Marie Lang

Marie Lang was an Austrian feminist, theosophist and publisher. Born in 1858 in Vienna, Lang was raised in a liberal, upper-middle-class home. After divorcing her first husband in 1884, she married Edmund Lang and the two hosted an influential salon for politicians and intellectuals. Joining the women's movement toward the end of the 1880s, she quickly became an influential women's rights activist. In 1893, along with Auguste Fickert and Rosa Mayreder, she founded the Allgemeiner Österreichischer Frauenverein. In spite of provisions in Section 30 of the law governing associations, which prohibited women's political involvement, the three friends used their networks of influential politicians and intellectuals to press for legal changes in laws governing women and children's civil rights and in favor of women's suffrage. In 1898, she co-founded the women's journal Dokumente der Frauen, serving as its editor-in-chief until 1902.