page_title: Adele Zay
section_title: Early career (1865–1884)
hierarchical_section_title: Adele Zay / Career / Early career (1865–1884)
caption_attribution_description: English: According to Tóth, Ferenc, ed. (2000). "Szeged". Csongrád megye építészeti emlékei [Architectural monuments of Csongrád County (in Hungarian). Szeged, Hungary: Csongrád Megyei Önkormányzat. ISBN 978-9-637-19328-6] the photograph was taken by Lázár Letzter (1832-1913?) in 1883. (Letzter formed a partnership with Lipus Lauscher, which operated as Letzter-Lauscher until WWI. After the war, Lauscher continued to photograph in his own name.)
context_page_description: Adele Zay was a Transylvanian teacher, feminist and pedagogue. Her family were part of the German-speaking community of the Kingdom of Hungary. Because of her father's death during her infancy, Zay's education was interrupted by periods where she taught to earn money in order to continue private and formal studies. In 1880 after studying abroad in Vienna and Gotha, she passed her primary education certification for Germany and Hungary. The following year, she was certified as a secondary teacher, becoming the first Transylvanian woman to have earned a higher education. From 1875 to 1884, she taught at the Institute of Irma Keméndy in Szeged.
  After almost a decade in Szeged, Zay accepted a post at a newly established normal school for training kindergarten teachers in Kronstadt. Though ostensibly a teacher, from the beginning Zay was the creative force behind the development of the school and designed the syllabus. She led the school from 1884 to 1927, becoming its official director in 1922. Simultaneously with her relocation to Kronstadt, Zay joined the General Women's Association of the Transylvanian Evangelical Church and became one of the leaders in pressing for women's rights.
context_section_description: By the age of 17, Zay had begun tutoring and within three years was teaching French and German at the Mädchenerziehungsanstalt von Philippine Barreaud (Philippine Barreaud Girls' Educational Institute) in Hermannstadt. When the school closed in 1873, she moved to the Cotroceni neighborhood of Bucharest and taught at the Mädchenerziehungs- und Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalt Asyl Helene (Helena Asylum Girls' Educational and Teacher Training Institute), where one of her older sisters was employed as a teacher. The Helena Asylum was an orphanage established in 1862 by Elena Cuza, the princess consort of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. It was later operated under the patronage of Queen Elisabeth of Wied. Zay taught classes in German language, geography, and history.
  In 1875, wanting to further her education, Zay went to Vienna and took a training seminar with Friedrich Dittes, a school reformer and advocate of the Fröbel method. She also undertook private lessons in Gotha with August Köhler, an adherent of Fröbel's principals who instructed her in pedagogy. By December, Zay had secured a new post, teaching English and German languages, geography and mathematics at the Institute of Irma Keméndy in Szeged. While teaching, Zay continued her own studies at the Keméndy Institute's normal school. In 1880, she passed the examination to teach in German and Hungarian state elementary schools. The following year, she passed an additional exam at the Budapest Public Normal School to teach French and English, becoming the first Transylvanian-Saxon teacher certified to teach secondary education. She continued teaching and worked as an administrator at the Keméndy Institute until 1884, when the presbyterium of the Evangelical Church of Augsburg Confession invited her to teach in their newly established normal school for training kindergarten teachers.
caption: Dugonics Square, Szeged, Hungary, circa 1883–1885 (top left building on the square with a horse in front is the Institute of Irma Keméndy)
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