Mecklenburg-Schwerin Admits Women to University Education.

Germany; Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Germany)

After the founding of the German Empire in 1871, rapid economic development pushed single, middle-class women out of the home and into a number of kinds of jobs, with many becoming governesses or teachers in girls’ schools. To have access to higher-level occupations, they were required to have university educations. However, the nine-year secondary school, called a “gymnasium,” that prepared students for a university education was for boys only, and students had to pass the Abitur, the final exam of the gymnasium, in order to be admitted to a German university. A women’s movement for higher education arose in reaction to this situation, and, combined with a number of contributing factors, it resulted in the German educational system being opened to women on a state-by-state basis. This process was completed in 1909, when the German duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the final holdout, allowed female students to matriculate at the University of Rostock, the oldest university in northern Europe.