Auguste Schmidt

Auguste Schmidt, full name Friederike Wilhelmine Auguste Schmidt (3 August 1833 – 10 June 1902) was a German pioneering feminist, educator, journalist and women's rights activist.

Life Schmidt was born on 3 August 1833 in Breslau, German Empire (now Wrocław, Poland). She was the daughter of Prussian army artillery lieutenant Friedrich Schmidt and his wife Emilie (born Schöps). In 1842, the family moved from Breslau to Poznań where from 1848 to 1850 she studied in Luisenschule to be a teacher.

Between 1850 and 1855, she worked as a private teacher for a Polish family, and later at a private school in Upper Rybnik.

In 1894, she became the first president of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF), (League of German Women's Associations), which brought together thirty-four women's civil rights movement groups under a controlling body. This expanded to 65 in the first year.

She published two novels in 1868, Tausendschön (Daisies) and Veilchen (Violets), a short story, Aus schwerer Zeit (From Hard Times), came out in 1895.

She retired in 1900 and died in Leipzig on 10 June 1902.

In 2003, a 14m long plaque was attached to the house in which she lived between 1863 and 1864 at Lortzingstraße 5, Leipzig, to commemorate her life.