90 per cent of the 300 female students in the ‘high school for young ladies’ came from lower middle-class families. The fathers were craftsmen or kept small shops. They did not want their children to participate in state-run education. Their idea was that attending ‘a higher school’ was better. The question of what occupation their daughter should aim for did not arise. Generally the children of workers did neither attend the higher school for ladies nor the secondary schools preparing for the Gymnasium (and the baccalaureate). Our school was the exception … I used to read in the morning before school about the debates in parliament and the regional assembly on issues related to women's education. My mother thought I was mad.

(Karin Roi Frey, Wenn alle Stricke reissen, dann wird sie noch einmal Lehrerin, Lehrerinnen in biographischen Zeugnissen (Bochum, 2001), p. 115)

We understood that we lived in a time of change, that we as female students were creating a new type of woman with independence and freedom but that we still were stuck in the old family structures. When we came home it was necessary to take on the role of ‘daughter of the house’. Instead of spending time with our books and seminar papers in the holidays we had to help with the housework from morning to night, we were there to serve other family members. When I once tried to get out of these duties my brother said with friendly superiority, ‘Learning to serve makes a good wife’, and gave me his clothes for ironing.

(Karin Roi Frey, Wenn alle Stricke reissen, dann wird sie noch einmal Lehrerin, Lehrerinnen in biographischen Zeugnissen (Bochum, 2001), p. 122)

When you look back did you always want to be a teacher or would you have liked to do something else?

I would have liked to study law.

Why did you not ask your father if that would be possible?

He would never have paid for that. He went to his brother who was the one who made decisions in the family and said ‘Can you imagine, she wants to go into higher education and university!’