Marie Lang

Marie Lang

Marie Lang (8 March 1858 – 14 October 1934) was an Austrian feminist, theosophist and publisher. Born in 1858 in Vienna, Lang was raised in a liberal, upper-middle-class home. After divorcing her first husband in 1884, she married Edmund Lang and the two hosted an influential salon for politicians and intellectuals. Joining the women's movement toward the end of the 1880s, she quickly became an influential women's rights activist. In 1893, along with Auguste Fickert and Rosa Mayreder, she founded the Allgemeiner Österreichischer Frauenverein (General Austrian Women's Association). In spite of provisions in Section 30 of the law governing associations, which prohibited women's political involvement, the three friends used their networks of influential politicians and intellectuals to press for legal changes in laws governing women and children's civil rights and in favor of women's suffrage. In 1898, she co-founded the women's journal Dokumente der Frauen (Women's Documents), serving as its editor-in-chief until 1902. In 1902, Lang attended the International Abolitionist Federation's conference in London and visited the Passmore Edwards Settlement, becoming an advocate of social welfare programs. When she returned to Austria, she gave lectures for the Frauenverein on the settlement movement and organized the Vienna Settlement Society, serving on its board until 1909. In 1901, she founded the Ottakring Settlement House, which served as a place for women to receive social services. Joining the Committee on Woman Suffrage in 1905, she worked actively to change Section 30 and gain women's voting rights. During World War I she worked in a war hospital, performing Swedish massage therapy. Her husband died in 1918 and after two years she retired from work with the Settlement Society to devote time to her family. She is remembered as one of the leading figures in the turn-of-the-century women's movement of Austria. The Settlement Society she founded remained in operation until 2003 and pioneered many social services in Austria, such as adult education, child and maternity care, summer camp programs, and tuberculosis treatment.

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