Marita Loersch

Marita Loersch (born Marie-Luise Beaucamp 25 August 1853 Lyon - 20 June 1915 Aachen ) was a German-French charitable worker, and founding member of several Catholic women's associations.

Life
After the sudden death of her father, she moved with her mother and three younger brothers to her maternal relatives in Aachen. There she attended the St. Leonhard Higher Girls' School and, after her mother died in 1868, she first went to the Sacré Cœur girls' boarding school in Paris and, after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, to the Sacré Cœur boarding school in Münster. After one of her brothers was killed in the war, she dropped out of school and moved back to Aachen to look after her two younger brothers. There she met the cloth manufacturer Heinrich Hubert Arthur Loersch (1843–1896), a brother of the legal historian Hugo Loersch, and only agreed to marry him on the condition that her two brothers would be accepted into the new family.

As her own marriage remained childless and her brothers were adults very soon, she devoted herself to charitable causes. She became a member of the "Mariannenverein Aachen", which looked after the Aachen Marianneninstitut and cared for young women who had just given birth in need, as well as the "Elisabethverein", which worked voluntarily for women in need, and from 1907 the " Hildegardis-Verein ", which was concerned with women's studies. She also worked in the so-called "Mägdehaus", which aimed to train, find jobs and temporarily care for girls looking for work. After her husband's death, Loersch also took on the task of visiting and caring for young female prisoners. For many years she also held the office of treasurer of the Patriotic Women's Association in Aachen, which set up rehabilitation aid for war veterans and set up kindergartens. She was also a co-founder of the first day-care centers in Aachen and Sunday schools for working women. She was also one of the co-founders of the Catholic Women's League, founded in Cologne in 1903, and was elected to its central board several times between 1903 and 1910.

In 1900, Loersch helped found a branch of the "Good Shepherd Association" in Aachen. In 1901, it was renamed the "Catholic Welfare Association for Girls and Women" and in 1903 the "Catholic Welfare Association for Girls, Women and Children". Loersch took over the chairmanship of the Aachen local association from 1904. At the same time, she had also founded another local association in Düren in 1902, which joined the overall association in 1906. In order to be able to communicate on an equal level with the many ordinary citizens of Aachen and to gain their trust, she studied the Aachen dialect intensively. Throughout her life she maintained close contact with her two surviving brothers, Charles Beaucamp (1855–1932), who became a lawyer and legal advisor, and Eugène Beaucamp (1859–1936), who became a gynecologist and medical advisor, as well as the director of the Mariannen Institute and co-founder of the hospital in Aachen-Forst.

Legacy
A street in Aachen and the youth home of the Catholic welfare association were named after her. Marita Loersch was buried in the Kuetgens family grave in the Aachen Ostfriedhof cemetery.