She was divorced, a single parent, politically. Marie Juchacz was the time of your life for women and children’s rights. Even more: exactly 100 years Ago, you stand as the first woman at the lectern of the German Parliament.
It is the 19. February 1919: A month earlier, has constituted the new national Assembly. For the first Time, 37 female members are moved into Parliament. Marie Juchacz is one of them. She is also the first woman in German history, to take the floor in plenary. “My lords and ladies,” she begins. The Protocol has a light-hearted mood among the mostly male members in the chamber. But Marie Juchacz throws from the track: “The woman is a full citizen. You know what that means superior. There are a lot more women eligible to vote than men. By submitting his vote on election day, you can participate every citizen politically. The fact of the women’s right to vote should force every friend of social democracy, to promote the woman’s vote. (…) What did this government, as a matter of course. She gave the women what they have been deprived of until then in the wrong.”
“A significant investment in the construction of the welfare state”
Hedwig Richter from the Hamburg Institute for social research
Equality is one of the objectives of the Marie Juchacz has prescribed. As a campaigner for women’s suffrage, it contributes significantly to this for a few months, will be introduced before the historic speech in Parliament. As members of their particular social policy at the heart of the work, care about the protection of the Mother to the housing. Issues such as these, she dedicates her whole life. There are topics that have been neglected to date.
“The idea of democracy as a welfare state was a great movement, to which both sexes were involved, but women have worked much of it,” says Hedwig Richter from the Hamburg Institute for social research. “This cliché of a two-sex model, women are for social issues and men for the hard policy, foreign policy and war, is responsible – from today’s point of view a little confusing. But the question is whether we can find this model good or bad, is not relevant in this case. The female members at the time felt simply very strong for these topics. The structure of the welfare state on which they were substantially involved, is one of the great achievements of the Weimar Republic.”
The Beginnings
Marie Juchacz (left) played a significant role in the history of the German women’s movement
The daily newspaper is your kids reading. Marie Juchacz, then Gohlke, is informed very early on about the political happenings in the world. She was born in 1879 in rural Landsberg an der Warthe (now Poland). Especially her brother plays in the first few years of your life have a Central role – he gives her books and excited for the social democracy. In school, she is a curious and disciplined child. Up to the age of 14. Birthday, she visited the elementary school – a secondary school, there is not. Then, she works as a maid, factory worker and a seamstress.
As a young woman, she learns the master tailor Juchacz know and marry him in 1903. It is the year in which the elections take place. Marie can’t choose, but she is determined to change this – what to you and all the other women to succeed some years later.
The first child comes in the same year, the second two years later. But Marie is unhappy in their marriage. She pulls in 1906, to Berlin. Shortly after, she joins the SPD. In 1917, she appointed a woman Secretary in the party’s Executive Committee. Topics such as maternity protection, housing and youth care will be a Central part of their work.
Although the social Democrats advocate as a first for women’s suffrage, the female party members is not easy, your demands a reality: “The social democracy had its own misogyny, a skepticism of women. One knows also from other countries such as the USA, the labour movement was from its origins a very masculine movement. She was skeptical of women entering the labour market, which moved to the part, therefore, that women have worked for a much lower wage,” says Hedwig Richter.
Parliamentary work: pragmatic and solution-oriented
In January 1919, Marie Juchacz is elected by the constituent Assembly of the Weimar Republic. Thus, she is involved as members instrumental in the preparation and implementation of important socio-political laws. A Central concern for the absolute principle of Equality for men and women. Vehemently opposing the introduction of the word “generally” in the clause “men and women in the same state have civil rights”.
In the same year, she founded the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO) with the aim of improving the state of care fundamentally. The AWO is today one of the six Central associations of voluntary welfare in Germany. Currently around 145,000 employees serve seniors and people with disabilities, among other things, operate kindergartens, all-day schools and counselling agencies for people in distress.
In that time, beginning in 1919, Marie Juchacz very active: they wrote writings, organized conferences, founded a welfare school for women and men, where the poor nurses are trained. Up to 1933.
The Nazi Regime
“The women’s movement was during the Weimar Republic, in a deep crisis, because they had achieved their goal. This is a typical development for movements. The number of members decreased. Young women are no longer occurred,” Hedwig Richter. The women’s movement has disbanded, some went into exile, others were not – but were in the resistance. On the eve of the presidential elections of 1932 Marie Juchacz warns: “The women (…) don’t want a civil war, want war, not Peoples (…). The women (…) to see through the hollowness of a policy that is particularly male, although it is only dictated by short-sightedness, vanity and renowned addiction. This policy, of the national socialist policy, with all the forces to counter, forcing us to our love for our people.”
But your words are not heard. In 1933, she flees first to Saarbrücken and take care of refugees from Germany. Hans E. Hirschfeld, a close companion wrote on the occasion Juchacz’ 75. Birthday: “I can still see in the Bahnhofstrasse in Saarbrücken, the spaces in which You, the party, member of the management Board, the Reichstag Deputy, the politician, without a lot of words to do in the kitchen stood, a lunch table set-up test and, therefore, a home and a refuge for the many jumble of people made You with food and drink and even more so with the popularity of supply test”.
As in 1935, the Saar territory, Germany is again attached to, flees Marie Juchacz about France in the United States. In exile you can afford while not a political work, but by their Ideals and goals, you will no longer time life. They organized talks and charity events for people who escaped the Nazi Regime and in the Stranger a start fresh.
After the war she returned to Germany and is active in the workers ‘ welfare. She dies at the beginning of 1956, at the age of 76 years. “Her whole life and was in the service of the struggle for a better and fairer world,” wrote the workers ‘ welfare in your obituary.