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

² These reforms are surveyed in Albisetti, James, Secondary School Reform in Imperial Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); Schleunes, Karl A., Schooling and Society: The Politics of Education in Prussia and Bavaria, 1750–1900 (Oxford: Berg, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ Bäumer, Gertrud and Lange, Helene, eds., Handbuch der Frauenbewegung, vol. III, Der Stand der Frauenbildung in den Kulturländern (Berlin: Moeser, 1902), 33, 108–13; Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, 108–10.Google Scholar

⁴ Bäumer and Lange, Handbuch, 116–8; Bogerts, Hildegard, Bildung und berufliches Selbstverständnis lebrender Frauen in der Zeit von 1885 bis 1920 (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1977); Evans, Richard J., The Feminist Movement in Germany, 1894–1933 Practical Reformers (London and Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1976), 22; Greven-Aschoff, Barbara, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland 1894–1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981), 51–8 and 85–6; Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, 169 ff.Google Scholar

⁵ In other German states (Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria) reforms had been carried out earlier; see Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, 256–75; “Reform of Female Education,” 31–37. For a state-by-state comparison see also Ehrich, Karin, “Stationen der Mädchenschulreform: Ein Ländervergleich,” in Kleinau and Opitz, Geschichte, 29–48. Lange, Helene and Bäumer's, Gertrud roles as members of the Prussian commission are described in Angelika Schaser, Helene Lange und Gertrud Bäumer: Eine politische Lebensgemeinschaft (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000), 118–28. For the debate about women's access to university study see Mazon, Patricia, Gender and the Modern Research University: The Admission of Women to German Universities, 1865–1914 (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

⁶ Gerhard, Ute, Unerhört: Die Geschichte der deutschen Frauenbewegung (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1990), 140–53. On the first Gymnasium for girls in Karlsruhe founded in 1893, see Asche, Susanne, Guttmann, Barbara, Hoschtrasser, Olivia, Schambach, Sigrid, and Sterr, Lisa, Karlsruher Frauen 1715–1945: Eine Stadtgeschichte (Karlsruhe: Badenia, 2000), 203–5. Local initiatives could be blocked by the Prussian Ministry of Education, for instance in Frankfurt in 1902, when a higher girls’ school founded by a local women's association was prevented from having girls admitted to the boys’ gymnasium, see Klausmann, Christina, Politik und Kultur der Frauenbewegung: Das Beispiel Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1997), 97–98.Google Scholar

⁷ Studies that illustrate the importance of local demographic, political, confessional, and economic conditions for changes in girls’ education are, Münster-Schröer, Erika, Frauen in der Kaiserzeit: Eine sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchung am Beispiel einer rheinischen Kleinstadt (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1992), 129–77; Reagin, Nancy, A German Women's Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 118–21.Google Scholar

⁸ Luntowski, Gustav, Högl, Günther, Schilp, Thomas, and Reinmann, Norbert, Geschichte der Stadt Dortmund (Dortmund: Stadtarchiv Dortmund/Harenberg Verlag, 1994), 265–96; Jackson, James Harvey, Migration and Urbanization in the Ruhr Valley, 1821–1914 (Boston: Humanities Press, 1997), 2–14; Tenfelde, Klaus, “Urbanization and the Spread of Urban Culture” in Towards an Urban Nation: Germany Since 1780, ed. Lenger, Friedrich (Oxford: Berg: 2002), 15–21. On the size of the city's working-class population see Uta Ottmüller, Die Dienstbotenfrage: Zur Sozialgeschichte der doppelten Ausnutzung von Dienstmädchen im deutschen Kaiserreich (Münster: Verlag Frauenpolitik, 1978), 45.Google Scholar

⁹ In 1820, 80 percent of Dortmund's population was Protestant, Luntowski, Geschichte der Stadt Dortmund, 302.Google Scholar

¹⁰ In 1851 and again in 1872, demonstrative Catholic religious processions evoked the ire of the Protestant population in Dortmund, see Rebecca Ayako Bennette, “Threatened Protestants: Confessional Conflict in the Rhine Province and Westphalia during the Nineteenth Century,” German History 26, no. 2 (2008): 168–94. For confessional divisions in Germany in general see Margaret Lavinia Anderson, “Living Apart and Together in Germany,” in Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany, 1800–1914, ed. Helmut Walser Smith (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 319–32.Google Scholar

¹¹ Between 1850 and 1870 none of the Magistrat members was Catholic. Only two Catholics served between 1871 and 1890, and ten between 1891 and 1914, Karin Schambach, Stadtbürgertum und industrieller Umbruch, Dortmund 1780–1870 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996), 332.Google Scholar

¹² Children were enrolled in Volksschulen according to religious confession and attendance was compulsory until age fourteen. Lamberti, Marjorie, State, Society, and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Kuhlemann, Frank-Michael, “Niedere Schulen,” in Handbuch, vol. 4, 179–207. On the conditions in Dortmund see Sollbach, Gerhard E., Das Dortmunder Schulwesen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Geschichte Dortmunds im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert 2 (Dortmund: Historischer Verein, 1991), 125–35. Many parents preferred private schools over municipal or state-sponsored schools because they would ensure exclusivity through tuition, see Schlüter, Anne, Neue Hüte – alte Hüte? (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1987), 59–61; Zinnecker, Jürgen, Sozialgeschichte der Mädchenbildung (Weinheim and Basel: Beltz, 1973), 49–51. Most municipal schools were established after mid-century, see Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, 37. In Westphalia, the first municipal higher girls’ school was established in 1826 in Minden, see Peter Lundgren, Margret Kraul, and Karl Ditt, Bildungschancen und soziale Mobilität in der städtischen Gesellschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 48.Google Scholar

¹³ Huffier, Alfred, Pauline von Mallinckrodt, Stifterin und Generaloberin der Kongregation der Schwestern der christlichen Liebe: Ein Lebensbild, 2nd ed. (Münster: Aschendorff, 1902), 45, 59.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Propstei Parish Archive Dortmund [hereafter PArDo], private ledger of Provost Wilhelm Aufenanger, “Die Tätigkeit der Schwestern der christlichen Liebe in Dortmund,” 355–57. Enrollment at the Municipal Higher Girls’ school stood at 282 during the 1873/4 school year, Rohsa, Erich, Festschrift Goethe-Gymnasium Dortmund 1867–1967 (Dortmund: Heinrich Borgmann, 1967), 39.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Bennette, Rebecca Ayako, Fighting for the Soul of Germany: The Catholic Struggle for Inclusion After Unification (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 124–25 and 129–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ Münster, Landesarchiv [hereafterLArM]/Berzirksregierung Arnsberg Schulen [hereafter BASch], Nr. 3217, 30 October 1882; Rohsa, Goethe Gymnasium, 21–26. Dortmund's Jewish families sent their daughters to the school as well.Google Scholar

¹⁷ A similar development occurred in the Westphalian town of Ratingen where Catholic and Protestant girls’ schools competed with each other, see Münster-Schröer, Frauen in der Kaiserzeit, 151–55.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Schmidt-Volkmar, Erich, Der Kulturkampf in Deutschland, 1871–1890 (Berlin: Musterschmidt, 1962), 79, 82, 110–12, 142–43; Ross, Ronald J., The Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf: Catholicism and State Power in Imperial Germany, 1871–1887 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 6–7; Lamberti, Marjorie, “State, Church, and the Politics of School Reform during the Kulturkampf,” Central European History 19, no. 1 (March 1986): 63–81; State, Society, and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 33–34, 44–45.Google Scholar

¹⁹ LArM/BASch, Nr. 3217, 18 June 1874; also Stadtarchiv Dortmund Bestand 3 [hereafter StArDo-3], Nr.1612, 28 July 1874; PArDo, Nr. A13, 4 July 1874. All translations are my own.Google Scholar

²⁰ LArM/BASch, Nr. 3217, 18 July 1874.Google Scholar

²¹ LArM/BASch, Nr. 3217, reviews for 1875, 1877, 1881, and 1882.Google Scholar

²² LArM/BASch, Nr. 3217, 30 October 1882, 24 November 1882, 9 March 1883; PArDo Nr. A13, 9 January 1883.Google Scholar

²³ Dortmunder Zeitung, 4 February 1884. Two-hundred fifty-one students were Protestant, 37 Jewish.Google Scholar

²⁴ LArM/BASch, Nr. 3217, letter dated January 1885.Google Scholar

²⁵ In 1884, 202 municipal higher girls’ schools, 1,007 private institutions, and 14 state-sponsored schools existed in Prussia, according to Bertha von der Lage in “Das Mädchenschulwesen Deutschlands,” Allgemeiner Frauenkalender für 1885, ed. Morgenstern, Lina (Berlin: Verlag der Deutschen Hausfrauenzeitung, 1885), 234. In 1901, there were 213 public and 656 private higher girls’ schools in Prussia according to Bäumer and Lange, Handbuch, 156. On the predominance of private institutions in the nineteenth century see also Zinnecker, Sozialgeschichte, 32–38; and Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, 30–35.Google Scholar

²⁶ StArDo-3, Nr. 2953, Blatt 219, 26 March 1885.Google Scholar

²⁷ LArM/Kreisschulinspektion Dortmund II [hereafter KSchDo], Nr. 11, list dated 1885.Google Scholar

²⁸ StArDo-3, Nr. 2953, Blatt 1 and 7, 21 June 1886, 4 May 1886 and Blatt 18–20, 3 November 1886.Google Scholar

²⁹ StArDo-3, Nr. 2953, Blatt 10, 26 July 1886 and Blatt 18–20, 3 November 1886.Google Scholar

³⁰ StArDo-3, Nr. 2953, Blatt 29, 5 March 1887; Blatt 40, 6 April 1887; Blatt 94, 12 July 1890. According to Goeker, enrollment at the municipal school had increased from 318 in 1887 to 468 in 1890.Google Scholar

³¹ StArDo-3, Nr. 2953, Blatt 98, 11 November 1890; underlined in the original.Google Scholar

³² StArDo-3, Nr. 2953, Blatt 101, 12 December 1890.Google Scholar

³³ StArDo-3, Nr. 2889, Blatt 22, 4 January 1891.Google Scholar

³⁴ LArM/KSchDo, Nr. 11, 1907.Google Scholar

³⁵ StArDo-3, Nr. 2953, Blatt 181, 1900/1901; Blatt 178, 17 June 1901.Google Scholar

³⁶ LArM/KSchDo, Nr. 11, 26 September 1902.Google Scholar

³⁷ Zinnecker, Sozialgeschichte, 39–40.Google Scholar

³⁸ StArDo-3, Nr. 2953, Blatt 255–57, 27 January 1908.Google Scholar

³⁹ Rohsa, Goethe Gymnasium Dortmund, 27; StArDo-3, Nr. 2904, Blatt 145.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ In the wake of the reform in Bremen for instance, six of the seven private higher girls’ schools requested and received subsidies to make these changes, detailed in Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen, Weibliche Kultur und soziale Arbeit: Eine Geschichte der Frauenbewegungam Beispiel Bremens 1810–1927 (Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 1989), 158–59.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Dransfeld, Hedwig, “Die private höhere Töchterschule,” Die Christliche Frau 4 (January 1913): 109–14.Google Scholar

⁴² Albisetti, “Reform of Female Education,” 30–9; Rohsa, Goethe Gymnasium Dortmund, 26–7; Kirchlicher Anzeiger für die katholischen Gemeinden von Dortmund und Umgegend, 9 March 1913.Google Scholar

⁴³ A similar school type, the Realschule, already existed for boys, see Albisetti, Secondary School Reform, 84 and 221. Middle schools for girls had been acknowledged as a separate school type in 1872, but were not tightly regulated, see Gertrud Bäumer, “Geschichte und Stand der Frauenbildung in Deutschland,” in Handbuch, 104; Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, 108–12.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ StArDo-3, Nr. 2889, “Errichtung einer städtischen Mädchen-Mittelschule,” 1891.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Marie Reinders Realschule: 1901–1976 (Dortmund: n.p., 1976), 30.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Bericht über den Stand und die Verwaltung der Gemeinde-Angelegenheiten der Stadt Dortmund für das Jahr 1904/05 I. Teil (Dortmund: Ruhfus, 1907), 191; Bericbt über den Stand und die Verwaltung der Gemeinde-Angelegenheiten der Stadt Dortmund für das Jahr 1905/06 I. Teil (Dortmund: Crüwell, 1907), 224.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Hieber, Hanne, “Marie Reinders, 1867–1911,” in Biographien bedeutender Dortmunder, vol. 3, ed. Hans Bohrmann (Essen: Klartext, 2001), 155.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Marie Reinders Realschule, 37; Reinders's letter is reproduced.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ StArDo-3, Nr. 2905, Blatt 71, 9 March 1909.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Marie-Reinders Realschule, 39.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Kirchlicher Anzeiger, 16 March 1913.Google Scholar

⁵² LArM/BASch, Nr. II H 5010, 6 April 1908; Kirchlicher Anzeiger, 23 February 1913; Wand, Albert, Festschrift zum goldenen Jubiläum der Liebfrauenkirche: 1883–1933 (Dortmund: Lensing, 1933), 41.Google Scholar

⁵³ Kirchlicher Anzeiger, 28 January 1912.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Before the war it was up to individual municipalities whether they wanted to make vocational training obligatory; Schlüter, Neue Hüte – alte Hüte?, 67–82; Henschke, Margarete, “Die Mädchen-Fortbildungsschule,” in Handbuch, 143–52.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Faehre, Otto, Dortmunder Adreß-Buch für das Jahr 1894 (Dortmund: Selbstverlag, 1894), 55.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ StArDo-3, Nr. 2865, Blatt 30, 94, 234, 256–84. Housekeeping classes in Volksschulen were established in 1894 and continued to be taught at least until 1914.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Bericht über den Stand und die Verwaltung der Gemeinde-Angelegenheiten der Stadt Dortmund für das Jahr 1902/3, I. Teil (Dortmund: Krüger, 1905), 163; Bericht über den Stand und die Verwaltung der Gemeinde-Angelegenheiten der Stadt Dortmund für das Jahr 1904/05 I. Teil (Dortmund: Ruhfus, 1907), 115.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ StArDo-3, Nr. 1744, Blatt 30, brochure of Bahte's school.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Bericht Dortmund 1904/05, 115–6; StArDo-3, Nr. 1755, Blatt 3 and 13.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ StArDo-3, Nr. 1755, Blatt 30; on the Lettehaus see Heyl, “Die hauswirtschaftliche Schule,” in Handbuch, 158; Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, 101–3.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Many of the technical teachers employed in the Dortmund's Volksschulen were former students of Neugebohrn or Bahte, StArDo-3, Nr. 2865, Blatt 256, 261, 267, 272.Google Scholar

⁶² Bericht Dortmund 1905/06, 104. The training courses were two years long, and the minimum age for applicants was seventeen. Initial enrollment was forty.Google Scholar

⁶³ Bericht über den Stand und die Verwaltung der Gemeinde-Angelegenheiten der Stadt Dortmund für das Jahr 1905/06 I. Teil (Dortmund: Crüwell 1907), 137; StArDo-3, Nr. 1755, Blatt 25, 26. On the philanthropy, influence, and conservative nature of the Patriotic Women's Association see Jean H. Quataert, Staging Philanthropy: Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany, 1813–1916 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Municipalization of private schools as a result of financial difficulties was common, see for instance Klausmann, Politik und Kultur, 99.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ StArDo-3, Nr. 2918, Blatt 12–17, annual report of Municipal Girls’ Trade School for 1912. The city received an annual subsidy from the Prussian state to run the school. On the Pestalozzi-Froebel House see Allen, Ann Taylor, “Let Us Live with Our Children”: Kindergarten Movements in Germany and the United States, 1840–1914,” History of Education Quarterly 28, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 30–45.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ StArDo-B, Nr. 1803, Blatt 30, statistics for 1913.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Nienhaus, Ursula, Berufsstand weiblich (Berlin: Transit, 1982); Adams, Carole Elizabeth, Women Clerks in Wilhelmine Germany: Issues of Class and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Stockmann, Reinhard, “Gerwerbliche Frauenarbeit in Deutschland 1875–1980: Zur Entwicklung der Beschäftigtenstruktur,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 11 (1985): 463–4. Before the turn of the century fewer than five percent of all commercial salaried employees were women; this share increased rapidly to 18 percent in 1907.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Bericht Dortmund 1904/05, 114; StArDo-3, Nr. 2896, Blatt 17; Kirchlicher Anzeiger, 2 February 1913; StArDo-3, Nr. 2896, Blatt 27, 1903.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Bericht Dortmund 1905/06, 138; Bericht über den Stand und die Verwaltung der Gemeinde-Angelegenheiten der Stadt Dortmund für das Jahr 1906/07 I. Teil (Dortmund: Ruhfus 1908), 130.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ StArDo-3, Nr. 2896, Blatt 6, 25 June 1903.Google Scholar

⁷¹ StArDo-3, Nr. 2896, Blatt 80–1, 17 August 1905; Blatt 125, 13 April 1908; Blatt 132, 6 May 1908; Blatt 140, 17 March 1909; Blatt 142, 23 March 1909. Only a few German municipalities supported mandatory training, but the number was gradually increasing before 1914, Adams, Women Clerks 104–5.Google Scholar

⁷² StArDo-3, Nr. 2896, Blatt 39–40, 1906.Google Scholar

⁷³ StArDo-3, Nr. 2918, Blatt 12–17, annual report for Municipal Girls’ Trade School for 1912.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ StArDo3, Nr. 2896, Blatt 90.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv Dortmund [hereafter WArDo] Nr. K1–104, Blatt 43, 77, 29 September 1906; Bericht Dortmund 1906/07, 111.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ StArDo-3, Nr. 2896, Blatt 149, 11 August 1910; Dortmunder Tageblatt, 23 March 1910 and 12 April 1910. The new school offered a year-long course for girls with Volksschule education to learn the basics of commercial trade, and it provided the now mandatory schooling for female commercial employees up to age seventeen.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ WArDo, Nr. K1–104, Blatt 537ff; Kurzer Bericht über den Stand und die Verwaltung der Gemeinde-Angelegenheiten der Stadt Dortmund für das Jahr 1912/1913 (Dortmund: Boden & Firchow, 1914), 6.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Albisetti, Schooling German Girls, 274–79.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Dortmunder Tageblatt, 16 April 1910.Google Scholar