Gebete.
The Personal Prayer
Of A Jewish Feminist
Author And Activist
[Judaica]. Pappenheim, Bertha. Gebete. Mit eimen Nachwort von Margarete Susman. Ausgewahlt and herausgegeben von Judischen Frauenbund. [Berlin]: Philo Verlag Und Buchhandlung, 1936.
8vo.; text a facsimile of Pappenheim’s autograph; original black wrappers, silver title label on front cover; excellent repair to front wrappers; a fine copy.
First (and only?) edition of Pappenheim’s personal prayer book, printed as a facsimile of a manuscript copy in Pappenheim’s hand. Text entirely in German; prayers dated from 1922 to 1935. Bertha Pappenheim, Jewish feminist leader and writer, was born in Vienna in 1859 and died in Neu-Isenburg, Germany in 1936, the date of this publication. A descendent of Gluckel of Hameln, whose memoirs she translated from Yiddish into German, Pappenheim was an activist who took part in the social and pedagogical activities of the feminist movement and organized the Jewish feminist movement in Germany. In 1881 she came to Frankfort, where for twelve years she headed an orphan home for girls, the Heim des Judischen Frauenbundes. In 1902, while a member of the welfare board of the city she organized social work for Jewish women. In 1904, in connection with the International Women’s Congress in Berlin, she founded the national Judischer Frauenbund, of which she was president for twenty years. (We gather from the subtitle that this publication pays homage to that group.)
Between 1902 and 1935 Pappenheim traveled constantly throughout the Balkans, Palestine, Galicia, Russia and Poland, and was active in the efforts to stop oppression of Jews (especially Jewish women) in those regions. She also worked forcefully against the white slave traffic of Jewish immigrants and in activities to aid Eastern European Jews. From 1933 on she participated in the secret emigration of Jewish children from Germany to other, safer, regions.
Despite her varied activities on behalf of International Jewry and her constant travels, Pappenheim found time to author several travel memoirs and religious pamphlets, of which this is the last. The exact circumstances of her death are unknown (in that they are not detailed by The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia), but considering her various rebellious activities under the Nazi regime and the date of her death one has to wonder as to whether her life was ended naturally or at the hands of the Third Reich.
A lovely and delicate copy of Pappenheim’s last publication; surely quite uncommon.
(#4217)
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