This society was not meant to be comprised of full-time professional workers, but of women who gave their talents and their spare time to Christian charity and social welfare work. On May 23, 1832, joined by 12 other women, she founded the Weiblicher Verein für Armen- und Krankenpflege (Female Association for the Care of the Poor and Sick). During the outbreak, Sieveking volunteered as a nurse at the plague hospital, but no one followed her example. The second was the devastating cholera epidemic of 1831. The first was a campaign launched by the local press in 1830 to identify and publicize the failures of municipal poor relief in the city. Two events in Hamburg propelled Sieveking from speculation to action. The free spirit would be struck dead by the multiplicity of little legalisms." Although for a time intrigued by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity, Sieveking became skeptical when she scrutinized the statutes of the Bavarian order: "The yoke is too slavish, the chains too restrictive. Martin Luther had left little room for the development of women's service in his new church, except for wives of the clergy. In one passage, she wrote defiantly, "If not a happy wife and mother, then founder of an order of Sisters of Charity!" The desire to do charitable work found little support in the Lutheran culture Sieveking grew up in. In the "moral diary" ( Sonntagsunterhaltungen or Sunday Conversations) Amalie Sieveking kept during her early 20s, she wrote of the personal turmoil and self-examination of this period of her life. Her graduates would serve as a major source of her public influence, because her former pupils were dedicated disciples and ardent correspondents. In 1813, she opened her first school with six pupils. Sieveking discovered her own talent as a teacher in the household where she lived, and instituted a series of six-year instructional programs for girls which she continued throughout her life. Later, in her adult years, when she had become a proselytizer for women's entrance into public charity, she made much of the disparity in educational opportunities for women and men. Her own school lessons-but not her brothers'-were discontinued. Because her father's fortune had been eroded by the French occupation and the end of a once-prosperous trade with Great Britain, Amalie and her three brothers were separated and sent to board in the homes of relatives and friends. Born Amalie Wilhelmine Sieveking in Hamburg, Germany, on Jdied in Hamburg on Aphad three brothers never married.īorn a patrician's daughter in 1794 in Hamburg, Amalie Sieveking was orphaned at an early age, her mother dying when she was four and her father when she was fifteen, in 1809. German humanitarian, charity worker, and educator who played an important role in making philanthropic activities more available to German Lutheran women.
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