essibly long and
difficult struggle that we women had to carry on in order to secure the
admission of women to the universities; the establishment of high schools
for girls; and the improvement of the opportunities given to women
teachers. In no other country were women teachers for girls wronged to
such an extent as in Germany. The results of the last industrial census
(1907) give to the demands of the woman's rights movement an invaluable
support: _Germany has nine and a half million married women, i.e._ only
one half of all adult women (over 18 years of age) are married. In
Germany, too, marriage is not a lifelong "means of support" for woman, or
a "means of support" for the whole number of women. Therefore the demands
of woman for a complete professional and industrial training and freedom
to choose her calling appear in the history of our time with a tremendous
weight, a weight that the founders of the movement hardly anticipated.

The German woman's rights movement originated during the troublous times
immediately preceding the Revolution of 1848. The founders--Augusta
Schmidt, Louise Otto-Peters, Henrietta Goldschmidt, Ottilie v. Steyber,
Lina Morgenstern--were "forty-eighters"; they believed in the right of
woman to an education, to work, and to choose her calling, and as a
citizen to participate directly in public life. Only the first three of
these demands are contained in the programme of the "German General
Woman's Club" (founded in 1865 by four of these women, natives of Leipzig,
on the anniversary of the battle of Leipzig). At that time woman's right
to vote was put aside as something utopian. The founders of the woman's
rights movement, however, from the very first included in their programme
the question of women industrial laborers, and attacked the question in a
practical way by organizing a society for the education of workingwomen.
The energies of the middle-class women were at this time very naturally
absorbed by their own affairs. They suffered want, material as well as
intellectual. Therefore it was a matter of securing a livelihood for
middle-class women no longer provided for at home. This was the first duty
of a woman's rights movement originating with the middle class.

Of special service in the field of education and the liberal
professions[69] were the efforts of Augusta Schmidt, Henrietta
Goldschmidt, Marie Loeper-Housselle, Helena Lang, Maria Lischnewska, and
Mrs. Kettler. Kindergartens we