Gerda Hedwig Lerner was born into an unconventional, affluent Jewish bourgeoisie family in post-WWI Austria. However, her childhood was also rich in family struggles and early exposures to unorthodox behavior. Lerner would later go on to form her unique perspectives and beliefs at an early age, particularly on cultural and social issues with the influence of her childhood experiences. Furthermore, her unique perspective and beliefs lead to the fruition of her conceptually eloquent and narrative-like historical text that would influence the feminist movement, and make her one of single most influential and iconic feminist figures since the 1960s.
Born on April 30th, 1920 in Vienna Austria, Gerda Hedwig Lerner was the youngest of three. Her parents, Ilona and Robert Kronstein had a strained relationship ever since she was born. Her mother, Ilona was a full-on…show more content… In 1934, a civil war erupted between the Nazis and the Social Democrats and Communists. Shortly, four years later, the Anschluss of March 1938 emerged, causing Jews to flee. Lerner, however fled to the United States in 1939, through her boyfriend, Bernard Jensen who she married for convenience to gain citizenship in the United States but the inevitably marriage turned out to be a failure. But while in the United States, Lerner worked odd, low-paying jobs such as a waitress, office clerk, an X-ray technician and saleswoman at a candy store located in Fifth-avenue, but was quickly fired after reporting her employers for paying their factory works less than the minimum wage. However a year later, she met Carl Lerner, a radical Communist director. They quickly fell in love, however, both of them were still married. So inevitably, the pair divorced their previous lovers in order to get