Sigrid Åkerhielm

Sigrid Charlotte Åkerhielm (born January 13, 1875 in Jönköping , † August 7, 1967 in Bremen ) was a Swedish physiotherapist and women's rights activist in Bremen.

biography

Family, education and work

Sigrid Baroness Åkerhielm was the daughter of Knut Axel Samuel Sebastian Åkerhielm af Blombacka and Augusta Helena Charlotte Brandström. Her sister was the mother of Elsa Brandström , who became known as the "Angel of Siberia" during World War I when she worked for the Swedish Red Cross.

In 1895/97 Åkerhielm was trained as a therapeutic gymnast at the Royal Gymnastics Institute in Stockholm . From 1897 to 1907 she worked at the Swedish Gymnastics Institute in Dresden .

From 1907 to 1926 she ran an institute for therapeutic gymnastics in Bremen, which she opened and which gained importance during the First World War. It supported the Bremen hospitals and employed nine Swedish employees.

She last lived in Bremen- St . Magnus .

Women's League for Peace

Åkerhielm became a member of the newly founded International Women's League for Peace (IFFF or WILPF) in 1919 . She worked together with Auguste Kirchhoff and became a member of the board of the Bremen section and treasurer of the German section. The IFFF was dissolved in Germany by the National Socialists in 1933. Using her Swedish nationality and connections, she helped those persecuted by the Nazis to move or flee Germany, especially Jews. After the Second World War , the IFFF was re-established in 1946 and Åkerhielm rebuilt the Bremen local group in 1946. She became state chairman. In 1949 the Bremen group organized a peace rally and Åkerhielm supported the goals of the peace movement as a speaker. From 1952, the IFFF started working with the newly founded West German Women's Peace Movement (WFFB). In 1952 she was also a member of the WFFB Presidium in Heidelberg. In 1958, like 100 other women from Bremen, she signed the appeal against nuclear armament.

Honors

• Red Cross Medal in Germany
• 1952: Vasa Medal, awarded by the King of Sweden Gustav VI. Adolf
• 1958: Vasa Order in Sweden

Literature, source

• Hannelore Cyrus: Åkerhielm (af Blombacka), Sigrid Charlotte . In: Women's history (s), Bremer Frauenmuseum (ed.). Edition Falkenberg, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95494-095-0 .