Helene von Forster

{{Infobox person | image = Helene von Forster, half-length portrait, (facing right) - Hof-Atelier Elvira LCCN2004682192 (cropped).jpg | caption = ''Hofatelier Elvira, 1880'' | birth_date = 27 August 1859 | birth_place = Nuremberg, Kingdom of Bavaria | death_date = 16 November 1923 | death_place = Nuremberg, Germany | education = Portsche Institut zur Städtischen Höheren Mädchenschule | organization = Verein Frauenwohl<br>German Association of Female Citizens | political_party = Progressive People's Party<br>German Democratic Party }}

'''Helene von Forster''' (born Helene Schmidmer, 27 August 1859 – 16 November 1923) was a German women's rights activist and author.<ref name="HvFlautSP">{{cite web|url=http://www.zeno.org/Pataky-1898/A/Forster,+Frau+Helene+von|title=Forster, Frau Helene von|author=Sophie Pataky|work=Lexikon deutscher Frauen der Feder vol. 1. Berlin|date=1898| pages=221–222 |access-date=5 September 2019|language=de}}</ref><ref name="HvFlautFembio">{{cite web | title=Helene von Forster, (geb. Schmidmer)|work=Erste stellv. Vorsitzende des Bundes deutscher Frauenvereine (BdF)|url= http://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/helene-von-forster/|publisher=Institut für Frauen-Biographieforschung |access-date= 5 September 2019|language=de}}</ref><ref name="HvFlautMS">{{cite web|url= https://www.nordbayern.de/kultur/kampf-fur-frauenrechte-1.567574|title= Kampf für Frauenrechte |work=Vor 150 Jahren wurde Helene von Forster in Nürnberg geboren |date=25 August 2009 |author= Martin Stolzenau |publisher= Nürnberger Nachrichten |access-date=5 September 2019|language=de}}</ref><ref name="HvFlutBK">{{cite web|url=http://www.hvf-gs.de/Unsere_Schule/Helene_v__Forster/helene_v__forster.html|title=Wer war Helene von Forster?|work=Der Text stammt von Frau Dr. Bertha Kipfmüller und wurde 1927 in Band 3 der Reihe “Lebensläufe aus Franken” veröffentlicht. Die Gesellschaft für fränkische Geschichte (Hrsg.) erlaubte die Veröffentlichung dieses Textes auf unserer Homepage.|publisher=Helene-von-Forster-Schule, Nürnberg|access-date=5 September 2019|archive-date=4 September 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190904200535/http://www.hvf-gs.de/Unsere_Schule/Helene_v__Forster/helene_v__forster.html|url-status=dead|language=de}}</ref> She is considered the most important representative of the feminist movement's moderate "bourgeois" wing in Nuremberg.<ref>Martin Schieber: ''Geschichte Nürnbergs''. Beck, München 2007, {{ISBN|3-406-56465-8}}, p. 115.</ref>

==Life== '''Helene Schmidmer''' was born in Nuremberg, Kingdom of Bavaria, the eldest of her parents' four recorded children. Christian Schmidmer, her father, was a prominent member of the city's business community and the owner of a factory producing wires and cables. Her mother, born Nanette Lotz, was the daughter of a top civil servant from the nearby Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. She attended the "Portsche Institut zur Städtischen Höheren Mädchenschule" (as it was known at that time), a prestigious school in the city's centre, and then, as was not unusual for daughters of the well-to-do at that time, concluded her formal education at a boarding school in Lausanne. From an early age she was exceptionally interested in literature.<ref name=HvFlautMS/>

On 20 September 1882 Helene Schmidmer married the leading Nuremberg eye doctor, Dr. Sigmund von Forster (1851–1939)<ref name="SvFlautBM">{{cite web|work=Sigmund von Förster (1851-1939) war Augenarzt, Gründungsmitglied und langjähriger Obmann der Anthropologischen Sektion der Naturhistorischen Gesellschaft Nürnberg.|page=45| url= https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Natur-und-Mensch_2012_0045-0054.pdf|publisher=Naturhistorische Gesellschaft Nürnberg e.V. & Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum", Linz|issn=0077-6025|author=Bernd Mühldorfer|title=Der Katalog Wunder - Ein Inventar der Bodendenkmäler lange vor dem Bayernviewer-Denkmal .... Footnote 2|access-date=7 September 2019|language=de}}</ref> whom she had met at literary events.<ref name=HvFlautSP/><ref name=HvFlautMS/> They made their home in Nuremberg. She helped him with his work: her humour and warm heartedness were appreciated by patients.<ref name= HvFlutBK/> The couple's daughter was born in 1894. [[File:Vorstand des ersten deutschen Frauenkongress Anfang März 1912 in Berlin.jpg|thumb|The Board of Directors of the German Women's Congress 1912 ({{Langx|de|Deutscher Frauenkongreß}}), including (back row from the left): Elisabeth Altmann-Gottheiner, Martha Voß-Zietz, Alice Bensheimer, Anna Pappritz, (front row from the left) Helene von Forster, Gertrud Bäumer and Alice Salomon]] While still a young woman she began to write lyric poems, as well as more light-hearted poetry, volumes of which she published. She donated the proceeds to charitable causes.<ref name="HvFlautMS" /> She contributed a short comedy to a celebration of the Pegnesischer Blumenorden (a misleadingly named Nuremberg literary society).<ref name="HvFlautSP" /> Further stage pieces followed, such as "Das Burgweiblein" (''"The Burgess"'') in 1902, "Im Hause Martin Behaims" in 1907 (which premiered, appropriately, on German Geography Day)<ref name="MBlautEGR">{{cite web|url= http://dl.ub.uni-freiburg.de/diglit/ravenstein1908/0085/ocr?sid=029ed8c6e2c6aa82e261f46eab32ed43|page=71|title=Martin Behaim: his life and his globe|date=1908|author=Ernst Georg Ravenstein|publisher=George Philip and Son, Ltd., London & Universitätsbibliothek, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg |access-date=5 September 2019}}</ref> and "Historie einer Urne" (''"History of an Urn"'') in 1913, a "Festspiel" written to celebrate the 44th congress of the German Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and Early History.

Von Forster also deployed her literary talent and reputation in the service of the women's movement in which she engaged during or by 1893.<ref name="SpurenHvF">{{cite web |url=https://www.nordbayern.de/region/nuernberg/auf-den-spuren-von-helene-von-forster-1.564809 |title=Auf den Spuren von Helene von Forster |work=Sondertour zur Frauenrechtlerin |date= 17 August 2009 |publisher= Nürnberger Nachrichten |access-date= 6 September 2019|language=de}}</ref> That was when she teamed up with Bertha Kipfmüller and set up, formally on 16 November, the Nuremberg section of the Verein Frauenwohl ("Women's Welfare Association"), committed to improving conditions for women in the city and surrounding region.<ref name="HvFlautMS" /> Helene von Forster became the association's the first chairwoman.<ref name="HvFlutBK" /> Membership soon reached 2,000. The association organised evening classes covering matters such as home economics and budgeting, handicrafts and languages. They founded and ran the "New Nuremberg Women's Labour School" (''"Neue Nürnberger Frauenarbeitsschule"'') and, from 1898, Bavaria's first post-natal women's hostel alongside the newly built city hospital in the St. Johannis quarter. This had what was seen as the important practical benefit of enabling working woman the chance to bring their babies into the world under medical supervision.<ref>Martin Schieber: ''Geschichte Nürnbergs''. Beck, München 2007, {{ISBN|3-406-56465-8}}, pp. 114-115</ref>

In 1894 she also organised a Nuremberg group of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein ''literally, "General German Women's Association"'', a national umbrella organisation that had been in place since the 1860s, but which was undergoing major expansion nationally during the 1890s.<ref name="HvFlautSP" /> She became a long-standing member of the regional executive. This organisation took an interest in various issues associated with the evolving women's movement, but its principal focus was on women's training and education. Van Forster became the first chairwoman of the Nuremberg group. In her committee work she was commended for her nimble use of words and also for the human intuition and warmth with which she guided the meetings she chaired.<ref name="HvFlutBK" /> Meanwhile, her book ''Die Frau, die Gehilfin des Mannes'', which had been published the previous year, was finding a growing resonance.<ref name="HvFlautMS" /> Between 1895 and 1909 she founded or co-founded several further organisations with the purpose of improving the condition of women.<ref>Forster, Helene von. In: Franz Brümmer: ''Lexikon der deutschen Dichter und Prosaisten vom Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart''. Band 2. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1913, p. 241.</ref>

In 1908 the old (originally Prussian) ban on women's participation in politics, which for some years had been interpreted with varying levels of vigour in different parts of Germany, finally disappeared. Helene von Forster joined the "Fortschrittliche Volkspartei" (FVP / ''"Progressive People's Party"''), remaining a member after 1918 when, following a party merger, the FVP became part of the new "Deutsche Demokratische Partei" (DDP / ''"German Democratic Party"''). During the 1914/18 war she ran her organisation's own Red Cross hospital in Nuremberg. She also set up a women's education institution in the city. With many of the men away at war women were now expected to take a more prominent role in organising matters at home, and like many, by the end of the war she was convinced that women should be entitled to vote in national and local elections on the same basis as men. In the event, the new constitution introduced during the 1918/19 revolution, delivered equal voting rights for women (along with a number of other innovations which generated more discussion at the time), and in 1919 von Forster became a DDP city councillor.<ref name="SpurenHvF" /> Membership of the city council in 1919 made her one of the first women in the new republican Germany to hold political office.<ref name="HvFlautMS" /> Working with her party colleague and fellow councillor Agnes Gerlach she energetically promoted welfare measures, support for the blind, schooling for girls and women's health, along with measures in support of the arts and education more generally.<ref name="HvFlautMS" /><ref name="HvFlutBK" /><ref name="DiefenbacherBeyerstedt2017">{{cite book|author1=Michael Diefenbacher|author2=Horst-Dieter Beyerstedt|author3=Martina Bauernfeind| title= Das "Rote Nürnberg" - die Arbeiter Hochburg|work=Nürnberg: Kleine Stadtgeschichte |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=UYl3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT179|date=6 September 2017|publisher=Verlag Friedrich Pustet |isbn= 978-3-7917-6124-4|page=179|language=de}}</ref>

According to one source it was the level of energy that Helene von Forster applied to her role as a campaigning city councillor that hastened her death. She died in Nuremberg on 21 March 1923, predeceasing her husband and survived, also, by the couple's daughter.<ref name="HvFlautMS" /><!--- wiki-de In Nürnberg ist seit 2001 die Grundschule Am Röthenbacher Landgraben nach ihr benannt.

Agnes Gerlach Bertha Kipfmüller Sophie Pataky

---> ==Published output (selection)== {{columns-list| * ''Moment-Aufnahmen''. J. L. Stich, Nürnberg 1892 * ''Im Freilicht''. Nisters Kunstanstalt, Nürnberg 1893 (Gedichte) * ''Die Frau, die Gehilfin des Mannes''. Nürnberg 1893 * ''Nürnberg nach Aquarellen.'' W. Ritter mit Versen von Helene v. Forster. Ritter u. Klöden, 1896 * ''Das Burgweiblein''. 1902 (Festspiel) * ''Stimmungsbilder aus Nürnberg''. Verlag Nister, Nürnberg 1906 * ''Im Hause des Martin Behaims''. 1907 (Spiel) * ''Familie und Persönlichkeits-Kultur''. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913 }}

==Notes== {{Notelist}} {{clear}}

==References== {{Reflist|35em}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:von Forster, Helene}} Category:German women's rights activists Category:Writers from Nuremberg Category:German Democratic Party politicians Category:Academic staff of the University of Basel Category:Heads of universities in Germany Category:Nazi Party members Category:1859 births Category:1923 deaths Category:Politicians from Nuremberg Category:20th-century German women