Upbringing girls in the 19th century in Austria

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Upbringing girls in the 19th century describes the education and its development for young women in Austria. It encompasses all forms of influencing adolescent women, both in the family and in public. The foundation for the upbringing of girls is the understanding of childhood and the role expectations of girls at the time.

The image of the child in the 19th century

The idea that childhood is a separate phase of life only emerged in the 18th century with the introduction of compulsory schooling. Previously, children were perceived as small adults and were considered unfinished beings. Children were seen as the property of the parents or the father who determined their life, their education and their labor. The children had to be obedient and subordinate their will to the adults.

For a family, a child meant not only joy but also a certain fear of losing it again. Mothers usually had little time to look after newborns because they had to work. However, there was also a different understanding of infant nutrition, care and hygiene. Child mortality did not decline until the 19th century through awareness campaigns about caring for children.

Even in the 19th century, a change in attitudes towards children was only possible in those layers in which there was no material need and no work was compulsory for all family members and the parents could therefore turn to their children. Bourgeois women turned more to toddlers by breastfeeding their children themselves, whereby the tenderness and closeness and more intensive preoccupation with physical well-being also reduced child mortality in the upper classes. This intensive preoccupation with the child, as well as its growth and upbringing, was reserved for middle-class families for a long time. Working and peasant families rarely showed such tenderness and affection.

Portrait of a girl in the castle park

The role of the girl in the 19th century

In the 19th century women were assigned the private sphere, men acted in public. Men and women were assigned opposing role models. The woman is therefore not autonomous, dependent, caring, selfless and private. The role of housewife and mother was therefore intended for girls.

Children and upbringing

The children developed under the direct care of the mother, but the father still claimed responsibility for upbringing. The most important thing in the 19th century was that the sons received a proper education. At best, you should get your high school diploma and then study. However, this was associated with enormous costs and if there was not enough money, the education of the girls was behind that of the boys. The daughters therefore often had to help with the household in order to save service personnel and thus enable their brothers to train. In the course of the 19th century the number of children decreased and thus it gradually became financially possible to give girls an education.

If education was even possible for girls, it was no more than practicing their future social role.

Public interest in women

There was no equality between men and women because the man had authority. This right was granted to the man because he was considered naturally superior due to his greater physical strength and greater courage. Women had no property of their own and no rights, as these were due to their husbands, and the men were thus guardians of the women. The man thus led a public life, while the domestic life was reserved for the woman. Women therefore received little recognition for their achievements, especially in public, and were thus neglected in this way. In the 19th century, however, the interest in women grew through the Enlightenment. By providing education to women, however, there was also concern that women would neglect their families and thus make them unstable.

School education for girls

School policy around 1800 and its further development

Schooling had been compulsory in Austria since 1774, for both boys and girls between the ages of six and twelve. However, the two sexes should not be taught together, but ideally there should be “separate schools for the little girls”. The education system at that time was in the hands of “house and estate” as well as the church and was assigned to living, working and legal districts. At that time the children were not taught anything, they were much more “settled in”.

School was the link between the family of origin and later life. Whereas in the past it was only understood as an addition to the educational process, it developed into its foundation. By learning the elementary skills in reading, writing and arithmetic, the whole people should be able to take orders and also to carry them out - the people became "governable" through school. However, school education should not go too far in order not to endanger the existing social structures. This fear of fundamental changes in the existing order became the starting point and foundation of conservative school policy from the end of the 18th century to the first half of the 19th century.

In order to create a modern central administrative state, it was necessary to nationalize the education system and create a “school state”. However, it was not until 1848 that a Ministry of Public Education was finally created, which one year later became the Ministry of Cultus and Education. On May 14, 1869, under Minister L. Hasner von Artha, the Austrian compulsory education system was completely rebuilt through the Reich Elementary School Act. The school system was withdrawn from church supervision and completely subordinated to the state. Compulsory schooling was extended from six to eight years, the teaching and educational material expanded, and elementary and community schools were established.

Women's clubs

Many concerns in the Austrian school system with regard to the schooling of girls were promoted by women, especially from the last third of the 19th century. The central achievement was the establishment of schools and educational institutions for girls.

However , despite many petitions, it was not until the 20th century that the work of women's associations for equality in education showed success.

Girls class 1891

Elementary school

Whenever possible, the children were given private tuition. If the parents could not raise the necessary financial means, the compulsory school years were completed in public elementary schools. However, there was a separation of girls and boys. If there was no school for girls, at least care was taken to ensure that the girls had their own benches, and the curriculum also differed. In addition to the elementary skills, they also learned handicrafts such as sewing and knitting as well as other skills that were considered appropriate for women at the time.

At the beginning of the 19th century, gymnastics lessons were only intended for boys. The main reason for excluding the girls was the widespread opinion that physical exercise leads to psychological and physical masculinization. From the 1830s onwards, these prejudices could only slowly be refuted by the argument that gymnastics brought beauty and health. Nevertheless, the motto was "head up, legs down and closed". The subject "gymnastics" for both sexes was only gradually introduced during the second half of the 19th century.

For peasant and working-class children, elementary school education was usually the only training. Higher daughter schools or Lyceen (higher schools for girls) were reserved for girls from middle-class families.

Further training

After compulsory schooling, girls had few opportunities for further education, as they were denied any access to technical and secondary schools in the first half of the 19th century. It was not until 1868 that the Viennese merchants founded the first commercial school for girls. Due to the Reich Primary School Act in the following year, girls in larger communities also had the opportunity to attend a three-class citizen school after the fifth grade. However, girls and boys are taught differently at these schools. Girls had less arithmetic, geometry and drawing, but six hours of needlework per week.

The Vienna Women's Acquisition Association established a four-class higher education school for girls in 1871, which was a middle school and the curriculum roughly corresponds to that of the Realschule, but also takes into account the “nature and tasks of women”.

In 1873 the Grazer Mädchenlyzeum, a six-class girls' middle school, opened. However, the curriculum of this and all other established lyceums and higher daughter schools did not correspond to that of the middle schools for boys.

Training

Women only had the opportunity to work in typical female professions such as educator, teacher or kindergarten teacher. One of the few options was training to be a primary school teacher. However, a state school for women teachers was not established until 1869.

High school and Matura

Girls were not allowed to attend grammar schools and therefore could not acquire the Matura , as they were rejected, according to the then Minister of Education Paul Gautsch Freiherr von Frankenthurn, because a grammar school "ran counter to the real nature of the female sex". With the help of a ministerial decree in 1872, girls were able to take the Matura as external students at a boys' grammar school from 1878. However, the clause “Ready to go to university” was crossed out on the certificate and thus did not entitle to a proper university course.

The first girls 'high school in Vienna was founded by the Association for Advanced Women's Education in 1892, when there were already 77 boys' high schools. In 1898, the first female graduates of the girls' grammar school were entitled to take the Matura at the Akademisches Gymnasium for boys. Three years later, Matura certificates from Austrian citizens finally also contained the note “Ready to go to a university”. It was not until 1904 that women were given full equality when taking the high school diploma. The first Matura at the girls' high school could be passed in 1906.

Education

In the past it was unthinkable for women in Austria to attend university and complete a degree. It was not until the 1860s that there was widespread debate about the topic of women's studies. The demand for women to be admitted to educational institutions remained unsuccessful for a long time. In 1897 women were allowed to take part in lectures for the first time as full or extraordinary listeners, but initially only in philosophical faculties . The medical faculty granted women admission to medical studies and pharmacy from 1900. In 1919 women were granted access to the law faculty, the veterinary and technical college, and the college for world trade and natural resources. A year later, she was admitted to the study of fine arts. In 1922 women were able to attend the Protestant theological faculty. It was not until 1945 that women were finally admitted to the Catholic theological faculty, which meant that all university courses in Austria were legally open to both sexes.

literature

  • Margret Friedrich : "A paradise is closed to us ...": on the history of the schooling of girls in Austria in the "long" 19th century. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne 1999.
  • Juliane Jacobi-Dittrich, Ilse Brehmer (Hrsg.): "Housewife, wife and mother": CVs and educational courses of women in the 19th century. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1983.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A Brief History of Children's Rights. In: unicef. Retrieved February 11, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Tanja Milenkovic: Changes in childhood and youth from the 18th century . GRIN Verlag, Munich 2003.
  3. ^ Andreas Gestrich: History of the family in the 19th and 20th centuries . In: Encyclopedia of German History . 3. Edition. tape 50 . Walter de Gruyter, 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-78099-4 , p. 36 f .
  4. ↑ Sina Lautenschläger: Gender-specific body and role images . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston, ISBN 978-3-11-056017-6 , pp. 305 .
  5. ↑ a b Ute Frevert: Citizens: Gender Relations in the 19th Century . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, ISBN 978-3-647-35739-3 , p. 24; 101 .
  6. ↑ a b Women's education and the great women in Mariahilf. District Museum Mariahilf, accessed on February 12, 2019 .
  7. ^ Juliane Jacobi-Dittrich: "Housewife, wife and mother": CVs and educational courses of women in the 19th century . Ed .: Ilse Brehmer. 1st edition. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1983, ISBN 3-590-18023-4 , pp. 265 .
  8. ↑ a b c d Margret Friedrich: "A paradise is closed to us ..." BÖHLAU Verlag Vienna, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-205-99049-8 , p. 37 ff .; 44 f .
  9. ↑ a b c d e f Important milestones and measures for gender equality in the Austrian education system. Federal Ministry of Education, Economy and Research, November 20, 2018, accessed on February 11, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Werner Tscherne: Unexpected Consequences of the Reich Primary School Act . Graz 1997, p. 221 .
  11. ^ Reichsvolksschulgesetz 1869. Retrieved January 11, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Renate Seebauer: Women who go to school . LIT Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Vienna, ISBN 978-3-7000-0629-9 , p. 196 .
  13. ↑ Women on the Move: 1848-1938. Austrian National Library, accessed on February 12, 2019 .
  14. ↑ a b c Dorothea Gaudart: women's movement and women's consciousness in Austria . In: Policy Yearbook . tape 1985 , p. 159 .
  15. ↑ Ingolf Wöll: head up, legs down and closed . Ed .: Sportunion Österreich. St. Pölten September 19, 2007, p. 62 ff .
  16. ↑ Michaela Hafner and Heidi Niederkofler: Stage victories - women in science and research . Ed .: BMWFW. March 7, 2011, p. 7 .
  17. ↑ Women at the University of Vienna. Retrieved January 20, 2019 .