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Practical Reformers: Women School Owners in Imperial Germany
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
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In the early 1860s, the Ruhr Valley town of Dortmund had no schools for girls beyond the elementary level with the exception of a few private establishments that trained domestic servants. This dearth of educational opportunities is hardly surprising in a town of just 25,000 people at a time when even many larger German cities were bereft of secondary schools for girls. By 1914, however, when Dortmund's population had grown tenfold to well over 250,000, girls or their parents could choose among numerous types of institutions beyond the basic elementary school—several secondary schools, middle schools, and a variety of vocational and commercial institutions, most of them under municipal control.
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References
1 Albisetti, James, Schooling German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); “The Reform of Female Education in Prussia, 1899–1908: A Study in Compromise and Containment,” German Studies Review 8, no. 1 (February 1985): 11–41. For a concise overview History of Education Quarterly see also Kraul, Margret, “Höhere Mädchenschulen,” in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungs-geschichte, vol. 4, 1870–1980: Von der Reichsgründung bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs, ed. Berg, Christa (Munich: Beck, 1991), 279–303; Herrlitz, Hans-Georg, Hopf, Wulf, and Titze, Hartmut, Deutsche Schulgeschichte von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart: Eine Einführung, 3rd ed. (Weinheim: Juventa, 2002), 87–106. A detailed analysis of German girls’ education can be found in Kleinau, Elke and Opitz, Claudia, eds., Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung, vol. 2, Vom Vormärz bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1996).Google Scholar
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