A Prayer for Peaceful Death

A PRAYER FOR PEACEFUL DEATH

When the day comes, when my muscles refused to abide, when my heart misses beats, when my lips no longer speak what my spirit and mind seek to express and I become a burden upon those who I’ve always sought to help with the bearing of life’s travails, please reach out Your hand, Your spirit, and separate between the clay of my body and the essence which is of Your Essence.

— Bertha Pappenheim, 1859-1936, Frankfurt, Germany

Activist Bertha Pappenheim was the founder or initiator of many institutions, including community homes and educational institutions. She authored novellas, plays, a book of prayers, and poems. As a young adult she was Josef Breuer’s patient, and her case was included in Sigmund Freud’s writings. In 1902, Pappenheim established a modern social work organization and, based on its success, she founded the League of Jewish Women. Pappenheim advocated for a woman’s movement that was equal to and independent of men’s organizations. She was dedicated to the issue of women’s trafficking and prostitution and was a spokesperson at major international conferences on the subject.

In 1954, a German postage stamp with a portrait of Pappenheim was issued in the series “Benefactors of Mankind” in recognition of her services. On the fiftieth anniversary of her death, a conference was held on her life’s work on the former site of a home she managed for endangered girls and unwed mothers in Frankfurt.