Minna Bernst

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Minna Bernst , b. Wilhelmine Elisabeth Gellert (born May 29, 1880 in Kassel ; † October 9, 1965 ibid) was a German women's rights activist and local politician and from 1919 one of the first six women elected to the 72-member city ​​council of Kassel.

Life

Minna Bernst's parents were the master baker Friedrich Conrad Gellert and his wife Maria Henriette geb. Leak. Minna attended elementary school am Wall in Kassel and then learned the trade of white seamstress . As a young woman, she spent two years, 1900–1902, in the household of a distantly related family in Paris . In July 1904 she married the factory worker Jakob Emil gen. Valentin Bernst (1881–1956), son of a shoemaker , and after the wedding the couple took over the operation of a cooperative convenience store in Holländische Strasse zu Kassel, close to the factories there and Workers' housing. The couple had seven children. The marriage ended in divorce in 1928. Valentin Bernst had meanwhile become an employee of the factory workers' association.

During the First World War, Minna Bernst sewed tarpaulins from home. Like her brother Cornelius Gellert , who was a member of the Reichstag from 1930 to 1933, Minna Bernst was a member of the SPD . After the active and passive right to vote for women was introduced in Germany on November 12, 1918, she was on the list of women on March 2, 1919, like Amalie Wündisch , although she was one of the younger activists among the women of Kassel SPD elected city councilor. She worked there for a legislative period until May 4, 1924.

Bernst and Wündisch got involved in youth work and in social organizations despite considerable domestic stress. At the beginning of 1920 they both belonged to the founders of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt in Kassel, which began its work with a warming hall and a people's kitchen in Kettengasse on the Fulda bridge. A sewing room was added later, in which shirts for unemployed men were made, as well as a home for apprentices, a social counseling center and a home for the elderly.

Bernst took part in October 1920 as a delegate at the first Reichsfrauenkonferenz in Kassel, which dealt in particular with questions of equality and the right to vote, and in 1925 she was a member of the Provincial Parliament of the Prussian Province of Hesse-Nassau for the city of Kassel (Socialist Working Group, SPD) . From 1930 to 1933 she was an expert citizen of the household and trade school in Kassel. From 1934 she lived in Volkmarsen , where she was elected to the district council of the Wolfhagen district in 1946 . However, she gave up this mandate in the same year and moved back to Kassel, where she died in 1965 at the age of 85.

Honor

On the Marbachshöhe in Kassel- Wilhelmshöhe a street is named after her. There you will also find the women Elisabeth Consbruch , Julie von Kästner , Johanna Wäscher and Amalie Wündisch who were elected to the city council in 1919 and the streets named after the first honorary city ​​councilor Johanna Vogt , who was also elected in 1919 .

literature

  • 100 year anniversary: ​​“Women of Cassels, you have to vote!” - “Cassel's new men”: This is how the region reacted to women's suffrage. In: Hessische / Niedersächsische Allgemeine . November 12, 2018 ( hna.de ).
  • Gilla Dölle, Cornelia Hamm-Mühl and Leonie Wagner: Women's elections: The female city councilors in Kassel 1919–1933 (= series of publications of the archive of the German women's movement ). Archive of the German women's movement, Kassel 1992, ISBN 3-926068-08-6 .
  • Jochen Lengemann : MdL Hessen. 1808-1996. Biographical index (= political and parliamentary history of the state of Hesse. Vol. 14 = publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 48, 7). Elwert, Marburg 1996, ISBN 3-7708-1071-6 , p. 72.
  • Jochen Lengemann: Citizens' Representation and City Government in Kassel 1835–2006. A manual, part 2 . (= Publications of the Kulturstiftung der Kasseler Sparkasse. Vol. 3 = Publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 60,2). Elwert, Marburg, 2009, ISBN 978-3-86354-135-4 , p. 128.
  • Dieter Pelda: The members of the Prussian Communal Parliament in Kassel 1867-1933 (= Prehistory and history of parliamentarism in Hesse. Vol. 22 = Publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 48, 8). Elwert, Marburg 1999, ISBN 3-7708-1129-1 , p. 12.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The election list of the SPD, which received 51.4 percent of the vote in the election, comprised three women in a total of 72 places.
  2. ^ Jochen Lengemann: MdL Hessen. 1808-1996. Biographical index (= political and parliamentary history of the state of Hesse. Vol. 14 = publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 48, 7). Elwert, Marburg 1996, ISBN 3-7708-1071-6 , p. 72
personal data
SURNAME Bernst, Minna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gellert, Wilhelmine Elisabeth (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH October 9, 1965
Place of death kassel