author
Käthe Schirmacher
1865–1930
A bold, complicated voice in European public life, she moved from pioneering feminist activism to outspoken nationalism over the course of her career. Her writing and lectures made her a visible figure in debates about women’s rights, politics, and modern society around 1900.
1 Audiobook
The Modern Woman's Rights Movement: A Historical Survey
by Käthe Schirmacher
About the author
Born in Danzig in 1865, Käthe Schirmacher was a German writer, journalist, and political activist whose career crossed literature, scholarship, and public debate. She studied in Paris and earned a doctorate in Zurich, achievements that were still unusual for women of her generation.
In the 1890s, she became one of the better-known voices of the radical wing of the bourgeois women’s movement, speaking and publishing on women’s education, work, and political rights. She was active internationally as a lecturer and public intellectual, and she spent important years in Paris while building her reputation.
Her later path was more controversial. Over time, she turned away from the women’s movement’s earlier internationalist spirit and became involved in nationalist politics, which makes her a striking and often debated figure in German history. She died in Merano in 1930.