Emma Jacobina Christiana Marwedel

Emma Jacobina Christiana Marwedel (born Feb. 27, 1818, Münden [near Göttingen], Ger.—died Nov. 17, 1893, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.) was a German-born educator who was instrumental in promoting the kindergarten movement in the United States.

Marwedel was of a family of some social standing. The deaths of her parents during her childhood left her without means, however, and she early had to earn her own support. Nothing is known of the education that prepared her to be a teacher, but her ambition and energy are attested by her election in 1864 as director of an association for the promotion of public education in Leipzig and by her membership in Germany’s first association for the advancement of women in 1865.

From 1867 to 1868 Marwedel served as the first director of the newly established Girls’ Industrial School in Hamburg and also conducted a kindergarten according to the principles of Friedrich Froebel. Her work in Hamburg made a deep impression on the visiting Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, as did her Warum bedürfen wir weibliche Gewerbeschulen? und wie sollen sie angelegt sein? (1868), a book on industrial schools for girls, drawn from her earlier observations in England, France, and Belgium. At Peabody’s suggestion, Marwedel went to the United States and in 1870 established a women’s cooperative industrial school near Brentwood, Long Island, New York. That effort failed along with the housing development with which it was associated, and Marwedel then moved to Washington, D.C., where in 1871 she opened a private school that included a kindergarten and Froebelian training classes for teachers.

In 1876 Marwedel moved to Los Angeles and established the California Model Kindergarten and the Pacific Model Training School for Kindergartners, the first such school in California. The enterprise failed to attract sufficient support. In 1880 she opened her Pacific Kindergarten Normal School in San Francisco. She operated the school, together with a model kindergarten and primary classes, until her retirement in 1885 or 1886. She also helped organize the San Francisco Kindergarten Society and the Silver Street Kindergarten.

Marwedel’s last years were occupied by her writings, including two books and several pamphlets, and by her lectures on Froebelian theory and practice.