Gerda Lerner

Gerda Lerner, born Kronstein ( born April 30, 1920 in Vienna, † January 2, 2013 in Madison, Wisconsin) was an American historian. It is considered a pioneer of Women's History ( Women's History )

Gerda Kronstein came from a wealthy Jewish family. Her mother was a painter and Illona was born in Hungary. Her father Robert was a pharmacist. After the Anschluss she could lay their Matura. Her father pulled away to Liechtenstein. She and her mother were arrested. Through the intervention of her teachers, she came surprisingly free from the several weeks of detention. They fled to the Father after Liechtenstein. Lerner fled without their parents in the United States.

In the States, she had numerous slightly -paid jobs ( waitress, maid ) and exercise trained as a X-ray technician. In 1939, she married. The marriage was but divorced in 1940. In 1941, she married the film producer Carl Lerner. In 1943 she became an American citizen. In 1945 she became pregnant and heard as a radiographer on. She took over as chief secretary a job with the union. From the marriage with Carl 1946 and 1947 were two children. In 1946 she became a member of the Communist Party and the Congress of American Women. Mid- August 1949, the couple moved because of the communist witch hunts from Los Angeles to New York. Lerner began her studies in history, with 38 years in evening classes at the New School for Social Research. The study she sat from 1963 to 1966 at Columbia University continues. In 1963 the BA in History and in 1965 the master. In 1966 she was awarded his doctorate with 46 years at Columbia University. She was the first who wrote his doctorate on a female historical topic. Her dissertation dealt entered with the sisters Grimke, who had fought in South Carolina against slavery and also for the rights of women and blacks in the United States in the 19th century. The presentation is today regarded as a classic. In 1966, Lerner founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the largest feminist organization today in the U.S.. She became a professor at the Department of History of the Sarah Lawrence College in 1968. There they established the nation's first master's program in women's history. In 1972 were introduced. Since 1980 she had the Robinson -Edwards Professor at the University of Wisconsin. There she taught in 1990 the nationwide first doctoral program for women's history. You made ​​numerous efforts, the box at the universities and to establish in public. Through their initiative, a national 1980 "Women's History Week " justified. In 1987 this was extended to a "Women's History Month ". Lerner was from 1980 to 1981 after the Early Modern activist Louise P. Kellog the second female president of the Organization of American Historians. Has played an essential role in ensuring that professors were more occupied by women in the United States. In 1991 she became Professor Emeritus. After her retirement she lectured at Duke University.

Her research interests were U.S. historical issues and the history of women. However, it were not the Jewish women, but the differences between African- and Euro - Americans in the spotlight. In 1972, she published with ' Black Women in White America " ( " Black women in white America "), a comprehensive and up to now irreplaceable source collection. Followed in 1977 with " The Female Experience" another source collection. Her two collections of source refuted the claim about the lack of sources on women's history. In 1986 a treatise on " The development of patriarchy " ( " The Creation of Patriarchy "). In their published 1993 Presentation " The emergence of feminist consciousness" ( " The creation of feminist consciousness" ) they span the time frame from the Middle Ages to the first women's movement and addressed the question of why the subordination of women could last so long and why a feminist consciousness has developed so slowly. The Lerner -Scott Prize is named after her and Anne Firor Scott. Since 1992, the best doctoral thesis was honored for Women's History in the U.S. annually. 2009, the German translation of her autobiography "Fire herb" ( " Firewood " ) published.

Lerner has received numerous prizes and awards. In 1995 she was awarded the Käthe Leichter price and a year later the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art. In 2002 she was the first woman honored with the Bruce Catton Prize and received in the same year the Roy Rosenzweig Award of the American Historical Association. She has been awarded a total of 18 honorary doctorates, including one from Vienna University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2006, she was honored for her literary and journalistic body of work with the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the Political Book. Your life should be filmed in a documentary.

Writings

Monographs

  • Fireweed. A Political Autobiography. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA 2002, ISBN 1-566-39889-4 (in German language: .. . Herb fire A political autobiography translation from American English by Andrea Holzmann - Jenkins and Gerda Lerner Czernin, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3 - 7076-0290-6.
  • Why History Matters. Life and Thought. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, inter alia, 1997, ISBN 0-19-504644-7 (in German language: The future needs the past Why history affects us from the American Walmot of Möller- Falkenberg Helmer, Königstein / Taunus 2002, ISBN 3. .. -89741-096-6 ).
  • The Creation of Feminist Consciousness. From the Middle Ages to Eighteen - Seventy ( = Women and History. Vol. 2). Oxford University Press, New York, NY, inter alia, 1993, ISBN 0-19-506604-9 (in German language: The emergence of feminist consciousness From the Middle Ages to the first women's movement ( = Women and History vol 2) from the English by. .. Walmot Möller- Falkenberg. campus -Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, inter alia, 1993, ISBN 3-593-34916-7 ).
  • The Creation of Patriarchy ( = Women and History. Vol. 1). Oxford University Press, New York, NY, among others, 1986, ISBN 0-19-503996-3 (in German language: .. ., The development of patriarchy ( = women and History Vol 1) from the English by Walmot Möller- Falkenberg Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, among other things, 1991, ISBN 3-593-34529-3 ).
  • Teaching Women's History. American Historical Association, Washington DC 1981, ISBN 0-87229-023-9.
  • The Majority finds its past. Placing Women in History. Oxford University Press, New York, NY 1979, ISBN 0-19-502597-0 (Also: The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC 2005, ISBN 0-8078-5606-1, in German language: women find their past. Basics of women's history. Translated from English by Walmot Möller- Falkenberg. campus -Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, among others 1995, ISBN 3-593-35242-7 ).
  • A Death of One 's Own. Simon and Schuster, New York, NY 1978, ISBN 0-671-24008-0 (in German language: .. . A own death The key to life From the Ameri Kishen Ute Seeßlen Böhme and Erb, Dusseldorf 1979, ISBN 3-88458 - 005-1.
  • The Grimké sisters from South Carolina. Rebels against slavery. Illustrated with photos. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1967 ( Revised and expanded edition. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC 2004, ISBN 0-8078-5566-9 ).

Editorial Boards

  • The Feminist Thought of Sarah Grimke. Oxford university Press, New York, NY, inter alia, 1998, ISBN 0-19-510604-0.
  • The Female Experience. An American Documentary. Bobbs- Merrill Educational Publishing, Indianapolis IN 1977, ISBN 0-672-61248-8.
  • Black women in white America. A documentary history. Pantheon Books, New York, NY 1972, ISBN 0-394-47540-2.
Madison (Wisconsin) University of Wisconsin System Gisela Bock The Washington Post Alice Schwarzer EMMA (magazine) Integrated Authority File
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