German Democratic Party and the German State Party 1918–1933. Droste, Düsseldorf 1980, ISBN 978-3-7700-5104-5 , p. 443, note.
  12. ↑ Helene Lange Prize - Women in Science .
personal data
SURNAME Lange, Helene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (DDP), Member of the Bundestag and women's rights activist, educator
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Oldenburg
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1930
Place of death Berlin