Wilhelmine Kähler

From 1890, Kähler was part of the labour movement. She co-founded and led the Verband der Fabrik- und Handarbeiterinnen, making her the only woman to lead a trade union in Germany during the 1890s.[1] She sat on the General Commission of German Trade Unions.[2] Her union became part of the Union of Domestic Workers of Germany, and she was acting president of that union in 1913.[3]

Around 1900 Kähler lived in Dresden, where she primarily worked on improving the situation of working women.[1]

Kähler wrote for the social democratic women's magazine Die Gleichheit and the Düsseldorf newspaper Volkszeitung starting in 1906. She was an editor of Für unsere Frauen, a women's movement correspondence, the yearbook Der Frauenhausschatz.[1]

From 1919 until 1923 Kähler worked as a civil servant for the Reich Ministry of Economy.[2] In 1919 she also became a member of the Weimar National Assembly, which drafted the Weimar Constitution. She was subsequently a member of the Reichstag until 1921, and then a member of the Landtag of Prussia until 1924.[1] Kähler represented the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD/MSPD).[4]

After 1926 she led a local Arbeiterwohlfahrt organisation in her home town of Kellinghusen until 1931.[2]

Kähler was born in 1864 in Kellinghusen, where she also went to school. She was a seamstress and a housekeeper.[4] In 1882 she married her first husband who was a cigar factory worker.[2]

Kähler later remarried in 1924 and moved to Bonn with her husband in 1931, retiring from political activism. She died in Bonn in 1941.[4]