12 Facts About Minna Cauer

Wilhelmine Theodore Marie Cauer, nee Schelle, usually known as Minna Cauer, was a German pedagogue, activist in the so-called "radical" wing of the German bourgeois feminist movement, pacifist and journalist.

Alongside Anita Augspurg, Cauer was the most prominent figure in the radical feminist movement.

The daughter of a Lutheran pastor, Minna Cauer grew up in Freyenstein, in the Province of Brandenburg.

Minna Cauer married a left-wing educator and physician, August Latzel in 1862, but was widowed in 1866.

Minna Cauer then trained as a teacher, working in Paris for a year before marrying Eduard Cauer, a school inspector, and moving with him to Berlin.

Widowed for a second time in 1881, Minna Cauer resumed work as a teacher and started studying women's history.

Minna Cauer founded Frauenwohl in Berlin in 1888, leading it until 1919, campaigning for women's rights and abortion rights.

Minna Cauer founded the Commercial Union of Female Salaried Employees, one of the first nonpolitical women's trade unions, in 1889.

Increasingly radical, Minna Cauer helped establish the Union of Progressive Women's Associations in 1899.

In 1902 the suffrage movement gained the backing of the FGWA, and with Anita Augspurg, Lida Gustava Heymann and Marie Stritt Minna Cauer co-founded the German Union for Women's Suffrage, which pursued both suffrage cause and moral campaigns, such as that against state-regulated prostitution.

In 1908, frustrated by the disinterest of the Free-minded People's Party in women's suffrage, Minna Cauer founded a more militant group, the Prussian Union for Women's Suffrage.

Minna Cauer's papers are held at the International Institute of Social History.