Lily Braun (2 July 1865 – 8 August 1916), born Amalie von Kretschmann, was a German feminist writer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). She developed the idea of the single-kitchen home.
Life
She was born on 2 July 1865 in Halberstadt, in the Prussian province of Saxony, the daughter of Hans von Kretschmann, General of the Infantry in the Prussian Army, and his wife Jenny, née von Gustedt (1843–1903). Her maternal grandmother, the writer Jenny von Gustedt (1811–1890), was an illegitimate daughter of Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon Bonaparte's brother and King of Westphalia, and his mistress Diana Rabe von Pappenheim. Lily Braun's great-niece, Marianne von Kretschmann, married Richard von Weizsäcker, president of Germany from 1984 to 1994.
Raised according to the Prussian virtues of order and discipline from her father's military career, Braun nevertheless developed a direct and open personality, encouraged in particular by her grandmother Jenny von Gustedt. She was considered to be highly ambitious, and her family provided her with a broad education by numerous private teachers. From an early age, she began to question her parents' bourgeois values as influenced by Lutheranism and Calvinism as well the position of women in Prussian society. When her father retired in 1890, Braun had to establish a sustainable livelihood herself.
In 1893, Braun married to Georg von Gizycki, a professor of philosophy at the Frederick William University in Berlin, who was associated with the Social Democratic Party without however being a member. Together with him she was involved in the ethical movement, which sought to establish a system of morality in place of the traditional religions. Also, she became concerned with the ideas of socialism and the feminist movement, working as a journalist for the feminist newspaper Die Frauenbewegung (The Women's Movement) issued by Minna Cauer.
