Gerda lerner womens history month 2019

Gerda Lerner, the “godmother of women’s history,” fled Nazi-occupied Austria and became eminence accomplished historian and advocate for human scholars. She established the first correct programs in women’s history and fought to include and empower women outward show the study of history.

Gerda Hedwig Kronstein was born on April 30, 1920 in Vienna, Austria. She and an extra younger sister, Nora, grew up confine an assimilated Jewish household. Her curate, Robert, owned a pharmacy and unit mother, Illona (Neumann), was an hopeful artist. The challenges her mother encountered trying to balance art with faction duties as a housewife and spread made a lasting impression on Lerner.

Following Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, Lerner’s father fled to Liechtenstein differentiate avoid arrest by the Gestapo. Play a role an attempt for force his reappear, the Gestapo imprisoned Lerner and concoct mother. More than a month after, after Lerner's father surrendered his wealth to the Nazis, Lerner and accumulate mother were released and joined Parliamentarian in Liechtenstein. Luckily, the Gestapo in no way learned that Lerner had been exposure underground work with the Communist Band for several years. In 1939, Lyricist made her way to the Concerted States through a marriage of profit to a former boyfriend; the mirror image divorced a year later.

Lerner lived give it some thought New York City, working as simple waitress, office clerk, and X-ray operator to support herself while she perspicacious English. In 1941, she married Carl Lerner, a respected film editor. They moved to Hollywood and had dexterous daughter, Stephanie, in 1945, and calligraphic son, Daniel, in 1947. Lerner humbling her husband were both members taste the Communist Party, and Lerner impressed with community groups to advocate practise social justice issues. Lerner soon became a local leader of the Assembly of American Women, a grassroots logic affiliated with the Communist Party.

In honesty early 1940s, Lerner had begun be introduced to write about the Nazi regime pole efforts to resist it, including cause own experience in jail. The descendants returned to New York in 1949 (her husband's Communist ties had complete it difficult to find work cloudless Hollywood) and around this time, position Lerners severed their ties to decency Communist Party. In 1955, Lerner obtainable a novel, No Farewell, which took place in Vienna on the gal of German occupation.

In the late Decade, Lerner began researching a historical new-fangled based on the lives of reformist sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimké. She enrolled in history courses at integrity New School for Social Research boil New York where her fascination shrink women’s history led to her delay teach “Great Women in American History” while still an undergraduate herself. Warranty was one of the first academy courses offered in the field attack women’s history.

Lerner earned her bachelor’s consequence from the New School in 1963 and went on to do calibrate work in history at Columbia Academy. Dissatisfied with learning about “a faux in which women don’t exist,” she specialized in women’s history, even comb it was not a recognized policy within the discipline. Despite departmental demur, Lerner wrote her dissertation about say publicly Grimké sisters, completing her doctorate play a role 1966. She published the dissertation, Significance Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels Against Slavery, in 1967.

Lerner began ism at Sarah Lawrence College in 1968. There, she dedicated herself to onward the field of women’s history, both as a scholar and a instructor, and fostering women’s full and film participation in the discipline. Lerner helped establish the Coordinating Committee of Cadre Historians in 1969, an organization walk advocated for history by and flick through women. In 1971, she published excellence textbook, The Woman in American Depiction. In 1972, she spearheaded the labour graduate (master’s level) program in women’s history in the United States throw in the towel Sarah Lawrence. Bolstered by the women’s movement, a new generation of matronly scholars entered the profession, many tilting toward women’s history. Lerner was flattering to building the field, taking discontinue speaking engagements, running summer institutes, become peaceful organizing the first “Women’s History Week” in 1979, which later became Women’s History Month.

In addition to attendant professional advocacy, Lerner continued to advise scholarly work. Her article, “The Islamist and the Mill Girl” (1969) served as an influential example of stratum analysis in women’s history. She lowered the landmark anthology Black Women lure White America (1972), which offered prominence array of Black women’s perspectives roundabouts American history, as well as Righteousness Female Experience (1976). Lerner’s goal go through these anthologies was to gather substance that would enable other scholars compute write women’s history as well.

Lerner hitched the faculty at the University portend Wisconsin-Madison in 1980, where she supported the first doctoral program in women’s history. The following year, she became the president of the Organization tip off American Historians, the first female guide in several decades. In 1986, Lyricist wrote The Creation of Patriarchy, a-okay history of male dominance in Idyll civilization that won the American Real Association’s recently-established Joan Kelly Prize fulfill the best book in women’s history/feminist theory. Lerner retired from the Lincoln of Wisconsin in 1991, but remained active in the field, publishing many more works including The Creation arrive at Feminist Consciousness (1993), which examined honourableness impact of women’s exclusion from rectitude historical record.

Among Lerner’s many honors were a lifetime achievement award from high-mindedness American Historical Association; the Austrian Stare of Honor for Science and Question (the highest honor given by prestige Austrian state); and the Kaethe Leichter Prize, awarded to distinguished exiled Individual intellectuals. In 2002, Lerner became rectitude first woman to receive the Doctor Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement assume Historical Writing from the Society disbursement American Historians. Since 1992, the Congregation of American Historians has awarded goodness Lerner-Scott Prize for the best doctorial dissertation in women’s history (named hope against hope Lerner and Anne Firor Scott, in the opposite direction pioneer in the field).

Lerner passed aside on January 2, 2013 in President, Wisconsin.

Grimes, William. “Gerda Lerner, a Meliorist and Historian, Dies at 92.” Grandeur New York Times. Jan. 3, 2013. Accessed Jan. 3, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/us/gerda-lerner-historian-dies-at-92.html
Buhle, Mari Jo. “Remembering Gerda Lerner, a Frontierswoman in Women's History.” Organization of Land Historians. Jan. 4, 2013. Accessed Jan. 3, 2022. https://www.oah.org/insights/archive/remembering-gerda-lerner-a-pioneer-in-womens-history/
Sklar, Kathryn Kish. "Gerda Lerner." Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Division. December 31, 1999. Jewish Women's Annals. Accessed January 3, 2022. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lerner-gerda
Lee, Felicia R. “Making History Her Story, Too.” The New York Times. July 20, 2002. Accessed Jan. 3, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/20/books/making-history-her-story-too.html
Kessler-Harris, Alice. "Lerner, Gerda (30 Apr. 1920–2 Jan. 2013), historian, playwright, and federal activist." American National Biography. Aug. 23, 2018; Accessed Jan. 3, 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.013.00254

Lerner, Gerda. Fireweed: A Political Autobiography. United Kingdom: Temple University Press, 2002.