Lina Dorina Johanna Eckenstein (23 September 1857 – 4 May 1931) was a British
polymath and historian who was acknowledged as a philosopher and scholar in the women's movement.
Life
Eckenstein's father was a Jewish
socialist from
Bonn who had fled Germany following the failed
revolution of 1848. Eckenstein was born in
Islington
Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ar ...
, London, in 1857; the highly independent mountaineer
Oscar Eckenstein was her younger brother.
[Chris Williams, 'Eckenstein, Oscar Johannes Ludwig (1859–1921)', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, Sept 201]
accessed 1 Oct 2015
/ref> Eckenstein had a large range of languages which she is thought to have obtained at some educational facility in Switzerland or Germany.[Sybil Oldfield, 'Eckenstein, Lina Dorina Johanna (1857–1931)', '' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 201]
accessed 1 October 2015
/ref>
She came to notice after joining a club started by the mathematician (and in time eugenicist) Karl Pearson
Karl Pearson (; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English mathematician and biostatistician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university st ...
which allowed middle-class radicals to talk about sex. The club, called the Men and Women's Club, operated during the late 1880s. Eckenstein was seen as a "new woman" and she presented studies she had made of the sexual relations of the Romans and of Swiss men and women during the Reformation.[ The club discussed feminist and liberal issues including ending any state legal interference in prostitution and whether motherhood should be reimbursed.][ Karl and Maria Pearson and their children, Sigrid, Helga, and ]Egon
Egon is a variant of the male given name Eugene. It is most commonly found in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Denmark, and parts of the Netherlands and Belgium. The name can also be derived from ...
, were to permanently remain as Eckenstein's friends.
Scholar
She supported herself financially with conducting research, proofreading, teaching, and translation. She undertook significant work on Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...
for Pearson's friend Martin Conway for which she was credited on the title page of his book. Eckenstein's family were German, but she also knew French and Italian, Middle High German, Middle English, and classical and medieval Latin and European history. This scholarly achievement made her overqualified to be a governess, but she became the governess to Margery Corbett.[ In 1896 she published ''Woman Under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent Life between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500'',][ which she dedicated to Karl and Maria Pearson.] This work drew a large number of sources together, some that she translated, to argue that many of the aspirations that women sought in the twentieth century were in some ways achieved by women in religious institutions a thousand years before.[ She describes the rebellion of the nuns at ]Poitiers
Poitiers (, , , ; Poitevin: ''Poetàe'') is a city on the River Clain in west-central France. It is a commune and the capital of the Vienne department and the historical centre of Poitou. In 2017 it had a population of 88,291. Its agglomerat ...
after the death of Radegund. For two years the nuns refused to accept a new abbess who had been appointed by the male Catholic hierarchy.[Woman under Monasticism]
book review, jstor, Retrieved 1 October 2015 Eckenstein's work is credited with recovering Caritas Pirckheimer
Caritas Pirckheimer (21 March 1467 – 19 August 1532) was Abbess of Saint Clara's convent in Nuremberg at the time of the Reformation, which she opposed due to the threat posed by Martin Luther to Catholic houses of worship and religious build ...
from historic obscurity. This work is thought to be the most scholarly of her publications despite the inclusion of some doubtful or mythical German history. It was read by the late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing in July 1896.[Coustillas, Pierre ed. London and the Life of Literature in Late Victorian England: the Diary of George Gissing, Novelist. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978, p.416.]
Traveller
In 1902 she walked through the upper Arno valley and published an account of her travels. The following year she began a new escapade, working with the archaeologists Hilda
Hilda is one of several female given names derived from the name ''Hild'', formed from Old Norse , meaning 'battle'. Hild, a Nordic-German Bellona, was a Valkyrie who conveyed fallen warriors to Valhalla. Warfare was often called Hild's Game ...
and Flinders Petrie in Egypt. She took on the administrative role of running the excavations camp and ensuring that finds were catalogued correctly. She worked at excavations at Abydos Abydos may refer to:
*Abydos, a progressive metal side project of German singer Andy Kuntz
* Abydos (Hellespont), an ancient city in Mysia, Asia Minor
* Abydos (''Stargate''), name of a fictional planet in the '' Stargate'' science fiction universe ...
, Saqqara, Serabit el-Khadim, and El Shatt
The El Shatt was a complex of World War II refugee camps in the desert of the Sinai peninsula in Egypt, established in early 1944. The region of Dalmatia (in today's modern Croatia, then Yugoslavia) was evacuated by the Allies, following the S ...
. At the temple of King Seti, she made a connection between some Egyptian art and a child's nursery rhyme
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
From t ...
.[ She was so intrigued by the connection between the 3,000-year-old cult picture and the story of the death of Cock Robin that she published a comparative study of nursery rhymes in 1906. In 1921 she published ''A History of Sinai'' which drew on her work with the Petries, tracing the history of the area back to before the Egyptians.][The History of Sinai]
'' The Spectator'', 3 December 1921, p.27. Eckenstein was well-qualified to publish books on the Sinai, as she had trekked across it by camel with Hilda Petrie (c.1905) and a single guide. She published several other books that mixed fact with imagination. One of her books published in 1924, ''Tutankh-aten'', was about the imagined childhood of Moses
Moses hbo, מֹשֶׁה, Mōše; also known as Moshe or Moshe Rabbeinu (Mishnaic Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ, ); syr, ܡܘܫܐ, Mūše; ar, موسى, Mūsā; grc, Mωϋσῆς, Mōÿsēs () is considered the most important pro ...
.[
From 1908 she became more involved in the campaign to improve women's rights. As part of this, she was supporting her previous pupil, and now friend, Margery Corbett in Geneva in 1920. Margery was the secretary of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. They both attended the International Women's Suffrage Alliance congress, where Eckenstein ensured that the proceedings were available in a variety of European languages.][
She died on 4 May 1931 from exhaustion and chronic cystitis at ]Little Hampden
Great and Little Hampden is a civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, about three miles south-east of Princes Risborough. It incorporates the villages of Great Hampden and Little Hampden, and the hamlets of Green Hailey and Hampden Row. Great ...
, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire.[
]
Legacy
After her death two further books were published: ''A Spell of Words'' in 1932 and ''The Women of Early Christianity'' in 1935. The former was dedicated to Sigrid, Helga and Egon Pearson
Egon Sharpe Pearson (11 August 1895 – 12 June 1980) was one of three children of Karl Pearson and Maria, née Sharpe, and, like his father, a leading British statistician.
Career
He was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, ...
, and argues that there are common roots for Indo-European culture.
Works
*''Woman under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent Life between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500'', 1896[''Woman Under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent Life between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500'', Cambridge University Press, 1896][
*''Life and art of Albrecht Dürer'', 1902
*''Through the Casentino'', 1902
*''Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes'', 1906
*''The moon cult in Sinai'', 1911
*''A History of Sinai'', 1921][
*''Tutankh-aten'', 1924
*''A Spell of Words: Studies in Language Bearing on Custom'', 1932
*''The Women of Early Christianity'', 1935
]
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Eckenstein, Lina
1857 births
1931 deaths
British women writers
People from Islington (district)
British feminists
English governesses
British writers
English people of German-Jewish descent