Anna Maria Cederschiöld (20 November 1815 in

Växjö Växjö () is a city and the seat of Växjö Municipality, Kronoberg County, Sweden. It had 71,282 inhabitants (2020) out of a Municipalities of Sweden, municipal population of 97,349 (2024). It is the administrative, cultural, and industrial ce ...

- 7 January 1892 in

Lund Lund (, ;"Lund"
(US) and ) is a city in the provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, southern Swed ...

) was a Swedish noble

deaconess The ministry of a deaconess is a ministry for women in some Protestant, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Orthodox churches to provide pastoral care, especially for other women, and which may carry a liturgical role. The word comes from the Greek ...

and nurse. She was a pioneer in the education of deaconesses and nursing in Sweden, and the first head of the first Deaconess institution in Sweden, Ersta diakoni, in 1851-1862.

Life

She was the daughter of the vicar in

Forsheda Forsheda is a urban areas of Sweden, locality situated in Värnamo Municipality, Jönköping County, Sweden with 1,459 inhabitants in 2010. Notable people *John Ljunggren - Olympic Racewalking, race walker References

Populated plac ...

, Kasper Hakvin Cederschiöld, and Helena Sofia Ingelman. She was engaged to her foster brother, but the engagement was broken by his death, an event which is thought to have caused her interest in religion and introduced her in religious circles. She was educated at home and managed a girls school in Lund in 1848-49, before she was promised the place as head of the future Deaconess Institution, which was at that point planned to be founded in Stockholm. In order to prepare herself, she studied the deaconess institution in Germany 1850-51, before she returned to take her place as head of the Ersta Diakoni in Stockholm, which was founded upon her return in 1851. This was the first formal education of nurses in Sweden: a secular nursing training was not to be opened until that of Emmy Rappe in 1867. In Germany, she studied at

Kaiserswerth Kaiserswerth is one of the oldest quarters of the City of Düsseldorf, part of Borough 5. It is in the north of the city and next to the river Rhine. It houses the where Florence Nightingale worked. Kaiserswerth has an area of , and 7,923 in ...

under

Theodor Fliedner Theodor Fliedner (21 January 18004 October 1864) was a German Lutheran minister and founder of Lutheran deaconess training. In 1836, he founded Kaiserswerther Diakonie, a hospital and deaconess training center. Together with his wives Friederik ...

just as

Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during th ...

. She had been recommended this position by a friend from the religious circles in Lund, where she was well known. During her tenure as principal and deaconess, "Sister Maria" became known for her hard work, in particularly during the

cholera Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...

in Stockholm in 1853. In 1854, she co-founded the Fruntimmersällskapet för fångars förbättring in Stockholm with philanthropist Mathilda Foy, writer

Fredrika Bremer Fredrika Bremer (17 August 1801 – 31 December 1865) was a Finland, Finnish-born Sweden and Norway, Swedish Swedish literature, writer and feminism in Sweden, reformer. Her ''Sketches of Everyday Life'' were wildly popular in Britain and ...

, writer Betty Ehrenborg and Emilia Elmblad, founder of the Stockholm home for reformed prostitutes.Elisabeth Christiansson: "Först och framför allt själen" Diakonins tankevärld omkring år 1850. Sköndalsinstitutet 2003 She also founded a home for former prostitutes near the deaconess institution. In 1862, she retired because of exhaustion. She had been expected to return to her position after her health had been recovered, but she never did so. She moved to Osby with her mother and another deaconess, and in 1877 to Växjö. In 1889, she visited Norway to participate in the planning of the first deaconess institution in Oslo.

References

A Maria Cederschiöld, urn:sbl:14717, Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (art av O. Centerwall.), hämtad 2015-03-10.

Life

See also

References

Further reading