page_title: Anita Augspurg
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Anita Augspurg / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Tittel / Title: Suffrage Alliance Congress Beskrivelse / Description: Øverste rekke fra venstre: Thora Dangaard (Danmark), Dr. Louise Qvam (Norge), Dr. Aletta Jacobs (Nederland), Annie Furuhjelm (Finland), Madame Mirowitch (Russland), Dr. Schirmacher (Tyskland), Madame Honneger (Sveits), uidentifisert Nederst fra venstre: uidentifisert, Anna Bugge Wicksell (Sverige), Rev. Dr. Ann Shaw (USA), Mrs. Millicent Fawcett (presitend, England), Mrs. Chapmann Catt (USA), Fru F. M. Qvam (Norge), Dr. Anita Augsburg (Tyskland) Dato / Date: 1909 Fotograf / Photographer: ukjent / unknown Sted / Place: England, London Eier / Owner Institution: Nasjonalbiblioteket / National Library of Norway Lenke / Link: &lt;a href="http://www.nb.no" rel="nofollow"&gt;www.nb.no&lt;/a&gt; Bildesignatur / Image Number: blds_05676
context_page_description: Anita Augspurg was a German jurist, actress, writer, activist of the radical feminist movement and a pacifist.
context_section_description: The daughter of a lawyer, during her adolescence Augspurg worked in her father's law office until she reached the age of majority. In Berlin she completed a teachers training course for teaching at Women's colleges and also took acting classes in parallel. From 1881 to 1882 she was an apprentice to the Meiningen Ensemble, and took part in concert tours across Germany, the Netherlands and Lithuania. Her maternal grandmother, who died in 1887, left her a considerable inheritance, which made her financially independent.
  After a five-year career as an actress, she went with her friend Sophia Goudstikker to Munich, where in 1887 they jointly opened a photography studio, the Hofatelier Elvira. The two women wore short hair, unconventional clothing, and frequently made public their support for the struggle for the liberation of women and their free lifestyle. Because of that unusual lifestyle, Augspurg was exposed to personal attacks by anti-feminists far more than were other personalities of the women's movement. Nonetheless, her contacts made through the stage and the studio quickly made her well-known, and she eventually had the Bavarian royal family as a customer.
  By 1890 Augspurg was deeply involved in the German women's movement and practised as a public speaker. Her commitment to women's rights led her to decide, after several years of successful work, to study for a law degree. She went to the University of Zurich, Switzerland, because women in Germany still did not have equal access to universities. Alongside Rosa Luxemburg, with whom she had a turbulent relationship, she was one of the founders of the International Female Students Association (Internationaler Studentinnenverein). She completed her studies with a doctorate in 1897, the first doctor of law of the German Empire.  However, she could not practise as a lawyer, since women were not yet allowed to do so.
  Meanwhile, in 1895 Augspurg had begun to collaborate with the newspaper Die Frauenbewegung ("The Women's Movement"), writing articles denouncing the discrimination to which she was subjected in social legislation, describing in particular marriage as a form of legalised prostitution. In 1896 she participated in the International Conference of Women held in Berlin, where she met the radical feminist Lida Gustava Heymann, who became her companion for the remainder of her life.
  At the turn of the century, Augspurg campaigned for women's rights in the German Civil Code: she brought together her political friends, Minna Cauer and Marie Raschke, producing petitions on the new marriage and family law, which was only partially effective. Augspurg published a sensational "Open Letter" in 1905, in which she appealed for change to the then prevailing patriarchal marriage law to enable entry into "free marriage", in defiance of state-approved marriage. This was interpreted as a call to boycott marriage and brought a storm of indignation. During this time, following the radical split from the conservative women's organisations, many women considered radical women's suffrage as a priority. Augspurg and her partner Lida Gustava Heymann worked together on the board of the Association of Progressive Women's Organizations. They formed an association for women's suffrage in Hamburg (1902) and in Bavaria (1913). From 1907 Augspurg contributed to Zeitschrift für Frauenstimmrecht, and was represented in 1919 in the magazine Die Frau im Staat, in which feminist, radical democratic and pacifist positions were published.
  During the First World War Augspurg and Heymann held illegal gatherings in their Munich apartment. They participated in the International Congress of Women in The Hague, Netherlands, in April 1915, which led to the founding in 1919 of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (IFFF), of which Heymann was Vice President. They found a common anti-war ground with the Independent Social Democrats, which had split off from the Social Democratic Party. In this context, their former differences with Socialist women such as Clara Zetkin became less important. Au
caption: Suffrage Alliance Congress with Millicent Fawcett presiding, London 1909. Top row from left: Thora Dangaard (Denmark), Louise Qvam (Norway), Aletta Jacobs (Netherlands), Annie Furuhjelm (Finland), Madame Mirowitch (Russia), Käthe Schirmacher (Germany), Madame Honneger, unidentified. Bottom left: Unidentified, Anna Bugge (Sweden), Anna Howard Shaw (USA), Millicent Fawcett (Presiding, England), Carrie Chapman Catt (USA), F. M. Qvam (Norway), Anita Augspurg (Germany).
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