GHDI logo


Orphaned Girls and Boys in a Welfare Institution (1846)

If traditional gender roles were clearly separated in bourgeois family life, such distinction also held true for children growing up outside a regular family. As the two wood engravings from 1846 illustrate, this principle also applied to the “Rauhe Haus,” a home for orphaned and neglected children founded in Hamburg by the Protestant theologian Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808-1881). Whereas the girls do needlework, the boys labor in the workshop. Care and discipline seem to blend here into family-like structures: note the girl in the corner, who is probably knitting as punishment, and the stern yet encouraging supervisory staff.

print version     return to image list previous image      next image

Orphaned Girls and Boys in a Welfare Institution (1846)

© Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz