“Louise of Baden – the forgotten mother of the Red Cross”

We “westeners”, however, lived in a different world from those “in dr’Schdad” (“in town”). In the fifties it still had a semi-rural character with three farms. At the time, I knew neither the Grand Duchess Louise of Baden through whose street, named after her, I cycled daily, nor the Baden Women’s Association, founded by her in 1859.
Today, the historiography of the Red Cross no longer mentions the Grand Duchy Baden, the Baden Women’s Association and the Grand Ducal couple Frederick I. Grand Duke of Baden and Luise of Prussia neither their contribution to the founding of the Red Cross. The Baden Red Cross, however, upholds the memory of Louise and awards the “Order of Merit Grand Duchess Louise of Baden” as the highest award. In numerous rooms of state and district associations of the German Red Cross her picture still hangs next to Henry Dunants.
In 2012, with his book “Louise of Baden. The Forgotten Mother of the Red Cross”, Kurt Bickel has earned the great merit of having rescued the humane work of Grand Duchess Louise from oblivion. Reading it is a wonderful private lesson that allows one to get to know another, unjustly forgotten side not only of my hometown, but also of Prussia and the Red Cross.
Reading Bickel’s book, Louise’s Baden Women’s Association turned out to be the oldest Red Cross sorority in Germany. In 1862 Dunant writes,”A memory of Solferino”. The Red Cross is founded in 1864. The Baden Women’s Association, founded already in 1859 by Louise of Baden, can thus be regarded the oldest Red Cross institution in the world.
In 1838, Louise was born as a Prussian princess of the House of Hohenzol­lern in Berlin. Her father William is the “Prince of Grapeshot”, who is still hated by Baden historians and who in 1848/49 bloodily suppressed the Baden revolution with the conquest of Rastatt near Baden-Baden. In 1871, he is crowned Prussian King and further more in 1871, in the conquered Versailles, he is crowned Emperor William I of the newly founded second German Empire.
Alfred Krupp, the armorer of the German Empire, the cannon king with the double range steel guns, the prince of the newly emerging industrial nobility and general of an army of thousands of workers, was closer to the imperial “Prince of Grapeshot” than Henry Dunant with the likewise new ‘invention’ of humanity,” reports Bickel. To William the Red Cross ideas of his daughter always remained alien.
Louise’s mother Augusta, however, the later German Empress, a born princess of Saxony-Weimar, had grown up in the Weimar of German classicism and cultivated active contact with Goethe as a child and young woman. Louise’s grandmother was the Russian Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, Grand Duchess of Saxony-Weimar. She “had what we call the ‘Russian soul’ or the ‘big heart’, at least character traits that were contrary to Prussian discipline. [...] Grandmother, mother and granddaughter were of high classical education and influenced by the ancient Greek ideal of the incorporation of beauty and the Good [...]. Throughout their lives they felt obliged to the idea of benefaction, charity, Christian charity in practice, and the Samaritan work incumbent upon women.”
Already in 1814 Maria Pavlovna, Louise’s model, founded the first German women’s association to alleviate the adversities of war: the Weimar Patriotic Women’s Institute. In 1817 it expanded into the Patriotic Institute of Women’s Associations in the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach, a forerunner of the later German Red Cross foundations. Louise’s mother Augusta becomes the pioneer of social welfare institutions, nursing and public health care. “The women’s associations of Pavlovna and above all the outstanding social commitment of Augusta have decisively shaped the social history of the 19^th century”, Bickel judges and quotes Henry Dunant: “Queen Augusta had given a powerful stimulus through her personal activity [...]. She was the first international Samaritan in Germany”.
When Louise was 10 years old, she moves to Koblenz, where she lives until the age of 18. Her father is Prussian Governor General for the Rhine Province, Rhineland and Westphalia. Mother Augusta is in opposition to militaristic Prussian politics and gathers “a large number of progressive and clerical spirits around her in Koblenz”. She introduces her daughter Louise to the task of caring for the poor and the sick. Augusta is a follower of the religious peace movement of the 19th century and is close to the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment. She rejects the military armament of Prussia. She rightly sees in it the preparations for the 1864 war against Denmark and 1866 against Austria. Augusta also wants a German nation state, but only with “moral conquests”. She abhors Bismarck’s policy of “blood and iron”, for which he publicly scolds her an “old frigate”.
Since 1850 Louise and mother Augusta have been staying in Baden-Baden every summer. Here, in 1855, the 18-year-old falls in love with the later Grand Duke Frederick of Baden. They married in 1856. Louise shares government affairs with her liberal-minded husband. The Prussian Louise slowly gains the recognition of the Baden population through her social and charitable commitment. In 1870, after 13 years of social commitment, a secret cabinet is set up for 31-year-old Luise, which is part of the government apparatus and with which she administers an aid fund.
Louise’ humane life’s oeuvre is the founding of the Baden Women’s Association in 1859. From 1853 to 1856, one of the most horrific wars that Europe has ever experienced rages: the Crimean War. “For the first time, the war showed itself in its new, industrial form” and Europe experienced its “first Verdun”.¹ All of Europe is shaken at the horror of the press reports. The mortality rate is over 40%! But one is touched though by the English nurse Florence Nightingale, who with 38 nurses is fighting the misery in 4 large military hospitals.
In May 1859, touched by this, 18 citizens of Fribourg and Karlsruhe suggest the establishment of an aid fund, and Louise makes herself available. In June, she writes a memorandum to the state government in support of “persons in need” because of war. The existing women’s associations in Karlsruhe merged with all other women’s associations in Baden to form the newly founded women’s association of Baden. It is assigned the patriotic task of “being able to help people in need in the event of war as well as wounded and sick military personnel”. The statute reads: “The association serves to support those in need as a result of war threats or war as well as the provision for wounded and sick military personnel”. The core of Dunant’s later Red Cross idea is pre-formulated here.