Born: 25 March 1868, Germany
Died: 12 February 1927
Country most active: Germany
Also known as: Agnes Karl
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
In 1902, a German magazine devoted to nursing interests contained an article by Sister Agnes Karll, giving the history of the formation of a modern, independent union of nurses, in which she said ; The need of an organization for the hundreds of nurses who have withdrawn from the existing orders has been widely realized in the last few years. That nursing should be looked upon as a skilled pursuit for women who desired industrial freedom. Trained in one of the best Red Cross hospitals, with an inheritance that made leadership natural, possessed with a far-seeing intellect and keen judgment, and with a real passion for bringing help to the individual, Sister Agnes lived modestly on a small private income and devoted time, strength and brains freely to the service of nurses. Sister Agnes spent ten years in private practice and she could see that nurses who were now, and had been for years making the hard struggle for existence in the lonely isolation of private duty should unite and form associations. So when her long overtaxed strength finally failed her in 1901, and she was compelled to give up nursing, she devoted herself to the study of private and government insurance, and in getting a personal knowledge of nurses’ homes in Berlin. January ti, 1903, a meeting was called to order in the Emmaus Sisters’ Home to found the German Nurses’ Association. At the first annual meeting it was moved, to approach the Red Cross Society, and to apply to them for use of their emblem for a badge, and the eligibility for war service work, with a view to the claim for post graduate work in hospitals. In July, 1903, the first affiliated group, joined this organization, it was a private institution of Frankfort.
Then the founder of a group in Stuttgart desired to get in touch with the association. The rapid growth and pressing activities of the young society soon brought the need of a professional organ to the front. The struggle which led the German nurses to professional independence and freedom was not finished but much had been won before the death of Sister Agnes Karll which occurred on February in, 1927. Her death was a great loss to the profession, not only in Germany, but in the world.