Gertrud Baer was a German Jewish women's rights and peace activist.
19 Facts About Gertrud Baer
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Gertrud Baer was born on 25 November 1890 in Halberstadt, in the Province of Saxony of the Kingdom of Prussia to the Jewish couple, Sara and Gustav Baer.
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Gertrud Baer's mother was the daughter of the Chief Rabbi of Hamburg, Anschel Stern, and his wife Jeanette.
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Gertrud Baer was the oldest sibling in the family, which relocated to Hamburg when she was around two years old.
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Gertrud Baer was influenced by her mother's involvement in the German bourgeois women's movement and accompanied her to meetings.
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Gertrud Baer completed her early schooling and trained to be a teacher studying in Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich and Neuchatel, Switzerland.
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That meeting was followed-up in 1919 with the formation of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, which Gertrud Baer immediately joined, served in various positions with the German branch of WILPF from its founding year.
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Between 1918 and 1919, Gertrud Baer set up a women's council in the Munich Ministry of Social Affairs, for the newly created Bavarian Soviet Republic.
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Gertrud Baer participated in the summer courses on Internationalism, sponsored by WILPF in the early 1920s.
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In 1922, Gertrud Baer, who had been executive secretary of the German WILPF for a year, made her first trip to the United States.
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Gertrud Baer missed her meeting with President Harding, when immigration detained her because of her membership in the Communist Party of Germany and fears that she had insufficient funds to support herself while in the country.
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Gertrud Baer served as vice president of the German Peace Cartel and traveled widely in Europe.
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When Hitler took over Germany in 1933, Gertrud Baer fled the country and obtained citizenship in Czechoslovakia.
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The Council had been moved to Princeton, New Jersey and it was deemed necessary for Gertrud Baer to relocate for safety concerns.
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In 1940, Gertrud Baer became American citizen, though she returned to Geneva permanently in 1950.
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In 1965, at the fiftieth anniversary convention for the creation of WILPF, Gertrud Baer expressed her frustration that the organization had moved away from its feminist roots, reminding members that until full equality in all spheres of life had been attained, women would remain at risk.
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At the close of the 1960s, Gertrud Baer was still committed to the organization, pressing for membership to be expanded to include young people and those outside mainstream organizations.
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Gertrud Baer pressed for disarmament and worked to get the superpowers to agree to passage of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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Ahead of her time in many ways, Gertrud Baer's ideas preceded both second-wave feminism and the 1980s rebirth of the peace movement.