Language German Nationality Austrian | Name Sophie Scherer Role Writer | |
Born Sophie Sockl
5 February 1817
Vienna ( 1817-02-05 ) Occupation painter (in her youth)
writer Spouse Anton Ritter von Scherer Children Rudolf Ritter von Scherer
Moritz
Sophie
Ernestine Died May 29, 1876, Graz, Austria | ||
Sophie Ritter von Scherer (5 February 1817, Vienna - 29 May 1876, Graz) was an Austrian writer.
Contents
Life
Sophie von Scherer, née Sockl, was born in Vienna, the daughter of the master cabinet-maker and inventor, Johann Gottlieb Sockl and Sophie, née Shurer von Waldheim. Among her siblings was the painter and photographer Theodor Sockl. In her youth she was a painter, but later turned to writing. Sophie married Anton Ritter von Scherer in 1841 and was the mother of the well-known Graz and Vienna religious law professor Rudolf Ritter von Scherer (1845-1918).
In 1848, she published her 3 volumes educational work, a novelty in the form of an epistolary novel. On the one hand, there were practical parenting advices for women of the middle and high classes, on the other hand Sophie wrote about the specific obligations of women, defined primarily as wives and mothers. Even though she was against the Revolution of 1848, she supported social reforms, such as financial and social improvements in the status of the domestic servants, old-age insurance, kindergartens, measures of child care and child support for socially vulnerable families.
In the autumn of the year 1848, in the context of the recently granted freedom of the press, in an open letter dated 17 November 1848, she makes an appeal "in the interest of the Catholic faith" at the first German bishops' conference in Würzburg. As a devout Catholic loyal to Rome, she opposed this emerging group of German Catholics and presented her ecclesiastical reform considerations, such as the worship simplification by omitting litanies and prayers not directly related to the Catholic faith, the introduction of the vernacular German in worship or the abolition of celibacy in order to overcome the gap between the priests and laity. While the church ignored it, the letter triggered a family dispute. Her brother, the Catholic Viennese painter Theodor Sockl, attacks her in a subsequent open letter, accusing her of Protestant convictions. In her turn, she invalidated her brother's arguments in a public reply (this would be her last publication).
Significance
Sophie von Scherer is considered a remarkable woman, ahead of her times, who acknowledged and advocated the necessity of a legal framework for social security and state family support about 100 years before their introduction.