Queer Places:
Porzellangasse 32, 1090 Wien, Austria
Zentralfriedhof
Vienna, Wien Stadt, Vienna (Wien), Austria
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Leopoldine
Kulka (31 March 1872 – 2 January 1920) was an Austrian writer and editor. She
was the first woman lecturer at the University of Vienna. As editor of
Neues Frauenleben she controversially met women
from combatant countries at the 1915 Women's conference at the Hague.
Jane Addams described how she felt
when she met in Zürich the Austrian delegate Leopoldina Kulka, whom she
remembered from The Hague meeting four years earlier as a beautiful and
blooming woman. Kulka, shrunken and marked by hunger and privation, was now
almost unrecognizable. She died a few months later.
Kulka was born in Vienna in 1872. She joined the radical General Austrian
Women's Association (GAWA) before she was thirty. She also became interested
in peace issues at the start of the century. She was writing regularly for
political magazines for women.[1]
In 1902
Auguste Fickert started an Austrian magazine which she called Neues
Frauenleben with Kulka as its editor. Kulka was a historian of literature
and the first woman lecturer at the University of Vienna.[2]
In 1904 she and
Adele Gerber went to Berlin to help found the International Women's
Suffrage Alliance.[3]
In 1911 she became vice-president of the GAWA.[1]
In 1914 she had helped translate Women and Labour by
Olive Schreiner
into German. The South African Schreiner argued that women understood the
value of life more than men.[4]
Despite a lot of debate about the value of a women's peace conference[1]
she was the delegate chosen in 1915. She traveled to The Hague where she
represented Austria at the Women at the Hague conference. This was during the
first World War but even then she raised 1,000 signatures of support. She and
Olga Meser were supported by the magazine Neues Frauenleben.[4]
On their return they both made reports to the magazine about the conference
noting the difficulties that some delegates had in attending the conference.[4]
The delegation from Britain was trimmed by the Foreign Office to 24 delegates
and actually only two made it to the Hague. Italy only managed one delegate,
Rosa Genoni, and
she was keen to note that she did not represent her country.
Laura Hughes came from
Canada to represent what was called at the time "the Colonies".[5]
In 1917 she led the peace section of the GAWA.[1]
In 1919 the war had finished and Kulka horrified
Jane Addams and other delegates as
she described the demoralising effects of starvation.[6]
Kulka died in
Vienna in 1920.
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldine_Kulka
- Oakley, Ann. Women, Peace and Welfare . Policy Press.
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