NOMINATION FORM International Memory of the World Register

Aletta H. Jacobs Papers ID Code [2016-30]

1.0 Summary (max 200 words)

The Papers offer a rare insight into the struggle for women’s rights in an era of colonialism. They highlight how transnational feminist networks engaged in the fight for suffrage, education, , labour rights and peace, often limited by white supremacist thinking. Aletta Jacobs (1854–1929) was the first female doctor in the with a university in . She used her position as a medical doctor to fight for women’s social and political rights. Containing letters from famous American and British suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony, Ann Howard Shaw, and Emmeline Pankhurst, the Aletta Jacobs Papers reveal a life full of international political activism and travel in Europe, the USA, Africa and Asia. Jacobs was of one of the many Jewish activists and a leading figure in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, which later gained NGO status at the United Nations. She was also the initiator of the International Congress of Women in 1915, the founding meeting of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Jacobs and other conveners visited the leaders of belligerent countries to plead for peace.

2.0 Nominator 2.1 Name of nominator (person or organization)

2.1.1 Atria, Institute on and Women’s History, , Netherlands 2.1.2 Sophia Smith Collection, , Northampton, MA, USA 2.1.3 University of /Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands

2.2 Relationship to the nominated documentary heritage

2.2.1 Atria is the keeper of the Aletta Jacobs Papers, which are the oldest documents in its International Archives for the Women’s Movement (IAV) collection.

2.2.2 The nomination is supported by the Sophia Smith Collection, a sister organization of Atria, which also holds manuscripts, archives, photographs, periodicals and other primary sources of information about international women’s history. They include important material on women’s rights, birth control, reproductive rights, and suffrage.

2.2.3 The / Rijksuniversiteit Groningen is where Aletta Jacobs completed her medical studies, the first woman in the Netherlands to do so.

2.3 Contact person(s) (to provide information on nomination)

Renée Römkens, Director, Atria, Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History

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Elizabeth Myers, Director of Special Collections, Smith College

Mineke Bosch, Professor of Modern History, University of Groningen 2.4.1 Contact details Name Address Atria Vijzelstraat 20 att. Dr Renée Römkens 1017 KL Amsterdam, Netherlands Telephone Facsimile Email +31 20 303 1500 [email protected]

2.4.2 Contact details Name Address Sophia Smith Collection 7 Neilson Drive att. Dr Elizabeth Myers Smith College Northampton, MA 01063, USA

Telephone Facsimile Email +1 413 585-2970 +1 413 585-2886 [email protected]

2.4.3 Contact details Name Address University of Groningen RUG PO Box 72 Att. Prof. dr Mineke Bosch 9700 AB Groningen, Netherlands

Telephone Facsimile Email + 31 50 363 5993/0612558337 [email protected]

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3.0 Identity and description of the documentary heritage 3.1 Name and identification details of the items being nominated If inscribed, the exact title and institution(s) to appear on the certificate should be given Papers of Aletta Henriëtte Jacobs, inventory numbers 1–639 as described on page 1–28 of the inventory of the International Archives for the Women’s Movement (IAV) at Atria, Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History, consisting of:

1. letters written to Dr Jacobs; 2. travel documents (1910–1915); 3. documents concerning the International Congress of Women in (1915), with letters from Emily Balch, Jane Addams and Emily Hobhouse; 4. documents concerning peace missions (1915–1916); 5. report of the visit to President W. Wilson (1915); 6. letters received by Dr Jacobs concerning birth control, mainly from American women (1920); 7. documents concerning the golden anniversary of her doctorate and her 75th birthday (1929); 8. newspaper clippings concerning Aletta Jacobs (1872, 1904–1956); 9. records of the ‘Comité ter eering van de nagedachtenis van Dr Aletta H. Jacobs’ (Committee to Honour the Memory of Dr Aletta H. Jacobs) (1935–1936); and 10. documents concerning the commemoration of the centenary of her birth (1954).

The physical extent of the archive is 1 linear metre.

3.4 History/provenance

Aletta Jacobs (1854–1929) was born as the eighth child of Anna Jacobs-de Jongh and Abraham Jacobs, a Jewish doctor, in Sappemeer, a village in the north of the Netherlands. She was the first woman to be admitted as a student at a Dutch university, the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (1871). She earned her MD in 1879 and started a career as a in Amsterdam, becoming the first female doctor in the Netherlands. She offered a free clinic for women in the poor quarters of Amsterdam. Jacobs started to give advice on birth control, adopting and experimenting with the ‘Mensinga diaphragm’, which was later referred to as a ‘Dutch cap’. This makes her a pioneer in this respect. In 1883 Jacobs sent a letter to the Board of the Mayor and Aldermen of Amsterdam to register as a voter for city elections, since she fulfilled the criteria as a professional woman who paid enough taxes to qualify as a voter. Her request was refused; even though the gender of voters was not mentioned in the Constitution of 1848, it was in the ‘spirit’ of the law to restrict the right of suffrage to males and to exclude women. She took an appeal to the Supreme Court, which also rejected it, and at the next change of the Constitution, in 1887, the adjective ‘male’ was added in the law before ‘Dutch citizen’ whenever enfranchisement was mentioned. In 1894 the Dutch Association for Women’s Suffrage was established. Jacobs became president of the Amsterdam branch in 1895 and president of the national association in 1903. Later she became one of the most prominent international leaders for women’s suffrage. Together with the American suffragist , Jacobs travelled in Africa and Asia in 1911 and 1912. She was also the initiator of the International Congress of Women in 1915, which became the founding meeting of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. After Jacobs’s death, her records were bequeathed to Mien van Wulfften Palthe-Broese van Groenou (Mien Palthe), who handed most of them over to . Mien Palthe and Rosa Manus were both close to Jacobs as lifetime suffrage and peace activists. The papers are part of the core documents of the unique International Archives for the Women’s Movement (IAV) that was founded in 1935. The Aletta Jacobs Papers contain letters from feminists, suffrage fighters, 3 birth control and peace activists around the world, including Carrie Chapman Catt, , Jane Addams, Emmeline Pankhurst and .

The papers, pictures and objects highlight both the Dutch and the international struggle for women’s rights — women’s suffrage being the most prominent, but also including women’s struggle to enter higher education and the medical profession, the position of prostitutes, women’s reproductive rights and women’s political anti-war actions.

Aletta Jacobs mentioned her papers in the preface of her memoirs, first published in 1924: “when I first started to read through my old letters and papers”. She recalled correspondence with Bertha von Suttner, William Stead and Björnstjerne Björnson. When Jacobs died in 1929 in Baarn, her belongings were in the house of Mien Palthe’s family in The Hague, where she lived. Mien van Wulfften Palthe-Broese van Groenou was her only heir according to her will from 1923.

On 20 May 1930, Rosa Manus wrote to Clara Hyde, Carrie Chapman Catt’s secretary, “Dr Jacobs’s books have come to me now, and I am organizing a real feministic library which I hope, will prove useful to the feminists.” This library and archive was founded in 1935 by Rosa Manus, W.H. Posthumus-van der Goot and , representing different generations of the women’s movement. The new library and archive were called the International Archives for the Women’s Movement (IAV). The IAV would be based in Amsterdam and preserve, collect and publish the cultural heritage of women and the international women’s movement. In a letter to Posthumus-van der Goot from 14 October 1936, Rosa Manus writes from Montreux, Switzerland, that they have to open the ‘Jacobs trunk’, when she returns to Amsterdam. The ‘First Annual Report of the International Archives for the Women’s Movement, from its founding until 1 May 1937’ reports that Rosa Manus has given a big part of her own library, including very precious material from Dr Aletta H. Jacobs, to the IAV (p. 166).

In February 1940, because of the threat of war, the IAV stored several valuable papers in a safety deposit box in the women’s branch of the Bank in Amsterdam, among them some important letters to Aletta Jacobs, papers from her travels to several governments in 1915 and notes of Scandinavian and visits. After occupied the Netherlands in May 1940, the German Security Police (Sicherheitsdienst) showed interest in the IAV materials. The fact that this truly international institute, headed by Rosa Manus, a Jewish feminist and well-known pacifist who had also helped refugees from Germany, could contain information on the enemies of the Nazis probably sparked their interest. On 2 July 1940, an abrupt end came to the flourishing beginning of the IAV: the Sicherheitsdienst knocked on the door of Keizersgracht 264, where the IAV was housed with the International Institute of Social History, told the two women who were present to leave, and sealed the door. A few days later the Germans removed the complete contents of the IAV to , Germany. Among the papers were some, but fortunately not all, of Jacobs’s papers.

After the war, in 1947, only one tenth of the books came back, and all archival material was lost. Only the few valuable papers in the bank had been saved. After many efforts to retrieve IAV property in the years following 1945, all hopes of getting documents back had evaporated. The board of the IAV made a claim for the damage of the missing books, archives and furniture to the ‘Schade-Enquête-Commissie’. Among the claims was correspondence of Aletta Jacobs, as well as 30 books from her legacy. In the 1960s the institute received money from the German government as compensation, Wiedergutmachung.

In 1961 E. Coops-Broese van Groenou, Mien Palthe’s sister, donated some letters and photographs of Aletta Jacobs to the IAV.

In 1992 an announcement in a Dutch newspaper came as a stunning surprise: a Dutch historian and journalist had visited the Osobyi (Special) Archive in Moscow and had seen there as Fond 1475 the archive of the IAV! Other archives from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and other 4 countries had also been stored there since 1945. The Russians had taken these items during their liberation of Europe from the east as spoils of war. Although a treaty about the return of the archives was signed immediately in 1992 and despite continuing visits from ambassadors and other high-ranking officials, a visit by Queen Beatrix to Russia was needed to set the bureaucratic wheels in motion. Finally, in May 2003, 25 big boxes of IAV material arrived back in Amsterdam. Of the Aletta Jacobs Papers, this concerns the items described in the inventory under numbers 140, 149–151, 176–177, 195, 205, 210, 272, 397, 409, 412, 414–415, 419–421, 426, 449–450, 530, 549, 556, 563, 581, 583 and 593.

It is not certain that all stolen letters have been recovered; there might still be some misplaced letters that became mixed up in other archives. When archivist Annette Mevis processed the archives that had returned from Moscow after 2003, she also found letters from other looted archives, which she sent back to the original owners. Since many of the other looted archives are very large, they might still contain material relating to Aletta Jacobs.

The letters written to Aletta Jacobs by more than 150 women and men from all over the world cover a broad range of themes. Some of the letters dating from the last decades of the 19th century deal with material requested by Aletta Jacobs for her and her husband Gerritsen’s library on the history of and the women’s movement. This library was sold to the Crerar Library in as the in 1904 and until this day is an outstanding source for the study of women’s history, with books, pamphlets and periodicals in 15 languages from over four centuries (now available online). The letters written between 1900 and 1920 deal mostly but not exclusively with suffragism and peace activities. When in 1919 — probably as the result of a recommendation from — an article in the US-based magazine Pictorial Review was published on Jacobs’s pioneering activities with birth control, many American women from all walks of life sent letters asking for more information and help.

The letters written by women who were active in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, such as American suffragists Carrie Chapman Catt, Susan B. Anthony, Ann Howard Shaw, the Finnish Alexandra Gripenberg, the British Beatrice Samuel and Emily Hobhouse, the Australian Vida Goldstein, the South African Olive Schreiner and the Austrian suffrage leader Marianne Hainisch and many more, show how the personal and the political are connected. As Mineke Bosch has demonstrated in her interpretative publication of 1990: Politics and Friendship: Letters from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902–1942, feminism and the fight for suffrage was embodied in the personal lives of the women involved. The wide scope of the letters demonstrates how suffrage was seen as a key to solve many other women’s rights issues.

Special mention should be made of the translations by Aletta Jacobs of two feminist works that undisputedly belong to the international canon of the history of women’s suffrage: ’s Women and Economics (1900) and Olive Schreiner’s Woman and Labour (1911).

The Aletta Jacobs Papers also highlight colonial history, because of the travels to Africa and Asia undertaken by Jacobs and Catt for the cause of women’s suffrage in 1911 and 1912.

Aletta Jacobs is nowadays considered the most famous Dutch feminist. She is the most photographed member of the first wave of feminism in the Netherlands. In all political cartoons about women’s suffrage (or feminism at large) that were published in the Dutch media, Aletta Jacobs is depicted as the woman representing the movement. One of the 50 windows into Dutch history that every pupil needs to learn about is dedicated to Aletta Jacobs. Anne Frank is the only other female protagonist on that list.

4.0 Legal information 4.1 Owner of the documentary heritage (name and contact details) 5

Name Address Atria, Institute on Vijzelstraat 20 Gender Equality and 2017 HK Amsterdam Women’s History Netherlands

Telephone Facsimile Email

+31 20-30 31 500 [email protected]

4.3 Legal status The nominated items are owned by Atria, Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History. Responsibility for preserving the documents is mentioned in Atria’s statutes.

4.4 Accessibility

The Aletta Jacobs Papers are digitized and available online for free on the Atria website. The inventory is published in English and leads the viewer directly to the scan of the original sources. To avoid damage, the original papers can only be brought out of the repository for necessary research purposes, and on special request.

4.5 Copyright status

The Aletta Jacobs Papers are in the public domain. Authors’ and publishers’ copyrights have expired. .

5.0 Assessment against the selection criteria

5.1 Authenticity

The identity of the Aletta Jacobs Papers is very clear and undisputed. The letters are addressed to Dr Jacobs, and many of the envelopes have also been kept.

5.2 World significance

The content as well as the history of the Aletta Jacobs Papers clearly show their international importance. Aletta Jacobs’s books and papers formed the basis of the initial collection of the International Archives for the Women's Movement (IAV). They connect to the history of the struggle for women’s rights, specifically concerning education, reproduction and suffrage. The First and Second World Wars and the Cold War are important contexts. The First World War is important because of the different reactions to war by feminists in different countries and also because of the history of the 1915 International Congress of Women in The Hague, of which Jacobs was a main organizer. The papers of the peace mission travels that followed that conference in 1915 are significant. These letters have even gained in importance 6 because of the rare moving images of Aletta Jacobs with Jane Addams and that were recently found on the moving images website Critical Past. The context of the Second World War is important because of the looting of the archives, and the lack of contact between the West and the East during the Cold War explains why it took so long for the Aletta Jacobs Papers to be discovered in Moscow and returned to their original owner. The looted archives returned to the IAV only 10 years after the end of the Cold War. The Aletta Jacobs Papers offer a rare insight into the transnational history of women’s rights, specifically suffrage, women’s higher education, birth control and women workers’ rights. Aletta Jacobs used her position as a medical doctor to fight for women’s liberation. In her long career, she gained a great reputation in the international women’s movement. At the end of her life, she was honoured as one of the veterans of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the organization that later became the International Alliance of Women and gained NGO status at the United Nations as one of three international women’s organizations . The writings of Aletta Jacobs have had significance across the world. For instance, Raden Adjeng Kartini (1879–1904), who has been a national hero of Indonesia since 1964, describes in her letter of 12 January 1900 that she read ‘Het Doel der Vrouwenbeweging’ (‘The Goal of the Women’s movement’) that she thought was published in De Gids. This refers to Jacobs’s 20-page article published in De Gids in 1899. Jacobs took on translating important works of feminism into Dutch: Women and Economics by Charlotte Perkins Gilman from the USA in 1900 and Women and Labour by the South African Olive Schreiner in 1911. There are letters from both writers in the Aletta Jacobs Papers. Those from Olive Schreiner are already shared in the online resource https://www.oliveschreiner.org/. Aletta Jacobs’s travels during the First World War to visit the leaders of belligerent countries to plead for peace have world significance. The Aletta Jacobs Papers contain handwritten reports of these visits. Recently, a short moving image fragment of Jane Adams, Aletta Jacobs and Alice Hamilton walking near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was also found on the moving images website Critical Past. A complete film was made about the life of Aletta Jacobs by Nouchka van Brakel in 1995, and in 2016 a television series will be produced that follows the footsteps of Jacobs’s travels together with Carrie Chapman Catt in 1911 and 1912.

5.3 Comparative criteria

1 Time

The Aletta Jacobs Papers date from 1871 to her death in 1929 and reflect a long period of engagement with the international struggle for women’s rights. Documents from 1936 and 1956 in honour of Aletta Jacobs that form part of the archive demonstrate her importance after her death. Documents cover the first wave of feminism, the movement with a focus on suffrage as well as a broad vision of women’s emancipation, and all the major themes of the time. The papers evoke a time of significant change, most notably the First World War.

2 Place

The University of Groningen takes pride in having hosted Aletta Jacobs as the first officially registered female student in the Netherlands. The documents reveal the intense contact within Europe between feminists from, for instance, Hungary and Russia with women from countries such as Scandinavia, the UK and France in a period where Eastern and Western Europe were much more naturally connected than during the Cold War. Letters from the USA to Aletta Jacobs are also prominent in the papers. Letters 7 from Dutch politicians to Aletta Jacobs highlight the long national struggle for votes for women. The letters that Aletta Jacobs published from her travels to Africa and Asia show how she also represents the voice from the metropole of the Dutch colonial empire. Her opinions on South Africa, India and the then reveal her position as a European with feelings of supremacy towards colonized peoples of colour. She writes highly of the engagements with Chinese feminists who were fighting for suffrage during the Chinese revolution of 1911–1912.

3 People

The letters written to Jacobs from prominent and less well-known people from many countries are key in understanding how the women’s political movement worked, how personal dedication and intense friendships fostered the movement, and how women gained access to political institutions. To mention just a few names, Carrie Chapman Catt, Olive Schreiner, Jane Addams and Emmeline Pankhurst are among the correspondents. Also Jacobs’s report of the visit to President Wilson deserves a place here. Letters from Dutch politicians such as to Aletta Jacobs highlight the long national struggle for suffrage. The Jewish heritage of Aletta Jacobs is hardly mentioned in her own writings, but her Jewish background did play a role in her life.

4 Subject and theme

The medical, ethical and political issues that Jacobs raised are still discussed vigorously today. The often desperate and emotional letters in the Aletta Jacobs Papers following the publication on birth control ‘Keeping the Stork in its Place’ in the US magazine Pictorial Review reveal the role of Jacobs as a pioneering female doctor helping women control pregnancies. is as hot an issue today as during Aletta Jacobs’s time. Women’s rights are still on the agenda, both nationally and internationally. Safeguarding the memory of the work of international leaders and forerunners such as Aletta Jacobs is crucial to understand the history and complexities of the feminist struggle for equal rights for men and women.

5 Form and style

The handwritten original letters look like other letters from that era. The handwriting of Jacobs herself is present from several periods in her life. Some of the documents are rare examples of travel documents that no longer exist — for instance, her large-format travel visa with pictures.

6 Social/spiritual/community significance

Aletta Jacobs is still widely considered a role modeI: a woman following her passion and going against the grain while pursuing her goals (gaining her medical education, achieving women’s voting rights, working for international peace). Immersion in the Aletta Jacobs Papers leaves you with a sense of awe about her life-long commitment to the women’s cause and all of her accomplishments. Aletta Jacobs’s unwavering belief in justice, as reflected in the title of Mineke Bosch’s biography Een onwrikbaar geloof in rechtvaardigheid (A firm believe in justice), is still an

8 inspiration today for many pupils, scholars and film-makers.

6.0 Contextual information

6.1 Rarity The Aletta Jacobs Papers are a collection of unique handwritten letters, reports and personal documents. Items such as newspaper clippings or printed reports were collected by Aletta Jacobs and form a unique combination with the other papers.

6.2 Integrity Not all of the letters written to Aletta Jacobs have been preserved. She probably destroyed or lost many letters during her lifetime. Those she bequeathed to Mien Palthe, who handed them to Rosa Manus, are part of the Aletta Jacobs Papers.

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