Agnes von Zahn-Harnack (19 June, 1884,
Gießen
Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univers ...
– 22 May 1950,
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
) was
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
teacher, writer and bourgeois women's rights activist.
Early life
She was the daughter of the
theologian
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
Adolf von Harnack
Carl Gustav Adolf von Harnack (born Harnack; 7 May 1851 – 10 June 1930) was a Baltic German Lutheran theologian and prominent Church historian. He produced many religious publications from 1873 to 1912 (in which he is sometimes credited ...
(1851–1930) and Amalie Thiersch (1858–1937). She was born Agnes Harnack as it was only in 1914 that her father was awarded the hereditary title of nobility. She attended two girls' high schools in Berlin-Charlottenburg between 1890 and 1900. She earned a doctorate in 1912 with a thesis on
German romanticism.
[von Harnack, Agnes]
"The Civil Work of German Women in War Times"
''Current History'' 5(October 1916): 97.
Career
As a young woman, von Harnack was principal of a girls' high school. She wrote about German women in wartime for ''
Current History
''Current History'' is the oldest extant United States-based publication devoted exclusively to contemporary world affairs. The magazine was founded in 1914 by George Washington Ochs Oakes, brother of ''The New York Times'' publisher Adolph Ochs, ...
'' in 1916.
Zahn-Harnack was chairwoman of the
Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine
The Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (Federation of German Women's Associations) (BDF) was founded on 28/29 March 1894 as umbrella organization of the women's civil rights feminist movement and existed until the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.
Its cre ...
from 1931 to its dissolution in 1933, when they chose to break the organisation up rather than continue under the supervision of the
Nazi regime
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
.
Personal life
On 8 December 1919, Zahn-Harnack married Karl von Zahn (1877-1944) in Berlin, Germany. Zahn-Harnack's husband was a civil servant in the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
's Ministry of the Interior.
References
1884 births
1950 deaths
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