| Anita Augspurg | |
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Anita Augspurg |
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| Born | September 22, 1857 Verden, Germany |
| Died | December 20, 1943 Zurich, Switzerland |
| Occupation | lawyer, writer, actor |
| Nationality | German |
| Subjects | Feminism |
| Notable work(s) | "Open Letter" of 1905 |
| Partner(s) | Lida Gustava Heymann |
Anita Augspurg (September 22, 1857 – December 20, 1943) was a German lawyer, actor, writer and feminist.
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The fifth daughter of a lawyer, during her adolescence Augspurg often worked in her father's law office. In Berlin, she was trained for teaching at secondary schools for girls and took acting classes in parallel. From 1881 to 1882, she was as an apprentice to the ensemble of the Meiningen Ensemble and took part in the concert tours, across Germany, the Netherlands and Lithuania. Her maternal grandmother, who died in 1887, left her a considerable inheritance, which made her financially independent.
After a five-year career as an actress, she went with her friend Sophia Goudstikker to Munich, where in 1887 they jointly opened a photo studio, the Hofatelier Elvira. The two women wore short hair, unconventional clothing, and frequently made public their support for the struggle for the liberation of women and their free lifestyle. Because of their unusual lifestyle, Augspurg's life was exposed to personal attacks by anti-feminists far more than other personalities of the women's movement, exposed. Nonetheless, Augspurg's contacts made through the photo studio and the stage in Munich quickly made her well-known, and she eventually had the Bavarian royal family as a customer.
By 1890 Augspurg was deeply involved in the German women's movement and practiced as a public speaker. Her commitment to women's rights was the reason why she decided, after several years of successful work, to work towards a law degree. She moved to study at the University of Zurich, because women in Germany still did not have equal access to universities. In addition to Rosa Luxembourg, with whom she had a turbulent relationship, she was one of the founders of the International Students Association. She completed her studies with a doctorate in 1897 and was the first doctor of law of the German Empire. However, she could not practice as a lawyer, since women were not yet allowed.
In 1895, Augspurg had meanwhile begun to collaborate in the newspaper Die Frauenbewegung ("The Women's Movement") with articles denouncing the discrimination she was subjected to in social legislation, describing in particular the marriage as a form of legalized prostitution. In 1896 she participated in the International Conference of Women held in Berlin, where she met the radical feminist Lida Gustava Heymann who became her companion for the remainder of her life.
At the turn of the century, Augspurg campaigned for women's rights in the German Civil Code: she brought together her political friends, Minna Cauer and Marie Raschke, producing petitions on the new marriage and family law, which showed only partial effect. Augspurg published a sensational "Open Letter" in 1905, in which she appealed to change the then prevailing patriarchal marriage law in order to enter into "free marriage", in defiance of state-approved marriage. This was interpreted as a call to boycott marriage and then triggered a storm of indignation. During this time, following the radical split from the conservative women's organizations, many women considered the radical women's suffrage as a priority. Augspurg and her partner Lida Gustava Heymann worked together in the Board of the Association of Progressive Women's Organizations. They formed an association for women's suffrage in Hamburg (1902), and later in Bavaria (1913). Starting in 1907, Augspurg contributed to Zeitschrift für Frauenstimmrecht, and was represented in 1919 in the magazine Die Frau im Staat in which feminist, radical democratic and pacifist positions were published.
In the First World War, Augspurg and Heymann participated in women's peace conferences and held illegal gatherings from their Munich apartment. They were involved in founding the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (IFFF), where Heymann was Vice President. Because of the common pacifist convictions, cooperation offered by the now separate from the Social Democratic Party, the Independent Social Democrats, the differences with the former socialist Clara Zetkin women to become less important. Augspurg collaborated with Kurt Eisner, and after the proclamation of the Weimar Republic in 1918 in Munich, became Bavarian member of the provisional Landtag of Bavaria. In the following elections, they soon ran on the list of Independent Social Democrats, but gained no mandate.
In 1933, due to the takeover of the Nazi Party, Augspurg did not return from a winter trip because she and Heymann feared reprisals. A crucial reason was that she had in 1923 applied for in person, together with Bavarian Interior Minister Heymann, the expulsion of the Austrian Adolf Hitler for sedition. Their property was confiscated, and their records were lost. She went to live in exile in Switzerland together with Heymann.
Opposed to the war, she proposed forms of active boycott. During the Weimar Republic, she practiced law and, in addition to supporting the policy objective of ending capitalism and organizing a matriarchy as a future society, she continued to fight against all forms of discrimination by gender and nationality, for general disarmament, and for the independence of all nations oppressed by the colonialism. Opposed to antisemitism and the nascent Nazism when Hitler took power, she and Heymann went into exile in South America and subsequently returned to Europe to settle in Zurich. There she died in 1943 a few months after her partner. Like Heymann, she is buried in the Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich.