Amalia Holst

Amalia Holst (née Amalia von Justi; 10 February 1758 – 6 January 1829) was a German writer, intellectual, and early feminist. Her work examined traditional pedagogy and challenged Enlightenment writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She often is called the German counterpart to Mary Wollstonecraft. Little is known about Amalia Holst's life. She rose to prominence in the late 1700s through her works as a teacher. She became more widely recognized in the 1970s, after her work was rediscovered and republished by Kassel University Press. Amalia Holst was born in 1758 in Mecklenburg. She is the daughter of Johanna Maria Magdalena Marchand and Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi and the oldest of six children from her father's second marriage. Her father was a well-known political economist and the Prussian chief inspector of mines. He was an advocate of women's rights who published pieces advocating for improved education for women. When Holst was ten years old, her father was accused of embezzling funds and imprisoned in Küstrin, where he died several years later. After her father's death, the family was split up. Their possessions had to be dissolved. Holst's mother went to live with her brother, who was a pastor in Brunswick. Holst's younger sisters were lodged into a monastery in Potsdam and her brother was admitted into a Danish cadet school. What happened to Holst during this time is unknown, but she is reported to have been employed as a teacher at a young age. She is said to have received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Kiel. In large part due to the influence of von Justi's progressive beliefs, Holst was one of very few women to receive a college education during this time in Germany. At the age of thirty-three, in 1791 she married Ludolf Holst. He was a lawyer as well as the director of the Pedagogical Institute in Hamburg-St Georg. They had three children together, one son and two daughters.