Ottilie Hoffmann

Ottilie Franziska Hoffmann (born July 14, 1835 in Bremen ; † December 20, 1925 in Bremen) was a German educator and social politician who was involved in the abstinence movement.

biography

Ottilie Hoffmann was born in the Ostertor quarter (Bremen) . Her parents were the businessman Ludwig Otto Hoffmann and his wife Friederike Franziska, geb. Horn. After attending a girls' school founded by Betty Gleim (1781–1827), she was already active as a teacher at the age of sixteen thanks to the influence of the writer Marie Mindermann (1808–1882). Hedwig Heyl (1850–1934), who later became a social politician and writer, was one of her students .

Around 1880 she worked in England as a tutor in the house of Lady Rosalind Carlisle. Here Hoffmann got to know the social commitment of English women in the Temperance Society, who advocated abstinence from alcohol. Hoffmann became a member of the World Association of Christian Abstinence Women and after her return from England developed into an influential leader of an abstinence movement in Germany.

Anna Klara Fischer continued her work for the abstinence movement and for the alcohol-free dining houses.

She was buried in the Riensberg cemetery .

Activities in associations

Hoffmann was one of the important women in the Bremen women's movement . On January 29, 1867, Hoffmann and Marie Mindermann took part in the founding of the association for the expansion of women’s field of work , which in the following years was called women's acquisition and training association . Through her active work on the board, she was able to participate as a delegate in the founding of the Federation of German Women's Associations on March 28 and 29, 1894 in Berlin . The founding assembly elected Hoffmann to the federal executive committee, to which she belonged until 1902.

On February 12, 1891, she founded the "Bremer Mäßigkeitsverein". In 1970 the name was changed to "Bremer Verein Ottilie Hoffmann"; this association still exists today.

In July 1896 she was elected to the main board at the annual meeting of the German Association against the Abuse of Spiritual Drinks in Kiel . On the occasion of the annual meeting, Hoffmann gave a lecture on the subject of "Are women's efforts towards moderation a patriotic duty?"

Through her work in the so-called temperance movement, which only worked towards a moderation of alcohol consumption, Hoffmann came to the conviction that only consistent abstinence could successfully combat alcoholism . With this in mind, she founded the German Association of Abstinent Women on July 17, 1900 in Bremen .

Dining houses

Among the outstanding achievements of Hoffmann are the alcohol-free dining houses, which were set up in Bremen and other places from 1900 and which bore her name. Around 1955 there were nine such houses in the city of Bremen alone, in 1980 there were only two. One of the two houses was at the train station (architect: Alexandra Tippel) in front of the Überseemuseum . The building on the Weser, in which the Café Ambiente is located today, was built in 1929 on behalf of the German Women's Association for Alcohol-Free Culture and was run as a teetotaler restaurant until 1983.

Honors

• In Bremen - Schwachhausen , Ottilie-Hoffmann-Strasse connects Busestrasse with Emmastrasse. The street sign reads: "Ottilie Hoffmann (1835–1925) founder of the German Women's Association for Alcohol-Free Culture and the Ottilie Hoffmann Houses in Bremen".
• The bronze sculpture Ottilie Hoffmann by Jürgen Cominotto has been located in Bremen-Mitte since 1987 on Ostertorsteinweg , corner of Wulwesstraße on Ulrichsplatz .

literature

• Elsa Ahlers in Bremische Biographie 1912–1962, published by the Historical Society of Bremen and the Bremen State Archives. Verlag HM Hauschild, Bremen 1969, pages 240 to 242.
• Mathilde Planck: Ottilie Hoffmann. A contribution to the history of the German women's movement . Franz Leuwer Verlag, Bremen 1930.
• Rudolph Bauer : Hoffmann, Ottilie , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 260f.
• Cecilie Eckler von Gleich: "Come on, we're going to Ottilie", 100 years of women's movement and abstinence. The Ottilie Hoffmann houses in Bremen. Bremen 2000.
• Cecilie Eckler from Gleich: Hoffmann, Ottilie Franziska . In: Women's history (s) , Bremer Frauenmuseum (ed.). Edition Falkenberg, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95494-095-0 .

Web links

• German women's association for alcohol-free culture eV Landesverband Bremen / Bremerhaven

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Report in the Weser-Kurier of February 12, 1981, page 18: "Alcohol is still a problem - the Bremen association Ottilie Hoffmann has now existed for 90 years."
2. ^ Report in the Bremer Nachrichten of October 1, 1960: "The tenth" Ottilie "has become particularly beautiful".
3. ↑ Report in the Weser-Kurier of March 26, 1980, page 12: “Just one more Ottilie-HSteinhausstraße 118a 26831 Bunderheeoffmann-Haus”
4. ↑ Homepage of Café Ambiente  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.