Bertha Pappenheim

Bertha Pappenheim was born in Vienna on February 27, 1859, the daughter of Sigmund (1824-1881) and Recha Pappenheim (1830-1905), née Goldschmidt. Pappenheim grew up as the oldest child with her brother Wilhelm (1860-1937). With her parents they lived a secluded Orthodox Jewish and prosperous life. She grew up in the area of conflict between the Jews, on the one hand, wanting to adapt to their Christian environment and, on the other hand, wanting to adhere to their Orthodox Jewish traditions in the face of the efforts of the Jews who had moved in from the East, including her father. Her socialization in the parental home was primarily aimed at the observance of religious commandments. She learned the Hebrew language, prayers,  religious rites and deepened what she learned in the Viennese "Schiffschul," a synagogue co-founded by her father. Later she charged: "The thirteen-year-old boy, a child, receives the consecration of self-responsibility; he is accepted into the congregation, he counts at prayer meetings, he participates in ritual customs, he has a claim and a share in the Torah, he can absorb the pure teachings, strengthen and enthuse himself in them, refine his moral sensibilities!" whereas she was only instructed in the correct performance of religious rites. Pappenheim spent her daily life playing the piano, which was abhorrent to her. Horseback riding and embroidery work, on the other hand, were something she enjoyed beyond her childhood, even in adulthood. 

Pappenheim's father, the grain merchant Sigmund Pappenheim, was a conservative man. In the dichotomy between the Orthodox and Reformers in the Jewish community in Vienna in the 19th century, he advocated adherence to traditional forms of faith. It was the "Schiffschul" that shaped his advocacy of Orthodox and Conservative Judaism in Vienna. This synagogue, located at 8 Schiffgasse in Vienna and ceremonially opened on September 16, 1864, socialized Bertha Pappenheim. From the age of six, Pappenheim, like many Jewish children from wealthy families, attended a private Catholic school. She learned English, French, Italian as well as Yiddish and Hebrew and also educated herself in secular matters. Thus, already in her youth, she repeatedly complained about the unequal treatment of the sexes. Bertha Pappenheim grew up in a time of strong social upheaval. She always balanced in the conflict between a traditional Jewish image of a loving mother and housewife and an educated emancipated woman. In 1875, at the age of sixteen, Bertha Pappenheim finished her schooling, after which marriage was traditionally to follow. Bertha Pappenheim was prepared for this, especially by her mother, by preparing kosher meals and learning the dietary rules. Marriage should Bertha Pappenheim never married. 

When her father fell seriously ill in 1880, the 21-year-old Bertha Pappenheim also became abruptly ill. As "Anna O" she went down in the history of psychoanalysis after Siegmund Freud. A detailed medical report testifies to her two-year stay with Dr. Breuer at the "Bellevue Sanatorium" and was published by Siegmund Freud, his colleague, in the "Studies on Hysteria" in 1895. Severely traumatized, "she hallucinated black snakes creeping out of the walls and one crawling on her father to kill him. Her right arm had become deaf from the situation [...] When the hallucinations had disappeared, she wanted to pray in her fear but her language failed, she could not speak any until at last she found an English saying and could continue to think and pray only in that language." When her father died on April 5, 1881, Dr. Josef Breuer became the most important confidant. Dr. Breuer diagnosed "hysteria," not an uncommon diagnosis at the time, especially among young, unmarried women. The "talking cure" that helped her to heal, a term invented by Pappenheim himself, was later developed into "talk therapy" by Sigmund Freud. In the only surviving document in which Pappenheim herself comments on her illness, she wrote in September 1882: "I, a native German girl, am now totally deprived of the faculty to speak, to understand or to read German. [...]"

Even in her early youth, Bertha Pappenheim denounced the unequal treatment of Jewish girls and boys, writing in "The Jewish Girl": "Despite the fact that the experience of the indispensability of women could not have escaped the old Jews, the female child is regarded as a second-rate creature". Encouraged by her distant cousin Anna Ettlinger, who visited her repeatedly in Karlsruhe, Pappenheim was already making plans for the future during her stay in the "Bellevue Sanatorium." At the end of the 1880s, Pappenheim moved with her mother to her home in Frankfurt am Main. Here, from 1888, a tangible idea grew: under a male pseudonym and released from the stigma of her illness, Pappenheim Bertha Pappenheim published her "private theater," which she had previously kept only to herself, such as   "Kleine Geschichten für Kinder" or "In der Trödelbude". Motivated by the traditional charity of Judaism, she committed herself to helping the weakest members of society. Whether by serving food in the soup kitchen or caring for newly arrived Jews from the East, Bertha Pappenheim's work was always guided by the credo: "Help for self-help. After the death of the director in 1897, Pappenheim - who had previously managed the orphanage on sick leave - took over the management of the home, located at Theobaldstraße 21.

In 1904, Bertha Pappenheim founded the Jewish Women's Association and the girls' home in Neu-Isenburg (1907) near Frankfurt am Main.  It was to be a modern home "not far from a medium-sized town and easily accessible," "no pupil would be held back by force in the asylum," at the same time she directed herself against the image of authority that was conventional at the time by demanding: "The directors of the asylum would have to share work and leisure with their housemates and use a friendly tone that excludes any imperious self-conceit and contempt for the morally ill." With this, Bertha Pappenheim shook violently at the prevailing image of women in her time; after all, women were supposed to "strive to enter a field in a leading position with a clear mind and unclouded senses in order to be worked on with success." She showed great courage when she also spoke up for young prostitutes, because "these girls know that they have only one sexual value. They can assert their individuality, their desires and inclinations only in the rarest of cases, because this requires a strength and a moral greatness that is not commonplace." In the Neu-Isenburg girls' dormitory, Pappenheim established the Jewish rites and customs she had learned from childhood, not without examining and exposing the "deformations and encrustations." 

Getrude Ehrenwerth, later also deputy of the home, who was dismissed from the civil service in 1933 due to the rise of the National Socialists, described  Pappenheim during this time as follows: "[...] the cheerful evenings when Bertha Pappenheim read aloud from Dr. Doolittle and his animals or from the "Flying Classroom" and similar funny stories [...] Again and again she interrupted herself while reading, stimulated the children to their own comments and explanations of what they had read. [...] In her closeness and through her nature, one also felt safe from the hardships of today. She was always faithful to the future.". From 1934 on, they actively prepared together the departure and adoption of the home children to England, Holland, Switzerland or Denmark. After being interrogated by the Secret State Police in January 1936, Bertha Pappenheim did not return to the home she had painstakingly built in Neu-Isenburg. Bertha Pappenheim died on May 28, 1936. The home continued to exist for another six years, until it was first almost completely destroyed in 1938 during the November pogroms and finally dissolved in 1942. The home's inmates were deported. Especially as an unmarried Jewish woman, Bertha Pappenheim gained recognition in the Jewish community through her professional and social activities. This was particularly exciting in the symbiosis between her Orthodox Jewish parental home and her emancipatory goals.