Queer Places:
Jewish Cemetery of Veyrier
Veyrier, Geneva, Geneve, Switzerland
Gertrud
Baer (November 25, 1890 – December 15, 1981) was a German Jewish
women's rights and peace
activist. One of the founding members of the Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom, she served as the executive
secretary of the German branch of WILPF beginning in 1921 and co-chair of the
international organization from 1929 to 1947. Throughout World
War II, though leadership was shared, Baer was the primary leader of the
organization. At the end of the war, she became the first WILPF consultant
to the United Nations and
held that post until 1972.
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 Stern and Gustav Baer. Her father, of long-established family from
Halberstadt of doctors and teachers. He was a metalwork dealer. Her mother was
the daughter of the Chief
Rabbi of Hamburg, Anschel
Stern, and
Jeanette Adler.[1] Baer's
maternal great-grandfather was Nathan
Marcus Adler who had served as the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire and
his father Mordechai Baer Adler, who had been the Chief Rabbi of Hanover.[2]
Baer was the oldest sibling in the family, which relocated to Hamburg when
she was around two years old. Younger siblings Erna (1892–1967), Walter (born
1894), Harriet (1896–1956), and Jeanette (1903–1944) were all born in Hamburg.
Jeanette was murdered at Auschwitz during
the Holocaust.[1] She
was influenced by her mother's involvement in the German bourgeois women's
movement and accompanied her to meetings. At one of those meetings, she met Lida
Gustava Heymann and with her, worked at the first women's house in
Hamburg.[3] Baer
completed her early schooling and trained to be a teacher studying in
Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich
and Neuchâtel,
Switzerland.[4]
Completing her training, Baer began her career as a teacher in Hamburg.[4] During World
War I Baer relocated to Munich and
became involved with Heymann, Anita
Augspurg and Helene
Stöcker in the Pacifist
Movement.[1][3] In
1915, she attended International
Congress of Women[3] held
in The Hague, where the
first ideas were launched for women to form the International Committee of
Women for Permanent Peace. That meeting was followed-up in 1919 with the
formation of the Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF),[5] which
Baer immediately joined, served in various positions with the German branch of
WILPF from its founding year.[1] Between
1918 and 1919, Baer set up a women's council in the Munich Ministry of Social
Affairs, for the newly created Bavarian
Soviet Republic.[3][6] She
also participated in the summer courses on Internationalism,
sponsored by WILPF in the early 1920s.[7] Between
1919 and 1933, she worked for the women’s journals Die Fray im Staat (Women in
the State) and Die Friedenswarte (Peace Watch).[8]
In 1922, Baer, who had been executive secretary of the German WILPF for a
year, made her first trip to the United States.[9][8] She
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.[9][10][11] Released
after the intervention of Jane
Addams, Baer, when speaking at a later meeting, urged women to join in the
peace movement and anti-war demonstrations.[12][13] Giving
lectures with members from Britain and France, Baer urged the United States to
withdraw troops from Latin
America, to release political prisoners, and to recognize the Soviet
Union.[6] Along
with Heymann and Frida
Perlen, Baer
led the efforts to reconcile German and French women in the interwar
period. One such initiative was a tree planting held in 1926 in northern
France. Baer also served as vice president of the German Peace Cartel and
traveled widely in Europe.[8]
Returning to the United States in 1924 to attend the WILPF International
Conference, Baer urged that Hitler be
taken as a serious threat.[8][14] In
1929, she succeeded Jane Addams as the International Chair of the WILPF,[4] but
due to the volume of work to be done, it was decided that the responsibilities
Addams had carried were to be shared with Emily
Greene Balch and Clara
Ragaz.[15][16] When
Hitler took over Germany in 1933, Baer fled the country and obtained
citizenship in Czechoslovakia.[17] WILPF
leadership called an emergency meeting and gave her asylum,
hiring her to work full-time to prepare for their next conference.[18][19] When
the Nazis seized and occupied the
country, she then fled to Geneva.[17] Upon
Addams death in 1935, it was decided to have Baer, Ragaz and Cor
Ramondt-Hirschmann, continue the shared responsibilities as WILPF chairs.[15] Making
her third trip to the United States that year, Baer participated in a
disarmament conference, appealing for the nations of the world to work
together for peace.[20]
In 1939, Baer, the monitor for WILPF of the Economic Council of the League
of Nations, was sent to the United States. The Council had been moved to Princeton,
New Jersey and it was deemed necessary for Baer to relocate for safety
concerns. From there, she served as the primary leader of the WILPF,
throughout the war, preparing the circular communications that quarterly were
sent to international branches.[21] The
chair was still shared by Baer and Ragaz, but British pacifist Kathleen
Innes, had replaced Ramondt-Hirschmann in 1937 as the third member.[16] The
three women sent a letter to President
Roosevelt urging him to allow refugees into the country.[22] In
1940, Baer became American citizen, though she returned to Geneva permanently
in 1950.[1] Having
kept alive the contacts and the organization, at the end of the war, Baer
became the first WILPF consultant to the United
Nations and held that post until 1972.[23] Some
of the initiatives she was involved in was urging the World
Health Organization to investigate what effect atomic
tests and specifically radiation posed
to the population. Beginning in 1955, she stressed the need to utilize solar
energy, rather than pursue nuclear
power,[24] and
in a 1960 campaign urged rural education through radio broadcasting.[25]
In 1965, at the fiftieth anniversary convention for the creation of WILPF,
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.[26] The
following year, as an observer to the UN NGO Forum held in Rome, Baer again
spoke about the links between feminism and pacifism, while urging
self-determination for Viet
Nam.[27] At
the close of the 1960s, Baer was still committed to the organization, pressing
for membership to be expanded to include young people and those outside
mainstream organizations.[28] She
pressed for disarmament and worked to get the superpowers to agree to passage
of the 1968 Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.[29] Ahead
of her time in many ways, Baer's ideas preceded both second-wave
feminism and the 1980s rebirth of the peace movement.[30] In
1977, a documentary film by Michaela Belger, entitled Gertrud Baer. Ein Leben
für die Gleichberechtigung der Frau, für Frieden und Freiheit (Gertrud Baer: A
Life for the Equal Rights of Woman, for Peace and Freedom) was released to
honor Baer's work.[1]
Baer died on 15 December 1981 in Geneva.[1] The
seminars WILPF holds annually to train new members were renamed in 1981 as the
Gertrude Baer Young Women’s Summer Seminars, in her honor.[31]
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