Mayreder, Rosa (1858–1938)

Austrian painter, writer, sociologist, feminist, and peace activist . Born Rosa Obermayer on November 30, 1858, in Vienna, Austria; died on January 19, 1938, in Vienna, Austria; daughter of Franz Obermayer (a restaurant owner) and Marie Obermayer; attended the Institute for Girls, and Sophie Paulus' School, both private girls' schools in Vienna; studied painting with Hugo Darnaut; married Karl Mayreder (an architect), in 1881 (died 1935).

At the age of 18, objecting to being a "stuffed doll," Rosa Mayreder abandoned her corset and refused to submit to any more constraints on body or mind. Now, along with Marianne Hainisch, Marie Lang , and Auguste Fickert , she is remembered as one of the founders of the Austrian feminist movement.

Born in Vienna in 1858, Mayreder was the daughter of the well-to-do owner and landlord of Winter's, a famous Vienna beer hall. She received a private school education and took French and piano lessons, but was thwarted in her pursuit of a higher education. "While my sisters never doubted for a moment that the sons of the family enjoyed absolute precedence as regards to educational opportunities, I responded to this situation with a constantly growing feeling of indignation, which was further kindled by the behavior of my brothers," she recalled.

Mayreder, as it turned out, was not only intelligent, but had a gift for painting and writing. Encouraged by her fiancé, Karl Mayreder, whom she married in 1881, she studied painting with Hugo Darnaut and by 1891 was exhibiting her landscapes and flower paintings at the Vienna Künstlerhaus. She also became a member of the Club of Water-Color Painters, and for many years wrote art criticism for a Vienna newspaper under the male pseudonym Franz Arnold. While pursuing painting, she also published a collection of short stories in 1896, Aus meiner Jugend (From my Youth). In addition, she wrote the libretto for the comic opera The Corregidor, by Hugo Wolf, whom she had met and befriended in 1882.

In 1894, Mayreder became active in the feminist movement, which was just then gaining a foothold in Vienna. On February 20, 1897, as a representative of the General Austrian Women's Union, she appeared before a meeting of women at the Old City Hall, speaking out against compulsory registration and medical surveillance of prostitutes. She also helped author the "Petition to the Austrian Parliament against the Official Sanctioning of Houses of Prostitution," expressing her belief that such establishments encouraged the exploitation of women. In 1900, along with Auguste Fickert and Marie Lang, Mayreder edited the journal Dokumente der Frauen (Documents of Women). (Fickert would leave to found her own journal, Frauenleben [Women's Life], following a disagreement between the three women.) In 1903, Mayreder was elected vice president of Allgemeiner Österreichischer Frauenverein, one of Vienna's largest women's organization, of which she had been a co-founder with Auguste Fickert.

Rosa Mayreder also addressed feminism in her first novel Idole, Geschichte einer Liebe (Idols, A Love Story, 1899), in which she stressed that love can lead to idolizing. In 1905, she published a volume of essays in cultural philosophy, Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit (Contributions to a Critique of Womanhood). "I consider the feminist movement to be one of those phenomena by which the present age differs favorably from all previous epochs of human history," she stated in the preface. For Mayreder, the unleashing of the creative forces within the feminist movement was as important as the struggle for women's rights. "Without the cooperation of Women as an equal partner," she wrote, "the community on which the ideal of higher humanity is based cannot be realized; and the contribution to civilization which women, in accord with their historical evolution, can offer is an indispensable complement to the achievements of men." A second volume of essays, Geschlecht and Kultur (Gender and Culture), was published around 1914.

In 1917, as the First World War raged, Mayreder addressed the Vienna Sociological Society, reading a paper entitled "The Typical Progress of Social Movement," in which she addressed ideological and political questions, and also the abuse of power. The paper may have been inspired by an incident the year before, when Mayreder was banned by the authorities from publishing a lecture entitled "Women and Internationalism."

Mayreder remained active throughout her life. In 1921, at the third congress of the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom, she was elected vice president of the Austrian branch (founded in 1915). As the years went on, she became a fervent pacifist and antimilitarist, and was instrumental in organizing an exhibition of antimilitarist toys and pacifist literature for children.

After 1912, Mayreder's personal life became quite difficult; her husband Karl began suffering psychotic episodes, resulting in intermittent outbursts of rage and obsessive behavior. Karl was treated by both Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, but did not improve. (In later years, Mayreder would be quite critical of Freud. "Indeed, the artistic interpreter in him by far surpasses the scientific observer," she wrote.) Upon Karl's death in 1935, Mayreder published a cycle of poems entitled Ein Schicksal (A Fate), celebrating their years of happiness before his illness.

Rosa Mayreder lived into her 80th year, dying on January 19, 1938, just two months before the Nazis destroyed Austria. In 1997, a new Austrian 500 schilling banknote bearing her likeness was issued in her honor.

Barbara Morgan , Melrose, Massachusetts