Clara Gertrud Wichmann (17 August 1885 – 15 February 1922) was a
German–
Dutch lawyer
A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...
and
anarchist feminist activist, who became a leading advocate of
criminal justice reform and
prison abolition in the
Netherlands.
Biography
In 1885, Clara Wichmann was born in
Hamburg,
the daughter of
Carl Ernst Arthur Wichmann and Johanna Theresa Henriette Zeise. In 1902, she studied
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
and the works of
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. She went on to study
law between 1903 and 1905,
during which she first became critical of the
criminal justice system and started to push for its
reform.
She developed a theory of
criminal law
Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and moral welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law i ...
that advocated for the
abolition of prisons and
punitive justice
Retributive justice is a theory of punishment that when an offender breaks the law, justice requires that they suffer in return, and that the response to a crime is proportional to the offence. As opposed to revenge, retribution—and thus retr ...
,
which she elaborated in her
thesis,
graduating as a
Doctor of Law in 1912.
In 1914, she was employed by the
Dutch Statistics Office as a
lawyer
A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...
, but was soon promoted to deputy director of the Social Welfare Institute. She collaborated with Jacques de Roos on compiling criminal statistics, and in 1919, she succeeded de Roos as head of the Judicial Statistics Department.
During her studies, she had joined the
Dutch feminist movement in 1908,
co-founding the ( en, Dutch Society for Women's Suffrage) and working as its secretary until 1911.
She was also on the board of the ( en, Association for the Improvement of the Social and Legal Status of Women in the Netherlands).
She went on to participate in the
opposition to World War I and became an
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...
in 1918.
She also studied the
history of feminism and, from 1914 to 1918, co-authored the
encyclopaedia ( en, Women, the women's movement and the women's issue) with Cornelia Werker-Beaujon.
She became an activist in the prison abolition movement and campaigned against punitive justice, which she described as "a blot of backwardness, coarseness, shallowness and harshness."
In 1919, she established the ''Comité van Actie tegen de bestaande opvattingen omtrent Misdaad en Straf'' ( en, Committee of Action against the existing views on Crime and Punishment) and co-founded the ''Bond van Revolutionair Socialistische Intellectuelen'' ( en, Union of Revolutionary Socialist Intellectuals).
On 21 March 1920,
she gave a public speech in which she asserted that crime was rooted in social injustice, and that equitable social relations would make almost all criminal acts disappear.
That same year, she co-founded the ( en, Union of Religious Anarcho-Communists).
She wrote numerous articles for the organisation's newspaper, ''De Vrije Communist'' ( en, The Free Communist),
in which she called for
strike action
Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to Labor (economics), work. A strike usually takes place in response to grievance (labour), employee grievance ...
s as a means of
non-violent resistance against social injustice.
In 1921, she married Jonas Meijer, a pacifist conscientious objector.
The couple were close to the Dutch anarchists and
Bart de Ligt.
Wichmann died in 1922, a few hours after giving birth to he daughter Hetty Clara Passchier-Meijer.
Legacy
Jonas Meijer continued to publish Wichmann's work after her death. Though an
atheist
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
, he was
Jewish by birth and survived the
Second World War by going into hiding in Amsterdam. Hetty Clara survived the war and helped hide a Jewish family in
Leiden whilst working with the
resistance
Resistance may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Comics
* Either of two similarly named but otherwise unrelated comic book series, both published by Wildstorm:
** ''Resistance'' (comics), based on the video game of the same title
** ''T ...
. After the war she became a doctor and until her death remained actively involved in the publishing and archiving of her mother's work.
In 1987, the Clara Wichmann Institute, which advocated for
women's rights, was opened in her name. In 2005, the institute studied the issue of
positive discrimination, or
discrimination against women
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primaril ...
on religious grounds, and its relationship with international treaties on
gender equality.
That same year, Ellie Smolenaars published ''Passie voor vrijheid'', a biography on Wichmann.
Selected works
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;Posthumously published
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References
Further reading
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wichmann, Clara
1885 births
1922 deaths
20th-century Dutch lawyers
20th-century women lawyers
Anarcha-feminists
Anarchist theorists
Anarcho-syndicalists
Dutch anarchists
Dutch atheists
Dutch encyclopedists
Dutch feminists
Dutch pacifists
Dutch women lawyers
Dutch writers
German emigrants to the Netherlands
Prison abolitionists
Socialist feminists