Published on 14 September 2016
The second half of the 19th century was characterized by the development of women’s movements, or emancipation movements, which did not mean the struggle for the equality of women and men, but activities whose main goal was to allow women a certain level of education, initially for purely practical reasons. At that time, there was a change in the field of girls' education; also, women started to participate actively to work in various organizations. The beginnings of women’s involvement outside the family may be linked to the National Revival. Through their child rearing practices, mothers were to convey and preserve the national identity. This is why a greater emphasis was put on women’s education.
As a result of political changes after the the fall of Bach’s absolutism, a great many organizations were established in the 1860s; and not only educational, but also cultural. In the environment of Prague’s intelligentsia, besides men’s salons, salons led by women began to appear. One of the clubs that helped women to use their leisure time was the Ladies’ American Club. Women from wealthy bourgeois families of the Prague intelligentsia applied themselves to charity, and many of them supported philanthrophic organizations. Among these there was, for example, the Society of St. Ludmila, which mostly provided the poor and the sick with food, but also financial support. There were also organizations which directly targeted the problem of poverty, in some cases women’s poverty. This was the area that the Czech Women’s Manufacturing Society concentrated on.
The Czech Women’s Manufacturing Society (CWMO) was founded in 1871 and reflected the emancipation process, which in the Czech lands had reached the stage where women founded and managed various charity and educational activities and societies and also reacted to the material distress that prevailed in Bohemia after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. As stated in Otto’s encyclopaedia, the humanitarian purpose of these societies was to improve the fate of women – orphaned girls, widows and other women left without a breadwinner – and to educate them to become self-sufficient girls and women, and through employment, able to look after their children and not be dependent on men.1 More than emancipation, the aim was to ensure that abandoned women did not raise the number of poverty-stricken people in the towns. This was why it was necessary to provide them with education and subsequently also employment, to help them to self-sufficiency and independence, therefore bringing about no significant burden for society.
The foundation of the CWMO was initiated by the writer Karolína Světlá, who together with other important personalities of the women’s movement, such as Sofie Podlipská and Věnceslava Lužická, responded to the Appeal to mothers and young women of Bohemia and Moravia, printed in January 1871 in many Czech newspapers, in which the authors stressed the need to establish a society whose purpose would be the support of female industrial education.
The Appeal included, for example: “The principle of recent years of mutual cooperation between all classes of men as exercised in our homeland has achieved such surprising material results that all concerns about the safe running of enterprises based on this principle have been disarmed.
There can be no doubt about its beneficial moral influence. Organizations dealing with education and food, savings banks and others, call upon the forces so far unused in their wide field of activities, which have therefore been lost to society until now. In so doing, they improve not only the material state of its citizens…, but also and at the same time awaken every single limb of theirs to independent activity, and encourage the sense for the common good and awareness in those classes in our nation which were often pushed aside by progress and the advantages resulting from it for others.
By realizing this, a great desire has been awakened in us to attempt in this way to improve and elevate the state of the female population, especially that of its huge majority, which is left to fend not only for themselves, but to provide, through their work, food for their family.
Despite their noble causes and endeavours, charitable institutions, with their insufficient means, cannot help significantly where the need is greatest…
We intend to take the first decisive step towards our sisters breaking out of these unfortunate circumstances by founding: savings banks, where it will be possible to save even the smallest amounts of money and to borrow under favourable conditions, so that at last, hard-working women will no longer suffer from usury; sale and employment agencies, which will accept the products of women’s work of all kinds for consignment sale, not only from Prague, but also from rural areas, and which will also arrange commissions for such products… Inexpensive training for daughters of poor families, which are likely to have to fend for themselves in the future. Most importantly, teaching them skills for trade… preparatory drawings for metal, wood and stone engraving, in the field of industry… also domestic economy in more detail, etc., to which however, the society will not limit itself. To set as the foremost task support for new fields of activity for the female gender, adequate to their skills and abilities, and to expand the area of their activities in accordance with their abilities...
The signatories of this Appeal elected a provisional committee, which turned to Dr. Tomáš Černý, the notable lawyer from Prague and later its Mayor, with a request for preparing the statutes. These were presented to the committee members on 5 March and approved on the same day.
The society’s main purpose was specified in the statutes as follows: “The purpose of the women’s manufacturing society in Prague is the care of the improvement and expansion of women's production, the beneficial sale of the products of female work, the provision of material security and the expansion of the education of women based on mutual cooperation.“
The society had its statutes and the management was provided by a fifteen-member commitee and the general meeting. The first constituent general meeting took place on 13 July 1871, and naturally Karolína Světlá was elected as chairwoman.
Compared to other organizations active at that time, like the Ladies’ American Club, which was associated mostly with the wealthy bourgeois classes in Prague, the CWMO tried to accommodate even the poorest classes, and did not concentrate only on Prague, but was also aimed at the rural areas. At the time of its foundation, the CWMO had over 1,000 members, who were divided into founding members (ladies, paying 10 guldens in their first year of membership and 5 guldens in subsequent years), contributing members (ladies, paying 1 gulden a year) and supporters (men, paying 1 gulden a year). After only the first year of its existence, the society numbered 1,680 members. Besides membership fees, the society solicited funds from extraordinary members and supporter contributions; took the proceeds of events organized by the society, such as concerts, lotteries, donations; and took out loans, but only within the limits of their statutes. These also defined what these funds were to be used for. Primarily, they were to be used for: training courses; mediating employment; savings banks intended to lend money to the society’s members in case of unexpected expenses; meetings, lectures and discussions; magazines, the society’s library and other purposes.
After the founding of the CWMO, Karolína Světlá started to work hard towards the establishment of a trade and industrial school to be run by the society. The school was founded on 15 October 1871 on the premises of the former Holy Trinity Elementary School in Spálená street, and it was attended by 176 female students. The school concentrated on teaching practical subjects, and girls for poor families could attend, too. The school tuition fees were low and girls from demonstrably poor families payed nothing. The school provided systematic and long-term, continuous, specialized training, thanks to which the girls were able to find future employment. The society also offered various language courses, handicraft lessons and educational lectures for the public. The lessons were taught in Czech and five specializations were available. Once a week, the girls could also attend free lectures in other subjects of study. The three-year business school provided whole-day schooling. In the industrial school, handicrafts like sewing, dressmaking, the refitting of clothes and linen, embroidery, hat decoration, knitting, and so on. Further, the school offered drawing, painting, singing and piano lessons, literary subjects and foreigh languages: French, Russian, English and German. The girls could expand their practical business skills in the society's lingerie shop in Spálená street.
Unlike in other schools, the students had a great advantage thanks to the sale and employment agency, which the society founded in 1871 and whose purpose was to arrange employment free of charge and to provide an outlet for students’ work.
Due to ill health, Karolína Světlá had to leave the society's committee in 1879. Although formally she remained a chair-woman, she was represented by her deputy, Sofie Podlipská, and the future chair-woman, Emílie Bártová. Emílie Bártová remained in the position until 1890, when she was briefly (until 1891) substituted by L. Čelakovská.
The school enjoyed great long-term interest, as is evidenced above all by the high number of students. This is also why the seat of the school changed often, as it was struggling against the lack of teaching premises. The success and the value of the society’s school were clearly measurable. For example, in the school year 1880-81, the school was attended by 513 female students. Out of this number, the society managed to find employment for 170 women. When the society recapitulated the twenty years of its existence, it assessed that its school prepared 10,036 female students for future employment, of which 4,888 were educated free of charge. The agency provided employment to 2,417 of them, of whom approximately half were graduates of the nursing course.
1891 was a watershed year for the CWMO. A new chair-woman, Eliška Krásnohorská - one of the most significant and inspirational women in the society’s leadership - was in office; and it was decided to erect a building expressly for the society on the corner of the Resslerova and Ditrichova streets. The new building, with seventeen special and well-equipped modern classrooms, was opened in 1896.
In 1910, Eliška Krásnohorská, editor of Žesné Listy (Women’s Paper) from 1874, resigned as the society’s chairwoman due to health problems. Jindřiška Flajšhansová was elected to the vacant post, and she also took over the position of editor of Ženské Listy from Krásnohorská. In the following years, the school began to struggle with increasing financial problems, which were worsened by the war. Improvement did not come even after the end of World War I; donations and contributions decreased dramatically, brought about also by decreasing membership.
In 1927 Eliška Krásnohorská died; after her death the paper Ženské Listy ceased to exist, as it could not survive the ever worsening financial situation. The CWMO also struggled for its existence. The generation of founding members was dying out, and with increasing options for the education of girls, the original purpose of the society did not elicit much of a response. In 1936 the society had only 506 members, in the following year only 396, and in 1940 a mere 201. At the time of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the society was chaired by Marie Procházková. On 16 August 1944, the society was dissolved by the Germans and its property confiscated by the city council, including the building in Resslerova street.
The members secretly managed to save mementoes of Karolína Světlá and Eliška Krásnohorská, and also part of the society’s library. The society was restored on 5 January 1946. The building was returned. However, it had been damaged in air-raids and its repair was estimated at 5 million Czech crowns. There were no members or finances for its operation. On 16 June 1947, the society decided to lend the building for 50 years, free of charge to the city council, on the conditions that its repair would be arranged, the building would be used by its schools, and two rooms would be set aside for the society, where the objects from the estate of Eliška Krásnohorská and Karolína Světlá, the archive, the library and other objects associated with the society’s history and with the origins of girls’ education would be preserved.
In 1963, the objects commemorating Eliška Krásnohorská were seized and moved to the depository of the Monument to National Literature in Opočno. After a hundred years of its existence, the Czech Women’s Manufacturing Society came to an end.
There are not many records conerning the society’s library in archival sources. In CWMO’s annual reports, we can follow irregular mentions of new books coming to the library. The annual report from 1878 says: “The library has been expanded by donations and writings sent to Ženské Listy.” This practice continued further, as written in 1905: “the society’s reading room was again enriched by a great number of new books and magazines, for which we thank the famous editorial offices of magazines based in Prague and outside, and the honourable publishers that send their publications to the editorial office of Ženské Listy to be announced.“ The annual report of 1901 at least reported on the size of the library, saying: “our members’ library, which with its reading room is open to the public every Sunday and holiday afternoon, has been expanded, to number 4,000 volumes of Czech and foreign language works.” The following year, headed by Miss Marie Kuřátková, the library has grown to 4,500 literary works and 60 magazines. The books could be studied in the reading room, and also taken home. The library’s expansion proceeded slowly until World War I, which caused a slight decline. In 1910, the library still owned 5000 volumes, but in 1917 it was down to only 4000. The library was not significantly expanded in the 1920s and 1930s, either. In 1928, for example, it contained 4616 volumes; in 1929 it was 4644; in 1931, 4655; in 1932, 4677; and from 1933 on, no new volumes were added.
The surviving annual reports show that the society’s school also had its own library, which was indirectly connected to the society's main library. Specific additions to individual departments - for example: teacher; student; geography; business subjects; and so on - are also mentioned in some school reports which were included in the annual reports.
World War II intervened not only in the fate of the society, which was abolished in 1944 by the Germans, but also in the fate of the library. A portion of the library was saved by the members, who took the books, together with objects connected with Karolína Světlá and Eliška Krásnohorská, out of the building. However, information about how large the rescued part of the library was, and the fate of the rest of the volumes, could not be traced.