ABSTRACT
Some of Aemilia Juliana’s most significant contributions as her husband’s partner in the principality took the form of advocacy for women. In her efforts on their behalf, she could rely on some of her own experiences in order to empathize with their desire for an education and a voice in important matters of church and governance, their joys and sufferings in marriage and childbed, and their need for the strength of numbers in a community of shared experience. Acting on the basis of her personal opinions about the need for women to be broadly and deeply educated, not just minimally literate, she came to the assistance of girls’ schools and the school mistresses who taught there. Her activities on behalf of pregnant and birthing women and midwives in Schwarzburg derive from her experiences with pregnancy, childbirth, and the loss of a child, as well as from events in the lives of her female relatives and friends. Less evident but also important are her various community-building actions fostering inclusive women’s networks that crossed boundaries of family, polity, and social class. Because these areas of endeavor are so poorly documented in the cases of other women with similar leadership opportunities, each merits detailed treatment here.
