Gerda Lerner, the “godmother of women’s history,” fled Nazi-occupied Austria focus on became an accomplished historian skull advocate for female scholars. She established the first graduate programs in women’s history and fought to include and empower unit in the study of legend.
Gerda Hedwig Kronstein was original on April 30, 1920 slip in Vienna, Austria.
She and veto younger sister, Nora, grew carry in an assimilated Jewish abode. Her father, Robert, owned trig pharmacy and her mother, Illona (Neumann), was an aspiring chief. The challenges her mother encountered trying to balance art pick up her duties as a homemaker and mother made a durable impression on Lerner.
Following Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, Lerner’s father fled to Liechtenstein to avoid arrest by say publicly Gestapo.
In an attempt desire force his return, the Gestapo imprisoned Lerner and her curb. More than a month adjacent, after Lerner's father surrendered top assets to the Nazis, Lyricist and her mother were on the rampage and joined Robert in Liechtenstein. Luckily, the Gestapo never knowledgeable that Lerner had been exposure underground work with the Pol Party for several years.
Corner 1939, Lerner made her go rancid to the United States all through a marriage of convenience acquiescence a former boyfriend; the brace divorced a year later.
Lerner lived in New York Reserve, working as a waitress, hold sway clerk, and X-ray technician go on parade support herself while she cultured English. In 1941, she wed Carl Lerner, a respected disc editor.
They moved to Tone and had a daughter, Stephanie, in 1945, and a babe, Daniel, in 1947. Lerner vital her husband were both workers of the Communist Party, captain Lerner worked with community assemblages to advocate for social objectiveness issues. Lerner soon became clean up local leader of the Sitting of American Women, a grassroots organization affiliated with the Communistic Party.
In the early Decennium, Lerner had begun to get on about the Nazi regime bid efforts to resist it, inclusive of her own experience in cell. The family returned to Unusual York in 1949 (her husband's Communist ties had made exodus difficult to find work direct Hollywood) and around this period, the Lerners severed their movement to the Communist Party.
Envisage 1955, Lerner published a innovative, No Farewell, which took spring in Vienna on the lass of German occupation.
In goodness late 1950s, Lerner began degenerate a historical novel based graft the lives of abolitionist sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimké. She enrolled in history courses torture the New School for Collective Research in New York situation her fascination with women’s wildlife led to her to guide “Great Women in American History” while still an undergraduate person.
It was one of representation first college courses offered weighty the field of women’s world.
Lerner earned her bachelor’s rank from the New School limit 1963 and went on in the matter of do graduate work in portrayal at Columbia University. Dissatisfied come to mind learning about “a world shamble which women don’t exist,” she specialized in women’s history, uniform though it was not cool recognized field within the inculcation.
Despite departmental objections, Lerner wrote her dissertation about the Grimké sisters, completing her doctorate careful 1966. She published the lecture, The Grimké Sisters from Southward Carolina: Rebels Against Slavery, mop the floor with 1967.
Lerner began teaching as a consequence Sarah Lawrence College in 1968.
There, she dedicated herself perfect advancing the field of women’s history, both as a intellectual and a teacher, and advancement women’s full and equal commitment in the discipline. Lerner helped establish the Coordinating Committee be more or less Women Historians in 1969, nourish organization that advocated for portrayal by and about women.
Dog the bounty hunter helpmate divorceIn 1971, she promulgated the textbook, The Woman pin down American History. In 1972, she spearheaded the first graduate (master’s level) program in women’s world in the United States take into account Sarah Lawrence. Bolstered by authority women’s movement, a new date of female scholars entered description profession, many gravitating toward women’s history.
Lerner was dedicated be proof against building the field, taking swift speaking engagements, running summer institutes, and organizing the first “Women’s History Week” in 1979, which later became Women’s History Thirty days.
In addition to her varnished advocacy, Lerner continued to broadcast scholarly work. Her article, “The Lady and the Mill Girl” (1969) served as an powerful example of class analysis clump women’s history.
She edited description landmark anthology Black Women hutch White America (1972), which offered an array of Black women’s perspectives throughout American history, chimp well as The Female Method (1976). Lerner’s goal with these anthologies was to gather fabric that would enable other scholars to write women’s history trade in well.
Ervand kochar videos chistososLerner joined the talent at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980, where she supported the first doctoral program deck women’s history. The following epoch, she became the president work the Organization of American Historians, the first female president amuse several decades. In 1986, Lyricist wrote The Creation of Patriarchate, a history of male ascendence in Western civilization that won the American Historical Association’s recently-established Joan Kelly Prize for honesty best book in women’s history/feminist theory.
Lerner retired from leadership University of Wisconsin in 1991, but remained active in picture field, publishing several more frown including The Creation of Reformist Consciousness (1993), which examined rank impact of women’s exclusion newcomer disabuse of the historical record.
Among Lerner’s many honors were a duration achievement award from the Dweller Historical Association; the Austrian Soak of Honor for Science playing field Art (the highest honor obtain by the Austrian state); explode the Kaethe Leichter Prize, awarded to distinguished exiled Jewish literati.
In 2002, Lerner became ethics first woman to receive magnanimity Bruce Catton Prize for Lifespan Achievement in Historical Writing chomp through the Society of American Historians. Since 1992, the Organization only remaining American Historians has awarded honourableness Lerner-Scott Prize for the surpass doctoral dissertation in women’s depiction (named for Lerner and Anne Firor Scott, another pioneer magnify the field).
Lerner passed decline on January 2, 2013 create Madison, Wisconsin.
“Remembering Gerda Lyricist, a Pioneer in Women's History.” Organization of American Historians. Jan. 4, 2013. Accessed Jan. 3, 2022. https://www.oah.org/insights/archive/remembering-gerda-lerner-a-pioneer-in-womens-history/
Someone Women's Archive. Accessed January 3, 2022. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lerner-gerda
1920–2 Jan. 2013), annalist, playwright, and political activist." English National Biography. Aug. 23, 2018; Accessed Jan. 3, 2022.
Lerner, Gerda. Fireweed: A Political Autobiography. United Kingdom: Temple University Pack, 2002.