Postage stamp: Women of German History - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1989 - 5 Pfennig

With industrialization in the 19th century, the mass employment of women in the factories began. The women worked under the same unhealthy, inhuman conditions as the male workers without special protection, but received lower wages. Politically, women were also without rights: until 1908 they were forbidden to join political organizations, the right to vote was reserved exclusively for men. If the union of workers in unions, the practice of solidarity in order to achieve better pay and working conditions, and the attainment of political and social rights was a protracted process of setbacks, then this was even more so for the mostly less well-qualified women disadvantaged by discriminatory legal provisions. The milliner Emma Ihr, one of the first German trade union leaders, was born on 3 January 1857 in the Silesian Glatz. Growing up in a petty-bourgeois Catholic family and brought up religiously, she came to Berlin in 1881 as a 24-year-old "full of hunger for education and energy" (according to a biographer). At that time Bismarck's "Socialist Law" was in force, threatening not only Social Democratic unions with punishment; with this instrument most of the early trade union organizations had been smashed as well. Emma von Ihr soon began to deal with women's issues and in particular with the organization of workers. In 1883 she was a member of the board of the Berlin »women's aid association for manual workers. The club was even more oriented to traditional charitable action and soon failed due to the disinterest of the workers. More success was granted to a second club founding, in which Emma was involved. The "Association for the Representation of the Workers' Interests," founded in 1885, soon welcomed several thousand women. His goals included trade union demands such as "the regulation of wage relations" and "mutual support in wage disputes." Under Emma Ihrer's direction, commissions for individual industries were set up and industry meetings were held to address farm maladies and wage demands. Also on women's suffrage was discussed at the club meetings. Emma and her congregation speakers stated that "the women who work hard day by day, above all, desire to be human, and do not hope for their right to live from the sky, or at the mercy of the capitalists or the charitable sense of the propertied classes but that they, as free-born people, demand their share of life and want to win their rights. " Following the example of the Berlin Association, similar organizations soon emerged in other cities as well. In 1886 the club was dissolved for violating the law. Emma and some other women were fined. In July 1889, Emma attended her at the founding congress of the Second International in Paris. This congress passed a resolution declaring the "duty of the workers" to regard women workers as equal combatants, and to assert the principle of equal pay for equal work, also with regard to women workers. In Germany, the end of the Socialist Law of 1890 again enabled freer trade union activity. When the General Commission of the Trade Unions of Germany, the first central instance of the Free Trade Unions, was formed in the same year, Emma, ​​too, belonged to her. She was the only woman among the seven Commissioners. At their instigation, the statutes of most trade union federations were changed so that women could become members. Emma Ihr also worked as a union founder herself. In 1903 she became chairman of the "Central Association of Workers in the Flower, Foliage, Palm and Cleaning Feather Factory". She was also involved in the construction of the Central Union of Domestic Workers of Germany. In 1904 she was given the leadership of a union women's committee. Politically, Emma was involved in Social Democracy. In the nineties she played a leading role in the Berlin Women's Agitation Commission, which was dissolved in 1895 by the authorities. In 1890 Emma founded her own magazine for women, The Worker. When the paper was published in 1891, it was financially supported by her husband, a pharmacist. A year later, the newspaper went into the editorial board of the politically more radical Clara Zetkin and for a quarter of a century became the central organ of the social democratic women's movement. In the following years, Emma published a series of brochures on the social situation of workers. Best known were her writings "The Organization of the Workers of Germany" (1893) and "The Workers in the Class War" (1898). Emma von Ihr advocated the joint trade union organization of both sexes. Through her dedication to organizing the workers, which brought her repeated police persecution, interrogation and punishment, she contributed significantly to the spread of the trade union spirit among the working women. "... it can hardly be denied," she wrote in 1898, "that a high degree of courage and energy was needed to rebuild the ruined and to achieve only what has been achieved." This sentence characterizes her own life's work. Emma's died on January 8, 1911 in Berlin. (Text: Dr. Ilse Fischer, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Archive of Social Democracy, Bonn)