Anna Elisabeth Kelly

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Christiane Marianne von Ziegler

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You can find the German version here.

Clara Immerwahr, verh. Haber

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You can find the German version here.

Ruth First

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You can find the German version here.

Elizabeth Shaw

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Hedwig Heyl

Born May 3, 1850 in Bremen
Died January 23, 1934 in Berlin

German politician, manager, and pioneer of women’s domestic educational development, active in early German women’s movement

Hedwig Crüsemann, born into a wealthy Bremen family of shipowners, married the Berlin chemical manufacturer Georg Heyl in 1869. She leveraged her upper-class origins deliberately and with amiable intelligence and charm. She was one of the few women of “high society,” wrote Gertrud Bäumer, who already felt they were part of the women's movement at a time when this had not yet been made “socially acceptable” through the participation of members of the imperial family. Her area of responsibility in the women's movement at the turn of the century was the professionalization of household management. She believed that women's domestic education should go beyond the learning and sharing of time-honored recipes to include budgeting and nutritional issues as well as the care and upbringing of children. Like many of her contemporaries, Hedwig Heyl was an enthusiastic supporter of the pedagogy of Friedrich Froebel. Together with Henriette Schrader, whose student she was, she founded the…read more

Cecilia Beaux

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You can find the German version here.

May Hofer

Born 8 September 1896 in Chybi near Krakow
Died 3 May 2000 in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy

South Tyrolean artist (enamellist)

As a child of the Danube Monarchy (Austro-Hungarian Empire) May was relocated early – after the early death of her father in 1909 – to Pola on the Adriatic Sea and the largest city in Istria (now Pula, Croatia), where her mother’s brothers, both naval officers, were stationed. Here she experienced the elegance of the Empire in its last years, an experience which would influence her for the rest of her life. Filled with the artistic desire to create something herself, May moved to Vienna during the first World War, where she attended courses at the Academy for Applied Art for three years. She selected the courses of Rosalie Rothansl in textiles and Eduard Wimmer-Wisgrill in fashion drawing. She also met the man who would become her husband, the painter and architect Anton Hofer, a respected artist at the Academy. After they married he decided to return to his home in Bolzano, since that seemed safer to him after the war. May followed with a heavy heart; she would have…read more