Guste Schepp

Guste Schepp (born Auguste Merkel: 23 August 1886 - 23 July 1967) was a German politician (Deutsche Staatspartei / DStP) and, over many years, a women's rights campaigner.

Biography Auguste "Guste" Schepp was born in Bremen, the city in which she would live and, more than eighty years later, die. Her father, Carl Merkel (1847-1911), was a successful businessman of Spanish-American provenance. Her mother, born Carlotta Clausen (1853-1928), came originally from Mexico. Guste was one of her parents' seven recorded children: she had four sisters and two brothers.

She attended Anna Vietor's Lyceum (girls' secondary school) till 1901. After that she was sent away for a year to a boarding school in Dresden, followed by a few months in England where she stayed with the family of an English pastor. She then enrolled at the Gustav Janson seminar (teacher-training college). Any ambitions to become a teacher were thwarted, however, since she was forced to abandon her course unfinished by serious illness. "... eine bedeutende, mutige, und wortverwandte Frau". (and others) as the "Frauenstadtbund" (loosely, "Women's City Association"). The name change had come about in 1923. In her new role Schepp now proved a tirelsss campaigner for an end to the situation whereby women were disadvantaged on account of gender. Then as now, other topics at the top of the agenda were Peace Resolution adherence and the selective criminalisation of abortion under § 218 of the German criminal code. Through her contributions to the "Bremer Nachrichten" and other newspapers she emerged as an effective campaigning journalist. She reported on the principal women's congresses of the time, and contributed well-considered pen-portraits of important (female) personalities such as Hedwig Heyl, Luise Koch, Ottilie Hoffmann, Anna Vietor and Helene Lange. During a period of intensifying political polarisation and gathering crisis, Schepp-Merkel also kept her readers supplied with commentaries on current events. One example was an article which appeared in the "Bremer Nachrichten" of 8 March 1932 under the heading "Eingesandt aus Frauenkreisen" ("A contribution from the women's groups") in which she launched a debate on the role of women in the - still theoretical, but already widely discussed in some quarters - "Third Reich". Through her work on the welfare committee with the Bremen senator for public welfare provision (and, after the Hitler nightmare ended, future mayor), Wilhelm Kaisen of the SPD. Despite being members of different political parties, they were both issue-focused politicians of the (usually) moderate left. Both Kaisen and his politically involved wife, Helene, became important political allies for Schepp-Merkel and, on a personal level, good friends. Weidemann backed his party comrade, Müller. Schepp engaged in a strident argument with Weidemann, whom she accused of "siding militantly" with the National Socialist party. In a stinging adminition, she warned him against fighting for the church hierarchy without regard for considerations of faith.

By 1945, as the war drew to a close, Schepp-Merkel was living in a makeshift home far to the south, in Bavaria, where she was looking after five grand children. Her old friend Wilhelm Kaisen asked her to return to Bremen to join the collective effort to rebuild the city, but in the immediate term family came first: her return to Bermen was deferred.

In 1950 Schepp-Merkel was a co-founder of the "Jugend-Gemeinschaftswerk" ("Youth Community Work") programme, under the auspices of the DEF). Others involved in the enterprise included Mathilde Wilkens, Else Ahlers and Grete Erling. The focus was on helping disadvantaged young people who had been unable to conclude their education satisfoactorily and transition snoothly into employment. The initiative involved one-year courses in topics such as household management and kindergarten work, along with more generalised courses. She derived huge joy and fulfillment from watching young people enrolled in the programme gain in knowledge, self-confidence, and confidence in life. She particularly relished taking her charges to the "Kunsthalle" (museum-gallery) so as to introduce them to "culture". As chair of the DEF), she lived out her conviction that Christianity must each day demonstrate its worth through actions. Her instinctive political liberalism was conditioned by a sense of responsibility for those whose own personal freedom was constrained. Her commitment to women's rights was predicated on harmony and synthesis rather than on confrontation. She believed it possible to reduce class idfferences and refused to accept the immutability of existing political road blacks. Remarkably, she succeeded in combining her socio-political commitment with family life in ways which enriched both. She continued to involve herself in the Bremen women'sd movement till just a few years before she died.