Provenance and early years Anna Goldschmidt was born at
Frankfurt am Main, at that time a
free city within the
German Confederation. However, she was still only 7 when the city lost its independence,
becoming instead part of what came to be known in English language sources as the
German empire. Moritz Benedict Goldschmidt (1831-1906), her father, was co-owner of a successful banking business and a notable art collector: Anna and her siblings underwent a childhood conditioned by her father's significant wealth. Her mother, born Pauline Jacobsen (1836-1901), came from a Jewish mercantile family with close family links to
Hamburg. It was as a member of the city's Jewish haute bourgeoisie that Anna grew up in a large lively family home in which guests were always welcomed. As a result of her parents' sociability, Anna Goldschmidt came into frequent contact with artists and art collectors, without ever needing to leave the house. Regular visitors also included academics, journalist and social philanthropists. Two of these were the pioneering gynecologist
Elisabeth Winterhalter (whose patient she later became) and Winterhalter's partner, the artist
Ottilie Roederstein, both of whom became personal friends and allies in respect of shared objectives that included securing, for women, access to university-level education and the improvement of social living conditions.
Ludwig Edinger She also acquired a particular interest in what sources of the time term the "natural sciences", and might have wished to study science at a university level, but the opportunities to do so in Germany did not exist. Other countries, notably Switzerland (where her friend
Elisabeth Winterhalter had studied medicine), were a little bit less restrictive when it came to higher education for women, but even to contemplate studying abroad would have risked a breach with her parents. Anna had a powerful sense of duty, meaning that such a breach would have been unthinkable for her. Slightly unusually, she was instead able to find a rewarding outlet for her fascination with, and growing knowledge of, the "natural sciences" through marriage. The marriage took place in
Frankfurt am Main and was followed, in due course, by the births of the couple's three children between 1888 and 1897. Anna Edinger was a compulsive autodidact, and was on occasion able to apply knowledge she had acquired through her own studies to support her husband's research, who found her hunger fir knowledge "a source of singular joy" (
"ausgesprochen genussfreudig"). In 1892 she teamed up with Hella Flesch to set up the Frankfurt "Hauspflegeverein" (
"Home care association"), in order to provide help for low income families in need and, in particular, to finance home nursing for housewives confined to their homes by childbirth or illness. on account of her ambitions for the association. This turned out to be the launch of a significant project which created a precedent for other towns and cities across Germany. Carefully trained carers saw to it that impoverished families were cared for if the woman of the house fell ill. In this way Edinger created and implemented a dual emancipatory strategy which supported both the providers and the recipients of the emergency home care. Longstanding assumptions of "natural distinctions" between gender roles also sometimes came to be reassessed. Aspects of "maternal care" and related now were to be re-evaluated in terms of "domestic responsibilities" in response to rapidly progressing industrialisation and urbanisation that were a feature of the time. There was a sense in which unpaid women's work and rarely or minimally paid women's work could become a professionalised branch of labour.
Peace Balancing family duties with support for her husband's research work and her co-ordination and management activities involving local welfare charities, along with the
BdF, was presumably a challenge. Nevertheless, during the first decade of the twentieth century she was also emerging as a forceful peace activist, initially locally and then both nationally and internationally, as part of the
International Peace Movement which grew up in parallel with the intensifying
arms race. As early as 1893 Erdinger was a member of the "Frankfurter Friedensverein" (
"Frankfurt Peace Association"), founded in 1886. She participated actively in several of the association's conferences. She used her networks to promote the twin causes of peace and freedom. In an age of increasingly untrammeled
jingoism, her uncompromising commitment pacifism (in combination, frequently, with her feminism) attracted hostility from many backers and members of the more mainstream women's organisations. The stresses of war had led to political polarisation in Germany as elsewhere, and the
BdF refused to have anything to do with the
Hague Conference, arguing that participation would run counter to national duty. Her opposition to militarism seems to have been behind the BdF "internal politics" which as early as 1910 had cost Edinger her membership of the organisation's national executive committee. Now the leadership decided that becoming involved in the Hague Conference was "unpatriotic" and thereby incompatible with BdF membership. What followed was a stark - and in terms of shared objectives potentially damaging - split in the German women's movement, between the "middle-class" and "socialist" wings. The Social Democrat ladies suddenly rediscovered their "patriotism" and, in a development which both echoed and contrasted with the
split within the
SPD itself, it was now the BdF's "middle-class peaceniks", such as Edinger, who were pushed into positions of opposition. By participating in the
1915 Hague Peace Conference Edinger was seen to have "boycotted" the call of the
BdF. Edinger was also able to support the event with a large financial donation. When it was over she offered her report of the conference to
Helene Lange, in Lange's capacity as president of the
"Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein" / ADF in order that it might be published in the ADF's newly launched feminist periodical "Neue Bahnen. Blätter für soziale Arbeit". Lange refused to print it, however, on the grounds that participation at the congress indicated a "not patriotic" attitude. This rigidly exclusionist approach was greeted by Edinger with incomprehension and exasperation: she was unable to comprehend hos it could be construed as "not patriotic" to participate in a conference that opposed a war that "nobody wanted".
Later years After the war ended Anne Edinger continued her antiwar engagement, working with what became the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She also continued to serve as president of the "Verband Frankfurter Frauenvereine" (''loosely, "Confederation of Women's Associations"''). ==References==