against the Latin and later against the French. In this struggle women took a prominent part, especially through membership in the society called the "Order of the Palms," which, before the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, united the strongest spirits of Germany for this purpose. The first woman to join this society was Sophie Elizabeth, Princess of Mecklenburg, married in 1636 to the Herzog of Braunschweig. She was followed by many others, both of the nobility and the common people, and was named by virtue of this leadership "The Deliverer."
In the eighteenth century we have the founder of the German theater, Caroline Neuber. In the artistic sense she was the first director of the German stage, the first to turn the attention of the greatest actors of her day to the ideal side of dramatic presentation. Early in the eighteenth century women began to take up university studies. A certain Frau von Zingler received a prize from the University of Wittenberg for literary work, and the wife of Professor Gottscheds entered upon a contest for a prize in poetry with her husband.
We find some old verses published in Leipsic, in a book of students' songs, in 1736, recognizing the fact that women attended lectures in the university there, although the reference is rather sarcastic, speaking of "beauty coming to listen in the halls of learning."
In 1754 the first woman received her degree of Doctor of Medicine in Halle—Dorothea Christine Erxleben, née Leborin, a daughter of a physician, who attained to this result only after many years of painstaking effort. With her father's help she studied the classics and medicine, and gradually, in spite of the objections of his brother physicians, began to practice as a doctor under her father's protection. She is said to have cured her patients cito tuto, jucunde, and in 1742 she published a book on the right of women to study, the title of which, according to the custom of the day, included the full table of contents. This book passed through two editions, and enabled her to gain the attention of Frederick II, who was persuaded to order the University of Halle to grant her the privilege of taking her examination there. The day arrived, and the hall was crowded for the occasion; the candidate passed the ordeal in a brilliant manner, and took the oath for the doctor's degree amid a storm of applause from the listeners present.
In the present century the germ of the movement for educational rights for women came into consciousness in Germany in the stormy year 1848, and first found expression and life through the work of two women—Louise Otto Peters and Auguste Schmidt.
