Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer

Marble Portrait bust of Dr. Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer, by Jean-Antoine Houdon: Paris 1806

Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer (née Dorothea Schlözer; 18 August 1770 – 12 July 1825) was a German scholar and the first woman to receive a doctor of philosophy degree in Germany. She was one of the so-called , a group of five academically active women during the 18th and 19th centuries, daughters of academics at Göttingen University, alongside Meta Forkel-Liebeskind, Therese Huber, Philippine Engelhard, and Caroline Schelling.

Life Dorothea was born on 18 August 1770, in Göttingen, Germany. She was the daughter of noted artist Caroline Friederike von Schlözer and professor August Ludwig Schlözer, a prominent historian and theorist on matters of education. Her father Schlözer believed that women's intelligence was equal to that of men. To settle a dispute with another professor on the effectiveness of Johann Bernard Basedow's method of education, they agreed to educate their first-born children by different methods to see how the results differed. Both children turned out to be girls. Dorothea Schlözer was given a non-Basedow regime, she had the best private tutors, and a rigorous curriculum made it possible for her to read at age four. In addition, she was given instruction in areas then thought to be typically female, such as playing the piano, singing, sewing, knitting, and cooking.

In 1810, her husband's business was declared bankrupt and he went into premature senility. This blow was followed by the death of Villers and two of her children. Weak with disease herself she moved to Avignon, France, seeking a milder climate and hoping to save the life of her only surviving daughter. She died there of pneumonia in 1825, aged 55.