Louise Dittmar

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Johanna Friederieke Louise Dittmar , also Luise Dittmar (born September 7, 1807 in Darmstadt ; † July 11, 1884 in Bessungen ) was a German women's rights activist, early socialist , publicist and philosopher at the time of the Vormärz , who consistently advocated equal rights in her books Genders began.

Life

Dittmar's father Heinrich Karl was a senior finance advisor. His wife Friederike Caroline had ten children with him. The couple were politically progressive and republican, but their image of women was traditionally rooted. There was not enough money for her daughter Louise for further education. Among the daughters she was destined not to marry, but to look after her parents in old age. After the death of her parents, Dittmar took care of the housekeeping of her unmarried brothers from 1840. Her brother Georg Hermann had participated in the Frankfurt Wachensturm in 1833 and was friends with Georg Büchner . Another brother, Karl Anton, married the daughter of the Darmstadt publisher Karl Leske, who was in close contact with liberal and democratic writers from Vormärz. Self-taught, she began to deal with literature, philosophy, state theory, ideas of social reform and criticism of religion. Historian Peter C. Caldwell considers Dittmar's writings to be the only deliberate attempt by a feminist of her time to participate in the male-dominated discourse on these issues. In fact, Dittmar did without literary and fictional types of text in order to spread her ideas.

Dittmar was particularly impressed by the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach , with whom she temporarily exchanged letters. In the mid-1840s she published her first anonymously written essay Sketches and Letters from the Present . In it she spoke out in favor of freedom of religion and belief. Associated with this were political demands and ideas about economic changes, which they contributed to a solution to the social question . In them she represented early socialist positions. In addition, Dittmar emphasized that fundamental political and economic changes must go hand in hand with unconditional gender equality. It was precisely on this question that she recognized a deficit in contemporary literature and philosophy:

“The feeling of independence can only take root in free relationships, and it is only from this feeling that self-confidence can grow, whereby one arrives at an impartial judgment about oneself. (…) I cannot help but to doubt the knowledge of those who doubt the possibility of their freedom as well as the understanding of the feminine nature. In the whole of existence they research to find an unconditionally free position for man, but in the truest sense they only understand the man below; there still remains a thread of bondage to which the woman is attached. "

Such views were ahead of their time. In 1845 she published the satire known secrets , in which she sharply criticized the liberal bourgeoisie, the Juste Milieu . A short time later, the religion-critical writing Man and his God in and outside of Christianity followed . She later published the book Lessing and Feuerbach , in which she commented on selected texts and, in an idealistic sense, advocated a churchless faith based on anthropology. She found recognition in religious reform movements such as the German Catholics . Her lecture of 1847, which she gave to a meeting of the political opposition, was four questions of time. Answered in a meeting of the Mannheim Monday Association to print. Regardless of the content of her theses, she regarded the lecture as a significant event, as it was the first time a woman had publicly stated "what she means by freedom of conscience."

Apart from a few accompanying essays, Dittmar hardly played a role in the revolution of 1848/49. She published two volumes of political poems and in 1849 published the journal Die sociale Reform . Well-known authors such as Louise Otto , Johanna Küstner , Julius Fröbel , Claire von Glümer and Malwida von Meysenbug wrote in it . However, the project had to be discontinued after a few issues.

Her perhaps most important book was published in 1849, The Essence of Marriage. Along with some essays on the social reform of women . Once again she fought for a social, democratic, equal society. The anthology also contained articles, for example by Louise Otto, which were first published in Dittmar's journal Die sociale Reform . In an essay about the revolutionary Charlotte Corday , Dittmar succeeded her. She met with criticism even from women close to her, for whom Dittmar's radical ideas went too far.

In her sketch for the characterization of Nordic mythology , published in 1848, she attempted a political-religious Germanism. According to this, “in Germanic nature” lies the drive “to know the innermost truth.” Hostility to nature, the separation of spirit and nature is a characteristic of the “self-misconception of the Orientals.” Freedom is the essence of nature and so is “that highest beings not oriental deism, the theory of utility, "but" nature that has become free in itself. " Germanic elements roots. "

Dittmar did not publish anything after 1850. The suppression of the revolution and the subsequent reaction with its association and assembly bans, including for women, meant the end of a political utopia for them. She spent the last four years of her life, already seriously ill and impoverished, with her two nieces in Bessungen, then a village near Darmstadt.

The old people's and nursing home Louise-Dittmar-Haus and Louise-Dittmar-Straße in Darmstadt are named after her.

Quote

"You will be amazed how this lady shames our philosophers and theologians with the freedom of her spirit."

- Ludwig Feuerbach to Otto Wigand August 16, 1848.

Fonts (selection)

  • Sketches and letters from the present . CW Leske, Darmstadt, 1845 ( digitized version )
  • Man and his God in and outside Christianity. From a worldly . G. André, Offenbach am Main, 1846 digitized
  • Lessing and Feuerbach, or a selection from GE Lessing's theological writings along with original articles and references from L. Feuerbach's Wesen des Christianenthums . Gustav André, Offenbach am Main, 1847 digitized
  • Four questions of time: Answered in a meeting of the Mannheim Monday Association . Offenbach am Main, 1847 digitized
  • On the characterization of Nordic mythology in relation to other natural religions. A sketch . CW Leske, Darmstadt, 1848 digitized
  • Brutus-Michel . 2nd probably edition CW Leske, Darmstadt 1848 digitized
  • Burrowing poems by someone who is true . J. Bensheimer, Mannheim, 1848 digitized
  • The essence of marriage . Otto Wigand, Leipzig, 1849 digitized

literature

  • Gabriele Käfer-Dittmar: Louise Dittmar (1807-1884). Unheard certificates J. v. Liebig, Darmstadt 1992. ISBN 3-87390-100-5 (Darmstädter Schriften 61).
  • Manuela Köppe: Louise Dittmar (1807–1884) “Freedom of the Spirit” . In: Irina Hundt (ed.): From the salon to the barricade. Women of the Heine Age . Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, pp. 281-298 ISBN 3-476-01842-3
  • Christine Nagel: »In the soul the struggle for freedom« - Louise Dittmar: Emancipation and morality in the Vormärz and in the revolution of 1848/49 . Königstein / Taunus 2005. ISBN 3-89741-181-4
  • Caldwell, Peter C: Love, death, and revolution in Central Europe: Ludwig Feuerbach, Moses Hess, Louise Dittmar, Richard Wagner . New York 2009. ISBN 0-230-61496-5
  • Irina Hundt: Social Reform - The magazine of the socialist and Feuerbachian Louise Dittmar in the context of the women's press 1840-1852. With an attempt at reconstruction . In: Lars Lambrecht (ed.): The emergence of the public - Another policy. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2007 ISBN 978-3-631-56750-0 , pp. 157-182

Web links

Wikisource: Louise Dittmar  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach: Collected works . Edited by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences by Werner Schuffenhauer . Berlin 1967. Volume 19, p. 178.
personal data
SURNAME Dittmar, Louise
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dittmar, Johanna Friederieke Louise (full name); Dittmar, Luise
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German women's rights activist, early socialist, publicist and philosopher during the pre-March period
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH July 11, 1884
Place of death Qualifications