The author sends a quote from the Polish-French physicist Marie Curie to the opening chapter, which plays in the summer of 1870: »I am not dealing with what was done. I am interested in what needs to be done. «You cannot describe the motivation of the German-Jewish writer, women’s rights activist and social activist Lina Morgenstern.
The foundation and support of the Froebelʼ kindergarten movement is only one of your ambitious projects. The readership of her biographer Gerhard J. Rekel learns that Lina Morgenstern was “small, rounded, funny, full of energy, spontaneous, cosmopolitan and in some areas. Properties that were not always perceived as advantageous in women in male -dominated 19th century.
Unconventional marriage
Lina Morgenstern conducted a rather unconventional marriage with her husband Theodor (“whose secret the two kept up to the end”), lovingly raised five children, preferred good food. Sometimes the energetic activist forgot to sleep. Lina Morgenstern took care of the folk kitchens, the children’s protection association and the training schools for young women and in this summer of war almost around the clock.
The foundation and support of the Froebelʼ kindergarten movement was just one of their ambitious projects.
Morgenstern’s story begins in Breslau, where she was born in November 1830 and spent a traditional Jewish childhood. She visits the “Synagogue on White Storch” and is encouraged by her religion teacher Abraham Geiger “to be able to think independently about ethical provisions”. She finds mental suggestions in reading the letters of Rahel Varnhagen and the tracts of the Bettina of Arnim. Soon she will also write down her own stories. Later, Lina Morgenstern, according to her husband’s economic bankruptcy as a fashion retailer, will bring through the family as a children’s book author.
In addition, she has been interested in the publications of the educators Friedrich Fröbel and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi since the 1850s. Inspired by this, she makes an attempt to start a first kindergarten. At the time, this was a political provocation in Prussia, as the conservative minister of culture Karl Otto von Raumer had officially banned such efforts.
The Froebelʼ ideal on which this movement was based was assumed to be “atheistic and demagogic”. Lina holds against it – and ultimately with success. It also initiates numerous organizations for women in emergencies and only brings out the first newspaper for women.
Situational images, partly fictional locations and reporting style
Gerhard J. Rekel wrote scripts for German television and already wrote several novels. So now the “history of a rebel”, as his Morgenstern biography in the subtitle is called. The author designs situational images and occasionally falls into a reporting style worth reading.
Efforting visuality, he creates locations, some of which have to have a fictional character. On the other hand, it is not fictional – prove that no less than 745 sources – are the described life data of the Lina Morgenstern.
This is how the story of a combative Jewish woman was created, who optimally used the self -employed thinking stimulated by Abraham Geiger. And at a time when women have not yet been granted.
Gerhard J. Rekel: »Lina Morgenstern. The story of a rebel «. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 2025, 259 pages, 26 €
