GOLDSCHMIDT (née Benas), HENRIETTE

GOLDSCHMIDT (née Benas ), HENRIETTE (1825–1920), German suffragette and educator; wife of Rabbi Abraham Meir Goldschmidt of Leipzig. She was one of the founders of the German Women's League (Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein) in 1865, organized petitions on behalf of women's rights to higher education and entry in professions (1867), and was a signatory to a petition to the Reichstag for protecting children born out of wedlock. In 1871 she founded the Society for Family Education and for People's Welfare (Verein fuer Familienerziehung und Volkswohl) in Leipzig, and was instrumental in the establishment of a municipal educational institution which eventually comprised kindergartens, a seminary for kindergarten teachers, and a vocational school for girls with teachers' training courses. In 1911 she founded the first institution of higher education for girls in Germany. Henriette Goldschmidt wrote Die Frauenfrage, eine Kulturfrage (1870), as well as on education, publicizing the ideas of Froebel. Her works include Was ich von Froebel lernte und lehrte (1909).

bibliography:

H. Lange and G. Baeumer (eds.), Handbuchder Frauenbewegung (1901), index; J. Siebe and J. Pruefer, Henriette Goldschmidt… (Ger., 1922); M. Mueller, Frauen im Dienste Froebels (1928). add. bibliography: A. Kemp, "Henriette Goldschmidt – Vom Frauenrecht zur Kindererziehung," in: Judaica Lipsiensia (1993), 33–53; I.M. Fassmann, Juedinnen in der deutschen Frauenbewegungen 1865–1919 (Haskala – wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen, vol. 6) (1996).

[Otto Immanuel Spear]