Bertha Paulssen Papers

Bertha Paulssen was a daughter of the merchant Otto Paulssen and Ida Heine. She attended the Büttnersche Höhere Töchter-Schule in Gohlis, then Realgymnasium courses of the General German Women's Association and graduated from the Petrischule Leipzig in 1910. She then studied mathematics and natural sciences in Göttingen and Leipzig until 1913 and was a guest student at a college in the USA for a year. She received her doctorate in 1917 under Wilhelm Wundt at the Institute for Experimental Psychology at the University of Leipzig.

After her studies, she worked as a carer in Frankfurt am Main, Kiel and Szczecin. At the suggestion of Wilhelm Hertz, she went to Hamburg in 1923 as a research assistant and in 1926 became head of department in the city's youth welfare office with the rank of government councillor. She supervised the state girls' homes and managed the care of the vulnerable and was responsible for about 800 employees. At the same time, she held teaching positions at the Socio-Pedagogical Institute of the University of Hamburg. She was involved in the German Association of Social Welfare Officers and in the Association of Professional Associations of Welfare Workers in Germany.

Paulssen was dismissed after the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933 and emigrated to England, where she worked as a social worker in London and Birmingham. In 1936 she went to the USA. In New York City, she worked as a social worker on the Lower East Side in the Henry Street Settlement and received a lectureship at Wagner College in 1938, then employment at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, and in 1943 she became the first female professor at Muhlenberg College. In 1945 she received a professorship at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg and taught at the Department of Sociology and Psychology until her retirement.