Mathilde Weber (women's rights activist)
Mathilde Weber , b. Walz (born August 16, 1829 in Tübingen ; † June 22, 1901 there ) was a German women's rights activist and social worker .
Life
Mathilde Walz was born in Tübingen and spent her childhood with her three younger siblings on an estate near Ellwangen . There she received an education from her parents that was extraordinarily good for girls for the time. Her father had therefore specially taken the elementary school teacher examination. Then she attended the secondary school for girls in Ellwangen.
In 1851 she married the agricultural economist Heinrich von Weber . In 1854 he was appointed professor of forestry and agriculture at the University of Tübingen and in 1858 signed a lease for the Bläsiberg estate near Tübingen.
Mathilde Weber first came into contact with the bourgeois women's movement in 1869. She was the first South German to attend the annual meeting of the General German Women's Association founded in Leipzig in 1865 . She was elected to the board and remained a member of the board until 1900.
In 1870 the Weber couple moved into the newly built house at Tübinger Neckarhalde 52, where Mathilde Weber lived until her death. After moving, she co-founded a "medical association". She was instrumental in founding the Tübingen women's labor school, the predecessor of today's Mathilde Weber School. Like Ottilie Wildermuth and many others, she signed the call for founding this school.
From 1879, after initial hesitation, Mathilde Weber developed a lively lecture activity on women's days as part of the General German Women's Association. In 1880 Mathilde Weber called for the establishment of a relief and poor employment association in the Tübingen Chronicle . With the proceeds from lectures and bazaars, she set out in 1886 to implement the project of a pension scheme for unprofitable single women. On a building site made available by the city of Tübingen (corner of Belthlestrasse and Weberstrasse), a semi-detached house with small apartments was built at cheap rental prices. It was named Jägerstift after the professor's daughter who died in the same year and who had deposited the start-up capital with her estate. Due to the large number of applications, a second house was built four years after its inauguration, the so-called Weberstift , in Weberstrasse, which was later named after her. In 1896 she founded another women's home on Hechinger Strasse, the Mathildenstift .
In addition, she began to publish from 1887. In addition to travel letters and chats , the important pamphlet Women Doctors for Gynecological Diseases, an ethical and sanitary necessity , should be given to women to study medicine. This document was submitted as a petition to the Landtag and Reichstag, but was initially only clearly rejected. Mathilde Weber saw the reasons for the rejection in all the men “who find it difficult to break free from the bonds of the old and traditional”.
The Allgemeine Deutsche Frauenverein (General German Women's Association) sent a petition to all German governments in 1888, calling for the medical profession to be released and the universities to be opened up to women. The pamphlet by Mathilde Weber was enclosed. All state governments decided to reject the application. In November 1891 she wrote a petition on the work of women doctors within the framework of statutory health insurance.
The Royal Medical College, which was involved in the discussion, recommended training qualified midwives instead of women doctors . Although women were not denied the ability to study medicine - even if “the few intellectually superior women” were accused of sloppiness and unfemininity - they were not granted the ability to practice medicine.
Even this small concession was soon reversed because - according to Walcher, spokesman for the Medical College and Mathilde Weber's nephew - it had to be seen as the “duty of all sustaining elements of today's society”, “a party of overthrow, like the women's emancipation party its consequences presented, face with all might, even if it should not succeed in stopping the movement, which is just as dangerous to the state and threatens the present society to the same extent as the similar tendencies following socialists and nihilism ”.
In 1890, her husband, Heinrich von Weber, died, who supported her in her endeavors and accompanied her to the general assembly of the General German Women's Association.
In 1891 the Reichstag reacted “with serenity” to the question of women's studies . Individual women have been studying at German universities for years, but only thanks to special permits as guest auditors. Maria von Linden , who was the first student in Tübingen to study natural sciences in 1892 , had such a special permit from the King of Württemberg thanks to the intercession of her great-uncle, a senior official . She saw Mathilde Weber, with whom she was in regular contact, as a woman who was “entirely a women's movement” and “not only gathered all the professional, learned and political women who came to Tübingen in her house”, “but who also tried hard to find these women to honor and help them ”.
In 1899 the city of Tübingen awarded Mathilde Weber the title of “city benefactor”. Later a street (Weberstraße) and a vocational school (Mathilde Weber School) were named after her.
Mathilde Weber died on June 22, 1901 and was buried in the Tübingen city cemetery. The grave was dissolved in 1978.
Works
- Travel pictures of a small Swabian woman , Stuttgart 1877.
- Chats about Paris and the world exhibition in 1878, Herzberg aH 1879.
- The housewife's mission, Berlin 1884.
- About the social duties of the family. Collected essays from the years 1875 - 1885 , 2nd edition, Berlin 1886.
- Doctors for women's diseases. An ethical and sanitary necessity , 4th edition, Tübingen 1889.
- Through Greece to Constantinople. A company trip in 35 days , 2nd edition, Tübingen 1892.
- Doctors for women's diseases. An ethical and sanitary necessity , 5th edition, Berlin 1893.
- Guide for young maids in better houses , 2nd edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1893.
- Why is there a lack of deaconesses and carers? , Oehmigke, Berlin 1894.
- Our house servants. Supports, housekeepers, associates, nannies, etc. Communications about the purposes and goals of the new association for house officials , Oehmigke, Berlin 1895.
- Hospital images. From the diary of the head of a medical association in the war years 1870-71 , 3rd edition, Krüger, Leipzig 1914.
literature
- Thea Caillieux: The Mathilde Weber School in Tübingen. In: Helga Merkel: Between annoyance and recognition. Tübingen 1993 ( online , PDF; 90 kB)
- Helga Merkel (ed.): Between annoyance and recognition, Mathilde Weber 1829 - 1901 , Kulturamt, Tübingen 1993 (Tübingen catalogs, volume 39), ISBN 3-910090-07-9 .
- Bea Dörr / Susanne Omran: Mathilde Weber. Emancipation and charity not only in Tübingen . In: Karlheinz Wiegmann (Ed.): There and away. Tübingen all over the world, Kulturamt, Tübingen 2007 (Tübingen catalogs, volume 77), pp. 151–163, ISBN 978-3-910090-77-4 .
- Ulrike Pfeil: Refinement against impoverishment. Mathilde Weber, a friend of the people and women's rights activist from Tübingen. In: Bernd Jürgen Warneken (Ed.): Volksfreunde. Historical variants of social engagement, Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde eV, Tübingen 2007 (Investigations, Volume 103), pp. 119–132, ISBN 978-3-932512-38-4 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bea Dörr: Mathilde Weber - women active social reformer in the 19th century BAF eV and Frauenprojektehaus e. V.
- ↑ See collection of sources on the history of German social policy 1867 to 1914 , III. Department: Expansion and differentiation of social policy since the beginning of the New Course (1890-1904) , Volume 5, Statutory Health Insurance , edited by Wolfgang Ayaß , Florian Tennstedt and Heidi Winter, Darmstadt 2012, No. 17.
- ↑ Thomas Hanstein: Tübinger Strasse ( memento from November 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Schwäbisches Tagblatt, January 27, 2010.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Weber, Mathilde |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Walz, Mathilde (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German women's rights activist and social worker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 16, 1829 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Tübingen |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 22, 1901 |
| Place of death | Tübingen |