MORGENSTERN (née Bauer), LINA

MORGENSTERN (née Bauer), LINA (1830–1909), German educational theorist, philanthropist, and author. Born in Breslau, she founded a society for supporting poor schoolchildren when she was only 18. In 1854, she married Theodor Morgenstern, a manufacturer, and they settled in Berlin.

From 1859 on, she devoted her life to education and philanthropy. She helped organize the first Froebel kindergartens, and in 1860 published Das Paradies der Kindheit (1904), a textbook based on Froebel's method. She established the first free kitchens for the needy in 1866, and in 1873 founded the Berliner Hausfrauenverein, a society which served to educate women and safeguard their welfare. The society conducted a cooking school, for which she wrote all the textbooks. In 1887, together with two nurses, she opened a school for nursing. In 1896, she convened the first International Women's Congress, in Berlin, where 1,800 delegates from all parts of the world heard her lectures on women's rights. She was active in peace movements and served as vice president of the Alliance des Femmes pour la Paix. She edited and wrote many books, including storybooks for children, novels, biographies, cookbooks, periodicals for women, and books on women's problems, such as Die Frauen des 19. Jahrhunderts or Frauenarbeitin Deutschland.

bibliography:

Wininger, Biog, 4 (1925), 429–31. add. bibliography: ndb, Vol. 18 (1997). 1091–11.

[Shnayer Z. Leiman]