1 Aletta made the request, but the prime minister's answer was sent to her father, as she was still a minor: Wilde, Inge de, Nieuwe deelgenoten in de wetenschap: Vrouwelijke studenten en docenten aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen 1871–1919 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1998), 56. In her Memories Aletta claimed to have been the first girl admitted to a qualifying secondary school. There is no evidence that she ever attended the local high school: Jacobs, Aletta Memories. My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrage, and Peace (New York: The Feminist Press, 1976, edited by Harriet Feinberg, originally 1924), 11.Google Scholar

2 The number of girls in secondary education increased more than five times between 1875 and 1905, from 674 to 3,589. At the same time the number of these girls attending mixed schools multiplied almost eighty times, from 27 to 2,114, an increase from 4 to 59 percent: Bakker, Nelleke and van Essen, Mineke, “No Matter of Principle—The Unproblematic Character of Coeducation in Girls’ Secondary Schooling in the Netherlands, ca. 1870–1930,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Winter 1999): 454–475. The number of women studying at Dutch universities increased almost four times between 1884 and 1895, from 60 to 230. Women's share of the total number of university students grew from 3 percent in 1898 to 13 percent in 1910: Bosch, Mineke Het geslacht van de wetenschap: Vrouwen en Hoger Onderwijs in Nederland, 1878–1948 (Amsterdam: SUA, 1994), 107, 195–196.Google Scholar

3 See: Jacobs, , Memories. Her international fame is not only based on her feminist activities, but also on her efforts to safeguard the famous Gerritsen Collection about the international women's movement (stored in the International Archive of the Women's Movement in Amsterdam). The founder of this collection was her ‘comrade-in-arms’ and husband Carel V. Gerritsen.Google Scholar

4 Jacobs, , Memories, 1–14; Bosch, Het geslacht van de wetenschap, 89–93; De Wilde, Nieuwe deelgenoten, 40–84.Google Scholar

5 For Germany: Albisetti, James C., Schooling German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 56–57. Unfortunately, neither a study by the same author on Austrian women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, nor Harriet P. Freidenreich's study on turn-of-the-century Jewish female university students are available in our country. We particularly look forward to the opportunity to compare our findings with the latter author's analysis of the role of the Jewish cultural tradition.Google Scholar

6 Amsing, Hilda, Bakens verzetten in het voortgezet onderwijs, 1863–1920: Gymnasium, h.b.s. en m.m.s. in onderwijssysteem, leerplan en geschiedenisonderwijs (Delft: Eburon, 2002), 80–86.Google Scholar

7 Bakker, Nelleke, “A Curious Inconsistency: Coeducation in Secondary Education in the Netherlands, 1900–1960,” Paedagogica Historica, Supplementary Series IV (1998): 273–292; Bakker and van Essen, “No Matter of Principle.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Pouwelse, W.J., Haar verstand dienstbaar aan het hart: Middelbaar onderwijs voor meisjes, debatten, acties en beleid 1860–1917 (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1993), 17–44.Google Scholar

9 Anonymous, , “Een vruchtbaar, maar nog braakliggend terrein,” De Tijdspiegel (1865)Google Scholar

10 Bakker, Nelleke, Kind en karakter: Nederlandse pedagogen over opvoeding in het gezin 1845–1925 (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1995), 24–32.Google Scholar

11 Jacobs, , Memories, 52.Google Scholar

12 Parvé, D.J. Steyn, “Middelbaar onderwijs voor meisjes,” De Economist (1867) I: 417.Google Scholar

13 Bricard, Isabelle, Saintes ou Pouliches: L'education des jeunes filles au XIXe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1985); Mayeur, Françoise L'Enseigenment Secondaire des Jeunes Filles sous la Troisième Republique (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale de Sciences Politiques, 1977); Albisetti, Schooling German Girls; Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung Band II eds. Kleinau, Elke and Opitz, Claudia (Frankfurt am M./New York: Campus Verlag, 1996); Dyhouse, Carol Girls Growing up in Late Victorian and Early Edwardian England (London: Routledge, 1980); June Purvis, A History of Women's Education in England (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1991); Pedersen, Joyce Senders The Reform of Girls’ Secondary and Higher Education in Victorian England: A Study of Elites and Educational Change (New York: Garland, 1987); Roach, John Secondary Education in England 1870–1902: Public Activity and Private Enterprise (New York: Routledge, 1991).Google Scholar

14 Whereas in 1895 74 percent of the total number of girls at secondary schools (1,762) attended a girls’ school, in 1905 this percentage had dropped to 41 (of 3,589 girls) and in 1925 even to 23 (of 10,319 girls): Bakker and van Essen, “No Matter of Principle,” 470. The objections and surveys are discussed in the same article.Google Scholar

15 See for the role of denominational groups in Dutch educational history: Valk, John, “Religion and the Schools: The Case of Utrecht,” History of Education 35 (Summer 1995): 159–177; De eenheid en de delen. Zuilvorming, onderwijs en natievorming in Nederland 1850–1900 eds. Velde, Henk te and Verhage, Hans (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1996).Google Scholar

16 Gans, M.H., Memorboek, platenboek van het leven der joden in Nederland van de middeleeuwen tot 1940 (Baarn: Bosch & Keuning, 1971), 387; I.B.H. Abram, Jewish Tradition as Permanent Education (Den Haag: SVO, 1986).Google Scholar

17 Gans, , Memorboek, 185; Renate Fuks-Mansfeld, “Enlightenment and Emancipation from c. 1750 to 1814,” in The History of the Jews in the Netherlands eds. Blom, J.C.H. et al. (Oxford/Oregon: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002), 164–191.Google Scholar

18 Dodde, N.L., “Jewish Education in Schools in the Netherlands from 1815 to 1940,” Studia Rosenthaliana 30 (1995): 67–87. In 1780 only 31 percent of the Jewish women could read and write, against 60 percent of Dutch women in general; 84 percent of the Jewish men could read and write, against 80 percent of the Dutch men in general.Google Scholar

19 Schama, Simon, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813 (New York: Vintage Books, 1977).Google Scholar

20 Knippenberg, Hans, De religieuze kaart van Nederland: Omvang en geografische spreiding van godsdienstige gezindten vanaf de Reformatie tot heden (Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1992), 274–275.Google Scholar

21 Swaan, Abram de, In Care of the State: Health Care, Education and Welfare in Europe and the USA in the Modem Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 61–124; Boekholt, P.T.F.M. and Booy, E.P. de Geschiedenis van de school in Nederland van de Middeleeuwen tot aan de huidige tijd (Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1987), 91–103.Google Scholar

22 Michman, Joseph et al., Pinkas. Geschiedenis van de joodse gemeenschap in Nederland (Ede/Antwerpen/Amsterdam: Kluwer, 1985), 73.Google Scholar

23 Wingerden, Marjoke Rietveld-van and Miedema, Siebren, “Freedom of Education and Dutch Jewish Schools in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Jewish History 17 (Spring 2003): 41–54.Google Scholar

24 Jaarboekje voor de Israëlieten in Nederland 1835 no. 3 ('s-Gravenhage: Gebroeders Belingte, [1835]); Nederlandsch Israëlietisch jaarboekje voor 1858 ('s-Gravenhage: Gebroeders Coutinho, [1858].Google Scholar

25 van Leeuwen, Marco H.D., Bijstand in Amsterdam, ca. 1800–1850. Armenzorg ah beheersings-en overlevingsstrategie (Zwolle: Waanders, 1992), 170.Google Scholar

26 Fuks-Mansfeld, , “Enlightenment and emancipation.“Google Scholar

27 Wingerden, Marjoke Rietveld-van, “Joods onderwijs in het midden van de negentiende eeuw: Tussen identiteit en sociale cohesie,” in Gezin, morele opvoeding en anti-sociaal gedrag: Thema's uit de empirische en historische pedagogiek eds. Frankrijker, Hans de et al. (Amsterdam: SWP, 2000), 243–250.Google Scholar

28 Dodde, , “Jewish education,” 82.Google Scholar

29 Hofmeester, Karin, “‘Een teeder en belangrijk punt': Opinies over openbaar onderwijs in joodse kring, 1857–1898,” in De eenheid eds. Velde, Te and Verhage, 157–176.Google Scholar

30 Jaarboekje voor de Israëlieten in Nederland 1835 no. 3; Nederlandsch Israëlietisch jaarboekje voor 1858.Google Scholar

31 The department for girls had 497 pupils and the boys’ department 479: Israëlietisch Weekblad, 8 July 1853.Google Scholar

32 Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 17 January 1862.Google Scholar

33 Ibid.Google Scholar

34 De Israëliet, 31 March 1854.Google Scholar

35 Michman, et al., Pinkas, 85.Google Scholar

36 These conditions are similar to those in nineteenth-century Bavaria, but could not be confirmed for other countries or states because of a lack data: Claudia Prestel, Jüdisches Schul- und Erziehungswesen in Bayern 1804–1933: Tradition und Modernisierung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989).Google Scholar

37 Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 3 June 1858, 28 Sept. 1860. At the time Brussels was a center of French-speaking boarding schools for bourgeois girls from Belgium and abroad. Most of these institutions were established by Roman Catholics: M. De Vroede, “The Catholic Boarding Schools for Girls in Belgium before the First World War,” in Bildungsgeschichte als Sozialgeschichte: Festschrift zum 60sten Geburtstag von Franz Pöggeler ed. Kanz, H. (Frankfurt am M./Bern/New York: Peter Lang, 1986), 313–337.Google Scholar

38 Fuks-Mansfeld, Renate, “Onderwijs en nationale identiteit van de joden in Nederland in de tijd van hun acculturatie,” in De eenheid eds. Velde, Te and Verhage, 135–156, especially 147.Google Scholar

39 Israëlietisch Weekblad, 8 November 1852; 11 February 1853.Google Scholar

40 Ibid, 4 June 1852.Google Scholar

41 Ibid, 7 February 1851; 8 November 1852.Google Scholar

42 Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 13 August 1858. This “confirmation” was introduced in some British Jewish communities as well, as is suggested by a reference to the Jewish Chronicle: See Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 21 July 1876.Google Scholar

43 Turksma, R., De geschiedenis van de opleiding tot onderwijzer in Nederland aan de openbare, protestants-christelijke en bijzonder-neutrale instellingen (Groningen: Wolters, 1961).Google Scholar

44 van Essen, Mineke, Opvoeden met een dubbel doel: Twee eeuwen meisjesonderwijs in Nederland (Amsterdam: SUA, 1990), 58.Google Scholar

45 Israëlietisch Weekblad, 22 April 1853, 8 September 1854; Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 8 March 1867.Google Scholar

46 Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 11 April 1856.Google Scholar

47 In 1865 the Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad started as an orthodox counterpart of the liberal weekly Weekblad voor Israëlieten: Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 17 Mai 1867, 18 August 1871, 19 April 1872, 10 Mai 1872, 8 November 1872; Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 15 Mai 1868, 4 November 1870, 1 August 1873.Google Scholar

48 van Essen, H.W., Onderwijzeressen in niemandsland: Beroepsontwikkeling in Nederland 1827–1858 (Nijkerk: Intro, 1985), 192–193.Google Scholar

49 Verslag nopens den staat der hooge, middelbare en lagere scholen in het koningrijk der Nederlanden 1850 and 1869.Google Scholar

50 Verslag van den toestand van het lager onderwijs in de gemeente Amsterdam, 1867 and 1868.Google Scholar

51 Knippenberg, , De religieuze kaart, 275.Google Scholar

52 Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 22 Febr. 1867. This implies that the Jews were an exception to the rule, suggested by van Essen and others, that until well into the twentieth century women teachers were recruited from the middle classes: van Essen, Opvoeden, 219.Google Scholar

53 Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 12 June 1874.Google Scholar

54 Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 7 Aug. 1868; Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 29 Oct. 1869.Google Scholar

55 Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 21 July 1865; Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 8 Sept. 1865.Google Scholar

56 Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 6 July 1866; Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 31 July 1868.Google Scholar

57 Fuks-Mansfeld, Renate, “Arduous Adaptation, 1814–1870,” in The History of the Jews in the Netherlands, 192–229.Google Scholar

58 The Netherlands have a system of state universities. Admission to one of these universities immediately implied admission to all others. The University of Zürich (Switzerland) was the first university to open its doors for girls in 1864, immediately followed by Paris. The Netherlands preceded Vienna, Prague, St. Petersburg, and Stockholm, all of which opened up to girls during the 1870s: Naomi Shepard, A Price below Rubbies: Jewish Women as Rebels and Radicals (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1993), 74.Google Scholar

59 Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 8 October 1869.Google Scholar

60 Fränkel, L., “De emancipatie der vrouw,” Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 28 January 1870; M.M. Meijers, “Joodsch familieleven,” Weekblad voor Israëlitische Huisgezinnen, 18–3–1870, 1 April 1870, 6 Mai 1870.Google Scholar

61 Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 31 August. 1877.Google Scholar

62 Ibid, 5 April 1867.Google Scholar

63 Centraalblad voor Israëlieten in Nederland, 30 March 1894, 6 April 1894.Google Scholar

64 Behm, Britta L., Moses Mendelssohn und die Transformation der Jüdischen Erziehung in Berlin. Eine bildungsgeschichtliche Analyse zur jüdischen Aufklärung im 18ten Jahrhundert (Munster: Waxmann, 2002); Jüdische Erziehung und aufklärerische Schulreform. Analysen zum späten 18ten und frühen 19ten Jahrhundert ed. Behm, Britta L. et al. (Munster: Waxmann, 2002).Google Scholar

65 Galchinsky, Michael, “Engendering Liberal Jews: Jewish women in Victorian England,” in Jewish Women in historical perspective ed. Baskin, Judith Reesa (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 208–226; Hyman, Paula E. Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History. The Roles and Representation of Women (Seattle/London: University of Washington Press, 1995), 36.Google Scholar

66 Kaplan, Marion A., The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), 61–64; Allen, Ann Taylor “Spiritual Motherhood: German Feminists and the Kindergarten Movement, 1848–1911,” History of Education Quarterly 22 (Fall 1982): 319–339.Google Scholar

67 Kaplan, , The Jewish Feminist Movement, 29–44.Google Scholar

68 After 1870, with the rise of nationalism in many European countries, an anti-Semitic movement grew. It spread from Eastern Europe to France, Germany and other countries. In the Netherlands, however, anti-Semitism hardly existed until the days of Hitler's Nazism: Blom, J.C.H. and Cahen, J.J., “Jewish Netherlanders, Netherlands Jews and Jews in the Netherlands,” in The History of Jews in the Netherlands, 230–295; Vital, David A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 217–238.Google Scholar

69 Shepherd, , A Price below Rubbies, 215–216.Google Scholar

70 Jacobs, , Memories, 12–13.Google Scholar

71 This proportion, measured in 1930, is almost three times as high as one would expect on the basis of the Jewish share of the Dutch population in the same year: Blom and Cahen, “Jewish Netherlanders,” 248.Google Scholar

72 Wilde, De, Nieuwe deelgenoten, 47–48. This source is much more reliable than the information given by Jacobs, Aletta herself. The latter suggests that the first three brothers went to the university.Google Scholar

73 Jacobs, , Memories, 2.Google Scholar

74 Wilde, De, Nieuwe deelgenoten, 78–84.Google Scholar

75 Jacobs, , Memories, 2.Google Scholar

76 Wilde, De, Nieuwe deelgenoten, 51–53.Google Scholar

77 Jacobs, , Memories, 9. Many women among the first generation of Jewish female physicians in Germany were equally stimulated by their fathers: Jüdische Frauen im 19ten und 20sten Jahrhundert: Lexikon zur Leben und Arbeit eds. Dick, Jutta and Sassenberg, Marina (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1993), 14.Google Scholar

78 Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 5 Aug. 1870.Google Scholar

79 At the time for students without a diploma of the classical gymnasium this was the only way to enter the university. See: Wilde, De, Nieuwe deelgenoten, 53–56.Google Scholar

80 Ibid., 58.Google Scholar

81 Weekblad voor Israëlieten, 11 October 1872.Google Scholar

82 Jacobs, , Memories, 11.Google Scholar

83 Wilde, De, Nieuwe deelgenoten, 45.Google Scholar

84 Ibid., 43.Google Scholar