Born: 22 February 1817, Germany
Died: 12 July 1877
Country most active: Germany
Also known as: Ottilie Rooschüz
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
Born at Rottenburg, the daughter of Gottlieb and Leonore Rooshuz.
In 1819, her parents moved to Marbach, the birthplace of Schiller, where she attended the Volkschule, until her confirmation when she was fourteen years of age. The only high school for girls in Wiirttemburg, Schwabenland, was ithe Katherinenstift in Stuttgart, where Ottillia hoped to enter, but her parents discouraged this. At home, associated with the youthful, beauty-loving nature of her mother, and the deeply studious scientific trend of thought of her father, she progressed rapidly, earning her title, “Wunderkind.” The name, Ottillia, was not as some believe, taken from Goethe’s work Elective Affinities, so eagerly read at the time of her christening, but from the statue of St. Ottilia, protectress of the Blind, which stood in Rottenburg. At sixteen years of age, she went to Stuttgart to attend the Katherinenstift, to learn the arts of household administration. In one of her writings she says : “Why should anyone think laundry work beneath him when the Queen of all, the Sun, is assisting in bleaching the linen?” Travelling through Schwabenland, brought her to the old university city, Tubingen, where she met Dr. Johann David Wildermuth. They were married in September, 1843. She founded a society of women that existed for thirty-eight years, its purpose being to uplift women in all walks of life. Her literary efforts were welcomed everywhere. Tubingen has a monument which bears her name, erected in 1887. Marbach founded a kindergarten in her honor, and at the fiftieth anniversary of her death, Tubingen opened the Ottillia Wildermuth School.