IN 1899 THE LEADERS of the women's movement organized a great memorial in the Berlin City Hall to celebrate and honor the life of Jeannette Schwerin, an activist in the new field of social work, who had died of cancer at the age of forty-seven. People from all walks of life came together to pay their respects and to express their grief at Schwerin's early death. In light of the crowds, reformers marveled that in the past only royal queens, who won public admiration as a result of their position rather than their accomplishments, had brought together so many people to mourn a woman. Twelve organizations mobilized the memorial for Schwerin's life and work, from the Bund Deutscher Frauenverein with 137 chapters and 70,000 members to the Berliner Handwerkerverein (Artisan Union), based in the capital and reform groups such as the Verein Jugendschutz (Association to Protect Youth), and Lette-Verein, which organized education and training services. The memorial, the manifold newspaper obituaries, and the ways in which Schwerin was officially honored by diverse organizations testified to her importance as a leader in Berlin and in Germany as a whole. And her mourning followers, as well as Schwerin herself, emphasized above all her role as a mother.

Since the eighteenth century Central European men and women have extolled the power of Mutterliebe (motherlove), even if the nature of women's roles and duties was a subject of disagreement. Often such exultation served to buttress a view widely held by the middle class that women and men flourished best in separate spheres. Yet in the late nineteenth century, as elite women gained access to new opportunities and as increasing numbers worked for pay outside the home, leading Central European women invoked motherlove to claim a role in the public sphere. Women active outside the home as social workers, teachers, or reformers described their work in terms of “geistige Mütterlichkeit” (spiritual motherhood).5 Helene Lange, leader of the moderate wing of the women's movement, explained how this “geistige Mütterlichkeit” is “unabhängig von physischer Liebe und Mutterschaft,” but nevertheless a force “die jede echte Frau durchdringt” (independent from physical love and motherhood [but nevertheless] permeates all true women).