intelligence of woman should receive equal training, so she fought step by step on the heated battle field of schools for girls. Quietly and unnoticed she founded, as a private school, the first high school for girls in Vienna. Today this school is flourishing and sends yearly a group of graduates to the universities. Never complaining, she has through her inspiration and zeal for this goal, won friends and assistance until the ‘Association for Wider Education of Women’ has become a power in our city. For girls she has striven long and earnestly for complete education and professional training, and for the boys also in our schools, with the warm heart of mother and grandmother. She has given her strength and influence to work against antiquated methods and un pedagogic harshness."
That so energetic and so broad-minded a champion for right should strive not only for the rights of women but also for international friendship of various nations is to be expected. And so Mme. Hainisch has thrown herself into the peace movement with the deepest conviction and the warmest zeal. (Mme. Hainisch was for years President of the League of Austrian Women's Clubs.) Through her influence this Austrian League joined the world association of women, the International Council of Women. In 1899 Mme. Hainisch attended the second Convention of this Movement in London; later she attended Conventions in Berlin and in Toronto, Canada. Her work for world peace has therefore been as distinguished as her work for women’s rights.
A glowing tribute to this remarkable woman is a brief poem by her dear friend Marie von Najmajer:
Oh say not with such a modest mien
You cannot poetize,
For to me appears in you
The purest form of poetry.
That beautiful quick-kindled fire
In your eyes and countenance;
The peculiar charm which ever flows
From your sweet and gentle soul;
The lovely grace which unites in you
The earnest fighting soul of purest woman;
Your strife, to all the light to bring,—
Is to me the most inspiring poetry.
That to this noble woman, Mme. Hainisch, mother of a President, founder of the New Woman Movement for Austria, and successful champion of it for over fifty years, who had at the beginning of her career been touched by the life of Qurratu’l-‘Ayn and the Báb,—that to this woman in her last and gloriously glowing days should come the message of the Bahá’í Movement, is but fitting and perhaps destined. She had not heard of the Bahá’í Movement, and how the message of Bahá’u’lláh was the fulfillment of what the Báb had preached, until Miss Root brought it to her attention. She received the book, Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, by Dr. J. E. Esslemont, very graciously and informed herself of its contents. Though she could not attend the lectures on the Bahá’í Movement given by Miss Root, she asked her dearest friend to go and report to her every detail of the lectures. Afterwards this friend brought to Miss Root a gift for the Bahá’í Assembly of Vienna-the books of Marie von Najmajer. An extra copy of the poem “Qurratu’l-‘Ayn,” given to Miss Root personally has been presented by Miss Root to the Bahá’í Archives of the United States, and it is from this book that we have quoted in this article.
Martha Root says of Mme. Hainisch: “She is the greatest woman I have met in Austria. Studying the Woman’s Movement of Austria we see that Mme. Hainisch and Marie von Najmajer have been the great moulders of thought for
