Wisconsin Warrior

N 1848, MATHILDE GEISLER ANNEKE, 31, stepped out of ordinary women’s roles and into a literal combat zone. A skilled equestrienne, she acted as orderly and cavalry courier for her second husband, Fritz Anneke, in the fight to unify Germany. Her quasi-military service was only the most striking in a string of Anneke’s boundary-breaking activities in her homeland and the United States. Born in 1817, eldest of 12 children in a bourgeois Catholic family in Prussia, Mathilde Geisler was 19 when she married wealthy wine merchant Alfred von Tabouillot. She wed less for love than to gain her father access to money to pay debts. Within a year, brought her renown and prompted a change in the law regarding marriage and divorce. In 1849, she and Fritz Anneke emigrated to the United States, where Madame Anneke, as she was called, inspired Susan B. Anthony, who became a friend, on the cause of women’s rights. The story of this “Amazonian orator,” as the New York described her, threads a narrative of immigrant self-discovery into the fabric of 19th century social turbulence and political change in Europe as well as the United States.