page_title: Princess Pauline of Anhalt-Bernburg
section_title: Day care center
hierarchical_section_title: Princess Pauline of Anhalt-Bernburg / Social Policies / Day care center
caption_attribution_description: Map of Detmold from 1660
context_page_description: Pauline Christine Wilhelmine of Anhalt-Bernburg was a princess consort of Lippe, married in 1796 to Leopold I, Prince of Lippe. She served as the regent of Lippe during the minority of her son from 1802 to 1820. She is regarded as one of the most important rulers of Lippe. On 1 January 1809, she abolished serfdom by princely decree. She managed to keep the principality independent during the Napoleonic Wars. She wrote a constitution, in which the power of the estates was reduced. In the collective historical consciousness of the Lippe population, however, she is best remembered for her social goals. Influenced by French reformist writings, she founded the first day care center in Germany, a labor school for neglected children, a voluntary work camp for adult charity recipients and a health care institution with first aid center.
context_section_description: Pauline worried about the welfare of small children, whose parents had to leave the house for work during the day. She read in a Paris newspaper of an initiative by Joséphine de Beauharnais, the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was still First Consul of France at that point in time. In Paris, however, only unmarried mothers were allowed to use the center, while in Detmold, the offering was also to married couples, if they both had to work. A circular from Princess Pauline Detmold ladies with the title German: Vorschlag eine Pariser Mode nach Detmold zu verpflanzen
  ("Proposal to transplant is a Parisian fashion to Detmold") is viewed as a starting point for the creation of a day care center:
  Madame Bonaparte and several delicate and elegant ladies in the vast capital of the French Empire chose and built with truly feminine sister feeling and enviable refinement in the various neighborhoods of the big city, rooms where delicate youngsters, whose mothers are employed outside their homes, are being nurtured, fed, and calmed. Every morning blissful mothers bring their children; every night they take them home again with joy and gratitude, and the female founders of this mild institution alternately assume the supervision 
  — circular (quoted from Traute zur Lippe: Zur Geschichte der Paulinenanstalt in Detmold)
  Pauline used the circular to find educated ladies willing to supervise the center one day each week, for free. The princely house would finance the center. Older girls from the vocational school and the orphanage would look after the children and be trained to care for them. In 1801, Pauline purchased a suitable building for the institution: the so-called "Schwalenberg Court" on Süsterstraße (now called Schülerstraße) in Detmold. The first day care center opened on 1 July 1802. The building was a three-story noble court; it was demolished at the end of the 19th century. The "Gymnasium Leopoldinum" (a secondary school, which still exists) developed from a school that was already housed in the building when Pauline bought it. The day care center was soon imitated all over Germany. The city of Detmold, however, saw the project as a royal hobby and provided no financial support.
  Up to 20 children were cared for in the first years. They were required to have been weaned from their mother's breast of and no older than four years of age. Four-year-old children, it was believed, could stay at home alone or accompany their parents in the gardens or the fields, until they were old enough to go to the vocational school. The child-care institution was open from 24 June until late October when the harvest and garden work were completed.
  Based on a report published by inspector Krücke in 1813, the center was open from 06:00 to 18:00 or 20:00. In the morning adolescent girls from the orphanage and older pupils from the vocational school would wash the children and put on a clean shirt and woolen jackets. On weekends, the clothing worn during the week was washed. The clothes were donated to the children when center closed at the end of the season. Pauline mostly financed the center using her own money, and the rest was paid out of the hospital fund. She managed to find twelve wealthy middle class women willing to act as supervisors. They had to record certain events in a journal, so that the princess was always well informed.
caption: Map of Detmold around 1660
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