Helene Lange campaigned for women's rights early on. She trained as a teacher, founded several schools and was one of the first women in the Hamburg Parliament.
by Astrid Reinberger
This square is also considered to be the high point of her work:On March 16, 1919, Helene Lange became senior president of the Hamburg Parliament. As a member of the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP), the 70-year-old stood for election and fought hard to ensure that women were finally allowed to participate in social decisions and equal education.
Helene Lange complains about "mental wasteland" for young women
For Helene, who was born on April 9, 1848, this struggle began in her childhood. As a young girl she lives in Oldenburg and is annoyed that she should learn to knit. She envies her two brothers who are spared and later writes of "the misfortune of being a girl" and the "spiritual wasteland" that surrounded her there. "It's one of the commonly held theories that it's never too early to get little girls into needlework," she wrote in her memoirs, published in 1921.
Her parents died early, and Helene Lange got a guardian who sent the 16-year-old to a Protestant pastorate in Württemberg. Academics and theologians hang out there, and a lively culture of discussion is cultivated - a discovery for Helene, the merchant's daughter from a humble background. But if she dares to interfere, her mouth is banned, it is said:"When clever men speak, girls must be silent."
Education as the key to self-determination
Helene Lange resolves to do teacher training because she realizes that education is the key to a self-determined life. She fails because of her guardian, who forbids her training on the grounds that "nobody in the Oldenburg region has ever done that". At least she manages to be allowed to teach German in a French boarding school for girls in Alsace. The teaching assistant uses the educational institution to self-taught philosophy, literature, history, religion and to learn French. However, she is aware that this time is only seen by the guardian as a "waiting time" - a waiting time until the wedding.
But Helene Lange wants more. As soon as she reaches the age of majority and is allowed to make decisions about herself, she goes to Berlin, finances herself with her inheritance and gives private lessons. In 1872, at the age of 24, she passed the teacher's examination and gradually made contact with the pioneers of the Berlin women's movement. She gets a permanent job at the Crainsche secondary school for girls and ends up running the teacher training college there. In her opinion, however, the education of girls is poorly regulated, and a well-founded scientific education with a matriculation examination or Abitur is still reserved for boys.
Women demand better education for girls
When the journal "The teacher in school and home" was looking for female authors, Helene Lange was there immediately. She is also involved in the "Berlin Association of German Teachers" founded by Marie Calm in 1869. She and her fellow campaigners actively campaign for the improvement of girls' education. You write a petition to the Prussian Ministry of Education and the House of Representatives. The accompanying text, the so-called Yellow Brochure with a justification for the higher education for girls, is written by Helene Lange. The demands:Scientific instruction, as well as religion and German, should be given by trained teachers, and the state should set up institutions for the scientific training of these teachers.
Throughout her life, Helene Lange campaigned for better educational opportunities for women.The petition is rejected. What is more, a storm of indignation breaks out over the women. They have not even called for women to be admitted to university studies. As a counter-reaction, Helene Lange and the doctor Franziska Tiburtius founded the "real courses for women" under the umbrella of the Scientific Central Association in Berlin, in which Latin and higher mathematics were also taught. The women raise the funds themselves. The General German Women's Association donates a portion, the rest is organized by the activists through a series of events, lectures and concerts.
What the proceeds are used for is only vaguely indicated to the audience, nobody should be alarmed. The strategy works:Real courses are held in high esteem, so that from 1893 they even develop into grammar school courses for girls. In the end, the Prussian Ministry of Culture commissioned Helene Lange, among others, to take part in a girls' school reform, which was actually implemented in 1908.
Not a suffragette, but a pragmatic teacher
She is a fighter, but Lange does not take part in the demonstrations for women's suffrage.Throughout her life, Helene Lange's intention has been to proceed pragmatically and purposefully. Although she is an important member of the women's movement, she is not radical, she never writes leaflets or goes to demonstrations. She also does not join any of the "suffrage organizations" that fight for women's suffrage, like the suffragettes in England and the United States. This brings her a lot of criticism within the women's movement.
However, the argumentative teacher is less concerned with major socio-political changes than with very specific concerns and structural improvements. The education that she had to fight hard for herself should of course be available to the young girls who follow. No more, no less. Even if she herself does not end the "waiting time until marriage" and never marries, she is still conservative and does not fundamentally question the "determination" of women in marriage and motherhood.
Lange and Bäumer publish handbook of the women's movement
In 1890, Helene Lange founded the "General German Teachers' Association" to enforce the standards achieved and to establish a higher-level representation of interests for female teachers. She is also on the board of the "Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine", which is intended to act as the umbrella organization for all women's associations. However, her health is troubling her, especially an eye condition that severely hinders her. Gertrud Bäumer, who is 25 years her junior, offers her help. Together, the two publish the handbook of the women's movement, a standard work, and finally the monthly magazine "die frau", which develops into the mouthpiece of the bourgeois women's movement. When in 1908 the Reichsvereinsgesetz (Reichsvereinsgesetz) allowed women to join political parties, Lange and Bäumer joined Friedrich Naumann's Liberal Association.
Joined the DDP and was elected to the Hamburg Parliament
The two women became inseparable and moved to Hamburg together, where the "Social Women's School" was founded in 1910. Helene Lange takes over the management of this school, which today is called "Helene-Lange-School" and is a grammar school for boys and girls. Together with Friedrich Naumann, Theodor Wolff and Max Weber, among others, Gertrud Bäumer founded the German Democratic Party (DDP), for which Helene Lange, as senior president, opened the Hamburg Parliament on March 16, 1919. But the 70-year-old Lange is in very bad health, so she is increasingly withdrawing from the public eye.
Last years in Berlin
When Gertrud Bäumer was elected to the Reichstag in 1920 and took up the post of Ministerial Counselor for Youth Welfare and Education, the two women returned to Berlin. Helene Lange writes her "Memoirs" and publishes her collected writings in 1928. In the same year she became an honorary citizen of her native town of Oldenburg and received the Prussian state medal for "services to the state". She died on May 13, 1930 at the age of 82.