Peter Petschauer’s Fundamental Work on the Education of Women in 18th Century Germany

Peter Petschauer has given testimony in his various books that, given some favorable resources, one can really face the turmoil and conflicts of one’s time and develop from them in an amazing way. For this, the democratic U.S. offered him an essential field of development and, of course, psychohistory and the psychohistorical society in particular. His personal development is something like a piece of lived psychohistory. The move from Germany to the U.S. enabled him to reflect and sort out the personal effects of the turmoil in German society from the distance of academic life in a democratic society, which he then presented in his books.

In my opinion, he was able to understand the opportunities and potentials of education, as he used them in his own life and their fundamental importance for the development of society. He presented this for the constructive sides of the developments of German society, using the example of women’s education in Germany in the 18^th century. Therefore, already around 1800, educated women such as Bettina von Arnim in Frankfurt and Caroline Schlegel in Jena were able to play a decisive role in the contemporary discussion of the Enlightenment’s change of mentality. At the same time, socially gifted women such as Rahel Varnhagen in Berlin and Johanna Schopenhauer in Weimar were able to bring together the leading members of their time in literary salons. Of the same importance was Caroline Schlegel’s circle in Jena for the emergence of German Romanticism.

The prerequisite for these constructive developments was

Page 189

women’s education in the 18^th century, which Peter Petschauer describes in his work, “The Education of Women in Eighteenth-Century Germany: New Directions from the German Female Perspective” (Studies in German Thought and History, Vol. 9). The book presents the theme as exemplarily clear and comprehensive. It is a scandal that this work has not yet been translated into German, but perhaps this Festschrift in his honor can be an inspiration.

Page 190