Bertha Kipfmüller (28 February 1861 – 3 March 1948) was described by an admiring journalist as a "small person with a powerful voice and an iron will". Her work as a German school teacher made her a women's rights activist and a pioneering figure in respect of women's education. She was, in addition, a committed pacifist during a period remembered for intensifying nationalist-populism in Europe, a linguistic genius and a passionate believer in life-long learning.
In 1899 Kipfmüller became the first woman in Bavaria to receive a doctorate. In 1929, after retiring from her work as a school teacher, she earned a second doctorate. In 1942 she wrote her autobiography, using notebook diaries. It had been her intention that it should be published during her lifetime. That did not happen; but 65 years after her death it was, triggering a renewed interest in her life and achievements. One reason that it had not been published sooner was that she wrote much of it using Gabelsberger shorthand, which presumably made sense at a time when writing paper was in short supply. But it was a form of shorthand that had not been widely used or understood, even in Germany, since the 1920s. It was her great x 2 nephew, Hans-Peter Kipfmüller, who mastered the script and transcribed the book into a more usable format, before arranging for its publication.
Life
Provenance and early years
Bertha Friederika Kipfmüller was born and grew up in Pappenheim, a small town in the Franconian hill-country between Nuremberg and Augsburg. She was one of eleven recorded children of the jeweler-goldsmith Christian Albert Kipfmüller (1822–1898) and his wife, born Christina Sabina Rist (1827–1916). She successfully completed junior school locally, and then between 1874 and 1877 was privately tutored by a Pappenheim teacher called Josef Fleischmann, who prepared her for the entrance exam for admission to the Upper Bavaria Teacher Training Seminary ("Kreislehrerinnenseminar für Oberbayern") in Munich. In order to prepare for the exam she was obliged to depend on private tutoring since the relevant government "preparatory school" only provided places to candidates who were boys. Kipfmüller completed the teaching course and in 1879, still in Munich, passed the appropriate teaching exams.
Teacher and organiser
Between 1879 and 1896 Kipfmüller worked as a teacher at junior schools at, successively, Eysölden (Thalmässing), Heilsbronn Abbey (Ansbach) and, from 1886, Schoppershof, a little town just outside Nuremberg (into which it has subsequently been subsumed). She would have liked to have taught at a school in Nuremberg itself, but at that time, under Mayor von Reichenbach and his successor, Mayor von Schuh, the schools in the city employed only men as teachers. The injustice of the situation angered her.
In 1886 she founded the "Middle Franconia Women Teachers' Association" ("Mittelfränkischer Lehrerinnenverein"), which was the first professional association for women anywhere in Bavaria. In 1890 she was a co-founder of the "German Women Teachers' Association" ("Allgemeiner Deutscher Lehrerinnenverein"), a Pan-German coming together of a number of regional organisations with similar objectives. She also engaged with the women's rights movement more broadly, alongside some of the leading rights activists on the national stage such as Auguste Schmidt, Helene Lange and the publisher of the journal "The Woman Teacher in School and Home" ("Die Lehrerin in Schule und Haus"), Marie Loeper-Housselle. She made it her mission to ensure that the Nuremberg-based "Middle Franconia Women Teachers' Association" worked effectively in concert with the national "German Women Teachers' Association".
Peace
In her posthumously published memoires Kipfmüller would recall that she came to Pacifism as early as 1886 through studying Kant and to socialism in 1890 through studying the (at that time hugely influential in Germany) writings of August Bebel. In April 1893 she joined the "German Peace Society" ("Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft " / DFG), which had been founded at the end of the previous year. Under the pseudonym "Berthold Friederici", and encouraged by Bertha von Suttner, in 1896 she published her little anti-war book, "Sedansgedanken" (loosely, "Thoughts on Sedan"), referencing the 1871 Battle of Sedan which had cleared the way for German unification. The book was deeply critical of militarism and the glorification of war.