Postage stamp: Women of German History - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1989 - 500 Pfennig

With »Women of German History« the Deutsche Bundespost solves the series »Industry and Technology. from. The new series is intended to help raise awareness of women's achievements in society. The new stamp appears simultaneously and identically in the editions »Deutsche Bundespost« and »Deutsche Bundespost Berlin«. Alice Salomon has significantly promoted and shaped the development of social work as a profession and the women's movement around the turn of the century in Germany. She was born on 19 April 1872 in Berlin. Her mother came from a Silesian banking family, her father was a merchant. She received the appropriate, but of her own experience as extremely unsatisfactory education of the "Higher Daughter." After a few years spent in embroidery and crocheting, she found her life's work at the age of 21. She was one of the first voluntary young women to join the "Women and Girls Groups for Social Aid Work", a charitable organization founded in 1893 by socially-minded citizens of Berlin, run by Jeanette Schwerin and Minna Cauer. Through this volunteer social activity, Alice Salomon came into contact with women from the women's movement. The »groups« were members of the »Association of German Women's Associations«, the umbrella organization of around two hundred women's groups and professional associations. The federal government existed until 1933 and had up to two million women members. In 1900, Alice Salomon was elected to the executive board of the then sensational young age. She worked very actively for the Confederation, outstanding in the organization of the great international women's congress under the patronage of the Empress in Berlin in 1904, the establishment of a women's vocational office and the establishment of links with the international women's movement. She was later the director of the International Women's Movement of the International Council of Women for many years. Before and after the First World War she was therefore criticized by the nationally oriented majority of the women's federation. Their commitment to peace was also not received with applause, such as their mediation to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, as the later American Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Adams visited in 1915 on behalf of the international peace conference of women in The Hague Berlin. The first chairmanship of the Association of German Women's Associations was denied Alice Salomon because of her Jewish origin. She was one of the first women to do her doctorate in Germany (without a high school diploma). In 1906 she wrote her doctoral thesis on "The causes of unequal pay for men's and women's work." Her entire literary and scientific work includes 25 books and around 300 articles. Thematically, she devoted herself to a socio-political issues, their proposals on worker protection and maternity protection and the remuneration of housewife work are now highly topical. Her works on social work were influenced by aspirations in the United States and are now considered the methodological foundations of social work as a profession. A third focus of her literary work was on the situation of women. It is today attributed to the moderate wing of the bourgeois women's movement, which had dedicated itself to "spiritual motherhood." The utopia of a possibly "better female world" moved Alice Salomon very much. At the same time she turned against general social injustice. At the suggestion of female teachers, who sought to provide better training opportunities for women, Alice Salomon founded the "Social Women's School" in Berlin in 1908, where she became its long-term director. The Social Women's School is today one of the predecessor institutions of the University of Applied Sciences for Social Work and Social Pedagogy Berlin. In addition, Alice Salomon established the "German Academy of Social and Pedagogical Women's Labor" in 1920, an institution for training and education for women in leadership positions in social work. Alice Salomon won leading scholars of her time as speakers such as Einstein, Cassirer, Klages, C.G. Jung and of course leading women of the movement such as Gertrud Bäumer, Marianne Weber, Hedwig Heyl and Anna Pappritz. Even at that time women's research in the modern sense was practiced at this women's academy. Alice Salomon had earlier criticized the attitude of German universities for closing themselves to the questions of everyday life, for wishing for a spirit in education to embrace the "totality of life." After the Gleichschaltungsforderung by the national socialists 1933 dissolves Alice Salomon the academy within a day. She herself lost all offices and had to emigrate to the USA in 1937. She died lonely in New York in August 1948. (Text: Prof. Dr. Marlis Dürkop, Rector, University of Applied Sciences for Social Work and Social Education Berlin)