Establishment of the Israelite-Humanitarian Women’s Association

It is ev­i­dent from the as­so­ci­a­tion’s name that it con­sid­ered it­self a de­cid­edly Jew­ish or­ga­ni­za­tion cham­pi­oning wel­fare work as well as Ju­daism. The ad­jec­tive “Is­raelite”, quite com­monly used in the 19th cen­tury, in­di­cates its Jew­ish char­ac­ter. At the same time, the term “Is­raelite” was meant to em­pha­size that the dif­fer­ence be­tween Jews and non-​Jews was con­sid­ered merely a mat­ter of con­fes­sion. The term “Jew­ish” was in­creas­ingly sec­u­lar­ized in the 19th cen­tury and thus ex­panded to in­clude an eth­nic mean­ing as well. As­so­ci­a­tions sought to avoid this by using the term “Is­raelite” in­stead. The ad­di­tion “hu­man­i­tar­ian” ex­presses a fun­da­men­tally char­i­ta­ble at­ti­tude ori­ented to­wards wel­fare, which was a con­stant in Ham­burg’s Jew­ish com­mu­nity. The by-​laws were printed at the same print­ing busi­ness as those of Ham­burg’s German-​Israelite Con­gre­ga­tion Deutsch-​Israelitische Gemeinde, and the Jew­ish Ma­sonic Lodge made their premises avail­able to the as­so­ci­a­tion for its gen­eral meet­ings. In order to be as ef­fec­tive as pos­si­ble in dif­fer­ent areas, the as­so­ci­a­tion co­op­er­ated with var­i­ous other Hanseatic foun­da­tions and char­i­ta­ble or­ga­ni­za­tions.

In 1908, Sidonie Werner, who had trained as a teacher, re­placed Gus­tav Tuch as chair­per­son of the Israelite-​Humanitarian Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion Israelitisch-​humanitärer Frauen­verein and suc­cess­fully es­tab­lished many new pro­grams of sup­port es­pe­cially for chil­dren, youth, and women. An ac­tive women’s rights ad­vo­cate, she specif­i­cally lob­bied for qual­i­fied pro­fes­sional train­ing for women and sought to pro­fes­sion­al­ize women’s so­cial work in order to ex­pand women’s in­flu­ence be­yond purely char­i­ta­ble work. As §2 of the by-​laws states, by help­ing women help them­selves, the as­so­ci­a­tion hoped to em­power women to im­prove their sit­u­a­tion and sup­port sis­ters in need. §8 stip­u­lates that the amount of the mem­ber­ship fee could be de­ter­mined by each mem­ber, thus open­ing up mem­ber­ship for less af­flu­ent women as well. Fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of the Gen­eral As­so­ci­a­tion of Ger­man Women All­ge­meiner Deutscher Frauen­verein founded in Leipzig in 1865, the Israelite-​Humanitarian Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion Israelitisch-​humanitärer Frauen­verein only ad­mit­ted women as full mem­bers. This cre­ated a pro­tected space for Jew­ish women to dis­cuss their in­ter­ests and is­sues as well as ex­pand their or­ga­ni­za­tional skills and pro­fes­sional am­bi­tions.

Aims of the Israelite-Humanitarian Women’s Association

Since its in­cep­tion, the as­so­ci­a­tion fo­cused in par­tic­u­lar on ex­pand­ing ed­u­ca­tion for women and girls and pro­mot­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for women, thus join­ing the middle-​class women’s move­ment in Im­pe­r­ial Ger­many in its de­mands for women’s ac­cess to higher ed­u­ca­tion, pro­fes­sional train­ing and qual­i­fied em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. The goal was to make women eco­nom­i­cally in­de­pen­dent and offer them the pos­si­bil­ity of a self-​determined life as an al­ter­na­tive to the ex­ist­ing middle-​class ideal of women as wives, house­wives, and moth­ers. In ad­di­tion, so­cial work to help the needy is clearly em­pha­sized in §2 as well. Dur­ing Sidonie Werner’s tenure as chair­per­son, the as­so­ci­a­tion es­tab­lished nu­mer­ous new so­cial projects. In 1909, an em­ploy­ment agency for women was set up in order to re­duce poverty among women. A project for women run by women, it proved very suc­cess­ful. Since the middle-​class women’s move­ment had es­tab­lished its own em­ploy­ment agen­cies, it is safe to as­sume that only Jew­ish women were placed through this agency. The Is­raelite Board­ing House for Girls opened in Ham­burg the same year. Its in­de­pen­dent as­so­ci­a­tion had strong ties to the Israelite-​Humanitarian Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion Israelitisch-​humanitärer Frauen­verein due to Sidonie Werner’s in­volve­ment along with that of sev­eral other board mem­bers, which serves to il­lus­trate the as­so­ci­a­tion’s in­ter­est in co­op­er­a­tion with other or­ga­ni­za­tions as stated in the by-​laws. The board­ing house pro­vided af­ford­able, clean, and re­spectable ac­com­mo­da­tion to un­mar­ried em­ployed girls. Just how great the need for such ac­com­mo­da­tion was is demon­strated by the enor­mous de­mand. The board­ing house opened in Jan­u­ary 1909, of­fer­ing 14 beds. Only one year later, it was over­crowded, hous­ing 23 board­ers, and had to re­ject nu­mer­ous ap­pli­cants due to lack of space.

Boarding houses for working women

Like the con­cept of an em­ploy­ment agency, the idea to es­tab­lish board­ing houses for un­mar­ried fe­male work­ers was not new. Be­gin­ning in the late 19th cen­tury, ac­tivists in the middle-​class women’s move­ment had founded these es­tab­lish­ments based on an Amer­i­can model in order to im­prove liv­ing con­di­tions for un­mar­ried women who earned their own liv­ing. A board­ing house for fe­male work­ers founded in 1890 by Hanna Bieber-​Böhm in Berlin, for ex­am­ple, was open to both fe­male la­bor­ers and women be­long­ing to the emerg­ing pro­fes­sional cat­e­gory of salaried em­ploy­ees. Board­ing houses for work­ing women rep­re­sented a pro­tected space which ful­filled a dual func­tion. By pro­vid­ing af­ford­able, clean, and re­spectable ac­com­mo­da­tion, women were given the op­por­tu­nity to earn their liv­ing with dig­nity, thus pre­vent­ing their so­cial de­cline into poverty and pros­ti­tu­tion. At the same time, the board­ing house pro­tected the rep­u­ta­tion of its fe­male board­ers.

Modern methods of social work

The as­so­ci­a­tion con­sid­ered the pre­ven­tion of hard­ship and poverty an­other im­por­tant task. Its in­fant care pro­gram, es­tab­lished in 1909, il­lus­trates this point well. In tak­ing up this issue, the as­so­ci­a­tion ad­dressed a press­ing issue at the time, which be­came even more charged due to their focus on so­cially dis­ad­van­taged moth­ers. By means of breast­feed­ing pre­mi­ums, the as­so­ci­a­tion hoped to mo­ti­vate des­ti­tute moth­ers to breast­feed their in­fants and care for them them­selves. Even if these pre­mi­ums could not re­place a wage, they of­fered a means of sup­port. How­ever, the as­so­ci­a­tion did not rely on fi­nan­cial sup­port alone to pre­vent poverty and hard­ship, it also of­fered spe­cific ed­u­ca­tion. For ex­am­ple, it paid for a physi­cian, Dr. med. Bland, to carry out free exams for in­fants and to give lec­tures on proper child care from in­fancy to school age. As of­fers like this one show, women and their liv­ing con­di­tions were taken se­ri­ously. Spe­cific and prac­ti­cal sources of sup­port and ed­u­ca­tion were de­signed to en­able them to take care of their chil­dren. The as­so­ci­a­tion sought to ef­fect a deep and last­ing change in the sit­u­a­tion and be­hav­ior of women rather than sim­ply try to re­duce their des­ti­tu­tion through fi­nan­cial sup­port. This shows that the Israelite-​Humanitarian Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion was open to the ap­pli­ca­tion of mod­ern meth­ods of so­cial work, as sev­eral other of its so­cial projects il­lus­trate as well. Since its in­cep­tion, it ran a recre­ational home for chil­dren in the spa town of Bad Sege­berg and sup­ported Ham­burg’s chil­dren’s day care cen­ter for boys and girls. Both of these in­sti­tu­tions en­abled women to earn a liv­ing while know­ing that their chil­dren were looked after, thus the as­so­ci­a­tion pro­moted fe­male em­ploy­ment and at the same time pro­vided child wel­fare ser­vices. Not just an as­so­ci­a­tion ad­vo­cat­ing for women’s rights, the Israelite-​Humanitarian Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion Israelitisch-​humanitärer Frauen­verein de­fined it­self as a Jew­ish or­ga­ni­za­tion specif­i­cally seek­ing to im­prove the lives of Jew­ish women. It adopted suc­cess­ful strate­gies and meth­ods em­ployed by the middle-​class women’s move­ment in its work and at­tempted to do jus­tice to the new image of wom­an­hood by cre­at­ing ex­clu­sive spaces for Jew­ish women. Non-​Jewish women’s or­ga­ni­za­tions in turn were in­spired by the work of Jew­ish as­so­ci­a­tions.

The Israelite-Humanitarian Women’s Association and the middle-class women’s movement

The ex­ist­ing, lively ex­change of ideas be­tween the gen­eral and the Jew­ish women’s move­ments was based on strong per­sonal ties as well. One of the mem­bers of the Ger­man Gen­eral Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion, which had marked the be­gin­ning of the middle-​class women’s move­ment in Ger­many with its found­ing in 1865, was Hen­ri­ette Gold­schmidt, wife of Leipzig Rabbi Abra­ham Meyer Gold­schmidt. Jo­hanna Gold­schmidt, a Jew­ish ped­a­gogue in Ham­burg, had con­nec­tions to ac­tivists in the middle-​class women’s move­ment going as far back as the rev­o­lu­tion of 1848/49. Bertha Pap­pen­heim, too, had been ac­tive in the Ger­man Gen­eral Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion’s Frank­furt chap­ter since 1895. A found­ing mem­ber and first chair­per­son of the Jew­ish Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion Jüdischer Frauen­bund, which had been founded in 1904 and was mod­eled on the League of Ger­man Women’s As­so­ci­a­tions Bund Deutscher Frauen­vere­ine, she main­tained close con­tact to Sidonie Werner, who took up the of­fice as chair­per­son in 1915. Con­sid­er­ing these con­nec­tions, it is hardly sur­pris­ing that the rel­a­tively young Israelite-​Humanitarian Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion Israelitisch-​humanitärer Frauen­verein did not sim­ply see it­self in the tra­di­tion of Jew­ish wel­fare or­ga­ni­za­tions and limit its ac­tiv­i­ties to the com­mu­nity, but in­stead en­gaged in de­bates on women’s rights and adopted mod­ern meth­ods of so­cial work from the gen­eral women’s move­ment.

A protected space for Jewish women

It is by no means un­usual for a women’s as­so­ci­a­tion to pur­sue local projects and to set goals de­cid­edly fo­cused on women and chil­dren. While there were many pro­gram­matic par­al­lels and per­sonal ties to the gen­eral women’s move­ment in Im­pe­r­ial Ger­many, the by-​laws clearly state that the Israelite-​Humanitarian Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion con­sid­ered it­self an or­ga­ni­za­tion run by Jew­ish women for Jew­ish women. Main­tain­ing their Jew­ish iden­tity and cul­ture ev­i­dently played an im­por­tant role. This is re­flected par­tic­u­larly in the es­tab­lish­ment of sup­port and spaces ex­clu­sively for Jew­ish women, where their re­li­gion was re­spected and where they could live as equals.

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