Women´s letters to Women´s Movement Activists, c. 1870-1930

In the course of the 19th century what came to be known as the woman question arose, especially in industrialized countries. The beginning of an organized womens movement in the 1860s intensified the debate and changed its character as a result of women finding new ways to talk to each other. A key objective of womens movement activists was to convince other women to emancipate themselves. This project aims at the target audience of the womens movement: to whom did the issues raised by the womens movement appeal? Who became involved in their debates and how were they affected by them? Letters written to womens movement activists show that there was a large group of women who albeit not being members of any womens organization became increasingly concerned with issues of womens rights, education and employment. How did these women assess their situation and the situation of other women? Did the letter writers respond to certain questions more frequently than to others? What did they worry about in their daily life, and what questions did they raise concerning the improvement of their situation or the circumstances of other women? In these letters written to womens movements activists, women sought advice and support for decisions about work, education and their life plan. The starting point of this project are the papers of Käthe Schirmacher (18651930), a radical activist of the womens movement who became increasingly involved in radical German nationalism. In a subsequent step, additional letters sent to famous activists will be searched in the archives. This research focuses on German, Hungarian, English and French correspondences because the womens movement was very active in these countries. Surprisingly, little research has been conducted on letters from unknown, ordinary women to leading activists of the movement. The letters will be analyzed with an international research perspective and a comparative approach. In a further step, I will draw upon specific types of letter writing, such as personal correspondences from citizens to politicians, readers letters which can be found in magazines initiated by the womens movement, and archival documents of institutions which offered legal or career advice to women. From these letters and documents it should be deducible how women practiced self-emancipation and how they wrote about these processes in the period of 18701930.