Luise Koch

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the German poet and playwright with the same maiden name, see Maidy Koch (1875–1966).

Luise Agnes Koch (born October 11, 1860 in Bremen ; † March 14, 1934 in Bremen) was a German educator, politician (DDP) and women's rights activist .

Life

Koch was the daughter of the businessman Carl August Koch and his wife, the piano teacher Lina Koch b. Schmahlstieg. She attended a private girls' school and stayed with her parents afterwards. She is said to have worked as a private teacher

In 1904 she founded the local branch of the German Association for Women's Suffrage, formed in 1902 (since 1904: German Association for Women's Suffrage ) and was chairwoman of the Bremen Association from 1904 to 1919. In 1916 she was elected to the board of the German Reich Association for Women's Suffrage.

In the suffrage movement, Koch was first a very determined feminist like the women's rights activist Lida Gustava Heymann (Hamburg) and Anita Augspurg (Berlin), with whom she was in contact. From around 1905, the radicals separated from the bourgeois women's associations. In the discussion on voting rights from 1911 to 1913, she advocated women's suffrage on the basis of the existing suffrage, which - with a few exceptions - was class suffrage at the state and municipal level . In 1912 this bourgeois view was also decided in the Bremen group, while the Social Democrats and the 'radical' women of the voting rights federation fought for equal and classless suffrage for both sexes.

At the beginning of the First World War , she called on around 600 members to stand up less for their own rights and more for the interests of the family, people and fatherland.

In 1916, Koch was elected to the board of the German Reich Association for Women's Suffrage. In 1917 she protested against “the upcoming reform of Bremen's electoral law [...] to apply the right to vote in a unilateral manner only to the male sex”. In 1918 she was ready to work with the women of the radical voting rights association and the social democrats. In 1918 she became a member of the new united groups of politically interested women in Bremen, in which both women's suffrage groups and the social democrats were represented.

1919 Koch became a member of the German Democratic Party (DDP). She represented the party in the constituent Bremen National Assembly from 1919/20, but did not run for Bremen citizenship .

Through her commitment to the women's suffrage movement, Koch was an important woman in the Bremen women's movement .

Honors

• The Luise-Agnes-Koch-Platz in Bremen - Hulsberg was named after her.

Literature, sources

• Romina Schmitter: cook, Luise Agnes . In: Women's history (s) , Bremer Frauenmuseum (ed.). Edition Falkenberg, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95494-095-0 .
• Bremer Nachrichten of October 11, 1930: Bremen Association for Women's Suffrage .

Web link

• Women's museum, portrait