Hanna Bieber-Böhm

Hanna Bieber-Böhm
Engraving from a photograph 1899
Born	Hanna Elmire Flora Böhm (1851-02-06)6 February 1851 Glaubitten, East Prussia
Died	15 April 1910(1910-04-15) (aged 59) Berlin, Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation	Feminist, social worker

Hanna Bieber-Böhm (6 February 1851 – 15 April 1910) was a German feminist and pioneer of social work. She established an organization to assist young women seeking work in Berlin and help protect them from becoming prostitutes, and founded a recreation home for women where they could also be trained in housework and gardening. She was in favor of combating prostitution through strong laws penalizing the clients of prostitutes.

Hanna Elmire Flora Böhm was born in Glaubitten, East Prussia on 6 February 1851. She was the eldest of eight children of the landowner Otto Böhm and his wife Bertha. Her mother died in 1870, and Hanna had to assume the maternal role. After her father married again in 1874 she became free to devote herself to art.

Hanna Böhm went to Berlin to study painting, and would practice this art for the rest of her life. Her early work includes portraits of her family and views of the family house in Glaubitten. She traveled to study art in Italy, Tunisia, Greece and Constantinople. Her ink drawings, watercolors and paintings of everyday scenes and people from this period have been preserved. Her portraits, genre paintings and landscapes sold well in Germany, Italy and North America. She was represented with three oil paintings at the exhibitions of the Konigsberg Art Association in 1883 and 1887.

In 1888, when she was thirty-seven, Hanna married the lawyer Richard Bieber (born 1858), whom she had met while studying in Berlin. He was seven years her junior. Bieber was Jewish in origin, but had become Christian. He wanted to marry in St. Mary's Church, but Protestant pastors refused a church wedding. This caused Hanna Böhm to reject the Protestant church. The couple had a civil marriage, which remained childless.

After her marriage Hanna Bieber Böhm remained a member of the Association of Berlin artists, but her painting became a secondary activity as she became interested in politics. Germany under chancellor Prince Otto von Bismarck was growing both economically and in population, and various associations and clubs had been formed to address social issues. Bieber-Böhm became involved in the movement fighting for women's rights, which was concerned with morality, prostitution, protection of children and other issues. The feminists often handed petitions to the German Reichstag for changes in women's status and equal rights to men.

In 1889 Bieber-Böhm founded the Jugendschutz (Youth Protection) association in Berlin. This gave support to girls looking for accommodation and help in finding work. Later she added a crèche and kindergarten. The main goal was to protect young women with no family in Berlin from prostitution. The Jugendschutz educated young Germans on the virtues of temperance and chastity, taught them to shun places of lax entertainment and to avoid promiscuity and alcoholicism, vices that she saw as closely connected. In the two homes for single impecunious girls that she established, and later in the convalescent home, the consumption of alcohol was prohibited. The homes were connected with housekeeping schools to prepare the residents for later life.