Dr. Hilde Lion

Hilde Lion was born on May 14, 1893 as the third of four children into a wealthy Jewish merchant family in Hamburg. At that time, women were not allowed to take A-levels or study. Lion initially trained as a teacher. Her work as a teacher sensitized her to the plight of working-class children.

From 1917, she continued her education at the newly established "Social Pedagogical Seminar" in Hamburg, which had been founded by her friends Gertrud Bäumer and Marie Baum. Her goals were to combine career and family and to define an independent female identity. In 1918, she therefore joined the left-liberal German Democratic Party with the aim of activating women for parliamentary democracy.

From 1919, she studied economics and education in Freiburg, Berlin and Cologne and received her doctorate in 1924. Her dissertation was published under the title "On the Sociology of the Women's Movement" and remains a fundamental work for the history of the German women's movement to this day.

From 1925 onwards, Lion taught in Berlin at the "Social Pedagogical Seminar" of the Charlottenburg Youth Home Association, which Anna von Gierke had founded. Despite her academic expertise, she saw herself primarily as a practitioner of social work. In 1928, she moved to the "German Academy for Social and Educational Women's Work" founded by Alice Salomon, initially as director of studies, then as the academy's first and only director. To prevent the National Socialists from taking over, the academy was closed in 1933.

Hilde Lion was able to leave for Great Britain in the same year thanks to a scholarship from the International Association of Academics and only returned to Germany for visits after 1945. Together with her partner Emmy Wolff, she ran a boarding school for German refugee children in Haslemere/Surrey. Hilde Lion died in Surrey, Great Britain, on April 8, 1970.