Magarethe meyer biography wife

Her mother died only a few hours after her birth. Her father encouraged education and the arts. Her father died when she was 15 years old. Through her older sisters Amalie and Bertha, she came into early contact with the "Society of German Catholics" and later attended the "School for the Female Sex". After her older sister Bertha divorced her husband Friedrich Traun, she entered a new marriage with the excommunicated priest Johannes Ronge , the founder of the schismatic German Catholics.

After the failed revolution of , Bertha followed Johannes Ronge into exile in London. Bertha Meyer spent and advancing the concept, opening Kindergartens across the German States. In fall of , Bertha became seriously sick and desperately needed help in the household.

Carl Schurz and Margarethe Meyer

Because of this, Margarethe traveled to London as well. There she met Carl Schurz who like Ronge had to leave Germany for political reasons. Margarethe and Carl entered a civil marriage and traveled soon thereafter to the United States. Both were members of the Irving Literary Society. In Watertown, Wisconsin , they started a small farm, where Margarethe's gift for financial affairs put them at an advantage.

She spent two years in New York then went west. Other Wisconsin parents were impressed and prevailed upon Schurz to open a Watertown kindergarten, the first in the United States. And like most of the early kindergartens in the United States, the class was conducted in the German language. The Watertown kindergarten continued until the outbreak of World War I, when it was closed due to opposition to the German language's use.