Pappenheim, Bertha, 1859-1936

Bertha Pappenheim (27 February 1859 – 28 May 1936) was an Austrian-Jewish feminist, a social pioneer, and the founder of the Jewish Women's Association ('Jüdischer Frauenbund'). Under the pseudonym Anna O., she was also one of Josef Breuer's best-documented patients because of Sigmund Freud's writing on Breuer's case.

Bertha Pappenheim was born on 27 February 1859 in Vienna, the third daughter of Recha Pappenheim and Sigmund Pappenheim. Her mother Recha, née Goldschmidt (1830–1905), was from an old and wealthy family in Frankfurt am Main. Her father Sigmund (1824–1881), a merchant, the son of an Orthodox Jewish family from Preßburg, Austria-Hungary (today's Bratislava, Slovakia), was the cofounder of the Orthodox Schiffschul in Vienna; the family name alludes to the Franconian town of Pappenheim. As "just another daughter" in a strictly traditional Jewish household, Bertha was conscious that her parents would have preferred a male child.[1] Her parents' families held traditional Jewish views on marriage and had roots in Orthodox Judaism. Bertha was raised in the style of a well-bred young lady of good class. She attended a Roman Catholic girls' school and led a life structured by the Jewish holiday calendar and summer vacations in Ischl.

When she was eight years old, her oldest sister Henriette (1849–1867) died of galloping consumption, now known as a form of tuberculosis.[2] When she was 11 the family moved from Vienna's Leopoldstadt, which was primarily inhabited by poverty-ridden Jews, to Liechtensteinstraße in the Alsergrund. She left school when she was sixteen, devoted herself to needlework and helped her mother with the kosher preparation of their food. Her 18-month-younger brother Wilhelm (1860–1937) was meanwhile attending a high school, which made Bertha intensely jealous.[3]

Anna O. was the pseudonym given to Pappenheim by Josef Breuer while she was his patient, in his descriptions of her as a case study. The pseudonym was constructed by shifting her initials B.P. one letter back in the alphabet to A.O. Aspects of the Anna O. case were first published by Freud and Breuer in 1893 as preliminary communications in two Viennese medical journals. The detailed case history appeared in 1895 in his book Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Freud.


In November 1888, when she was twenty-nine and after her convalescence, she and her mother moved to her mother's hometown of Frankfurt, Germany. Their family environment was partially Orthodox and partly liberal. In contrast to their life in Vienna they became involved in art and science, and not only in charitable work. The Goldschmidt and Oppenheim families were well known as collectors and patrons of the arts and lent their support to scientific and academic projects, particularly during the founding of Frankfurt University.[31]

Shortly after moving to Frankfurt, she first worked in a soup kitchen and read aloud in an orphanage for Jewish girls run by the Israelitischer Frauenverein ('Israelite Women's Association'). In discovering the children's delight at H. C. Andersen's tales, she shared her own tales. In this environment, Pappenheim intensified her literary efforts and became involved in social and political activities. Her publications began in 1888 and were initially anonymous; they appeared from 1890 under the pseudonym Paul Berthold, and she began publishing under her own name in 1902, firstly in the journal Ethische Kultur ('Ethical Culture') .

In 1895 she was temporarily in charge of the orphanage, and one year later became its official director. During the following 12 years she was able to orient the educational program away from the one and only goal of subsequent marriage, to training with a view to vocational independence.[25]

Having witnessed Catholic and Protestant charities working to address the issue of white female slavery, Pappenheim sought to align herself with a Jewish charity with a similar mission. Her cousin, Louise, informed her that not only did no such organization exist, but it was an issue the Jewish population wished not to acknowledge. She entreated several Rabbis to address the issue of Jewish men in Turkey and Frankfurt heavily involved in the trafficking of Jewish girls and women. As well, she persistently addressed the issue that while a Jewish man could freely leave his wife and children to relocate and remarry, a Jewish woman in such circumstances could not remarry because there was no divorce. And, any subsequent children by another father had no support for the man not her husband was not considered the legal father. To compound the problem, Orthodox Jewry considered a child born to an unwed mother as worse than a bastard. The child could not be part of the community.[25]

The situation forced many women to sell their children to men—often under the persuasion the girl would be hired out to a wealthy family with lifetime opportunities. These girls became just some of the victims of white slavery among the Jews. Other women knowingly sold their daughters into prostitution because they had no means of supporting their children. As well, Jewish girls caught in the white slavery trap but discovered by the German police had no organization which advocated for them. Without proper papers and no means of returning home, many turned to prostitution.[25]

Activism
In 1895, a plenary meeting of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein (ADF; 'General German Women's Association') took place in Frankfurt. Pappenheim was a participant and later contributed to the establishment of a local ADF group.


The first Board of the Weibliche Fürsorge in Frankfurt, 1904 (Pappenheim: first row, second from the left).
After she gave a speech at the Israelitischer Hilfsverein ('Israelite Women's Aid Association') in 1901, a women's group was formed with the goal of coordinating and professionalizing the work of various social initiatives and projects. This group was first a part of the Israelitischer Hilfsverein, but in 1904 became an independent organization, Weibliche Fürsorge ('Women's Relief').

At the first German conference on combating traffic in women held in Frankfurt in October 1902, Pappenheim and Sara Rabinowitsch were asked to travel to Galicia to investigate the social situation there. In her 1904 report about this trip, which lasted several months, she described the problems that arose from a combination of agrarian backwardness and early industrialization as well as from the collision of Hasidism and Zionism.

At a meeting of the International Council of Women held in 1904 in Berlin, it was decided to found a national Jewish women's association. Similar to the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF; 'Federation of German Women's Associations'), co-founded by Helene Lange in 1894, the intent was to unite the social and emancipatory efforts of Jewish women's associations. Pappenheim was elected the first president of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (JFB; 'League of Jewish Women') and was its head for 20 years, contributing to its efforts until her death in 1936. The JFB joined the BDF in 1907. Between 1914 and 1924, Pappenheim was on the board of the BDF.

On the one hand the goals of the JFB were feminist—strengthening women's rights and advancing the gainful employment of Jewish women—and on the other hand they were in accordance with the traditional goals of Jewish philanthropy—practical charity, as a divine precept. Integrating these different objectives was not always easy for Pappenheim. A particular objection was that in her battle against traffic in women she not only spoke openly about Jewish women as victims, but also about Jewish men as perpetrators. She criticized how women were perceived in Judaism, and as a member of the German feminist movement she demanded that the ideal of equal rights for women be realized also within Jewish institutions. She was particularly concerned about education and job equality.

A statement she made at the first JFB delegate assembly in 1907 – "under Jewish law a woman is not an individual, not a personality; she is only judged and assessed as a sexual being"[32] – prompted a violent nationwide reaction on the part of Orthodox rabbis and the Jewish press. The existence of the conditions Pappenheim criticized — traffic in women, neglect of illegitimate Jewish orphans — was denied, and she was accused of insulting Judaism.[citation needed] Also, politically liberal and emancipated Jews had a patriarchal and traditional attitude about women's rights.[citation needed]

Meanwhile, the JFB grew steadily and in 1907 had 32,000 members in 82 associations. For a time the JFB was the largest charitable Jewish organization with over 50,000 members. In 1917 Pappenheim called for "an end to the splintering of Jewish welfare work," which helped lead to the founding of the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Juden in Deutschland ('Central Welfare Agency of German Jewry'), which continues to exist today. Her work on its board was supported by Sidonie Werner.

In May 1923, she was one of the principal speakers at the First World Congress of Jewish Women in Vienna, where she spoke on the need to protect Jewish girls and women from trafficking and prostitution.[33]

After the Nazis assumed power in 1933, Pappenheim again took over the presidency of the JFB. She resigned in 1934 because she could not abandon her negative attitude to Zionism, despite the existential threat for Jews in Germany, while in the JFP, as among German Jews in general, Zionism was increasingly endorsed after 1933. Especially her attitude toward the immigration of young people to Israel (Youth Aliya) was controversial. She rejected the emigration of children and youths to Palestine while their parents remained in Germany. However, she herself brought a group of orphanage children safely to Great Britain in 1934. After the antisemitic Nuremberg Laws were passed on 15 September 1935, she changed her mind and argued in favor of the emigration of the Jewish population.

After Pappenheim died, her JFB positions were partially taken over by her friend Hannah Karminski. In 1939 the JFB was disbanded by the Nazis.

Neu-Isenburg home
Pappenheim was the founder or initiator of many institutions, including kindergartens, community homes and educational institutions. She considered her life's work to be the Neu-Isenburg home for Jewish girls (Mädchenwohnheim Neu-Isenburg).

Pappenheim published her first works anonymously, and later under the pseudonym Paul Berthold, a common practice among women writers of that time. She derived the pseudonym by taking modifying her first name Bertha to a surname, Berthold, and using the initial of her surname, P, as the first letter of the first name, Paul.[38] Starting in 1902 she published novellas and plays under her own name.

One of her first productions was a translation from English of Mary Wollstonecraft's programmatic paper in English on the women's rights movement, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. It appeared in 1899 under the title Mary Wollstonecraft – Eine Verteidigung der Rechte der Frau.

Starting in 1910 she translated several Yiddish texts into German:

The memoirs of Glikl bas Judah Leib (also known as Glückel of Hameln), one of Pappenheim's ancestors (1910).
The Ma'assebuch, also known as the "Women's Talmud" a collection of stories from the Talmud and the Midrash (1929)
Parts of Ze'enah u-Re'enah, also known as the "Women's Bible."
Only the first part of her translation of the Women's Bible appeared (Bereschit, correspondending to the First Book of Moses). The translations of the Second and Third Books (Schemot and Wajikra) have reportedly been lost.

Her treatment is regarded as marking the beginning of psychoanalysis. Breuer observed that whilst she experienced 'absences' (a change of personality accompanied by confusion), she would mutter words or phrases to herself. In inducing her to a state of hypnosis, Breuer found that these words were "profoundly melancholy fantasies...sometimes characterized by poetic beauty". Free association came into being after Pappenheim decided (with Breuer's input) to end her hypnosis sessions and merely talk to Breuer, saying anything that came into her mind. She called this method of communication "chimney sweeping" and "talking cure" and this served as the beginning of free association.

Bertha Pappenheim was born in Vienna in 1859 into a well-to-do family. After her father’s death in 1881 Bertha Pappenheim got ill and became a patient of Sigmund Freud, who later referred to her in his writings as Anna O. Politically active as a Jewish woman, Bertha von Pappenheim founded the Jewish Women's Association (Jüdischer Frauenbund) in 1905. She also founded a home for unwanted girls, unmarried mothers and their children in Neu Isenburg in 1907. Bertha Pappenheim fought against international white-slavery of women and founded clubs where young women could get help. She translated Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" into German. She died 1936 in Neu-Isenburg.