Helene Lange was a prominent educationist and feminist and played an important role in the German women's movement. She demanded that the education of women should be taken out of the hands of men and tried to improve women's access to higher education institutions. "In this polemical work written for the most conservative people in Europe in this matter of female education, we may behold reflected as in a mirror the entire movement in all countries, and see all of its stages, from the initiation on to the most advanced line of progress, in one picture." (W. T. Harris)