page_title: Helene Lange
section_title: Political engagement and feminist movement
hierarchical_section_title: Helene Lange / Political engagement and feminist movement
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Berliner Gedenktafel, Helene Lange, Kunz-Buntschuh-Straße 7, Berlin-Grunewald, Deutschland English: Porcelain Berlin Memorial Plaque on the house at Kunz-Buntschuh-Straße 7 in Grunewald, Germany. The house, that previously stood, where Helene Lange lived from 1901 until 1916.
context_page_description: Helene Lange was a pedagogue and feminist. She is a symbolic figure of the international and German civil rights feminist movement. In the years from 1919 to 1921 she was a member of the Hamburg Parliament. In 1928 she was honoured with the Grand Prussian State Medal "For Services to the State".
context_section_description: In 1887, Lange addressed with other women a petition to the Prussian Ministry of Education and the Prussian House of Representatives, that a greater influence of women teachers in public high schools for girls and scientific teacher training for women should be stipulated. The petition was rejected. In the so-called Gelben Broschüre (Yellow Pamphlet), a companion magazine to this petition, Lange summarizes their stance on women's education 'Your goal is the teaching of girls through women, who can better empathize with the essence of girls in their view. To date, most teaching arrangements are held by men'.
  In 1889, Lange offered Realkurse (middle high-school courses) for women in Berlin, which were converted in 1893 to Gymnasialkurse (high school courses). In 1890, she established the Allgemeinen Deutschen Lehrerinnenverein (General German Women Teachers Association) to represent the interests of female instructors, and takes management of the association. Lange established the magazine Die Frau (The Woman) in 1893, which developed into the most important magazine of the German women's civil rights movement, and from 1893 Lange is on the founding board of the Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins, the General German Women's Association. In 1894, Lange became board member of the newly founded Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (Federation of German Women's Associations), the umbrella organization of all German women's associations. However, the Social Democratic women's groups refused to join, because the Federation rejected their sociopolitical demands. From 1898, and due to failing eyesight, Lange lived and worked together with her companion aide the German feminist and politician Gertrud Bäumer.
  When the International Council of Women met in Berlin in 1894, Helene Lange gave her speech about the importance of women's suffrage; at the conference, she helped founding the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
  In 1906, Lange was called upon as an advisor to the Prussian Cultural Administration (preußischen Kultusverwaltung), leading in 1908 to the Prussian girls school reform.
  After abolition of the Prussian Associations Legislation (Preußischen Vereinsgesetzgebung) in 1908, which had prohibited women from membership in political parties, Lange joined the left-liberal Freisinnigen Vereinigung (Free-minded Union). Between 1914–1918 Lange supported during World War I the Nationaler Frauendienst (National Women's Service), which organized women for war support service on the German Fronts of World War I. Between 1917–1920, Lange and Bäumer lived together in Hamburg, where Lange founded the Soziale Frauenschule (Social Women's School), and worked as a teacher.
caption: Porcelain Berlin Memorial Plaque on the house at Kunz-Buntschuh-Straße 7 in Grunewald
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