Gerda Lerner facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Gerda Lerner
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Gerda Kronstein in 1981.
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| Born |
Gerda Hedwig Kronstein
April 30, 1920 |
| Died | January 2, 2013 (aged 92) Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.
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| Education | New School (BA) Columbia University (MA, PhD) |
| Spouse(s) |
Bobby Jensen
(m. 1939; div. 1940)Carl Lerner
(m. 1941; d. 1973) |
| Children | 2 |
Gerda Hedwig Lerner (born Kronstein; April 30, 1920 – January 2, 2013) was an American historian who was born in Austria. She is famous for helping to create the study of women's history as a proper subject in universities.
Besides writing many academic books, she also wrote poems, stories, plays, movie scripts, and her own life story. From 1980 to 1981, she was the president of the Organization of American Historians. In 1980, she became a special professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She taught there until she retired in 1991.
Gerda Lerner was one of the first people to make women's history a recognized field of study. In 1963, she taught a class called "Great Women in American History." This was one of the very first college courses about women's history ever offered.
Contents
Her Early Life
Gerda Hedwig Kronstein was born in Vienna, Austria, on April 30, 1920. Her parents, Ilona and Robert Kronstein, were a wealthy Jewish couple. Her father was a pharmacist, and her mother was an artist. Gerda felt that her mother had a difficult life because she did not fit the usual role of a wife and mother in Vienna.
Gerda had a younger sister. Both girls went to local schools and a type of high school called a gymnasium.
Facing Challenges in Austria
In 1938, Austria was taken over by Germany in an event called the Anschluss. Gerda became involved in the anti-Nazi resistance, which was a group that secretly fought against the Nazis.
That year, Gerda and her mother were put in jail. Her father had already escaped to Liechtenstein and Switzerland. Gerda was held for six weeks with two Christian women who were also jailed for political reasons. They shared their food with her because Jewish prisoners received less food.
In 1939, her mother moved to France, and her sister went to Palestine. That same year, Gerda moved to the United States. She was sponsored by the family of Bobby Jensen, who was her fiancé and a socialist.
Starting Her Career
After moving to New York, Gerda Kronstein married Bobby Jensen. She worked many different jobs, like being a waitress, a salesperson, an office clerk, and an X-ray technician. At the same time, she was writing stories and poems. She published two short stories about her experiences during the Nazi takeover of Austria.
A New Path in Life
Her marriage to Jensen ended. She then met Carl Lerner (1912–1973), who was a theater director. They both got divorces in Reno, a place where it was easier to get a divorce.
Kronstein and Lerner got married and moved to Hollywood, where Carl worked in filmmaking. In 1946, Gerda Lerner helped start a group in Los Angeles called the Congress of American Women.
The Lerners were involved in activities that supported workers' rights, civil rights, and peace. They faced difficulties during the 1950s because of a period called McCarthyism. This was a time when many people were unfairly accused of being communists. The "Hollywood blacklist" meant that many people in the film industry lost their jobs because of these accusations.
Back to School and New Ideas
The Lerners moved back to New York. In 1951, Gerda Lerner worked with a poet named Eve Merriam on a musical play called The Singing of Women. Lerner's novel No Farewell was published in 1955.
Lerner went back to school at the New School for Social Research and earned her bachelor's degree in 1963. She realized that many people's stories were not being told in history. This idea led her to get a Ph.D. in history and to help create women's history as a proper subject in universities. In 1963, she taught the first regular college course in women's history.
In the early 1960s, Gerda and Carl Lerner wrote the movie script for Black Like Me (1964). The movie was based on a book by a white journalist named John Howard Griffin. He had pretended to be a black man for six weeks to report on life in the southern United States. Carl Lerner directed the movie.
Becoming a Leading Historian
Lerner continued her studies at Columbia University, where she earned her master's degree in 1965 and her Ph.D. in 1966. Her Ph.D. paper was published as The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels Against Slavery (1967). This book was about Sarah Moore Grimké and Angelina Grimké, two sisters from a slave-owning family who became abolitionists (people who wanted to end slavery).
In 1966, Lerner helped start the National Organization for Women (NOW). She was a leader in this group for a short time. In 1968, she began teaching at Sarah Lawrence College. There, she created the first master's degree program in women's history in the United States, which started in 1972. Lerner also taught at Long Island University.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Lerner published important books and articles that helped make women's history a recognized field. Her 1969 article "The Lady and the Mill Girl" looked at how women's lives changed in the 1800s. She was one of the first historians to study history with a focus on women's experiences and perspectives.
Her important works include collections of documents like Black Women in White America (1972) and The Female Experience (1976). She also wrote a collection of essays called The Majority Finds Its Past (1979).
Creating Women's History Month
In 1979, Lerner led a conference called The Women's History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Leaders from many women's and girls' organizations attended. They learned about the success of Women's History Week in Sonoma County, California.
Because of this, they decided to start similar celebrations in their own groups, communities, and schools. They also agreed to work towards having a "National Women's History Week." This effort helped lead to the creation of Women's History Month across the country.
In 1980, Lerner moved to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. There, she started the first Ph.D. program in women's history in the nation. While at this university, she wrote several important books. These include The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (1993), Why History Matters (1997), and her autobiography Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (2002).
From 1981 to 1982, Lerner was the president of the Organization of American Historians. She helped make women's history easier to understand for leaders of women's groups and high school teachers.
Important Books
Black Women in White America
Lerner edited Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (1972). This book tells the story of 350 years of black women's contributions to history. It shows how they made a difference even though they were enslaved and treated as property for centuries. This was one of the first books to share the important contributions of black women in history.
The Creation of Patriarchy
In The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), Gerda Lerner explored the very early roots of male dominance in society. She believed that patriarchy, a system where men hold most of the power, began when early states were forming around 2000 BCE. Lerner used evidence from history, archaeology, literature, and art to show that patriarchy was something that people created, not something natural. She thought that the main power of patriarchy was in its ideas.
The Creation of Feminist Consciousness
The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to 1870 (1993) is another important book by Lerner. In this book, she looked at European culture from the 7th to the 19th centuries. She showed how a male-dominated society limited women.
As more women's writings survived after the 7th century, Lerner used them to show how feminist ideas developed. She showed how women found ways to get around, change, or challenge "male thought." She looked closely at how women were often not allowed to get an education. She also showed how many women found a way to express themselves through writing. Often, they started with religious writing, which allowed them to create new ideas and imagine different futures, helping them to "think themselves out of patriarchy."
Fireweed: A Political Autobiography
Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (2003) tells the detailed story of Lerner's life. It covers her childhood in Vienna, her experiences during the war, and her move to the United States. It ends in 1958, when she began her formal studies at the New School for Social Research in New York. This school was started by many European refugees who had escaped Nazi persecution. Lerner believed that education and meaningful work were very important for women to feel happy and fulfilled.
Awards and Recognition
- In 1998, Lerner was chosen as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- In 1986, she won the American Historical Association's Joan Kelly Prize for her book The Creation of Patriarchy.
- She received the Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Historical Writing.
- In 1992, the Organization of American Historians created the annual Lerner-Scott Prize. This award is named after her and Anne Firor Scott. It is given each year to the best Ph.D. paper in U.S. women's history.
- A documentary film about her life, Why Women Need to Climb Mountains, was released in 2016.
Her Death
Gerda Lerner passed away on January 2, 2013, in Madison, Wisconsin. She was 92 years old. She is survived by her two children, Dan and Stephanie Lerner.
Other Works
Musical
- Singing of Women (1951, with Eve Merriam)
Screenplays
- Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom (1957)
- Black Like Me (1964)
- Home for Easter (not dated)
Books
- No Farewell (1955)
- The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels against Authority (1967)
- The Woman in American History [editor] (1971)
- Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (1972)
- The Female Experience: An American Documentary (1976)
- A Death of One's Own (1978/2006)
- The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (1979)
- Teaching Women's History (1981)
- Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey (1982)
- The Creation of Patriarchy (1986)
- The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy (1994)
- Scholarship in Women's History Rediscovered & New (1994)
- Why History Matters (1997)
- Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (Temple University Press, 2003)
- Living with History/Making Social Change (2009)
See also
In Spanish: Gerda Lerner para niños
