Agnes Karll

Agnes Caroline Pauline Karll (25 March 1868 – 12 February 1927) (also spelled as Agnes Karl) was a German nurse and a nursing reformer. She served as the third president of the International Council of Nurses from 1909 to 1912, and was an honorary member of the Association of Head Nurses in Great Britain and Ireland.

Life and work Agnes Karll was born 25 March 1868 at Embsen, Germany, the daughter of Theodor Karll and his wife Ida. Her parents separated in 1881. A business meeting of the officers of the German Nurses' Association, with Agnes Karll on the far right. Karll's first ambition was to become a teacher and attended Johanna Willborn's advanced training school in Schwerin, which put her in touch with the women's movement at the time and allowed her to meet German feminist Helene Lange. However, when she graduated, she was not eligible to take the teacher's examination because she was too young. She began working as an educator and private teacher in 1886 in Retgendorf (now Dobin am See) and Alt Gaarz. By the age of 19, Karll realized that teaching was not the profession she wanted to pursue.

From 1891 on, she worked for ten years in private clinics, especially around Berlin. It was also during this period that she had the opportunity to spend a few months in the United States and to make herself known there as a nurse (1894). Afterwards, she continued to forge professional links with nurses in other countries, especially in England, Finland and Austria.

Karll worked tirelessly toward the independence of nurses and widespread recognition of the new nursing profession. She coined the term “nurse.” In 1907, she established a systematic and well-founded three-year nurses training program, including a final examination and state recognition. Because of her efforts, further improvements were introduced regularly for everyday nursing work, including a wage sufficient to cover the cost of living.

As part of the German Association of Female Citizens (Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins), in 1903 she founded an organization of women dedicated to care, German Nurses Association of which she was the first president. The association helped its members find work and provided them with insurance and legal advice. Later, it was renamed Agnes-Karll-Verband, and then Deutschen Berufsverband für Krankenpflege eV (DBfK) in 1973. Today it is named Deutscher Berufsverband für Pflegeberufe (DBfK) and is the largest free professional nurses` association in Germany. Streets in Gadebusch, Mainz, Embsen and Elmshorn