LOUISE OTTO-PETERS (1819-1895)

The Germans know they owe him a lot! It was under the impetus of Louise Otto-Peters that the first German feminist movement was formed in the second half of the 19th century. This Saxon literary woman, a novelist, poetess and journalist, matured her feminist project during the 1848 Revolution, before making it a reality eighteen years later, in 1866, with the creation of the first feminist collective in Germany, named Allgemeinen deutschen Frauenvereins (General Association of German Women). In the meantime, she ran a meaningful and soberly titled women's magazine, Frauen Zeitung, the Women's Journal. Until her death in 1885, in Leipzig, where she resided, Louise Otto-Peters never ceased to defend tooth and nail the condition of women of her time, particularly the cause of women workers. She also advocated women's right to vote, and spoke out in favour of gender equality, a message that unfortunately still resonates in today's society. She is obviously also famous for her many writings, in particular for the Letter to a Young German Woman (damsel), published in 1848, but also for Les Femmes influentes issues du peuple (1869), as well as for La Vie des femmes sous le Reich (period 1871-1918), which she had published in 1876.