This article is about the public life of Bertha Pappenheim. For information on her psychological treatment by Josef Breuer under a pseudonym, see Anna O.

Anna O.

Anna O. was the pseudonym of a patient of Josef Breuer, who published her case study in his book Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim , an Austrian-Jewish feminist and the founder of the Jüdischer Frauenbund .Anna O...

Bertha Pappenheim (February 27, 1859, in Vienna - May 28, 1936, in Neu-Isenburg

Neu-Isenburg

The “Huguenot Town” of Neu-Isenburg with its outlying centres of Gravenbruch and Zeppelinheim is found in the Offenbach district in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany, right near Frankfurt am Main...

) was an Austrian

Austrians

Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....

-Jewish feminist, a social pioneer, and the founder of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (League of Jewish Women).

Youth

Bertha Pappenheim was born on 27 February, 1859 in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 as the 3rd daughter of Siegmund Pappenheim and Recha Pappenheim. Her father Siegmund (1824–1881) was from Preßburg (today's Bratislava

Bratislava

Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...

), Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

; the Jewish family name "Pappenheim" alludes to the Franconian town of Pappenheim

Pappenheim

Pappenheim is a town in the Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated on the river Altmühl, 11 km south of Weißenburg in Bayern.- Notable people :The architect and professor Eduard Mezger was born in Pappenheim....

. Her mother Recha, neé Goldschmidt

Goldschmidt

Goldschmidt is a German surname meaning "Goldsmith". It may refer to:* Adolph Goldschmidt , art historian* Berthold Goldschmidt , composer* Hans Goldschmidt , chemist, son of Theodor Goldschmidt...

(1830–1905), was from Frankfurt am Main. Both families were well-to-do and had roots in Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...

. Bertha was raised in the style of well-bred young ladies of good class. She attended a Roman Catholic girls' school and led a life structured by the Jewish holiday calendar

Hebrew calendar

The Hebrew calendar , or Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today predominantly for Jewish religious observances. It determines the dates for Jewish holidays and the appropriate public reading of Torah portions, yahrzeits , and daily Psalm reading, among many ceremonial uses...

 and summer vacations in Ischl.

When she was 8 years old her oldest sister Henriette (1849–1867) died of "galloping consumption

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

".The family's second daughter died at 2 years of age in 1855, 4 years before Bertha was born; see Jensen Streifzüge p. 19. When she was 11 the family moved from Vienna's Leopoldstadt

Leopoldstadt

Leopoldstadt is the 2nd municipal District of Vienna . There are inhabitants over . It is situated in the heart of the city and, together with Brigittenau , forms a large island surrounded by the Danube Canal and, to the north, the Danube. It is named after Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor...

, which was primarily inhabited by poverty-ridden Jews, to Liechtensteinstraße in the 9th District

Alsergrund

Alsergrund is the ninth district of Vienna, Austria . It is located just north of the first, central district, Innere Stadt. Alsergrund was incorporated in 1862, with seven suburbs. The area is densely populated, with a lot of government-built housing. According to the census of 2001, there were...

 Alsergrund. She left school when she was 16, devoted herself to needlework

Needlework

Needlework is a broad term for the handicrafts of decorative sewing and textile arts. Anything that uses a needle for construction can be called needlework...

 and helped her mother with the kosher preparation of their food. Her 18-month-younger brother Wilhelm (1860–1937) was meanwhile attending high school, which made Bertha intensely jealous.Jensen Streifzüge p. 21.

Illness

Between 1880 and 1882 Bertha Pappenheim was treated by Austrian physician Josef Breuer

Josef Breuer

Josef Breuer was an Austrian physician whose works laid the foundation of psychoanalysis.Born in Vienna, his father, Leopold Breuer, taught religion in Vienna's Jewish community. Breuer's mother died when he was quite young, and he was raised by his maternal grandmother and educated by his father...

 for a variety of nervous symptoms that appeared when her father suddenly became ill. Breuer kept his then-friend Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

 abreast of her case, informing his earliest analysis of the origins of hysteria.

Frankfurt

In November 1888 when she was 29 and after her convalescence, she and her mother moved to Frankfurt am Main. 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.

In this environment Bertha Pappenheim intensified her literary efforts (her publications began in 1888 and were initially anonymous; they later appeared under the pseudonym "P. Berthold") and became involved in social and political activities. She first worked in a soup kitchen

Soup kitchen

A soup kitchen, a bread line, or a meal center is a place where food is offered to the hungry for free or at a reasonably low price. Frequently located in lower-income neighborhoods, they are often staffed by volunteer organizations, such as church groups or community groups...

 and read aloud in an orphanage for Jewish girls run by the Israelitischer Frauenverein (Israelite Women's Association). 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.

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. In the following years she began—first of all in the journal Ethische Kultur (Ethical Culture)—to publish articles on the subject of women's rights. She also translated Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...

's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman".

Jüdischer Frauenbund

At the first German conference on combating traffic in women

Forced prostitution

Forced prostitution, also known as involuntary prostitution, is the act of performing sexual activity in exchange for money on a non-voluntary basis. There are a wide range of entry routes into prostitution, ranging from "voluntary and deliberate" entry, "semi-voluntary" based on pressure of...

 held in Frankfurt in October 1902, Bertha Pappenheim and Sara Rabinowitsch were asked to travel to Galicia

Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria

The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was a crownland of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian Empire, and Austria–Hungary from 1772 to 1918 .This historical region in eastern Central Europe is currently divided between Poland and Ukraine...

 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

Zionism

Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

.

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. Bertha 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

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

, 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 recognized as a sexual being" 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". Also politically liberal and emancipated Jews had a patriarchal and traditionalistic attitude about women's rights.

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 Bertha 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.

After the Nazis assumed power in 1933 Pappenheim again took over the presidency of the JFB, but 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. And after the antisemitic Nuremberg Laws

Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism...

 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 Hannah Karminski. In 1939 the League of Jewish Women was disbanded by the Nazis.

Neu-Isenburg

Bertha 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 orphanage for Jewish girls (Mädchenwohnheim Neu-Isenburg).

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).

Starting around 1906 Pappenheim had the goal of founding a refuge to help illegitimate girls and/or Jewish women endangered by prostitution and traffic in women, where she could implement the theories she had developed on Jewish social work. This home was to be operated on the following principles:

• In contrast to traditional Jewish charities, modern social work should be undertaken, focusing on education and training for an independent life.
• In accord with the principle of "follow-up aid", former home inhabitants' progress through life was to be monitored for an extended period to avert renewed negligence.
• The home should not be "an establishment caring for juveniles in the legal sense, no monument in stone to some foundation, with inscriptions, votive tablets, corridors, dormitories and dining halls, an elementary school, a detention room and cells, and a dominating director's family, but rather a home, although it can be only a surrogate for the proper raising of children in their own families, which was preferable".
• The residents should become involved in Jewish tradition and culture.
• The home should be kept simple, so that the residents become familiar with the realities and requirements of a lower middle class household.

Louise Goldschmidt, a relative of Pappenheim's mother, made available a pair of semi-detached houses where a girl's home could be established in Neu-Isenburg

Neu-Isenburg

The “Huguenot Town” of Neu-Isenburg with its outlying centres of Gravenbruch and Zeppelinheim is found in the Offenbach district in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany, right near Frankfurt am Main...

 near Frankfurt am Main with all its clinics and social institutions. In contrast to Prussian Frankfurt, Hessian Neu-Isenburg's less rigid laws also had advantages for stateless persons.

Thanks to donations amounting to 19,000 marks to furnish the house, it could begin operations on 25 November 1907 with the goal of providing "protection for those needing protection and education for those needing education".

The facility was plain, and was sometimes criticized for being excessively so. There was, for example, no running water in the bathrooms and central heating was only added in 1920. But the facilities did make it possible to strictly adhere to Jewish dietary and purity requirements, (kashruth, kosher). In the basement a passover kitchen was even available, although it was required only once a year.

Art in the house and garden was to serve to educate the residents. Examples are the children's fountain, Der vertriebene Storch (The Expelled Stork) designed by Fritz J. Kormis to illustrate a tale by Pappenheim, lecture series, modest theater performances, and speeches, among others by Martin Buber

Martin Buber

Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....

, a friend of Pappenheim and a guest on several occasions.

The number of residents was initially low, but grew in the course of time from 10 in 1908 to 152 in 1928. The property and existing buildings were expanded with purchases and donations and adapted to meet increasing requirements, and additional buildings were constructed. In the end the home consisted of four buildings, including one for pregnant women and those who had just given birth—the delivery itself took place in a Frankfurt clinic—and an isolation ward.

The home's school-aged children attended the Neu-Isenburg elementary school. There was extensive medical care for the residents, and at regular intervals psychiatric examinations. Pappenheim rejected psychoanalytic treatment for the residents. She herself only spoke once about psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

 in general: "Psychoanalysis is in the hands of a doctor what confession is in the hands of a Catholic priest; whether it becomes a good instrument or a double edged sword depends on who is administering it and on the treatment".

Since the ongoing financing of the home was preferably not to depend on rich individual patrons, an association, the Heim des jüdischen Frauenbundes e.V. (Home of the Jewish Women's Association), was established to act as its sponsor and owner. Membership fees of 3 marks per year were supposed to put the covering of running expenses on a broad basis.

Appreciation for her Neu-Isenburg work was not at first forthcoming for Bertha Pappenheim. Orthodox Jewish circles considered the founding of the home to be a scandal, and its existence a tacit toleration of prostitution and immorality. In order to reintegrate into the Jewish community single mothers, young prostitutes and their children, who in most cases had been disowned by their families, the home attempted to motivate families to resume relations with them, and known fathers to marry the mothers of their children or pay alimony.

Final years and death

After her mother died in 1905 Bertha Pappenheim lived alone for many years without a private attachment. "Mir ward die Liebe nicht" ("Love did not come to me"), she lamented in a poem dated 1911. In 1924 a close friendship began with the 40 years younger Hannah Karminski when Hannah took over the leadership of the Jüdischer Mädchenclub (Jewish Girl's Club). Both women spent their free time together as far as possible. When in 1925 Karminski moved for a time to Berlin, they wrote to each other almost daily.

On a trip to Austria in 1935 she donated two of her collections (lace and small cast iron

Cast iron

Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...

 objects) to the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.The collections were initially permanent loans of the Siegmund und Recha Pappenheim geborene Goldschmidt-Stiftung, and later came into the possession of the museum as donations. From Vienna she traveled on to Ischl. While traveling her general condition deteriorated and she was taken to the Israelite Hospital in Munich. During an operation which took place there it was determined that she had a malignant tumor. Despite her illness she traveled end of 1935 to Amsterdam in order to meet Henrietta Szold

Henrietta Szold

Henrietta Szold was a U.S. Jewish Zionist leader and founder of the Hadassah Women's Organization. In 1942, she co-founded Ihud, a political party in Mandate Palestine dedicated to a binational solution.-Biography:...

, the head of Youth Aliyah, and again to Galicia, to advise the Beth Jacob Schools. After returning to Frankfurt her suffering increased and she became bedridden. She also had jaundice

Jaundice

Jaundice is a yellowish pigmentation of the skin, the conjunctival membranes over the sclerae , and other mucous membranes caused by hyperbilirubinemia . This hyperbilirubinemia subsequently causes increased levels of bilirubin in the extracellular fluid...

.

During her last few days of life she was summoned for questioning by the state police station in Offenbach, the reason being denunciation by a Christian employee of the home. A feeble-minded girl had made a derogatory comment about Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

. Pappenheim refused to appear at the hearing because of poor health. After the hearing on 16 April 1936, for which she calmly but firmly supplied information regarding the accusation, no further steps were taken on the part of the police.

She died on 28 May 1936, cared for until the end by her friend Hannah Karminski, and was buried next to her mother in the Rat Beil Strasse Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt.

After the death of Bertha Pappenheim the work in Neu-Isenburg could continue essentially unhindered until the 1936 Olympic Games

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

. Starting in 1937 the children residing in the home were no longer allowed to attend the Neu-Isenburg elementary school and had to be transported daily to the Jewish school in Frankfurt. Starting in 1938 the Isenburg branch of the NSDAP instigated the closing down of the home.

On 10 November 1938, one day after the November Pogrom (Reichskristallnacht), the home was attacked. The main building was set afire and burned down, and the other buildings were wrecked. On 31 March 1942 the home was disbanded by the Gestapo

Gestapo

The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

. The remaining residents were deported to the concentration camp in Theresienstadt, where many died. On 9 December 1942 Hannah Karminski was brought to the extermination camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau where she was murdered on 4 June 1943.

Stories, plays, poetry

Bertha Pappenheim published her first works anonymously, and later under a pseudonym, "Paul Berthold", still a common practice among female writers of that time. She derived the pseudonym by modifying her own name: „Berth(a) Pappenheim“ became „P(aul) Berth(old)“. Starting in 1902 she published novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

s and plays under her own name.

Kleine Geschichten für Kinder (Little Stories for Children) appeared anonymously in 1888, to be followed in 1890 by a volume of tales, In der Trödelbude (In the Junk Shop). The nine novella in this volume have as their subject in each case a defective or otherwise useless item, such as a piece of lace, a music box, or a coffee pot.

In 1913 she published the play Tragische Momente. Drei Lebensbilder (Tragic Moments. Three Scenes from Life). The scenes correspond to three episodes in the life of a Jewish couple. In the first scene the young couple experiences the atrocities of the Russian pogroms of 1904 and flees to Frankfurt. In the second scene, as Russian Jews they are not accepted in the community. A Jewish innkeeper wants to employ the woman as a hostess and the man as a trickster. When they turn down his offer, he denounces them as political criminals and they flee to Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

. The third scene shows the man as a widower waiting for his son to return from Europe. When the son confesses that he cannot imagine a life as a farmer in Palestine, his father commits suicide. Pappenheim refused to have the play performed at a JFP assembly of delegates in 1933, "since the 'Tragic Moments', which I wrote without an ulterior motive, would certainly give rise to objections in Zionist circles because of their timeliness". She advised against "scattering explosives among the women".

In addition she wrote numerous texts unpublished during her lifetime. Most are lost and what remains is scattered. Among the scattered texts are the so-called Denkzettel ("Memoranda"), short maxims and sayings, some of which are dated and some of which she later had her secretary Lucy Jourdan collect and copy. An example: "Whoever foregoes his freedom without an urgent necessity does not deserve it." These texts also include the prayers which were published by the League of Jewish Women shortly after Pappenheim's death. These are not prayers in the sense of traditional Judaism, but personal poems addressed to God.

One of Pappenheim's poems written in the period 1910–1912:

Love did not come to me -

So I vegetate like a plant,

In a cellar, without light.

Love did not come to me -

So I resound like a violin,

Whose bow has been broken.

Love did not come to me -

So I immerse myself in work,

Living myself sore from duty.

Love did not come to me -

So I gladly think of death,

As a friendly face.

Translations

One of her first productions was a translation of Mary Wollstonecraft's programmatic paper in English on the women's rights movement. It appeared in 1899 under the title Mary Wollstonecraft – Eine Verteidigung der Rechte der Frau (Mary Wollstonecroft — in defense of women's rights).

Starting in 1910 she translated several Yiddish texts into German:

• The memoirs of Glikl bas Judah Leib
  Glückel of Hameln
  Glückel of Hameln was a Jewish businesswoman and diarist, whose account of life provides scholars with an intimate picture of German Jewish communal life in the late-17th-early eighteenth century Jewish ghetto...
  
   (also known as Glückel of Hameln
  Glückel of Hameln
  Glückel of Hameln was a Jewish businesswoman and diarist, whose account of life provides scholars with an intimate picture of German Jewish communal life in the late-17th-early eighteenth century Jewish ghetto...
  
  , who in fact was Pappenheim's ancestor)(1910),
• The Ma'assebuch, also known as the "Women's Talmud", a collection of stories from the Talmud
  Talmud
  The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
  
   and the Midrash
  Midrash
  The Hebrew term Midrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....
  
  (1929) and
• Parts of Ze'enah u-Re'enah, the so-called "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 apparently been lost.

Bertha Pappenheim dealt exclusively with texts written by women or for women. The Ma'assebuch and the Women's Bible were the most widely distributed works of Yiddish "women's literature". As to the purpose of her translations, she wrote in the foreword to Glikl:

Putting the text into modern language and punctuation has the purpose of reanimating the image of a woman who, deeply rooted in her times, stands out because of her unusual intellectual gifts, and is true to her faith, true to her people, true to her family, and true to herself.

And in the foreword to the Ma'assebuch she wrote:

In the hands of parents, educators and teachers the Allerlei Geschichten (All Kinds of Stories) can be a bridge to a new understanding of the meaning of traditional Jewish culture and beliefs.

Together with her brother Wilhelm and Stefan Meyer, a relative, she found out while researching her family tree that she was distantly related to Glikl. She also had Leopold Pilichowski (1869–1933) make a portrait of her as Glikl.

Articles and information pamphlets

The focus of her writings, however, was to provide information especially about the social situation of Jewish refugees and traffic in women. In 1924 she published her most well-known book, Sisyphus-Arbeit (Sisyphean Labor), a study on traffic in women and prostitution in Eastern Europe and the Orient.

Recognition

In 1954 a German postage stamp with a portrait of Bertha Pappenheim was issued in the series "Benefactors of Mankind" in recognition of her services. On the 50th anniversary of her death, a conference was held on various aspects of her life. On the former site of the Neu Isenburg home for endangered girls and unwed mothers, a seminar room and memorial to Bertha Pappenheim were inaugurated in 1997.

Links with further information

• Selective bibliography at: http://www.utoronto.ca/wjudaism/encyclopedia/e_p.html

• More on her life at: http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/pappenheim-bertha

• Let me continue to speak the truth: Bertha Pappenheim as author and activist. Elizabeth Loentz. Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College Press 2007 (also online in Google Books)