Lily brown

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Photograph by Lily Braun, 1902, Illustrirte Zeitung

Lily Braun , born as Amelia Jenny Emilie Klothilde Johanna von Kretschmann , first marriage to Lily von Gizycki , (born July 2, 1865 in Halberstadt ; † August 9, 1916 in Berlin ) was a German writer , social democrat , women's rights activist and journalist . She particularly campaigned for the compatibility of motherhood and work. She published her autobiography with memoirs by a socialist and in it above all described her commitment to women's emancipation .

Life

Lily Braun was born as the daughter of the Prussian infantry general Hans von Kretschmann and his wife Jenny, née von Gustedt . Her maternal grandmother, Jenny von Gustedt , née Rabe von Pappenheim , is the illegitimate daughter of Jérôme Bonaparte from his love affair with Diana Rabe von Pappenheim . Her great niece Marianne von Weizsäcker , née von Kretschmann, is Richard von Weizsäcker's widow .

Early years

Lily Braun's young years were characterized by discipline and rigor. In the military and aristocratic circles of Prussia , this kind of education was a good form. The young woman grew up with the basics of fear of God, discipline and loyalty to the king. Lily Braun suffered particularly under the mother's instructions:

“Frau von Kretschmann was a beautiful woman of moderate intelligence. For her, the forms of a “befitting” life and the standards of the Protestant faith were the values ​​by which she raised her children. So the maternal instructions that determined Lily's development and later that of her younger sister had a rather inhibiting and constricting effect, gagging her more than forming and shaping her. "

Nevertheless, she loved her parents, especially her father, who inherited the character traits of openness and directness that Lily Braun used in her combative nature all her life. In addition to her parents, her maternal grandmother, Jenny von Gustedt, was an important caregiver until her death. Throughout her life she encouraged Lily Braun not to end up as a housemaid. The Kretschmann family often moved because of their father's work. Halberstadt , Neisse , Schwerin , Potsdam , Karlsruhe , Berlin , Posen , Brandenburg , Schwerin, Bromberg and Münster were all places where Hans von Kretschmann's career took place. For most of her childhood, Lily Braun was brought up according to the conventions of the time. This included looking beautiful, pleasing the men and, above all, attracting attention. The adolescent often bumped into it and also had problems with her classmates. Trying to always be the best in class, she didn't make many friends. But she also enjoyed the advantages that the position of the family brought with it at that time. Among other things, she met the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. As far as education was concerned, the young girl received a broad education that was given to her in private schools and by private teachers.

Forming an opinion and looking for a way

Lily Braun began to have doubts about the religious beliefs of her family at an early age and she also bitterly encountered social injustice.

"Because of her critical faculties, Lily began to express doubts about the church-religious teachings at an early stage. Prayers, proverbs, hymn book verses and the Lutheran catechism did not seem understandable to her, the desolation of the Protestant Church bored her, and even before her confirmation she openly expressed violent criticism of the naive interpretations of the Bible before her parents and the pastor. "

In addition to criticizing religion, her commitment as a women's rights activist was already rooted in her youth. In particular, the position of women in aristocratic societies did not correspond to what Lily Braun believed to be right. On the other hand, the daughter of the general family enjoyed the benefits of the rich upper class up to the age of 25.

After her father fell out of favor with the emperor in 1889, Lily Braun was forced to build an independent existence far away from aristocratic society. In 1893 she married the philosophy professor Georg von Gizycki , who was close to the Social Democrats , but without becoming a party member. Through him, Lily Braun began to deal more with questions of the women's movement and socialism and began to work for the magazine women's movement . She also became a board member of the Frauenwohl association .

After Georg von Gizycki's death on March 3, 1895, she openly confessed to being a Social Democrat and thus turned away from her origins.

"Lily von Gizycki is fully committed to social democracy at the London Women's Congress, and she uses every opportunity she has to study the diverse impulses of British trade union work and the work of other organizations in the proletarian quarters and slums."

In 1896 she married the social democratic politician and publicist Heinrich Braun (1854–1927). On June 27, 1897, the two had their only son, Otto Braun .

Lily Braun's political stance

Lily Braun joined the SPD early on and became one of the leaders of the German women's movement . In the course of her political career she tried to mediate between the bourgeois and proletarian women's movement, but was sharply criticized for this from both sides. The idea that she propagated of combining motherhood and employment (a model that she herself lived) met with criticism.

Together with her second husband Heinrich Braun, she published the magazine Neue Gesellschaft for some time , which appeared once a week. It should address a new target group under the banner of the Social Democrats. Lily and Heinrich Braun wanted to attract intellectuals, artists and scientists with their content. Disappointed about the rather less enthusiasm of the party colleagues, Lily Braun devoted herself to her writing after this failure.

Commitment as a women's rights activist

As a daughter from a noble family, she was  rejected by the socialist women's movement - above all Clara Zetkin and Ottilie Baader - although she felt that she belonged to this movement. Clara Zetkin panned her 1901 study Die Frauenfrage in the socialist women's magazine Die Equality . For bourgeois women, however, their ideas were too radical. In order to reduce the double and triple burden of working women, Lily Braun called for working hours to be reduced to the lowest daily level. She propagated new forms of living together and designed the model of the kitchen-house in an essay published in 1901 .

Lily Braun was one of the founding members of the Federation for Maternity Protection, which was largely initiated by Helene Stöcker .

She criticized the design of the maternity leave insurance as “complete half-measure”, as it did not even see the most essential needs of mother and child met, as well as the inadequacy of the social security system, which excluded whole areas that were viewed as women's work. This included, in particular, domestic service, home work and farm work.

The last few years

In 1909/10 she and her husband had the architect Bruno Paul build a large villa with a park in Kleinmachnow , which is now a listed building. From 1909 to 1911 she published the two-volume autobiography Memoirs of a Socialist with Albert Langen . After the outbreak of World War I , she unreservedly supported the war policy of the German Empire. She exchanged ideas with her friend Käthe Kollwitz , for example, about her son and their sons Hans and Peter Kollwitz . She died during the war:

“On the morning of August 6, 1916, on the way to the post office, where she wanted to ask for an urgently awaited letter from her son, who was a soldier at the front, Lily Braun collapsed on the street. Two days later she died of complications from a stroke; on the evening of that day her son, who had just started a soldier's leave, stood with his father at the bier of the deceased "

Her son, the poet Otto Braun, died on the Somme in April 1918 . Her husband, Heinrich Braun, married Julie Vogelstein , a close friend of Lily Braun , in 1920 . He died in Berlin in 1927.

The literary work

Early works

Lily Braun's literary work began in 1892 when she published the diaries and notes of her beloved grandmother Jenny von Gustedt. From Goethe's circle of friends. Memories of Baroness Jenny von Gustedt gives an insight into the friendly relationship between her grandmother and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Then she describes in Deutsche Fürstinnen just mentioned and explains the life and behavior of these.

The question of women

One of her most important and most hotly debated works is the question of women . In the study, Lily Braun explains her point of view on the debate. In two main chapters, she goes into the development of the women's issue up to the 19th century and then also explains the economic side. The development gives an overview from antiquity through Christianity to the position of women in the age of revolution.

In the second main chapter, she goes into both civil and proletarian women's work and the women's movement, in order to finally explain the history of social democratic legislation for working women. She also campaigned for maternity protection:

“The protection of women workers in Austria developed even more slowly, because before 1885 there was hardly a trace of it at all: women were not denied night work and work underground. But then it took an upswing through which it surpassed France: the eleven-hour day, the four-week maternity protection was introduced, work underground and at night was prohibited. "

Memoirs of a Socialist

In what is probably her best-known work, Memoirs of a Socialist , she processes her life story, divided into two volumes. Correspondence, memories of conversations and her own thoughts, which she recorded in her diary every day, give a detailed insight into her life.

“And again I read through many a night. Every time I turned a page I expected to find the hideous thing that gave so many people the right to abhor socialism and to fight it by all means. But I didn't find it. Nothing horrified me, and if I was surprised, it was only about the fact that every criticism of the existing and every demand for the future was taken for granted. I often laughed in silence with joy when I found my own, long-familiar ideas; and where my thoughts couldn't keep up, my feeling said yes and a thousand times yes. Equal rights for all: men and women; Freedom of belief; Securing existence; Peace of peoples; Art, science, nature a common property of all; Work is a duty for all; Free development of personality, uninhibited by the shackles of caste, race, gender, property - how could anyone who even thought beyond his own four walls ignore the correctness and necessity of these demands ?! "

Lily Braun thought far ahead for the prevailing views of the time and called for not only equality between men and women, but also detailed approaches such as combining motherhood and employment.

Commemoration

The tomb for Otto and Lily Braun, which has been preserved to this day , in Erlenweg in Kleinmachnow near Berlin, 1926

Lily Braun's urn was buried in 1916 on the family's estate on Erlenweg in Kleinmachnow near Berlin, later her son Otto, who died in 1918, was also buried. In 1926 a tomb was erected there based on a design by the Berlin sculptor Hugo Lederer (1871–1940), which is now hidden in the front yard of the property at Klausenerstraße 22 in Kleinmachnow by subdividing the once large Braun property and is now a listed building.

In several places, such as Berlin and Hamburg, there are Lily-Braun-Strasse, in Munich there is a Lily-Braun-Weg. In addition, the Lily-Braun-Oberschule (today: Lily-Braun-Gymnasium ) in Berlin-Spandau was named after her.

Her autobiography was filmed in 1986 under the title Broken Bridges with Monika Woytowicz in the title role for the ZDF (script: Helmut Pigge , director: Franz Peter Wirth ).

Works

  • (Ed., Lilly von Kretschman, Ps.): From Goethe's circle of friends. Memories of Baroness Jenny von Gustedt. 1892
  • (Lily von Gizycki, Ps.): German princesses. 1893
  • (Lily von Gizycki, Ps.): The civil duty of women. Lecture 1895
  • (Ed. Et al.): The women's movement . Revue for the interests of women. 1895
  • The question of women . Your historical development and economic side. Hirzel, Leipzig 1901. ( full text on gutenberg.org)
  • Hans von Kretschman (Ed.): War letters from the years 1870 - 1871. Reimer, Berlin 1903.
  • Truth or legend. A word about the war letters from General von Kretschman
  • The maternity insurance. A contribution to the question of care for pregnant women and women who have recently given birth. Vorwärts bookstore, Berlin 1906.
  • The women and politics. Buchhandlung Vorwärts, Berlin 1903. - literature.at at Austrian Literature Online .
  • In the shadow of the titans. Memories of Baroness Jenny von Gustedt . (Edition 3. Thousand under the title Im Schatten der Titanen. A memory book for Baroness Jenny von Gustedt. Westermann, Braunschweig 1908).
  • Memoirs of a Socialist. Novel. Volume 1: Years of Apprenticeship . (Autobiography). Albert-Langen-Verlag, Munich 1909.
  • The emancipation of children. A speech to the school youth. Albert-Langen-Verlag, Munich 1911.
  • Memoirs of a Socialist. Novel. Volume 2: Years of Fight. (Autobiography). Albert-Langen-Verlag, Munich 1911.
  • The love letters of the marquise . Albert-Langen-Verlag, Munich 1912.
  • Maternity. A compilation for the problems of women as mothers. Albert-Langen-Verlag, Munich 1912.
  • The women and the war. Between War and Peace, Volume 17. S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1915. - literature.at at Austrian Literature Online.
  • Life seeker. Novel . Albert-Langen-Verlag, Munich 1915.
  • Collected Works. Five volumes. Klemm, Berlin-Grunewald 1923.
  • with Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Ed.): Women’s work and work. Original edition. Fischer Pocket Books, Volume 2046, The Woman in Society, Early Texts. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-596-22046-7 . Table of contents (PDF).
  • with Hans-Peter Oswald (Ed.): The women's question - its historical development and economic side. Reprint of the edition Hirzel, Leipzig 1901. Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8370-5774-4 . Table of contents (PDF).

Literature on Lily Braun

Web links

Commons : Lily Braun  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Lily Braun  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Lily Braun
  2. ^ Dieter Borkowski: Rebel against Prussia. The life of Lily Braun. P. 9.
  3. ^ Dieter Borkowski: Rebel against Prussia. The life of Lily Braun. P. 13.
  4. ^ Dieter Borkowski: Rebel against Prussia. The life of Lily Braun. P. 14.
  5. ^ Dieter Borkowski: Rebel against Prussia. The life of Lily Braun. P. 16.
  6. ^ Dieter Borkowski: Rebel against Prussia. The life of Lily Braun. P. 78.
  7. ↑ Helene Stöcker: Memoirs, ed. by Reinhold Lütgemeier-Davin u. Kerstin Wolff. Cologne: Böhlau, 2015, 114.
  8. ↑ Lily Braun: The question of women. Your historical development and economic side
  9. ↑ Kirsten Scheiwe: Social security models between individualization and dependencies. (PDF; 2.0 MB) p. 131 , accessed on March 25, 2009 .
  10. ^ Manfred F. Fischer: Kleinmachnow. Jérôme in the Alder Path; the Landhaus Braun by Bruno Paul . In: Brandenburgische Denkmalpflege 21, 2012, 1, pp. 57–68.
  11. ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Home Front. The fall of the ideal world - Germany in the First World War . Bastei Lübbe, 2014, ISBN 978-3-8387-5621-9 .
  12. ^ Dieter Borkowski: Rebel against Prussia. The life of Lily Braun. P. 16.
  13. ↑ Lily Braun: The question of women. Their historical development and economic side
  14. ↑ Lily Braun: Memoirs of a Socialist
  15. ↑ Solveig Schuster: Lily Braun's grave in Kleinmachnow in danger No more spirit for the grave in the garden . In: Potsdamer Latest News , June 29, 2016, at: pnn.de
personal data
SURNAME Brown, Lily
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kretschmann, Amalie Jenny Emilie Klothilde Johanna von (birth name); Gizycki, Lily von (name from 1st marriage); Gizycki-Braun, Lily von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, socialist and women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Halberstadt , Province of Saxony , Kingdom of Prussia
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1916
Place of death Berlin , Kingdom of Prussia , German Empire