Käthe Stricker

Catharine Stricker , called Käthe Stricker , (born November 22, 1878 in Vegesack , † November 23, 1979 in Bremen ) was a German educator , women's rights activist and literary historian .

biography

Family, education and work

Stricker was the youngest of three daughters of the Vegesack captain Lüder Stricker (1823–1882). The father died when she was four years old and the mother Betty Stricker nee. Hohorst (1839-1919) moved to Hanover with her daughters .
She died unmarried and was buried in the Vegesack cemetery, where the family gravestone has been preserved.

Stricker attended the Höhere Töchterschule from 1885 to 1894 and a teachers 'seminar from 1894 to 1897 , and completed this with the qualification to teach middle and higher girls' schools. After that, she was daughter of the house in Minden in a pastor's family. From 1898 to 1900 she taught at private schools in London and then until 1904 in Verden (Aller) .
From 1904 to 1907 she studied English, history and philosophy and later German at the University of Göttingen . She is considered to be one of the first female academics who was allowed to take up such a degree with difficulty in Germany. In 1907 she completed this training with the senior teacher examination and was then a teacher in Hanover. In 1908 she was employed at the higher girls' school and the Lyceum of Anna Vietor in Bremen and taught a. a. in history, mathematics and physics. Because of her hearing loss, she had to reduce the number of lessons in 1920 and end her school service in 1923.

Women's movement

Stricker was one of the conservative pioneers of the Bremen women's movement , which was also active in women-related research. In 1909 she and Helene Stöcker initiated an initiative vis-à-vis the Bremen Senate on the need to protect unmarried mothers in particular in the Bund für Maternity Protection . From 1912 she was a member of the Historical Society Bremen and she was the first woman who was allowed to give a lecture here. She belonged to the German Association for Women's Suffrage and was a delegate at the Berlin General Assembly in 1912. In 1914 she joined the newly founded German Women's Suffrage Association, which advocated equal voting rights for women more resolutely.

politics

Around 1919 she became a member of the conservative German National People's Party (DNVP). Her involvement in the party was mainly about women's rights. In 1920 she represented the Bremen local group at the meeting of the Reich Women's Committee in Berlin and in autumn 1920 at the German national women's conference in Frankfurt am Main . Her political orientation led to connections with the Bremen historian Dietrich Schäfer , the State Secretary and DNVP chairman Karl Helfferich and the politician Alfred Hugenberg .

Author, speaker and literary historian

Stricker worked on various scientific but also political topics on history, literature and politically conservative areas. Her writings on Shakespeare and the Shakespeare performances at the Bremen Theater as well as on Dorothea Tiecks (1799–1844) translations of Shakespeare's works were fundamental . She wrote and lectured on topics such as prostitution , women in the romantic era and women's biographies (including Jane Addams , Betty Gleim , Bernhardine Schulze-Smidt, Dorothea Tieck and Anna Vietor). She was active for the adult education center, for libraries and for the Bremen State Archives .

Honors

• On her 100th birthday in 1978, she visited her former student Hilda Heinemann geb. Ordemann, wife of the former Federal President Gustav Heinemann .
• Her written estate is in the Bremen State Archives , the family in the Schönebeck Castle Museum of Local History .

Works

• Bernhardine Schulze-Smidt . In: Bremisches Jahrbuch , Volume 28, Bremen 1922. In: Bremische Biographien 1912–1962, Bremen 1969.
• Betty Gleim . In: Bremisches Jahrbuch , Volume 40, Bremen 1941.
• The woman in the Reformation . Source booklets on women's life in German history, issue 11, 1927.
• German women's education from the 16th century to the middle of the 19th century . Source booklets on women's life in German history, No. 21, 1927.
• Dorothea Tieck and her work for Shakespeare . In: German Shakespeare Society (Hrsg.): Shakespeare Yearbook. 72, 1936, pp. 79-92.
• Anna Vietor . In: Bremische Biographien 1912–1962 , Bremen 1969.
• My résumé in key words . In: Report of the Association of Christian Teachers , 1978/79.

literature

• Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
• Romina Schmitter: Stricker, Catharine, called Käthe . In: Frauen Geschichte (n) , Bremer Frauenmuseum (ed.). Edition Falkenberg, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95494-095-0 .
• Karin Ehrich: "... I want to be patient too." Käthe Stricker's letters from London 1898–1900. The stay abroad in the career of a teacher. In: Wiltrud Ulrike Drechsel (Ed.): Higher daughters. On the socialization of middle-class girls in the 19th century. Bremen 2001, pp. 141 - 160. (= contributions to the social history of Bremen, issue 21) ISBN 3-86108-640-9 .