Henriette Goldschmidt (1825–1920) was a German Jewish feminist, pedagogist and social worker. She was one of the founders of the German Women's Association () and worked to improve women's rights to access education and employment. As part of that effort, she founded the Society for Family Education and for People's Welfare () and the first school offering higher education to women in Germany.
Early life
Henriette Benas was born on 23 November 1825 in Krotoschin, Province of Posen, Kingdom of Prussia, to Eva (née Laski) and the Jewish merchant, Levin Benas. Her mother died when she was five years old, and her father remarried an illiterate woman, who was not a nurturing maternal figure. Benas completed school at the Höhere Töchterschule at age 14, where her education was limited to subjects which taught women how to be effective housewives. She supplemented her meager education by reading German classics and the newspaper, Breslauer Zeitung, which aroused her early interest in politics. In 1853, Benas married her cousin, Abraham Meir Goldschmidt, a widower with three sons, who was the rabbi of the Warsaw German-Jewish congregation. Five years later, her husband was appointed to succeed Adolf Jellinek as rabbi of Leipzig and the family relocated.
Activism
Goldschmidt equated the move to the university town of Leipzig with an awakening to freedom and humanitarian spirit. She quickly became involved in the German-Jewish community and was exposed to the ideas of Friedrich Fröbel, founder of the early-childhood kindergarten education system. Encouraged by her husband to pursue her interests in education, Goldschmidt studied history, literature, pedagogy and philosophy on her own. In 1865, she, Louise Otto-Peters and Auguste Schmidt organized a conference of German women and founded the German Women's Association () to work towards improving the lives of women. Goldschmidt had initially been hesitant about becoming a board member of the group, as the legal statutes at that time forbade women voting in volunteer organizations, but with her husband's encouragement, she became an active member. Between 1867 and 1906, she served as a member of the board and presented many lectures for the organization.
In 1867, Goldschmidt organized petition drives for submission to the Reichstag in support of women's rights to access education and employment and she was a signatory to the petition to protect illegitimate children. She also proposed that women be participants in their communities, because women would lend a sensitivity to dealing with culturally divisive issues. The following year, she proposed a mandatory social service initiative requiring women to serve for a year in social work. In 1871, Goldschmidt founded the Society for Family Education and for People's Welfare (), with the goal of training kindergarten teachers in the Fröbel method. She served as president of the organization for over four decades. By the following year, the organization was sponsoring teaching seminars to a growing number of adherents and had opened a public kindergarten. By 1878, she organized the High School for Ladies (), where professors from the University of Leipzig gave lectures to students. Because women were barred from attending college, and only a few private schools offered inferior education, the lectures were attended by hundreds of women and offered them the chance for not only an education, but employment as a teacher.