Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius

Memorial plaque on the house, Behrenstrasse 9, in Berlin-Mitte

Henriette Therese Friederike Hirschfeld-Tiburtius (née Pagelsen) (born February 14, 1834 in Westerland on Sylt ; † August 25, 1911 in Berlin ) was the first independent, academically trained dentist in Germany and a fighter for women's studies .

Life

The women's rights activist Helene Lange wrote about Tiburtius' life: "What ran counter to her whole being was the indifference that accepts given conditions as unchangeable."

youth

Henriette was born on February 14, 1834 in Westerland as the third child of the Pagelsen family. The family soon moved to the mainland and at the age of 19 the young Friesian woman was married - to a landowner, the 30-year-old Christian Hirschfeld. The couple managed the large hereditary leasehold in Hammer near Kiel. The marriage was unhappy. The husband's increasing drunkenness and a lack of economic talent led to the court becoming indebted. After a few painful experiences, Henriette Hirschfeld left her husband in 1860. The marriage ended in divorce in 1863. Christian Hirschfeld died on July 26, 1867.

Education

Penniless and left to her own devices, Henriette Hirschfeld moved to live with a married friend in Berlin. By chance she read in a newspaper article about the English sisters Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Blackwell , who were the first practicing doctors in New York after studying in the USA. Since Henriette Hirschfeld had often suffered from toothache since childhood, the treatment of which she felt was rough and clumsy, she wanted to become a dentist.

Dental training in Germany was not yet clearly regulated in the middle of the 19th century - there was no regular state degree in dentistry. In addition, women were denied access to the university until the beginning of the 20th century. Henriette Hirschfeld therefore traveled to Philadelphia , USA, as a single woman in October 1867 . With great perseverance, she obtained admission to the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery . She was only the second woman in America to do this. So far, only one American, Lucy Hobbs, had graduated from a dental college in Cincinnati - but only for one year and not during the regular two-year study period. After Henriette Hirschfeld had overcome the initial resistance, she was treated "friendly and considerate" by her male colleagues. For reasons of propriety, however, she had to do her anatomical studies at the Women's Medical College for some time . The German showed herself to be able to cope with all challenges “with a skillful hand and eagerness to learn”. She learned English as well as anatomy and physiology, surgical techniques and did laboratory work. After two years of study, she graduated on February 27, 1869 (a few days after her 35th birthday) with the title "Doctor of Dental Surgery". She was the first woman in the USA who had succeeded in doing this as part of a regular course at a dental college.

Practice establishment

After graduating, she returned to Germany and opened her first practice in Behrenstrasse 9 in Berlin , a street parallel to the boulevard Unter den Linden . She mainly treated women and children, which corresponded to the ideas of the bourgeoisie at the time and what she too had made her principles. However, she also made exceptions. The practice went well beyond expectations right from the start and brought "brilliant material success" over the next few decades. Her excellent reputation as a dentist was established through her appointment as court physician to Crown Princess Victoria , her children and occasionally her husband, the later Emperor Friedrich III. approved.

“I had to think (…) of our first and only dentist, the small, extremely delicate and weak Dr. Tiburtius, who recently pulled out a colossal molar tooth with such great skill using gas anesthesia "

- Hedwig Dohm 1874

Private life

In the winter of 1872 she married her long-time friend, a retired military doctor. D. Karl Tiburtius . They had two sons Carl and Franz, and Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius was 42 years old when the second birth was born - an unusual age for motherhood at this time. Despite starting a family, she did not give up her job, even if motherhood and work were incompatible with the basic civic values ​​of her time. The son Dr. Franz Tiburtius was born on January 24, 1876 and died as a senior naval assistant doctor on July 5, 1904 during the Herero uprising in German South West Africa .

Social activities

In addition to motherhood, employment and marriage, she was passionately committed to helping the less well-off. The friendship with her future husband probably also led to the fact that he was able to convince his sister Franziska Tiburtius to start studying medicine in Zurich, which she finished in 1876 as one of the first doctors to practice her own practice in Germany. From then on, the "double name Tiburtius enjoyed a full sound". In 1876, Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius founded the first outpatient clinic run by women in a working-class district of Berlin together with her sister-in-law Franziska Tiburtius and her colleague Emilie Lehmus . A short time later she founded the "Association for the Rescue of Minor Girls" and the "Home House for Girls Looking for Jobs", and later a "Care House for Fallen Girls and Women" was added. In 1881 Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius opened a nursing ward for women in her old apartment in Berlin's Friedrichstrasse as an extension to the polyclinic for female doctors , so that she could now also provide inpatient care.

death

After 30 years of practice, Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius retired from the practice and moved to her retirement home in Berlin-Marienfelde. She died on August 25, 1911 after a brief illness.

Honors

Road sign in Sylt-Westerland.

In memory of Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius, a commemorative plaque was placed on Behrenstrasse 9 / Berlin-Mitte, where her practice was at the time, on February 14, 1998.

During the 50th annual meeting of the Schleswig-Holstein Dental Association in Sylt-Westerland on May 9, 2008, a previously unnamed pedestrian path between Norderstrasse and Lornsenweg as an extension of Waldstrasse was named "Henriettenweg" by resolution of the community assembly in honor of Germany's first female dentist.

The annual congress of Dentista eV, an association of female dentists, takes place as the Hirschfeld-Tiburtius Symposium and is dedicated to Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius. It traditionally takes place in the Kaiserin-Friedrich-Haus of the Kaiserin-Friedrich-Stiftung in Berlin, which is historically connected to Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius.

Web links

Commons : Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

See also

• Franziska Tiburtius , her sister-in-law, German doctor and also campaigner for women's studies .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Helene Lange: Memoirs. Berlin: Herbig, 1925, chap. 11, URL: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/langeh/lebenser/chap010.html
2. ^ Officer's memorial sheet 1904-1907 [1]
3. ↑ Tiburtius p. 85ff.
4. ↑ Hirschfeld-Tiburtius Symposium ( Memento from August 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Dentista. Retrieved June 7, 2015.

literature

• Cécile Mack: Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius (1834-1911) The life of the first independent dentist in Germany. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-631-34783-9 .
• Ingrid Schaub: Between the salon and the girls' room. Kabel, Hamburg 1992, pp. 73-80.
• Franziska Tiburtius: Memories of an eighty year old. Berlin 1923
• Helmut Trede: The first female dentist in Germany - a pastor's daughter from Brande-Hörnerkirchen. In: Heimatkundliches Jahrbuch for the Pinneberg district 2009, pp. 117–122.