Call Number:

Ms. Coll. 42

Repository:

German Society of Pennsylvania: Joseph P. Horner Memorial Library

Extent:

0.17 linear feet (1 box + 3 legal-size folders)

Language:

German

Preferred Citation:

Frauenhilfsfond records, Joseph P. Horner Memorial Library, German Society of Pennsylvania

Date:

1914-1922, 1924

Creator:

Frauenhilfsfond. (Philadelphia, Pa.), Knueppel, Johanna, 1859-1936, Schweizer, Berta, and Women's Auxiliary of the German Society of Pennsylvania.

Form:

Donor lists, Logs (records), Membership lists, Minute books, and Reports

Abstract:

The Frauenhilfsfond was the women's auxiliary of the Hilfsfond (Relief Fund), a German-American charitable organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, devoted to war relief and humanitarian aid in German-speaking areas overseas during and after the First World War. The Frauenhilfsfond was essentially an umbrella group of German-American women's organizations in the Philadelphia area that coordinated the women’s efforts related to the relief work. The collection contains the complete minutes of the group from August 1914 until March 1917, as well as a record of donations received from March 1915 to April 1917. It also includes a log of homemade knitted items produced for overseas relief from October 1919 to March 1920, as well as a few items dated in the early 1920s related to campaigns to feed destitute children in German-speaking areas in Europe, efforts that were led by the American Friends Service Committee. The records dating from after 1917 appear to overlap with the activities of the Women's Auxiliary of the German Society of Pennsylvania, of which the Frauenhilfsfond president, Antonie Ehrlich, and others in the group were simultaneously members.

The Frauenhilfsfond was the women's auxiliary of the Hilfsfond (Relief Fund), a German-American charitable organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, devoted to war relief and humanitarian aid overseas during and after the First World War. The Frauenhilfsfond was essentially an umbrella group for German-American women's organizations in the Philadelphia area that coordinated the women’s efforts related to the relief work.

The parent organization, Hilfsfond, was founded on 5 August 1914, about a week after the start of the war, with the aim of helping the wounded as well as the widows and orphans of German and Austrian-Hungarian soldiers killed in the war. This purpose is reflected in the official full name of the women's auxiliary, as it appears on the title pages of the organization's minute books: Frauenhilfsfond für verwundete Krieger der deutschen und österreichisch-ungarischen Armee sowie für Witwen und Weisen von im Kriege Gefallenen (Women's Auxiliary of the Relief Fund for the wounded soldiers of the German and Austro-Hungarian Army, as well as the widows and children of those killed in the war).

The women’s auxiliary had its beginnings at the second meeting of the Hilfsfond, on 9 August 1914, when Antonie Ehrlich was named as chairperson of a 'women's committee.' Ehrlich subsequently chaired the first meeting of the Frauenhilfsfond on 25 August 1914. The founding officers were:

President: Antonie Ehrlich (Mrs. Franz Ehrlich) Vice President: Mrs. B. Remmers (probably Berta Remmers) (2nd) Vice President: Mrs. Keller (probably Henrietta M., wife of Harry F. Keller) Treasurer: Emma Heyl (Mrs. Herman Heyl) Secretary: Johanna Knueppel (Mrs. Arthur H. Knueppel) Auxiliary secretary (Hilfssekretär): Mrs. A. Schuck (probably Antonie, wife of Louis F. Schuck) Auxiliary secretary (Hilfssekretär): Berta Schweizer (Mrs. J. Otto Schweizer)

All of the officers simultaneously held leadership positions in the Women's Auxiliary of the German Society of Pennsylvania: Ehrlich was president; Heyl, corresponding secretary; Knueppel, financial secretary; and Keller, Schuck, and Schweizer, directors.

Meetings of the Frauenhilfsfond were attended by representatives of many different German-American women's organizations. The number of participants at meetings averaged about 25 to 30, and ranged from as few as 16 to as many as 74 (the largest attendance may have been at the meeting of 27 November 1914, when 70 women, besides four of the officers, were present).

The extant minute books of the Frauenhilfsfond end in the middle of March 1917. It appears that the Frauenhilfsfond, as an umbrella alliance of German American women's organizations in Philadelphia, did not maintain a distinct organizational identity beyond that time, although many of the women who had participated continued to make significant contributions to German-American war relief efforts, some of them through other projects undertaken by the Women's Auxiliary of the German Society of Pennsylvania.

In October 1919 the German Society of Pennsylvania (GSP) formed a Foreign Relief Committee to work in conjunction with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in providing humanitarian relief in famine-stricken areas in Central Europe. The GSP committee had two distinct parts, one of male members and the other of female members, under the Women's Auxiliary. The five officers of the latter women's committee had all been active in the Frauenhilfsfond and three of them – Antonie Ehrlich, president, Emma Heyl, vice president, and Johanna Knueppel, secretary – had also been officers of the Frauenhilfsfond [1].

In April 1920 German-American contributions to the AFSC-led efforts took place under the rubric United Relief Committee, and letterhead created for appeal letters indicate a "Ladies Auxiliary" led by Antonie Ehrlich (honorary chair), Mrs. Richard Guenther (executive chair), and Mrs. Otto Kessler (secretary) [2]. Ehrlich and Guenther had been associated with the Frauenhilfsfond; and all three women were active in the GSP Women's Auxiliary.

Antonie Ehrlich, née Ruelius (1849-1928)

The president of the Frauenhilfsfond, Antonie Ehrlich, was born on 2 June 1849 in the Pfalz (Palatinate) region of Germany. She emigrated with her family to the United States in 1859, and her father ran the City Hotel in Philadelphia (4th and Wood Streets). She attended the school of the Deutsche Freie Gemeinde (Independent German Congregation of Philadelphia). In March 1870 she married Franz Ehrlich (1836-1904), a German immigrant who had served with distinction in the Civil War, in the 75th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, and who ran a bookstore in Philadelphia. Antonie and Franz Ehrlich had five children: two daughters, Antonie and Henriette; and three sons, Franz, Hans, and Waldemar. Antonie Ehrlich served as president of the Women's Auxiliary of the German Society of Pennsylvania from its founding, in 1900, until her death on 2 January 1928.

Johanna Knueppel (1859-1936)

The secretary of the Frauenhilfsfond, Johanna Knueppel, was born in Germany on 26 August 1859. In 1882 she married Arthur H. Knueppel (1857-1930). The Knueppels immigrated to the United States and settled in Philadelphia around 1889. At the time that Johanna Knueppel recorded the minutes for the Frauenhilfsfond (1914-1917), she and her husband lived at 2027 N. 17th Street (the address inscribed on the inside front covers of the minute books). Johanna Knueppel died at the Mary J. Drexel Home in Philadelphia in July 1936.

Footnotes

[1] 155. Jahresbericht der Deutscchen Gesellschaft von Pennsylvanien für das Jahr 1919 (Philadelphia: Heymann Printing House, 1920), pp. 9, 18, 19, 20-21, 24 (GAC AE 50).

[2] See Ms. Coll. 28 Hilfsfond records, Folder 77.

The collection contains the records of the Frauenhilfsfond, the women's auxiliary of the Hilfsfond (Relief Fund), a German-American charitable organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, devoted to war relief and humanitarian aid in German-speaking areas overseas during and after the First World War. Included are the complete minutes of the group from August 1914 until March 1917.

A further volume of records contains a list of donations received, including clothing, wool, and first-aid supplies, from March 1915 to April 1917. After a gap, the same volume also contains a log of homemade clothing production from October 1919 to March 1920: wool yarn given out to women, who then brought back scarves, caps, sweaters and mittens that they had knitted, to be sent overseas. This volume may have been kept by the GSP Women's Auxiliary, and thus may represent its contribution to the Frauenhilfsfond, as well as documentation of a later effort (1919-1920), under the auspices of the GSP Foreign Relief Committee.

The collection also includes a few loose items dated 1921 to 1922, related to the participation of the GSP Women's Auxiliary in campaigns to feed destitute children in German-speaking areas, efforts that were led by the American Friends Service Committee. Finally, one item of a more retrospective nature, is a letter from the Philadelphia architect and one-time GSP vice president Carl P. Berger, addressed to Antonie Ehrlich, dated 23 September 1924, in which he gives details of several German-American war relief efforts in which he played a significant role.