Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Elisabeth Selbert
Summary
Elisabeth Selbert (1896–1986) was a German politician and lawyer. She was one of the four women who worked on the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, collectively called the Mütter des Grundgesetzes (Mothers of the Basic Law). She had a central role in ensuring that explicit equality between men and women was included as a fundamental right in the Basic Law.
Selbert was born Martha Elisabeth Rohde on 22 September 1896 in Kassel, the second of four daughters in a Christian family. She received a traditional upbringing for the time, which meant there was no expectation that she would struggle for equality. She learned to embroider, sew, and knit, and had little time for reading.
Her family could not afford to send her to high school, so from 1912, she attended the Kassel Industrial and Commercial School of the Women's Educational Association. Her goal at this time was to become a teacher. Lack of money prevented her achieving this, and she started work as a foreign correspondent for an import/export firm.
In 1914, after losing this job, she worked in the Telegraphendienst der Reichspost (de "Telegraph Service of the Reich Post"), receiving this position because of the shortage of male workers during the First World War. Here, in 1918, in the middle of the November Revolution, she met her future husband, the scholar Adam Selbert, who was then chair of the Arbeiter- und Soldatenrat (de "Workers' and Soldiers' Council") in Niederzwehren near Kassel. Adam promoted Elisabeth and took her to political events, and at the end of 1918, she joined the German Social Democrats.
Philipp Scheidemann, who was then Lord Mayor of Kassel and later became Reichskanzler (de "Chancellor of the Reich"), encouraged Selbert to become active in politics. After the Weimar Republic was founded, women received suffrage, and Selbert wrote many articles and spoke at numerous events about women's duty to inform themselves about, and engage in, politics.
In 1919 Selbert stood for parliament as the candidate for the Niederzwehren municipality, and worked in the Finance Committee.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.