Berlin: On the trail of strong women through Germany’s capital
Berlin city history is often men’s history. But what about the women who shaped the city? Special tours are dedicated to them – and broaden the view of Berlin.
What would have happened if Friedrich Schiller had been a girl? The Berlin women’s rights activist Hedwig Dohm (1831-1919) once pondered this and came to the conclusion: “Friederike Schiller” would have been Germany’s greatest poet – “even if unpublished”.
During Dohm’s lifetime, job opportunities for women were limited. Dohm called for complete equality – in education, work, elections. As radical as that was back then, only a few know the publicist today. A guided tour of Berlin follows in their footsteps.
“Human rights have no gender,” is Hedwig Dohm’s famous sentence. It stands on her tombstone in the St. Matthäus-Kirchhof in the district of Schöneberg. And also on a plaque on a house wall in the Kreuzberg part of Friedrichstrasse, where Dohm was born in 1831.
Nearby is the Willy-Brandt-Haus, the federal headquarters of the SPD. Checkpoint Charlie is also not far from Dohm’s birthplace. It reminds of the division of the city, of the wall. On New Year’s Eve 1989, the US actor David Hasselhoff sang about “Freedom” at the height of the Brandenburg Gate. Brandt and Hasselhoff should say something to almost every visitor to Berlin, but not necessarily Dohm.
Men rarely take part in the tours
Hedwig Dohm has been forgotten for a long time, says city guide Tanja Beer, who takes twenty women with her on a spring day in March in search of traces of the life of the feminist. Men have not registered – there are rarely any, says Beer, who designed the tour in 2019 for the 100th anniversary of Dohm’s death.
They are offered by Crossroads, an organization that offers guided tours with a church focus – and tours that shed light on lesser-known biographies and stories from Berlin.
Bier leads the group from Friedrichstrasse via the Jewish Museum and the Berlin House of Representatives to Potsdamer Platz. Dohm, the 1919 Stern, was rediscovered in the 1970s, says Beer. The magazine “Emma”, for example, reported on her in the series “Yesterday’s Sisters”.
Known for disarming humor
Dohm might have liked the title of the series. According to Beer, she was known for her humor with which she disarmed even her critics. She countered the accusation that she hates men: she doesn’t hate men at all, she also likes lions – “but that doesn’t mean that I let them eat me.”
The feminist, who was so radical for her time, is just one of many influential women who lived in Berlin. For September, Crossroads is planning a theme week with city tours all about the women of the capital. Names like Christa Wolf or Empress Auguste Viktoria are under discussion. The exact program has not yet been determined.
From lesbian subculture to immigrant history
Women’s history has been the focus of women’s tours since 1994, the year it was founded. The Berlin network offers guided tours, lectures and seminars.
Around 100 tours are on offer: from “The Golden Twenties on Kurfürstendamm”, “Lesbian Subculture” or “Women’s Life in the Nazi Era” to “Writers in West Berlin”, “Female Immigrants in Neukölln” or “Prussian Queens”, to to guided tours with titles such as “Do women kill differently?” or «Women build differently?».
On the homepage you will find a whole series of tours. And there are always new ones, says Claudia von Gélieu, who once co-founded the “women’s tours”.
“We see ourselves as a network and are open to new approaches to women’s history,” says the 61-year-old. It is important, for example, that migrant women tell their stories themselves and that no one is talking about them. A daughter of Turkish guest workers or a woman who came from Lebanon as a refugee child offer guided tours. “These tours often have the most questions.”
equality in commemoration
The women’s tours are also committed to ensuring that more women’s names can be seen in the cityscape – on street signs, plaques or in the form of monuments. “There is still a lot to be done before women are equal in history, in remembrance and commemoration,” says the website of women’s tours.
Is the sentence still relevant? Claudia von Gélieu says: “A lot is happening, but not enough.”