Portrait of Magdalena Neff (née Meub), 1906, photographer: Atelier Oskar Suck, digital copy of an original in a private collection. KIT Archives 28010/I 7884.
German women first received the right to “regular” admission to academic study in Baden, and thus also leave to sit the qualifying examinations. After the admission of women in 1900 Magdalena Meub achieved regular matriculation at Karlsruhe Polytechnic, in the winter semester of 1904/05. Magdalena Meub, the daughter of master baker Meub, was born on February 9, 1881, in Karlsruhe. In 1893, she entered Germany’s first girls’ preparatory school, called a Gymnasium, in Karlsruhe, and passed her school-leaving exams (Abitur) in 1899. Subsequently, she became Germany’s first female pharmacy apprentice and successfully completed the assistantship examination. This qualified her for university studies, since the Abitur from the girls’ school in Karlsruhe was not officially equivalent to one for boys prior to a decree issued in 1904. Magdalena Meub studied pharmacy at the Polytechnic until 1906 and passed her state examination with distinction. In the year of her graduation, she married the pharmacist Adolf Neff, and together they acquired the Lion Pharmacy in Ehingen on the Danube, which they ran jointly until 1954. Magdalena Neff, née Meub, was a pioneer in many respects. As one of the first female high school graduates and Germany’s first female graduated pharmacist, she paved the way for many of her successors. She is regarded as the founder of a network of women from which the Association of German Women Pharmacists emerged. as
For centuries it was quite naturally assumed that universities were exclusively responsible for the academic education of young men. When women began approaching German universities in the latter half of the nineteenth century to seek admission to lectures, there were no legal barriers to their participation. However, these women were predominantly foreigners. In Baden, the case of Sofja Kovalevskaja created significant attention. She had applied to attend lectures in mathematics, physics, and chemistry at Heidelberg in the summer semester of 1869. This request prompted a fundamental decision by the university senate to allow women to attend lectures under certain conditions, taking into account personal circumstances. They were permitted, provided the lecturer had no objections. By the end of the nineteenth century, the number of female students at universities in Baden, as elsewhere in the German Empire, had increased considerably. Most women attended to further their education without taking any formal examinations, although some were awarded doctorates. Despite this progress, women were still excluded from systematic study. Unlike their male counterparts, a woman’s permission to attend lectures could be revoked at any time, and ordinary matriculation was not an option, since women were barred from meeting the requirements for university admission in Germany. Activists in the women’s movement recognized that further progress toward gender equality could only be achieved through equal educational opportunities. Consequently, education became a central focus of the bourgeois women’s movement. Following models established in Prague and Vienna, the Women’s Educational Reform Association Frauenbildungsreform opened a girls’ preparatory school, called a Gymnasium, in Karlsruhe in February 1893. After six years, the first four girls graduated in 1899. This grammar school probably provided the best preparation of girls for the Abitur, leading to the establishment of similar schools across the German Empire based on the Karlsruhe model. In the summer semester of 1900, Baden became the first state in the empire to allow women to enroll at its state universities. A little later the other states in the empire also made it possible for the growing numbers of female high school graduates to enroll at their universities. Bavaria initially followed Baden’s example in the winter semester of 1903/04, followed by Württemberg in the summer of 1904. By 1909, the enrollment of women had been introduced in all the states and universities of the German empire. Marco Birn