32 Facts About Gerda Lerner

Gerda Hedwig Lerner was an Austrian-born American historian and woman's history author.

Gerda Lerner served as president of the Organization of American Historians from 1980 to 1981.

Gerda Lerner taught at Long Island University from 1965 to 1967.

Gerda Lerner played a key role in the development of women's history curricula and was involved in the development of degree programs in women's history at Sarah Lawrence College and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she launched the first Ph.

Gerda Lerner worked at Duke University and Columbia University, where she was a co-founder of the Seminar on Women.

Gerda Lerner was born Gerda Hedwig Kronstein in Vienna, Austria, on April 30,1920, the first child of Ilona Kronstein and Robert Kronstein, an affluent Jewish couple.

Gerda Lerner's family are originating and relating to Breslau, Berlin, Leva, Turdossin, Helishoy, and Reichenberg.

Gerda Lerner's father was a pharmacist, and her mother an artist, with whom Gerda, according to her autobiography, had a strained relationship as a child.

Gerda Lerner had a younger sister, and they attended local schools and gymnasium.

Gerda Lerner Kronstein occupied a cell for six weeks with two Christian women held on political grounds.

In 1939, her mother moved to France, and Gerda Lerner's sister relocated to Palestine.

That year, Gerda Lerner immigrated to the United States under the sponsorship of the family of Bobby Jensen, her socialist fiance.

Gerda Lerner worked in a variety of jobs as a waitress, salesperson, office clerk, and X-ray technician, while writing fiction and poetry.

Gerda Lerner published two short stories featuring first-person accounts of the Nazi annexation of Austria.

Gerda Lerner's marriage with Jensen was failing when she met Carl Lerner, a married theater director who was a member of the Communist Party USA.

Kronstein and Gerda Lerner married and moved to Hollywood, where Carl pursued a career in film-making.

In 1946, Gerda Lerner helped found the Los Angeles chapter of the Congress of American Women, a Communist front organization.

In 1951, Gerda Lerner collaborated with poet Eve Merriam on a musical, The Singing of Women.

Gerda Lerner enrolled at the New School for Social Research, where she received a bachelor's degree in 1963.

In 1966, Gerda Lerner became a founding member of the National Organization for Women, and she served as a local and national leader for a short period.

Gerda Lerner's 1969 article "The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson", published in the journal American Studies, was an early and influential example of class analysis in women's history.

Gerda Lerner was among the first to bring a consciously feminist lens to the study of history.

In 1979, Gerda Lerner chaired The Women's History Institute, a fifteen-day conference at Sarah Lawrence College, co-sponsored by the college, the Women's Action Alliance, and the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1980, Gerda Lerner moved to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she established the nation's first Ph.

From 1981 to 1982, Gerda Lerner served as president of the Organization of American Historians.

Gerda Lerner edited Black Women in White America: A Documentary History, which chronicles 350 years of black women's contributions to history, despite centuries of being enslaved and treated as property.

Gerda Lerner concluded that patriarchy was part of archaic states forming in the 2nd millennium BCE.

Gerda Lerner provides historical, archeological, literary, and artistic evidence for the idea that patriarchy is a cultural construct.

Gerda Lerner believed that the main strength of patriarchy was ideological and that in western societies it "severed the connection between women and the Divine".

Gerda Lerner believed that education and life work were critical to women's self-realization and happiness.

Gerda Lerner died on January 2,2013, in Madison, Wisconsin, at the age of 92.

Gerda Lerner was survived by her grown children Dan and Stephanie Lerner.