Agnes Karll

On 26 August 1887, Karll began training as a nurse at the Clementine House in Hanover, which was a mother house of the Red Cross. She then worked as a nurse at the clinics of the University of Göttingen.[2][3]

From 1891 on, she worked for ten years in private clinics, especially around Berlin. It was also during this period that she had the opportunity to spend a few months in the United States and to make herself known there as a nurse (1894). Afterwards, she continued to forge professional links with nurses in other countries, especially in England, Finland and Austria.

Clinic Agnes Karll in Laatzen, Germany

Karll worked tirelessly toward the independence of nurses and widespread recognition of the new nursing profession. She coined the term “nurse.” In 1907, she established a systematic and well-founded three-year nurses training program, including a final examination and state recognition. Because of her efforts, further improvements were introduced regularly for everyday nursing work, including a wage sufficient to cover the cost of living.[1][2][4]

As part of the German Association of Female Citizens (Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins), in 1903 she founded an organization of women dedicated to care, German Nurses Association of which she was the first president.[5] The association helped its members find work and provided them with insurance and legal advice. Later, it was renamed Agnes-Karll-Verband, and then Deutschen Berufsverband für Krankenpflege eV (DBfK) in 1973. Today it is named Deutscher Berufsverband für Pflegeberufe (DBfK) and is the largest free professional nurses` association in Germany.[1][5]

Agnes Karll committed herself to building respectability for the nursing profession and establishing a three-year training course. It was also her idea to establish a new profession of nursing assistant.[2]

In 1909 in London, she became the third president of the International Council of Nurses, and was an honorary member of the Association of Head Nurses in Great Britain and Ireland (Matrons' Council for Great Britain and Ireland). From 1913, she was one of the first women to work as a lecturer at the Leipzig Women's University. In 1926 she led a national congress of nurses in Düsseldorf, Germany.[1][2]

In the last years of her life, Agnes Karll was accompanied by a Swiss woman, Emmy Oser. It was through her that Karll came into contact with the Reformed theologian Leonhard Ragaz in Zürich, who was very attentive to the needs of the nursing profession and would be one of Agnes Karll's inspirations.

Karll died in 1927 in Berlin, and is buried in the family vault on Jarmstorfer Strasse, in a secluded spot in the old Gadebuscher cemetery.[1]