Luise Büchner

This first comprehensive German-language monograph on Luise Büchner (1821-1877) from Darmstadt presents her life and work as an author, versatile activist in the first bourgeois women's movement, and co-initiator of several measures for better education, vocational training, and employment opportunities for women. Her most well-known book, "Die Frauen und ihr Beruf," is particularly highlighted in the context of her time, drawing from her extensive writings. In this work, Büchner articulated her views and approaches to the roles and responsibilities of women in family and society across four editions, which she further developed through her own experiences in practical association work and discussions with women and men both domestically and abroad, thus proving herself to be an evolutionary feminist. Many of her fictional contributions revisit the themes discussed in her non-fiction work on the "women's question," with which she aimed not only to entertain her readership but also to educate them. Büchner's voice, temperament, and comments on events and personalities in her writings and letters reveal a surprisingly fresh image of an unmarried woman who refused to be defined by the rigid societal norms of her time, instead paving new paths for women. This monograph is an expanded and revised German version of the English biography "Luise Büchner: A Nineteenth-Century Evolutionary Feminist.".