Mathilde von Horn

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mathilde von Horn (born July 1, 1875 in Munich , † September 23, 1943 in Karlsruhe ) was a German nurse and superior general of the Baden Sisterhood of the German Red Cross .

biography

Mathilde Freiin von Horn was born as the eldest child of the parents Maria, née Freiin von Gienanth (1853-1910), and Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von Horn (1847-1923) into the old noble family of the von Horn family. The father was a Royal Bavarian Chamberlain, Colonel General of the Infantry, Minister of War and Councilor of State in extraordinary service. During their youth the family lived in Landau in the Palatinate . The Protestant upbringing of her parents' house shaped Mathilde.

On April 4, 1899, she began training as a nurse in the Ludwig Wilhelm Hospital of the Baden Women's Association of the Red Cross in Karlsruhe. The fourth day of the German women's, aid and care associations also took place on this day. One of the agenda items was to ensure that female staff were given free nursing care in the event of war. In order to be prepared in the event of war, they wanted to begin with a six-month training course for nurses who had to undertake to work in health care in the event of war. Mathilde von Horn joined this association in September 1899. On November 16, 1900, she was accepted into the Baden Women's Association of the Red Cross, which was under the protectorate of Her Royal Highness Grand Duchess Luise von Baden .

In 1904 Freiin Mathilde von Horn was appointed superior of the Baden Women's Association by the Red Cross and superior of the internal department of the Karlsruhe Municipal Hospital . Grand Duchess Luise personally presented her with the superior badge. In 1908, Mathilde von Horn and her colleague Oberin Pia Bauer , who is now referred to as a pioneer in oncological care, resigned from their positions as superiors in Heidelberg due to adverse and stressful working conditions for nurses, thus demonstrating moral courage. Mathilde von Horn was officially on leave and was proposed in 1909 as superior in the general hospital in Mannheim under the direction of the internist and nephrologist Franz Volhard . On October 15, 1913, Mathilde von Horn was appointed to the position specially created for her as Superior General for Department III of the Baden Women's Association of the Karlsruhe Red Cross.

World War I: France, Serbia, Russia, Bulgaria

Right at the beginning of the First World War, Mathilde von Horn moved as superior of the XIV Army Corps with 200 sisters in the stage area to Pfalzburg , Zabern and then to Nisch in Serbia. On September 7, 1915, she went to a disease area in Russia to help set up hospitals. In January 1916 she was given the difficult task of visiting German prison camps in Russia. There she was supposed to deal with the food situation and the hygienic conditions of the prisoners and to find out who was responsible for the pastoral care of the prisoners and their dignified burial. In addition, she should endeavor to exchange cripples and procure necessary medication. Alexandrine Countess von Üxküll-Gyllenband , Erika von Passow, Magdalene von Walsleben, Elisabeth von Gagern and Matron Emma von Bülow also took part in the prisoner-of-war camp visits in 1915/1916 and 1916/1917 . The trips were under the supervision of the Danish doctor Thorvald Madsen (1870-1957), who had been appointed by the International Red Cross in Geneva as an observer and hygiene officer. On the trip to Tashkent in Turkestan, Mathilde Freiin von Horn met the "Angel of Siberia", Elsa Brändström . Elsa Brändström described the gloomy conditions in the prisoner-of-war camps in her notes. After the work in Turkestan, other missions followed in Serbia, Bulgaria, Astrakhan , the Caucasus and Baku . Here, too, Mathilde von Horn's commitment was aimed at improving the situation of German prisoners of war and represents the first successful efforts of the International Red Cross to recruit prisoners of war. In 1917 Mathilde von Horn ran a nurses' school in Bulgaria, where sisters from educated Bulgarian circles were taught. The curriculum at this school in Sofia included the subjects of medicine, surgery, bacteriology and X-ray studies . Since Mathilde von Horn was already interested in Conrad Röntgen in her youth and had a companion from oncological care in Pia Bauer , she attached importance to the teaching of technical content during the training with the student nurses, which was rather unusual for that time. Mathilde von Horn also took a massage course with the budding nurses . For Mathilde von Horn, elements of physiotherapy and massage were part of the elementary training content. As early as 1913, Ernst von Seuffert had reported on X-ray treatment for uterine carcinomas at the IV International Congress for Physiotherapy and pointed out the importance of complementary therapies.

In the last months of the war Mathilde von Horn worked in hospitals in Constantinople, Damascus, Warsaw and northern France.

After returning from the First World War, Mathilde von Horn devoted herself to expanding the Rotkreuz parent company in Karlsruhe. In 1921 she took in young war orphans as house daughters in the mother's house in order to prepare them for two years in a kind of nursing care school for the profession of nurse. She also succeeded in making the Karlsruhe motherhouse the largest member of the Association of Motherhouse of the Red Cross.

Awarded an honorary doctorate to Henry Dunant

In 1903, the founder of the International Red Cross, Henry Dunant , to whose mother house Mathilde von Horn belonged, was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Medical Faculty of the Ruprecht-Karls-University for his services to nursing and special war nursing. Dunant received the honorary doctorate together with Gustave Moynier . Vinzenz Czerny , doctor, cancer researcher and medical supervisor of Pia Bauer, who was a close colleague of Mathilde von Horns, emphasized at the Ruperto Carola's centenary celebration in 1903 the development of free science at the Ruprecht-Karls-University since 1803 and made ties with it to the tradition of his predecessor Franz Anton Mai and his services to the academization of nursing a hundred years earlier. This concern of Franz Anton Mais corresponded to that of Henry Dunant. For health reasons it was not possible for Dunant to attend the Zentenar celebration. He limited himself to written greetings.

Honors

1929: Florence Nightingale Medal of the International Red Cross ("for extraordinary merits in voluntary nursing on the battlefields")

Publications

  • Seventy years motherhouse of the sisters of the Baden Women's Association of the Red Cross 1960-1930 , Karlsruhe in Baden 1930.

swell

  • Archive of the Association of Sororities of the German Red Cross, Bonn.
  • Archive of the Baden Red Cross of the Sisterhood in Karlsruhe, unsigned folder.

literature

  • Kathrin Enzel: Mathilde Countess von Horn. General Superior of the Baden Women's Association of the Red Cross. 1875-1943 , in: Life pictures from Baden-Württemberg . Volume 22. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, pp. 410-442.
  • Martina Frohnhäuser: General Superior Mathilde von Horn (1875-1943): A life in the service of the Baden Red Cross , Inaug. Dissertation Institute for the History of Medicine at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, supervisor Wolfgang U. Eckart , 2003 Frohnhäuser: Mathilde von Horn
  • Oberinnen-Vereinigung in the German Red Cross (ed.): The call of the hour - Sisters under the Red Cross , Kohlhammer Stuttgart 1963.
  • Horst-Peter Wolff (Ed.): Biographical lexicon on nursing history “Who was who in nursing history” , Volume 1, Ullstein Mosby, Berlin / Wiesbaden 1997, pp. 87-88.
  • Christine E. Hallett, Government of Flanders: Nurses of Passchendaele. Caring for the Wounded of the Ypres Campaigns 1914–1918 , Pen & Sword Books, Military Classics, Barnsley (UK) 2017.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herbert Grundhewer: From the voluntary war nursing to the integration of the Red Cross in the army medical system , in: Johanna Bleker and Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach (ed.): Medicine and War. On the dilemma of the health professions 1865-1985 , Fischer TB Ffm, p. 42. ISBN 3-596-23859-5 .
  2. ^ Daniela Wittmann: BA Nurse - A System for Germany ?! A historical-critical consideration in Germany and its new perspectives , university publication Institute for Gerontology University of Heidelberg, supervisor Eric Schmitt, 2015, on the history of the origins of the Luis Sisters (first Red Cross Sisterhood in Baden, Karlsruhe) under Luise von Preußen p. 9 + 10. BA nurse perspective for Germany ?!
  3. ^ Wolfgang U. Eckart : Medicine and War. Germany 1914-1924 , excursus: The Badische Landesverein im Krieg, Ferdinand Schöningh Paderborn 2014, p. 115.
  4. ↑ Alexander Sudahl: The Red Cross in the Kingdom of Württemberg , dissertation at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , academic advisor Wolfgang U. Eckart , 2001, pp. 324–326. Doctorate Alexander Sudahl
  5. ^ On the situation and activities of daily life (ATLs) in the hospitals: Wolfgang U. Eckart : The wounds heal very nicely. Field postcards from the military hospital 1914-1918 , Steiner Stuttgart 2014, p. 51 picture postcard with the Red Cross nurse Karlsruhe. Eckart: The wounds heal very nicely
  6. ^ Hannes Leidinger , Verena Moritz : Captivity, Revolution, Homecoming. The significance of the prisoner of war problem for the history of communism in Central and Eastern Europe 1917-1920 , Böhlau Verlag Wien, Cologne, Weimar 2003, p. 178, ISBN 3-205-77068-4 .
  7. ^ Anne Hardy: Actions not Words. Thorvald Madsen, Denmark, and International Health. 1902-1939 , in: Iris Borowy and Anne Hardy (ed.): Of Medicine and Men. Biographies and Ideas in European Social Medicine between the World Wars , Peter Lang Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt a. M. 2008, p. 135. Of Medicine and Men . ISBN 978-3-631-58044-8 .
  8. ^ Timo Gantert: German and Austrian prisoners of war of the First World War in Russian-Soviet custody. Physical and psychological trauma as reflected in memory literature, 1917–1937, dissertation Institute for the History of Medicine at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , academic advisor Wolfgang U. Eckart , 2008, p. 16, p. 45–49, p. 95– 103, p. 155. Gantert: Traumatization of prisoners of war
  9. ↑ Pia Rastetter: The non-surgical therapy of uterine cancer in Germany (1895-1945): X-ray therapy, radium therapy and complementary therapies, dissertation Institute for the history of medicine (now history and ethics of medicine) of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , academic supervisor Wolfgang U Eckart , 1999, pp. 18 + 19. Dissertation Pia Rastetter .
  10. ↑ a b Martina Glad houses: superior general Mathilde of Horn (1875 to 1943). A life in the service of the Baden Red Cross, dissertation Institute for the History of Medicine, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , 2002, pp. 78 + 79, pp. 209–212.
  11. ↑ See Alexander Sudahl 2001: pp. 44–46. Doctorate Alexander Sudahl
  12. ↑ Vice-Rector Excellence Privy Councilor Professor Dr. Czerny : Ceremonial address , in: Senate of Ruperto Carola : Acta Saecularia. In memory of the centenary celebration at Heidelberg University, 1803-1903 , Verlag von Otto Petters Heidelberg 1904, pp. 59–61, Henry Dunant , pp. 180, 215.
personal data
SURNAME Horn, Mathilde von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German nurse and superior general of the sororities of the German Red Cross
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1943
Place of death Karlsruhe