Hildegard Wegscheider

Hildegard Wegscheider

Hildegard Ziegler as a young woman

Hildegard Caroline Sophie Wegscheider , née Ziegler (born September 2, 1871 in Berlin ; † April 4, 1953 ) was a German teacher, school reformer, SPD politician and women's rights activist.

Life

The pastor's daughter Hildegard Ziegler attended the secondary school for girls in Liegnitz and passed the teacher examination after a year of boarding school in Lausanne . She studied in Zurich from 1893 because she was admitted there without a high school diploma. At the same time she passed her Abitur at the Royal Catholic High School in Hedingen near Sigmaringen with a special permit in 1895 . This made her the first woman in the Kingdom of Prussia to successfully pass this test. In Berlin not allowed doctorate she 1898 in Hall to Dr. phil.and was thus one of the first women to receive a doctorate from a German university . She was a lecturer at the Humboldt Academy in Berlin and a teacher in high school courses. In 1899 she married the doctor Max Wegscheider (1866–1928) and had two children with him; the marriage was divorced in 1906. In 1900 she founded the first private school with grammar school classes for girls in Charlottenburg near Berlin. After Wegscheider had passed the state examination for high school teachers in Kiel , she was senior teacher in Bonn from 1908 .

Wegscheider was a member of the Prussian constitutional assembly for the SPD from 1919 to 1921 and had been a member of the Prussian state parliament from 1921 . In addition, she was a member of the board of directors of the Association of Resolute School Reformers, which was newly founded in 1919 .

Wegscheider later returned to school as a high school councilor in Berlin from 1920 to 1933 . With the seizure of power of the Nazis in 1933 it was removed from all offices. She then made her living as a private tutor. At the same time she was involved in a small group of opposition members in the resistance against the Nazi regime . This group held together tightly until 1939. Even after that, Wegscheider helped politically persecuted people and Jews go into hiding.

In March 1949, Wegscheider actively involved in the International Women's Day , explaining inter alia how their first of Heinrich von Treitschke the registration was denied in Berlin, so that she was forced to take their studies in Halle.

Wilmersdorf cemetery in Berlin; Grave of Hildegard Wegscheider (Grave of Honor of the State of Berlin)

In February 1953 she received the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, because of her social commitment, her performance and her courage to become the first woman in Prussia to graduate from high school . Unfortunately, she could not enjoy this fame for very long; She died on April 4, 1953 at the age of 81 in Berlin and was buried in an honorary grave in Dept. C7-3-12 at the Wilmersdorf cemetery.

Honors

• The Hildegard Wegscheider Gymnasium in Berlin-Grunewald is named after her.
• Hildegard-Wegscheider-Strasse was named after her in Röttgen (Bonn) .
• In 2021, a stamp will be issued to mark Wegscheider's 150th birthday .

Publications

• Chronicon Carionis: a contribution to the historiography of the 16th century , Halle (M. Niemeyer), 1898 phil. Diss. (= Hallesche Treatises on Modern History 35 )
• The working woman and the alcohol . German Workers' Abstinentenbund, Berlin 1904.
• The wife and mother as a champion against alcoholism. Lecture given at the III German Abstinent Day in Dresden . "Alcohol opponents", Reichenberg 1905.
• To our women. In: The woman in the democratic state . Publishing house "Das Volk", Berlin 1946.
• Big wide world in a narrow mirror. Memories . Arani, Berlin-Grunewald 1953.

literature

• Hildegard Wegscheider 80 years old. In: Social Democratic Press Service 1951 digitized
• Hildegard Wegscheider. In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Volume I. Deceased personalities. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hannover 1960, pp. 323-324.
• Stephan Koop: Hildegard Wegscheider and her school. Values ​​for a self-determined Europe. Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt 2009, ISBN 978-3-8370-3333-5 .
• Maike Lechler: Wegscheider, Hildegard, Dr. phil., née Ziegler. In: Eva Labouvie (Ed.): Women in Saxony-Anhalt, Vol. 2: A biographical-bibliographical lexicon from the 19th century to 1945. Böhlau, Cologne and others. 2019, ISBN 978-3-412-51145-6 , pp. 438-442.
• Bettina Michalski: Louise Schroeder's sisters: Berlin social democrats of the post-war period. Dietz, Bonn 1996, pp. 244-253.
• Manfred Berger : Wegscheider, Hildegard , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 614f.
• Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920–1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 , p. 66 f.

Web links

Commons : Hildegard Wegscheider  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Hildegard Wegscheider in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography on the Hildegard Wegscheider Oberschule website

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hildegard-Wegscheider-Strasse in the Bonn street cadastre
2. ↑ Annual program 2021 - Federal Ministry of Finance - Postage Stamps. Retrieved November 20, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Berger writes in Lemma and consistently in the text and in the list of publications Wegsch n eider