Johanna Hundhausen

Johanna Hundhausen (born August 3, 1877 in Mülheim am Rhein ; † July 6, 1955 in Wissel ) was a German German scholar and historian who worked as a teacher and headmistress, and in later years as an author.

biography

Family background

Johanna Hundhausen was born in Mülheim, which later became Cologne's district. Her father was the engineer and entrepreneur Hermann Hundhausen, her mother Maria, née von Zuccalmaglio. Her maternal grandfather was the lawyer, poet and legend researcher Vincenz von Zuccalmaglio , her brother, one year younger, the lawyer and professor of German literature in Beijing , Vincenz Hundhausen .

Professional background

After the father's death in 1883, the family moved to Bonn . From 1901 Johanna Hundhausen attended a private teachers' seminar there, which was attached to a higher school for girls. After completing her training, she worked as a teacher at this school for three years. Her mother died in 1906. In 1908, women in Prussia were given the full right to enroll , and Johanna Hundhausen began studying German and history at the University of Bonn at the age of 31 . She decided to become a teacher, which at the same time meant a decision against marriage and family, as the so-called " female teacher celibacy " had been required by law since 1892 . She worked as a senior seminar teacher in Arnsberg for one and a half years, and in 1913 she moved to Kleve as a senior teacher . There she was also involved in society: she was the chairman of the youth group of the Catholic German Women's Association and was one of the first women to be a member of a municipal committee, the Committee for Youth Care.

In November 1918 Hundhausen became a member of the organizing committee of the German Center Party , which was supposed to adapt the party organization to the new electoral law in the Weimar Republic . She was considered a talented speaker, and at election rallies she spoke particularly to women as voters and called on them to become politically active. She called on women to vote for the National Assembly , because this body would decide on the future legal position of women. She saw the participation of women in political life not only as a right, but also as a duty. She also demanded political interest from her students. She urged women to get involved in better working conditions for women. This was in contrast to some of the conservative members of the Center Party who, after the end of the First World War, expected that women who had worked during the war should now retire from working life. In 1927 she founded the Klever branch of the Catholic Women's Association together with Theresa von Jordans .

In 1919 Johanna Hundhausen took over the management of the Catholic girls' school in Kleve. The six-class Lyceum was recognized as a higher educational institution at which the pupils could acquire the secondary school leaving certificate for boys according to the curriculum for junior high schools . At Hundhausen's initiative, the school was expanded in such a way that in future schoolgirls could also take their Abitur at it and receive thorough Latin lessons, which, according to Johannas Hundhausen's reasoning, was necessary so that the girls were able to study at university and, moreover, an understanding of the liturgy of the Catholic Church Church developed. In order to be able to meet the high requirements and the associated higher costs, the school, which was called Marienschule from 1925, took out a loan of 100,000 guilders in the Netherlands . The guarantee was taken over by the owner of the school, the Catholic parish of St. Mary's Assumption. In 1931 the first female students graduated from the school.

On April 23, 1933, after the National Socialists seized power , the law against the overcrowding of German schools and universities was passed, according to which the proportion of female students was only allowed to be ten percent in future. In the same month there were first attacks against Johanna Hundhausen: An alleged waste of public money in the school was publicly denounced in detailed press reports; eventually these grants were blocked by the city and district . At the end of the 1933/34 school year, Hundhausen was retired at the age of 56; whether voluntary or involuntary is not known.

Last years of life

After her retirement, Johanna Hundhausen devoted herself to tasks in the Catholic Women's Association. She gave lectures and wrote essays for the magazine Die christliche Frau , primarily about women personalities from the Lower Rhine area or the Essen monastery . When there was a shortage of teachers during the Second World War , she briefly returned to teaching. In 1944, after bombing raids on Kleve, she was evacuated to Essen , where she lived in the Hedwig-Dransfeld-Haus . Her wish was to spend her retirement years in the Die Münze children's and old people's home in Kleve. The move there was delayed by the expulsion of her brother Vincenz from China, who had returned to Germany seriously ill in 1954 and also wanted to move into the mint . Before that happened, however , Johanna Hundehausen died in May 1955 in his native Grevenbroich , six weeks later on July 6, 1955 in the hospital in Wissel.

Publications

• The bloom of the Essen monastery under the great Abbess Mathilde . In: the christian woman . tape 32 , 1934, pp. 241-243 .
• From the beginnings of the Essen monastery . In: the christian woman . 1934.
• Medieval abbesses of the Essen monastery . In: the christian woman . 1937.
• Holy Empress Helena . In: the christian woman . 1938.
• with Heinrich Neu : women's graves in Cologne Cathedral . (1st edition from 1948). Ed .: Catholic German Women's Association. 2nd Edition. Cologne 1980.

literature

• Helga Ullrich-Scheyda: Johanna Hundhausen - a headmistress in the Weimar Republic . In: Project group women's history of the VHS Kleve (ed.): Reading book on the history of the Klever women . Kleve 2004, ISBN 3-933969-44-1 , p. 215-225 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ullrich-Scheyda, Johanna Hundhausen , p. 215.
2. ↑ Helga Ullrich-Scheyda: The fight for more education. In: nrz.de. October 4, 2014, accessed November 22, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Ullrich-Scheyda, Johanna Hundhausen , pp. 216/17.
4. ↑ Ullrich-Scheyda, Johanna Hundhausen , p. 217.
5. ↑ Ullrich-Scheyda, Johanna Hundhausen , p. 218.
6. ↑ Ullrich-Scheyda, Johanna Hundhausen , p. 219.
7. ↑ Ullrich-Scheyda, Johanna Hundhausen , p. 54.
8. ↑ Ullrich-Scheyda, Johanna Hundhausen , pp. 219/20.
9. ↑ Ullrich-Scheyda, Johanna Hundhausen , p. 223.
10. ↑ Ute Küppers-Braun: Power in women's hands: 1000 years of rule by noble women in Essen . 1st edition. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2002, ISBN 3-89861-106-X , p. 81 .
11. ↑ Ullrich-Scheyda, Johanna Hundhausen , pp. 224/5.
12. ↑ ^{a b c} Johanna Hundhausen, Heinrich Neu : Women's graves in Cologne Cathedral . Ed .: Catholic German Women's Association. 2nd Edition. Cologne 1980, p. 2 .