Die schwer erkämpfte Befreiung aus der Unmündigkeit. Bildungswege von Frauen im 18. Jahrhundert
The hard-won liberation from immaturity. Educational paths of women in the 18th century

Summary/Abstract: At the time of the Enlightenment, women were subjected to mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion which were legitimated by anti-emancipatory arguments. The Enlightenment ideal of the autonomous, self-determined personality only applied to men. This patriarchal attitude played an important role in excluding women from higher education institutions and in expelling them into the private sphere, meaning that if women wanted to deepen their basic knowledge they had to do it autodidactically. As a result, the categories of ‘gender’ and ‘class’ decisively shaped the educational process of women; determining female participation in knowledge and education at both the institutional and the informal level. Against this socially critical background, and based on three examples from Poland, this article considers the following questions: How did women acquire knowledge at a time when their access to educational institutions was denied? What paths to knowledge did they choose? Finally, what possibilities did this autodidactic education serve to open up and/ or shut down?

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