2 - Maxims of Leadership for a Silent Readership: Sophie von La Roche's Pomona für Teutschlands Töchter and Mein Schreibetisch

Summary

IN 1783, WHEN SOPHIE VON LA ROCHE introduced herself to the reading public as a journal editor, women's leadership meant being mentored and mothered simultaneously: female readers were to acquire (erwerben) knowledge from a female author who used her maternal voice to instruct them (kennen lehren):

Ich hoffe meine Leserinnen sind mit mir zufrieden, daß ich sie vorerst mit den Verdiensten unsers Geschlechts bekannt mache, weil ich sie dadurch ihre eigene Fähigkeiten näher kennen lehre, und vielleicht den edlen Ehrgeitz erwecke, auch in ihrer Art und nach ihren Umständen Vorzüge des Wissens und der Beschäftigungen zu erwerben.

[I hope that my readers are satisfied with me, in that I shall first make them familiar with the accomplishments of our sex, because through this, I can make them aware of their own capabilities, and perhaps arouse in them the noble ambition to acquire the advantages of knowledge and of occupation, each in her own way and according to her situation.]

Much of La Roche's oeuvre has been ably examined for the author's views on education and on motherhood; however, the specifics of the historical articulations of female identities around 1800 are such that Pomona für Teutschlands Töchter (1783, Pomona for Germany's Daughters) and Mein Schreibetisch (1799, My Writing Desk) warrant further examination as collections of La Roche's pithy statements on women's leadership. Accordingly, we may read the excerpt below both as maternal advice and also as mentoring advice for future community leaders:

So bitte ich [… Gladbachs] Lesefibeln für Kinder bekannt zu machen. Sie werden dem schätzbaren Zirkel kleiner Bürgerfamilien damit viele Aufklärung, und viel gute Gesinnungen in die Seele bringen. … Wie leicht ist es einzusehen, daß … unser Familienglück, welches bey jedem guten Vater und Mutter in den Verdiensten und Wohl ihrer Kinder mehr, als in ihrem eigenen besteht, zu grossem Theil auf guter Bildung bürgerlicher Kinder ruht.

[This is why I would like [… Gladbach's] reading primers for children to become known. They will bring invaluable enlightenment into bourgeois family circles, as well as many good inclinations into the soul…. It is easy to see that familial happiness, which, for every good father and mother, comes more from the accomplishments and well-being of their children than from their own, derives to a great extent from the good education of bourgeois children.]