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born on June 12, 1876, in Berlin
died on January 25, 1955, in Ried near Kochel, Upper Bavaria
German painter and weaver; wife of Franz Marc
150th birthday on June 12, 2026
Maria Marc, the daughter of a bank director, began her training as an “academic” painter at an early age. As a woman she was not allowed to study at a state art academy, so she attended the Damenakademie (Ladies Academy of the Artists' Association) in Munich. In the summer she travelled to Worpswede (where she was taught by Otto Modersohn) and to Dachau Moos. In 1905, she crossed paths with Franz Marc in Schwabing. In those early days, however, the painter’s other lovers—he managed to maintain a four-way relationship, pushing both his and her limits to the extreme—made her life and love quite difficult. He also made her work difficult; he intervened with corrections more and more ruthlessly. Her oeuvre is nonetheless impressive, today more than ever: in 1995 and 2004, it was presented to the public at the Lenbachhaus in Munich and the Schlossmuseum Murnau. However, there was one area—music—where she was superior to Franz Marc: she was an accomplished pianist.
Although Maria…read more
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Marie Laurencin
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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Luise Büchner
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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Born 22 May 1844 in Allegheny City (now Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania
Died 14 June 1926 at Château de Beaufresne near Oise, France
U.S. painter and graphic artist
The daughter of a respectable upper-class family, Mary Cassatt decided at an early age to become an artist against the wishes of her father; her determination and talent led her to become the most distinguished woman painter of her era. Her paintings, drawings and prints portray in particular the manifold activities of a bourgeois woman’s life during the late 19th century; in the inner concentration and reflectiveness of her female subjects Cassatt created a new feminine image that challenged the traditional iconography of woman as simply a beautiful object of the male gaze.
Cassatt was the fourth child of the banker Robert Simpson Cassatt and Katherine Kelso Cassatt, an unusually cultivated and well-read woman. Mary was exposed to the art treasures of European museums while still a child during a four-year sojourn of the family in Europe. At seventeen she prevailed against her father and began to study art, first at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and…read more
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Ingeborg Bauer Polo
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
There is also Italian version.
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Hedwig Andersen
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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born November 25, 1846 in Garrard County, KY
died June 9, 1911 in Leavenworth, KS
US-American temperance reformer
175th birthday on November 25, 2021
Carry Nation, the fiery opponent of alcohol, was often called a madwoman for vandalizing taverns (saloons) with an axe and stones, but she did more to make the American Temperance Movement and its fight for Prohibition (banning the sale and manufacture of alcohol) nationally known than anyone else.
Carry spent an unhappy childhood with a mentally ill mother, who thought she was Queen Victoria and alternately pursued her daughter with hatred or smothered her with affection. At the age of ten, Carry underwent a spectacular religious conversion and was convinced throughout her life that her decisions were directly guided by God. Although her schooling was mediocre, she eventually passed a teacher's exam.
Her marriage to a doctor and Civil War veteran lasted only a few months until she left him because of his alcoholism, from which he soon died soon. She worked as a teacher for four years to keep herself, her daughter and her mother-in-law afloat. A second marriage to David…read more
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American writer
born June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut
died July 1, 1896 in Hartford, Connecticut
120th anniversary of death on July 1 2016
Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of the most popular American writers of the 19th century. Today she is best known for her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was printed in over 40 languages, but she also produced several other novels and numerous short stories. She often took inspiration from her experiences growing up in a large, devoutly religious family in Protestant New England. Stowe's father, Lyman Beecher, was a Congregational minister, known for his evangelical sermons and moral reforms; Roxana Foote Beecher, mother of Stowe's eight full siblings, was a well-read and educated woman in an age when few women were literate. She died when Stowe was four, leaving Catharine, her oldest daughter, to fill the maternal role for Stowe for the rest of her life.
Born into an intelligent and ambitious family, Stowe received an unusually rich education for a girl. She read avidly in her father's study any material she could find: old sermons, theological texts, and a…read more
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Paula Wiesinger
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
There is also Italian version.
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Johanna Just
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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Born 22 September in Kassel
Died 9 June 1986 in Kassel
German lawmaker (Social Democratic Party) and jurist; one of the four “Mothers of the (German) Basic Law (constitution)”
30th Death Day / anniversary of death on 9 June 2016
“Men and women are equal before the law” – this sentence would not be part of the German Basic Law (constitution) today had not Social Democrat Elisabeth Selbert, one of the four mothers of the Basic Law, forced the so-called fathers of the Basic Law to their knees 57 years ago. Their formulation of the equal rights clause had read: “Men and women have the same rights and duties as citizens” (my emphasis). The discriminatory Marriage and Family Law of 1896, for example, against which our grandmothers had already campaigned in vain, was completely untouched by this version. Selbert writes: “I wanted to assure that equal rights would be understood as an imperative to action by the lawmakers in contrast to the constitution of the Weimar Republic. I had never thought that in 1948/49 equal rights would even have to be discussed or that substantial opposition would have to be overcome! But I got it through after all with the help of the protests of all the women’s organizations. It…read more
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George Sand
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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Born 10 November 1907 in Hanover
Died 8 June 2001 in Marwitz (near Berlin)
Most important German ceramicist of the 20th
115. birthday November 10, 2022
Hedwig Bollhagen was the child of a businessman and a mother who stimulated her daughter’s interest in modern art at an early age. A female friend of the family introduced Hedwig to the making of pottery during her school vacation. Her love of ceramics was also inspired by simple crockery at a farmers’ market.
After completing school in 1924 she studied and worked for several months in a small village pottery workshop in Hesse. Beginning in 1925 she spent five semesters at the Fachhochschule (technical college) Höhr-Grenzenhausen in the Westerwald. By the beginning of the 1920’s she had already come in contact with members of the Bauhaus, an institution which would influence her style. In 1927 Bollhagen was invited to work in the Steingutfabriken (earthenware factory) Velten-Vordamm in the vicinity of Berlin. Not yet 20, she became the supervisor of the more than 100 „Malmädchen“ (paint-girls). Her work in this position enhanced Bollhagen’s interest in the total production…read more
