Alice Salomon


Alice Salomon was a German social reformer and pioneer of social work as an academic discipline. Her role was so important to German social work that the Deutsche Bundespost issued a commemorative postage stamp about her in 1989. A university, a park and a square in Berlin are all named after her.

Life and career

Alice Salomon was the third of eight children, and the second daughter, of Albert and Anna Salomon. Like many girls from affluent families in this period, she was denied further education, despite her ambition to become a teacher. This ended in 1893 when she was 21, and she recorded in her autobiography that this was "when her life began".
In 1900 she joined the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine. In due course she was elected deputy chairperson, and kept this role until 1920. . The organisation supported destitute, abandoned, or single mothers and aimed to prevent their children being neglected.
From 1902 to 1906 she studied economics at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, though she had no relevant qualification. Her publications were sufficient for university entrance. She earned her doctorate in 1908 with a dissertation entitled Die Ursachen der ungleichen Entlohnung von Männer- und Frauenarbeit. Also in this year she founded a Soziale Frauenschule in Berlin, which was renamed "Alice Salomon School" in 1932 and is now called Alice-Salomon-Fachhochschule für Sozialarbeit und Sozialpädagogik Berlin.
In 1909 she became secretary of the Internationalen Frauenbund. She converted from Judaism to the Lutheran Church in 1914. In 1917 she was made chairperson of the Konferenz sozialer Frauenschulen Deutschlands that she herself had founded; by 1919 sixteen schools belonged to it.
In 1920 she resigned from the BDF from fear of antisemitic propaganda. Five years later, she founded the Deutsche Akademie für soziale und pädagogische Frauenarbeit which was directed by Hilde Lion. Speakers at this institution included Albert Einstein, Carl Gustav Jung, Helene Weber and others of similar eminence.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, this organisation published thirteen monographs on the social and economic conditions faced by the poor in Germany. For Alice Salomon's 60th birthday, she received an honorary doctorate from Berlin University and the Silver State Medal from the Prussian State Ministry.

Treatment by the Nazis

In 1933 when they acceded to power, the Nazi party stripped her of all her offices and six years later, when she was 65, she faced interrogation by the Gestapo. The Nazis objected to Salomon's Jewish origins, her Christian humanist ideas, her pacifism and international reputation. She was expelled from Germany, where she had been running a relief committee for Jewish emigrants.
She went to New York, her German citizenship and her two doctorates having been taken from her. In 1944 she became an American citizen. A year later, she was honorary President of the International Women's Federation and the International Association of Schools of Social Work.
She died in New York.

Tribute

On 19 April 2018, Google Doodle commemorated her 146th birthday.

Selected publications

Translator's note: These are in German.