Sidonie Werner

Sidonie Werner (16 March 1860 – 27 December 1932) was a German Jewish schoolteacher and feminist based in Hamburg. She was active in the German League of Jewish Women which she founded in 1904, together with Bertha Pappenheim. In 1929, she organized the World Conference of Jewish Women in Hamburg.

Biography Born in Posen on 16 March 1860, Sidonie Werner was brought up in a well-to-do Jewish merchant's family. She attended a girls' high school before completing a course in teacher training. After first working in a Jewish school in the Hamburg suburb of Altona, she was employed by the Hamburg school authority until her retirement. On 4 June 1929, as chair of the Hamburg Women's Association (Hamburger Frauenverein), Werner opened the Second World Congress of Jewish Women which was held in Hamburg.

Werner established a considerable number of facilities for Jewish women and children over the years. These included a girls' home in Hamburg (1906), a children's home in Bad Segeberg (1908), a children's home in Altona (1910), as well as several buildings in Bad Segeberg's Bismarckallee for children and mother care. In the late 1920s, she established a home for sick children in Wyk (1927), extending the facility in 1929. It was destroyed by fire in 1938.