Paule Mink (born Adèle Paulina Mekarska; November 9, 1839 – April 18, 1901) was a French feminist and socialist revolutionary of Polish descent.
Adèle's parents were enlightened liberals who apparently became adherents of the utopian socialism of Henri de Saint-Simon.
As a young woman she was married to a Polish aristocrat, Prince Bohdanowicz, with whom she had two daughters, Anna and Wanda.
In 1866 a feminist group called the Société pour la Revendication du Droit des Femmes began to meet at the house of André Léo.
Members included Paule Minck, Louise Michel, Eliska Vincent, Élie Reclus and his wife Noémie, Mme Jules Simon and Caroline de Barrau.
[1] Adèle first burst on the public scene in 1868, when she began speaking and writing about women's issues and socialism.
With her friend André Léo she founded the oddly-named Female Workers' Fraternal Society (Société fraternelle de l'ouvrière).
She supported the uprising of the Paris Commune and was a prominent revolutionary orator at the republican clubs of St. Sulpice and Nôtre Dame.
Paule Mink also made several tours to the provinces to drum up support for the Paris Commune in other cities; somehow she always managed to get through the German siege.
Like many refugees from the Paris Commune, Paule Mink settled in Switzerland, where she associated with the anarchist leader James Guillaume.
Since Mink's family had strong connections and citizenship to Russia, the French government threatened to deport her.
In later years she again worked as an organizer for the POF, and she contributed to Benoît Malon's non-sectarian journal Révue Socialiste.
Her funeral was the occasion for a large demonstration of socialists, anarchists and feminists and ended in a violent brawl with the police.