Henriette Arendt

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Henriette Arendt (born November 11, 1874 in Königsberg ; † August 22, 1922 in Mainz ) was a German nurse and became Germany's first female police assistant in Stuttgart in 1903 . After a falling out with her superior authorities, she left the service at the end of 1908 and devoted herself mainly to lecturing and publishing against child trafficking .

Life

Arendt was the daughter of the wholesale merchant and mayor of the city council, Max Arendt , who also chaired the assembly of representatives of the Jewish community and from 1903 to 1913 the central poor commission in Königsberg. The philosopher Hannah Arendt was a niece.

Henriette first attended the secondary school for girls and then for a year the Ecole supérieure in Geneva . After attending a business school in Berlin for half a year , she worked as a correspondent and accountant from 1892 to 1895 , probably in her father's rags export company. In 1895/96 she trained as a nurse at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin . After completing her training, she worked at the Jewish Hospital for another year and then moved to the Berlin Sisters' Association of the Red Cross Augusta House . She was baptized as a Protestant on May 22, 1899 . Arendt worked both in home care and in nursing in various hospitals and mental institutions , including in Kiev and most recently in 1902 in the New Lung Hospital Schömberg . In 1902/3 she joined the non-denominational Stuttgart auxiliary nurse association . About her experiences as a nurse, she published the report of the Path of Thorns of Mercy in 1909 under the pseudonym "Sister Gerda" .

On February 1, 1903, Arendt became a police assistant in Stuttgart, where she was supposed to assist with the police medical examination of women caught and to look after so-called "neglected" women. From 1905 she became increasingly involved in child welfare . Arendt came increasingly into conflict with her superior authority, which accused her of lacking loyalty. Her increasing lecturing activity was resented, her filing was criticized, allegations of embezzlement were investigated and in 1908 she was advised to resign. In December 1908 Arendt resigned from her employment. She moved to Switzerland and worked as a welfare worker for orphans between 1909 and 1916 . She also gave a large number of lectures against the international child trafficking and published her account of the events in 1910 under the title Experiences of a police assistant , with which she triggered a broad public discussion in Stuttgart.

When the First World War broke out , Arendt had been on a lecture tour in England since May 1914 . With the help of her Swiss domicile certificate , she initially pretended to be a Swiss citizen and worked for a few months as an interpreter for the Belgian refugee agency. In January 1915, her domicile certificate was revoked. In February 1915 she married her cousin , the French officer Réné de Matringe, presumably in London . But her marriage was not recognized by the English authorities. In May 1915 she was arrested in London and tried as a suspected agent before a court martial. She was deported to Rotterdam on May 28, 1915 , where she received a German passport. From November 1915 she devoted herself to working in a care facility for refugees from Galicia in Vienna . In March 1916, Arendt applied to the Red Cross for employment. However, since the authorities did not clarify her nationality after her marriage, she was considered to be an annoying foreigner in Austria despite her German passport and was deported on March 28, 1916 at the instigation of the Württemberg state police. However, she was allowed to travel to Germany, where she worked for the Red Cross , most recently as head nurse of the French Rhine Army in a hospital in Mainz.

Fonts

  • People who lost the path. Experiences from my five years as a police assistant in Stuttgart. Kielmann, Stuttgart 1907.
  • Images from the prison world. 6th edition. Kielmann, Stuttgart 1908.
  • More state care for the fallen and endangered. The best way to fight venereal diseases. 4th edition. Kielmann, Stuttgart 1908.
  • Paths of Thorns of Mercy. From Sister Gerda's diary. 1st edition. German Verl.-Anst, Stuttgart 1909.
  • Experiences of a police assistant. 4th edition. Süddeutsche Monatshefte, Munich 1910. ( digitized on Archive.org)
  • Little white slaves. Vita, Berlin-Charlottenburg 1911.
  • Child traffickers. Research and welfare work from September 1, 1911 to September 1, 1912. 2nd edition. Self-published, Stuttgart 1912.
  • My work to protect the defenseless. [Berlin] 1914.

literature

  • Doris Geis: Henriette Arendt (1874-1922). An extraordinary woman and a forgotten author . In: Renate Heuer , Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow (Ed.): Counter-images and prejudice. Aspects of Judaism in the work of German-speaking women writers. Campus, Frankfurt / M. 1995, pp. 133-159.
  • Heike Maier: "tactless, unfeminine and Prussian". Henriette Arendt, the first female police assistant in Stuttgart (1903–1908). A micro study. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1998.
  • Maja Riepl-Schmidt : Henriette Arendt. The first female police assistant in Stuttgart . In: Maja Riepl-Schmidt (Hrsg.): Against the overcooked and ironed out life. Women's emancipation in Stuttgart since 1800 . Silberburg, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-925344-64-0 , p. 198-212 .
  • Mascha Riepl-Schmidt : Henriette Arendt (11.11.1874 Königsberg / Pr - 22.8.1922 Mainz). The first female police assistant in the German Reich since 1903. In: HannahArendt.net. Political Thought Journal. 1 (February 2005).
  • Henrike Sappok-Laue: Henriette Arendt - nurse, women's rights activist, social reformer. Mabuse-Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2015.
  • Henrike Sappok-Laue: Henriette Arendt , in: Hubert Kolling (Ed.): Biographical lexicon for nursing history "Who was who in nursing history", Volume 7, hpsmedia nidda, pp. 19-22.
  • Axel Wellner: Henriette Arendt , in: Horst-Peter Wolff, Succession Hubert Kolling (Hrsg.): Biographical lexicon on nursing history "Who was who in nursing history" , Volume 1, Ullstein Mosby Berlin, Wiesbaden 1997, pp. 4 + 5.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hilde Steppe : >> ... To the sick for comfort and to honor Judaism ... << On the history of Jewish nursing in Germany , Mabuse Ffm, 1. + 2. Edition 1997, 2008.
  2. ↑ Doris Geis: Henriette Arendt (1874-1922). An extraordinary woman and a forgotten author . In: Renate Heuer, Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow (Ed.): Counter-images and prejudice. Aspects of Judaism in the work of German-speaking women writers. Campus, Frankfurt / M. 1995, p. 145.
  3. ↑ Heike Maier: "Tactless, unfeminine and Prussian". Henriette Arendt, the first female police assistant in Stuttgart (1903–1908). A micro study. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1998, p. 14.
  4. ↑ Maier, Henriette Arendt , pp. 87–123.
  5. ↑ Maier, Henriette Arendt , pp. 129–141.
  6. ↑ According to Heike Maier, the information about Arendt's marriage is contradicting itself , and she does not consider it clear whether Henriette de Matringue, who died in Mainz, was really Henriette Arendt, although various obituaries suggested this. Maier, Henriette Arendt , pp. 150–152. On the other hand, see Doris Geis: Henriette Arendt (1874–1922). An extraordinary woman and a forgotten author . In: Renate Heuer, Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow (Ed.): Counter-images and prejudice. Aspects of Judaism in the work of German-speaking women writers. Campus, Frankfurt / M. 1995, p. 158 f.

Web links

Wikisource: Henriette Arendt  - sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Arendt, Henriette
ALTERNATIVE NAMES de Matringue, Henriette; Sister Gerda (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first German police assistant
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg
DATE OF DEATH August 22, 1922
Place of death Mainz