Women and education were not originally thought to mix. Originally, Austria stopped educating girls at the age of 14 and did not allow women in Austrian universities until 1897 (Sime, 2002). Women who expressed a desire to go to university were often met with shock and closed mindedness. Traditional values stated that women were naturally inclined to be mothers and housewives and men provided for their families. The female pioneers that were college educated either did not marry or married later in life. They also had less children or no children all together (Freidenreich, 2002, p. 108).

Heidelberg University. ©Alan Caplar

Education

The first female German university enrollment occurred in April 1900 at the University of Heidelberg and female enrollment throughout the country was around 5 to 10 percent. Austria was much more bleak with 2 percent of enrollment being women. According to the article, Education of Women in Germany, written in 1906, there was little opposition to women becoming teachers, but salaries varied greatly between men and women, “the teachers’ salaries are: for male principals, $1,360; for female, principals, $550; for male teachers, $800; for female teachers, $460” (Dormeyer, 1906, p. 54).

Girls were encouraged from a young age to assume their household responsibilities but “boys of twenty or still younger spoil their prospects in life by marrying” (Dormeyer, 1906 p. 52). This argument is given in favor of boys continuing education but not girls and certainly they should not be educated together or the boys will become distracted from their work and get married. Pursuing education after the age of 14 for girls was discouraged because “prolonged attention wearies them”, among other nonsensical reasons (p. 51).

Nevertheless throughout the 20th century girls were afforded more and more opportunities. At the age of six, girls and boys were both expected to go to public school, then girls could go to what was called manual training school from age 14 to 16 where mainly domestic subjects were taught. After that they could go to seminar which prepared them for teaching careers. Finally Gymnasium is where girls studied for university from age 16 to 19 (Dormeyer, 1906, p. 55).

Jobs in Academia

Those that went to Seminar found themselves as teachers, mainly in elementary, middle, and all girls high schools (Freidenreich, 2002 p. 69). Before the Nazi’s took control of Germany and annexed Austria, 84 women held paid positions in academia in those two countries. A measly four women held the title of full professor (p. 73). The path to academic careers was paved with unpaid research positions and even those were difficult to obtain. Lise Meitner was relegated to a “basement woodworking shop with a separate entrance and had to use the toilet in a restaurant down the street” while she worked as an unpaid researcher at the Chemistry Institute because women were not allowed upstairs with the men (p. 75).

Careers During WWII

Nazi’s took over Germany in 1933 and at the time 100,000 women worked as teachers and 3,000 were doctors. Hitler was against women in professional positions and most women lost these jobs. They were then prohibited from working in high-ranking careers such as judges, lawyers, and principals, and from working in “influential positions in government agencies, charities, schools and hospitals” . A quota on university positions was put in place where women were not to exceed 10 percent of the faculty (Llewellyn, Southey, and Thompson,  2014).