Jeanette Schwerin

Jeannette Abarbanell was born in Berlin into a prosperous liberal Jewish family. Eduard Abarbanell (1880-1865) was a well respected physician who had backed the liberal democratic aspirations of the 1848 revolutionaries. Hungry for learning, after a year, on the recommendation of a teacher, she removed herself from school and educated herself using a self-developed approach that involved extracting, interpreting and commenting on texts. By the time she was grown up she was exceptionally eloquent and well-read. She never lost her appetite for autodidactic education, and was able to deepen her knowledge of History, Philosophy and Applied Economics ("Nationalökonomie") with study at Berlin University. When she was 20 she married Ernst Schwerin, another doctor. He shared her religious background and family tradition of socially based community mutual care. Their son, Moritz Schwerin (1873-1914) was delicate and needed a lot of care when he was small, but as he grew up Jeanette Schwerin became increasingly involved in social work and in the women's movement. (Source: Wikipedia)