Marita Loersch

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Marita Loersch

Marita Loersch (born Marie-Luise Beaucamp , born August 25, 1853 in Lyon , † June 20, 1915 in Aachen ) was a Franco-German charitable woman and a founding member of several Catholic women's associations.

Live and act

The daughter of the French military doctor Eugène Louis Beaucamp (1815–1858) and his German wife Elisa Kuetgens (1828–1868) moved after the sudden death of her father in Laon with her mother and three younger brothers to live with their maternal relatives in Aachen. There she attended the secondary school for girls in St. Leonhard and, after her mother had also died in 1868, first moved to the Sacré Cœur boarding school for girls in Paris and, after the outbreak of the Franco-German War, to the Sacré Cœur boarding school in Münster in 1870 . After one of her brothers died in the war, she dropped out of school and moved back to Aachen to look after the two younger brothers. She got to know the cloth manufacturer Heinrich Hubert Arthur Loersch (1843-1896), a brother of the legal historian Hugo Loersch , and only consented to a marriage with him on condition that her two brothers would be accepted into this new family constellation.

Since her own marriage remained childless and her brothers grew up quite soon, she devoted herself to charitable causes. She became a member of the "Mariannenverein Aachen", which looked after the Aachen Marianneninstitut and the care of young women who had recently given birth in need, further in the "Elisabethverein", which volunteered for women in need, and from 1907 in the " Hildegardis Association ", which the Women's studies was important. In addition, she worked in the so-called “Maiden's House”, which had the aim of training, job placement and temporary care for girls looking for work. After the death of her husband, Loersch also took on the task of visiting and looking after young female prisoners. For many years she also held the office of treasurer of the Fatherland Women's Association in Aachen, who set up rehabilitation aids for war invalids and set up war kindergartens. In addition, she co-founded the first day care center in Aachen and the Sunday schools for women workers, which she also took over. She was also one of the co-founders of the Catholic Women's Association , which was founded in Cologne in 1903, and was elected several times from 1903 to 1910 as an assessor on its central board.

Even before that, in 1900, due to a significant initiative by Loersch, a branch of the “Society of the Good Shepherd” was founded in Aachen, which in 1901 became a “Catholic Welfare Association for Girls and Women” and in 1903 a “Catholic Welfare Association for Girls, Women and children ”and from which the Association of Social Service of Catholic Women (SkF) developed in 1968 . From 1904 Loersch took over the chairmanship of the Aachen local association, which was one of the three first foundations of the federal association in Germany. At the same time, in 1902, she had also launched another local association in Düren , which joined the general association in 1906 as the 22nd group.

In order to be able to communicate with the many ordinary citizens of Aachen on an equal footing and to gain their trust, she learned the Aachen dialect intensively . Her life she continued to hold close connection to her two they surviving brothers, and Charles Beaucamp (1855-1932) Attorney and Judicial Council and Eugène Beaucamp (1859-1936) gynecologist and Privy Medical Councilor and Head of Marianne Institute and co-founder of the hospital in Aachen-Forest had become .

In memory of Marita Loersch, a street in Aachen and the youth home of the Catholic welfare association were named after her. Marita Loersch found her final resting place in the family grave of the Kuetgens family in Aachen's East Cemetery .

literature

  • Ingeborg Schild , Elisabeth Janssen: The Aachen East Cemetery. Mayersche Buchhandlung , Aachen 1991, ISBN 3-87519-116-1 . Pp. 393-295
  • Life pictures . in: Die christliche Frau , issue 9/10 1915
  • Elisabeth Fischer-Holz (ed.): Women also make history. Important women from the Euregio Maas-Rhein , Grenz-Echo Verlag 2003
  • Saskia Reichel: Loersch, Marita , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 366f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ From the history of the association of the Social Service of Catholic Women , chronology on the pages of the skf-Aachen
  2. ↑ 100 years of social service for Catholic women in Düren , anniversary publication, Düren 2006
personal data
SURNAME Loersch, Marita
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beaucamp, Marie-Luise (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-French charitable woman and founding member of several Catholic women's associations
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Lyon
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1915
Place of death Aachen