She was born on 2 July 1865 in
Halberstadt, in the
Prussian province of Saxony, the daughter of , General of the Infantry in the
Prussian Army, and his wife Jenny, née von Gustedt (1843–1903). Her maternal grandmother, the writer Jenny von Gustedt (1811–1890), was an illegitimate daughter of
Jérôme Bonaparte,
Napoleon Bonaparte's brother and
King of Westphalia, and his mistress
Diana Rabe von Pappenheim. Lily Braun's great-niece,
Marianne von Kretschmann, married
Richard von Weizsäcker, president of Germany from 1984 to 1994. Raised according to the
Prussian virtues of order and discipline from her father's military career, Braun nevertheless developed a direct and open personality, encouraged in particular by her grandmother . She was considered to be highly ambitious, and her family provided her with a broad education by numerous private teachers. From an early age, she began to question her parents'
bourgeois values as influenced by
Lutheranism and
Calvinism as well the position of women in Prussian society. When her father retired in 1890, Braun had to establish a sustainable livelihood herself. In 1893, Braun married to , a professor of philosophy at the
Frederick William University in
Berlin, who was associated with the Social Democratic Party without however being a member. Together with him she was involved in the
ethical movement, which sought to establish a system of morality in place of the traditional religions. Also, she became concerned with the ideas of
socialism and the
feminist movement, working as a journalist for the feminist newspaper '''' (The Women's Movement) issued by
Minna Cauer. After her first husband's death, she married in 1896
Heinrich Braun, who was a Social Democratic politician and a publicist. The couple had one son,
Otto Braun, a talented poet who was killed at the
Western Front in the last months of
World War I. Braun joined the SPD at an early age and became one of the leaders of the German
feminist movement. Within the party, she belonged to the
revisionist opposition within the SPD, which did not believe in the theories of
historical materialism, but aimed for a gradual change in society, rather than a socialist revolution. Her attempts to mediate between proletarian and bourgeois feminist circles and proposals on reconciliation of family and working life were highly criticized. Her answers to
the woman question were rejected by socialist authors like
Clara Zetkin, while middle-class circles considered her ideas too radical. Like her fellow political activist
Helene Stöcker, Braun was strongly influenced by
Friedrich Nietzsche; she and her husband wanted the SPD to focus on the development of personality and individuality. They believed women should have their own personality and should not have to be regarded only as (future) mothers and wives. Braun wanted
economic freedom for women and advocated new types of personal relations up to the abolition of legal marriage. Deeply concerned about the fate of her son, Braun died in
Zehlendorf (today part of Berlin) from the consequences of a stroke at the age of 51, in the midst of World War I. After her death, her second husband Heinrich Braun married
Julie Braun-Vogelstein, who was also the editor of Lily Braun's
Collected Works. == Works ==