Her experience of childhood was a lively one, growing up in the family home set beside the “Schlachte” promenade alongside the right bank of the Weser where it passes through the city centre.
Her final years were spent studying at the training college for women teachers that Johann August Martin Janson had already created alongside the school when setting it up back in the 1860s.
Heineken then remained at the “Höhere Töchterschule Janson” for nearly a further two years, till 1892 She was employed as a teacher, having in October 1890 passed the exams necessary to qualify for work at the junior and middle levels.
[1] During 1907 Heineken contributed an article to the 12 June edition of the Bremer Nachrichten (daily newspaper) in which she criticised the city authorities for the way in which they were falling behind on schools provision for girls.
[1] In 1907, in compliance with a suggestion from the municipal council, Agnes Heineken started to teach at the state secondary school for girls at Vegesack.
Between 1909 and 1912 she led the “Bremer Verein für Frauenstimmrecht ”, dedicated to winning voting rights for women in the face of establishment inertia and conservative opposition.
She was also involved, with Verena Rodewald, in the founding in 1910 of the “Frauenstadtbund Bremen”, set up as a city-wide umbrella organisation for various women's groups of a political social character that had emerged during the previous half century or so.
and chair of the Bremen section for higher and middle schools for the Allgemeiner Deutscher Lehrerinnenverein, a national umbrella organisation of women teachers.
The ideals and objectives of the Monistenbund are hard to pin down in a couple of lines: it was internationalist and pacifist in outlook, with an all-encompassing science-based world view.
It was agreed between the competing groups to follow an ordinance dated whereby the state should be divided into four separate electoral districts, of which Bremen-city, allocated 166 of the 200 seats, was by far the largest in terms of population.
[1][9] An achievement as a parliamentarian of which Agnes Heineken was particularly proud came quite early on, in April 1920, when she persuaded the assembly to legislate for a “Bremer Jahre” (”Bremen Year”).
However, priorities and fashions in respect of girls’ education moved on, and 1959 the “Bremen Year” component of the school curriculum - at least in the terms in which Agnes Heineken had promoted and implemented the concept – was ended.
The DDP had reconfigured itself and then, in 1930, rebranded itself as the more overtly nationalist DstP (party) in order to try and appeal to National Socialist voters in a context of intensifying political polarisation.
Many existing party stalwarts had reacted by withdrawing from political involvement, while the electoral tide towards fascism, buoyed by stratospheric levels of unemployment, had persisted.
By the end of the year she had been forcibly removed from all her public and education related leadership jobs, and subjected to a significant diminution if pension entitlement.
During the twelve Hitler years she would stick within a small close-knit circle of friends and do what she could to help citizens suffering persecution through decisions by government officials concerning their perceived Jewishness.
An exception was made for the state of Bremen because of U.S. insistence on the need for direct control over one of the two main northern port cities for strategic and logistical reasons.