Mothers of the Nation: Right-Wing Women in Weimar Germany

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Mothers of the Nation

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Mothers of the Nation Right-Wing Women in Weimar Germany Raffael Scheck

Oxford • New York

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Dedicated to Anselm and Adelia Scheck

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First published in 2004 by Berg Editorial offices: First Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AW, UK 838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003–4812, USA © Raffael Scheck 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scheck, Raffael, 1960– Mothers of the nation : right-wing women in Weimar Germany/Raffael Scheck. ––1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 1-85973-707-2 –– ISBN 1-85973-712-9 (paper) 1. Women in politics––Germany––History––20th century. 2. Deutsche Volkspartei (Germany) 3. Deutschnationale Volkspartei. 4. Germany––Politics and government––1918–1933. 5. National socialism and women. I. Title. HQ1236.5.G3S33 2004 320'.082'0943––dc22 2003019625 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN

1 85973 707 2 (Cloth) 1 85973 712 9 (Paper)

Typeset by Avocet Typeset, Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn.

www.bergpublishers.com

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Contents Preface

ix

List of Abbreviations

xv 1

1.

Introduction

2.

Women’s Entry into Party Politics

23

3.

Hostility to Women in Politics

49

4.

Women’s Rights and Housewives’ Power

65

5.

Family, Youth, and Morality

85

6.

Small Rentiers

107

7.

Foreign Policy

117

8.

Women’s Local Politics

137

9.

The Nazi Challenge

157

Conclusion

183

Reference Sources

187

Bibliography

191

Index

225

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Preface This book examines the work of women in the German People’s Party (DVP) and the German National People’s Party (DNVP) – parties that covered the range from the moderate to the radical right of the Weimar Republic. Unlike the Nazi Party (NSDAP), these parties offered women seats in the national and local parliaments and in the party leadership. The book introduces the leading women from these two parties and traces the organizational structures that they created on the national and local level. It further analyzes their policies in fields ranging from social welfare to foreign policy and ends with a discussion of their reaction to the dramatic growth of the Nazi Party after 1930. The central theme is the women politicians’ attitude toward interest politics. Mothers of the Nation shows that right-wing women, in keeping with the tradition of the German bourgeois women’s movement, refused to stand up primarily for women’s interests and instead invoked the Volksgemeinschaft (community of the people), a vision of harmony and cooperation of the groups involved in production. They believed that German women should use their newly won political rights to strengthen the Volksgemeinschaft by reconciling the divided nation and by infusing it with a higher morality. This stance helped right-wing women to achieve impressive success in mobilizing conservative women, but it did not help them prevent the fragmentation along economic-interest lines that ultimately rendered their parties defenseless against the Nazis. Most of the conservative women mobilized by the DVP and DNVP (over a third of the women’s vote by 1924) sooner or later supported the Nazis. Until recently the study of women in the two parties that form the subject of this book had received little attention.1 The works by Andrea Süchting-Hänger and Kirsten Heinsohn have begun to fill this gap, however, at least for the German Nationalist People’s Party and some organizations associated with it.2 Julia Sneeringer’s thorough analysis of party propaganda directed toward women, although not limited to parties of the right, also offers important insights.3 Johanna Gehmacher’s book on the Austrian Großdeutsche Volkspartei has enriched the field with a study of a party that shows many similarities to the two parties discussed in this book, particularly the DNVP.4 Greater breadth has been added to the field by studies of organizations that cooperated with the DVP and DNVP. This is true for the housewives’, colonial, anti-feminist, and Evangelical movements.5 Biographies of some right-wing women, such as Käthe

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Preface Schirmacher, Magdalene von Tiling, and Guida Diehl, have deepened our knowledge, as has the study on women in German parliaments by Heide-Marie Lauterer.6 Yet, there are still major gaps in the picture of right-wing women during the Weimar Republic, particularly with respect to women in the DVP. The present study focuses on politics within the parties. Its most valuable primary sources are party newspapers or newsletters. They offer articles and speeches by the women politicians as well as a treasure trove of information on the parties themselves, on associated women’s organizations, and on parliamentary proceedings. Private papers have been consulted wherever possible so as to put public pronouncements into a more critical context, and various collections of documents from the parties and from women’s organizations have further broadened the documentary base. The divisions of the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin hold the richest deposits, including party newspapers, pamphlets, and books by the women from the two parties. Among the private-paper collections, the holdings of the Schirmacher Nachlass at the University Library in Rostock, the Katharina (Kardorff-) von Oheimb and Eduard Dingeldey papers at the Federal Archives in Koblenz, and the Paula Mueller-Otfried papers at the archive of the German Evangelical Women’s League were the most useful. The structure of the book stresses first the ideological and organizational parameters of women’s work within the two parties. The first chapter introduces the context, background, and mind-set of the main players. The next chapter delineates the structure of women’s politics in the two parties, and the third chapter is devoted to the hostility women felt from men and women in their parties and looks at their reaction to it. Next, the book turns to the politics of right-wing women. The following three chapters are organized thematically rather than chronologically because many legislative issues were debated repeatedly from 1919 to 1930. Chapter Four focuses on women’s issues, contrasting the DVP and DNVP women’s rather limited engagement for women’s rights with their receptiveness to housewives’ concerns. Chapter Five deals with legislative work in social and cultural policy – areas in which nobody questioned the expertise of women. The small-rentiers topic, covered in Chapter Six, belongs to the same general field but warrants separate treatment because of its complexity. Chapter Seven shifts the focus away from parliamentary politics to the women’s stands on foreign policy, the one area that divided the two parties more than anything else for much of the 1920s. Chapter Eight concludes the section on women’s policies with a look at right-wing women’s activity at the local level to assess how national and local politics interacted. The final chapter deals with the changed parameters of politics in the last years of the Weimar Republic and the right-wing women’s reaction to the rise of the Nazis. The conclusion then evaluates the effect of the female politicians’ activities and puts the results of this

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Preface study into the context of broader questions regarding women in politics and Germany’s political culture. The focus throughout the book is on the leading women who sat in the national parliament (Reichstag) and some state diets as well as on those women who were important in the women’s committees within the parties. Wherever appropriate, connections will be shown to the men in the party, particularly the leaders, and to the rank-and-file women, who are the subject of Chapter Eight. The analysis, when involving Germany’s federal states, will concentrate most often on Prussia, which was important not only by virtue of its size (more than 60 percent of the German population and territory) but also because it included most of the strongholds of the two parties. The present study would have been inconceivable without the generosity of archivists, librarians, research assistants, and colleagues. The staff at the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) in Koblenz and Berlin were particularly helpful. In Koblenz, Mr. Alois Fischer helped me to go through the parties’ propaganda materials, and Mr. Gregor Pickro even sent me copies of the archive’s research guides and some documents. Members of the Landesarchiv Berlin, particularly Frau Schumacher, as well as their colleagues at the Geheimes Staatsarchiv in Berlin were resourceful over many years. I am also grateful for the hospitality and advice of members of the archives of the German Evangelical Women’s League in Hanover and of the Catholic Women’s League of Germany in Cologne. Ulrike Gebhardt in Rostock and Kerstin Wolff of the Archive of the German Women’s Movement in Kassel generously shared their knowledge of the field, and the staff of the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, particularly in the old building Unter den Linden, worked tirelessly to support my research. I still feel bad about my loud Hurrah that echoed through the reading rooms of this pristine building when one staff member found a volume that closed a two-year gap in my research materials (the volume had been listed as missing in the catalog). I am grateful to Amy Bongard for having come to Berlin with me during my sabbatical in 1997/98, and I thank the German state for its generous Erziehungsgeld that helped make our stay affordable. Peter Scheck (my brother), Dora Wache (my step-grandmother), my parents, and my friends Stephan March, Elke Krüger, and Rudi Thurner helped to make my time in Berlin one of the happiest of my life. For twenty years, the friendship of Stephan Scharfenberger and Marco Guerini in Zurich has been a source of support and humorous inspiration. At Colby College, several research assistants performed much appreciated work: Amalie Gosine, Jody Beznoska, Yuliya Komska, Kerry West, Rebecca Downing, Gregory Robinson, Camille Dugan, and Alexis Frobin (in chronological order). Yuliya Komska established a biographical database on right-wing women’s politicians, Kerry West counted and tabulated the members of a local DNVP branch, Gregory Robinson did much useful work on an earlier version of – xi –

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Preface the text, and Alexis Frobin helped getting the last version of the manuscript ready for the publisher. The interlibrary loan librarians at Colby have done their utmost to track down some obscure texts for me. My prolific and friendly colleagues in the History Department (Peter Ditmanson, Ben Fallaw, Paul Josephson, Elizabeth Leonard, Howard Lupovitch, Richard “Pete” Moss, Larissa Taylor, Jim Webb, and Robert Weisbrot), as well as the secretaries Sarah Ward and Dianne LaBreck, graciously put up with me as department chair and have created a supportive work atmosphere that has helped me to keep up my spirits. The funding from the Social Science Division of Colby College was critical to this project, as was the generously funded sabbatical. Input from colleagues has much improved the manuscript. Subscribers to the electronic discussion list H-GERMAN responded to my inquiries about small rentiers and the legal ramifications of alcohol abuse in Germany. In Berlin, Karin Hausen and the members of the colloquium on gender history at the Technische Universität Berlin provided much appreciated criticism, as did Angelika Schaser who also let me borrow many books from her rich private library. Nancy Reagin commented on the chapter on women’s issues and housewives’ power. Ute Planert generously shared her ideas on women and nationalism with me. Eva Schoeck-Quinteros and Christiane Streubel allowed me to present parts of the present work at a conference on women and nationalism at the University of Bremen in 1999 and provided important feedback. Julia Sneeringer shared with me her insights on DNVP propaganda, and Larry E. Jones on many occasions helped me with his expertise on Weimar politics. Elizabeth Leonard, Kirsten Heinsohn, Christiane Streubel, and Andrea Süchting-Hänger read the entire manuscript and made many useful comments. A reputed historian of women in the American Civil War and dear friend, Elizabeth Leonard used her great insight and stylistic experience to help me enhance the book’s structure and eliminate Germanisms. I also wish to thank professors Josef Mooser, Regina Wecker, and Peter Fritzsche for evaluating the manuscript as part of a Habilitation procedure at the University of Basel. Several anonymous manuscript reviewers carefully read the manuscript and provided helpful critique. I particularly want to thank my editor Kathleen May and Ken Bruce at Berg; they have been wonderful examples of professionalism and expediency. Finally, I thank my children, Anselm (8 years old) and Adelia (6), for putting up with a messy house as I was finishing this book and, most of all, for understanding that some professional commitments, including the work on this book, have occasionally prevented me from spending the entire day playing with them.

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Preface

Notes 1. In an article from 1990, Helen Boak observed: “Women’s participation in the Catholic, conservative and liberal parties and these parties’ attitudes to their female members have not been investigated.” (Helen Boak, “Women in Weimar Politics.” European History Quarterly 20, no. 3 (1990): 369–99). There is now good work on the Democratic Party: Angelika Schaser, Helene Lange und Gertrud Bäumer: Eine politische Lebensgemeinschaft (Cologne, Vienna, Weimar: Boehlau Verlag, 2000), and Schaser, “Bürgerliche Frauen auf dem Weg in die linksliberalen Parteien (1908–1933).” Historische Zeitschrift 263, no. 3 (1996): 641–80. 2. Andrea Süchting-Hänger, Das “Gewissen der Nation”: Nationales Engagement und politisches Handeln konservativer Frauenorganisationen 1900 bis 1937 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2002); Kirsten Heinsohn, “Im Dienste der deutschen Volksgemeinschaft: Die ‘Frauenfrage’ und konservative Parteien vor und nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg.” In Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2000. See also Raffael Scheck, “German Conservatism and Female Political Activism in the Early Weimar Republic.” German History 15, no. 1 (1997): 34–55; Scheck, “Women Against Versailles: Maternalism and Nationalism of Female Bourgeois Politicians in the Early Weimar Republic.” German Studies Review 22 (1999): 21–42; Scheck, “Zwischen Volksgemeinschaft und Frauenrechten: Das Verhältnis rechtsbürgerlicher Politikerinnen zur NSDAP 1930–33.” In Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht. Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2000; Scheck, “Women on the Weimar Right: The Role of Female Politicians in the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP).” Journal of Contemporary History 36, no. 4 (2001): 547–60; and Scheck, “Women in the Non-Nazi Right during the Weimar Republic: The Case of the German Nationalist People’s Party (DNVP).” In Paola Bacchetta and Margaret Power, eds., RightWing Women Across the Globe. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. 3. Julia Sneeringer, Winning Women’s Votes: Propaganda and Politics in Weimar Germany (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 4. Johanna Gehmacher, Völkische Frauenbewegung: Deutschnationale und nationalsozialistische Geschlechterpolitik in Österreich (Vienna: Docker, 1998). 5. See the works by Nancy Reagin and Renate Bridenthal on housewives cited below. For colonial women, see Lora Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2001), and for – xiii –

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Preface a history of anti-feminism that sheds much light on the contribution of women to this movement, see Ute Planert, Antifeminismus im Kaiserreich: Diskurs, soziale Formation und politische Mentalität (Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1998). For the Protestant women’s movement, see Jochen-Christoph Kaiser, Frauen in der Kirche: Evangelische Frauenarbeit im Spannungsfeld von Kirche und Gesellschaft 1890–1945 (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1985); Ursula Baumann, Protestantismus und Frauenemanzipation in Deutschland, 1850 bis 1920 (Frankfurt am Main, New York: Campus, 1992); and Doris Kaufmann, Frauen zwischen Aufbruch und Reaktion: Protestantische Frauenbewegung in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Piper, 1988). 6. Anke Walzer, Käthe Schirmacher: Eine deutsche Frauenrechtlerin auf dem Wege vom Liberalismus zum konservativen Nationalismus, Frauen in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 19 (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1991), pp. 26 and 79; Gury Schneider-Ludorff, Magdalene von Tiling: Ordnungstheologie und Geschlechterbeziehungen – Ein Beitrag zum Gesellschaftsverständnis des Protestantismus in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2001); Silvia Lange, Protestantische Frauen auf dem Weg in den Nationalsozialismus: Guida Diehls Neulandbewegung 1916–1935, Ergebnisse der Frauenforschung 47 (Stuttgart and Weimar: Verlag J.B. Metzler, 1998); and Heide-Marie Lauterer, Parlamentarierinnen in Deutschland 1918/19–1949 (Königstein: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2002).

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List of Abbreviations BA BDF

German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) Federation of German Women’s Associations (Bund deutscher Frauenvereine) DDP German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei) DEF German Evangelical Women’s League (Deutsch-evangelischer Frauenbund) DFBS German Women’s Committee against the War-Guilt Lie (Deutscher Frauenausschuß zur Bekämpfung der Schuldlüge) DNVP German National People’s Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei) DVP German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei) IAW International Alliance of Women ICW International Council of Women LFA Provincial Women’s Committee (Landesfrauenausschuss) of the DNVP NLC Nationalliberale Correspondenz NSDAP Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) RFA National Women’s Committee (Reichsfrauenausschuss) RHV National Housewives’ League (Reichsverband der Hausfrauenvereine) RLB National Rural League (Reichslandbund) RLHV National Rural Housewives’ League (Reichsverband der landwirtschaftlichen Hausfrauenvereine) SPD Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) VdL Verhandlungen des Preußischen Landtags VdR Verhandlungen des Reichstags VEFD Federation of German Evangelical Women’s Leagues (Vereinigung evangelischer Frauenvereine Deutschlands) VRPT Union of the Female Postal and Telegraph Workers (Verband der deutschen Reichspost- und Telegraphenbeamtinnen) WkFA Electoral District Women’s Committee (Wahlkreisfrauenausschuss) of the DVP

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–1– Introduction

Nationalism has drawn women into a dialectic process. On the one hand, it has held out the promise of participation and entitlement. Nationalism is about the people, about men and women. Beginning with le peuple of the French Revolution, it has pulled women into the political process and by doing so has slowly eroded the legitimacy of law codes that discriminate against women. On the other hand, nationalism has often reaffirmed traditional gender divisions and hierarchies particularly through its tendency to seek confrontation with other peoples and nationalisms. In national emergencies and wars, men have traditionally gone to the front and women have been cast back into maternal and caring roles.1 This dialectic reached a crucial stage during the First World War and its aftermath in many European countries, particularly in Germany. The First World War helped to make the boundaries between the private and the public sphere porous and thus to undermine the association of private with female and public with male. This happened not only through the influx of women into industrial and administrative jobs held by men. Given the prolonged absence of millions of men and the steadily worsening food supply due to the British blockade, women in Germany also became the backbone of the home front, where stability and holding out mattered as much as they did in the murderous trenches. With their social services, their labor, and their frugal housekeeping, women made an essential contribution to the war effort.2 Right after the war, Germany’s revolutionary socialist government recognized this contribution when it decreed the introduction of women’s suffrage on 30 November 1918. Beginning with the elections to the National Assembly on 19 January 1919, German women were for the first time allowed to vote and be elected in all national, state, and local elections.3 Although the suffrage broadened women’s political opportunities, the momentum for reform quickly weakened due to a reaction already visible during the war. The war losses and the decline of the birthrate typical for modern societies heightened the role of women as bearers of children and exerted pressure on them to reproduce in the service of the nation. This happened at a time when individual choice was increasingly replacing religious morality in reproductive issues and when economic constraints induced many couples to have fewer children than their parents. Given that Germany needed a large army to rise as a great

–1–

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Mothers of the Nation power again, the birthrate was a national concern of the highest order.4 Moreover, the double threat from a revolutionary left and vengeful war enemies as well as the widespread feeling of chaos and moral decline in postwar Germany made middle-class constituencies yearn for a reweaving of the social fabric according to Christian and conservative values. Women were essential for this project – particularly in their role as mothers and housewives. The women politicians of the German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei, DVP) and the German Nationalist People’s Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP), who are the focus of this book, generally affirmed these reactionary goals. Yet, they also believed that the national emergency after the German defeat in 1918 had undercut the legitimation for excluding women from a range of political and social opportunities. Comparing the nation with a damaged ship in a storm, the journalist Emma Stropp (DVP) argued: “One cannot hold back the larger part of the crew and ask them to clean the deck when it is necessary to flush the joints, hold together breaking parts, and reconstruct in a storm and emergency all that was exhausted, old, or willfully destroyed.”5 Leading rightwing women thus established a connection between the national emergency and an expansion of their rights by claiming that a beleaguered nation on the verge of civil war could not survive without opening new opportunities to women with their allegedly inborn reconciling, “maternal” qualities.6 While accepting a traditional definition of women as different from men, these women activists pointed out that the war had dissolved the borders between private and public sphere and that women therefore needed to play a more public and political role. They argued, in historian Doris Kaufmann’s words, that the “inner front” of the war, guarded mostly by women, had become the “outer front” through Germany’s military collapse and disarmament.7 This book explores the main themes and activities of leading right-wing women in Weimar Germany. It argues, first, that the priority of these women was to mobilize the large pool of previously politically dormant conservative women, who were told to use their new political rights to rescue the nation, unite it, and make it strong again. Second, it shows that their self-definition and also the tools used to achieve their mobilization goal were shaped by a belief in essential gender differences. While reaching out to Germany’s conservative women, the leading women of the DVP and DNVP appealed to this belief and cast it in the powerful rhetoric of Volksgemeinschaft, a term that became notorious through its racist meaning under the Nazi regime but was used long before the Nazis and not always in a racial context.8 Together with the majority of the German women’s movement, right-wing women believed that men and women are essentially different.9 Among the typical qualities they ascribed to all women were compassion, social responsibility, and a refined sense of morality and culture. Women, so the theory ran, –2–

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Introduction were more loyal to basic ideas than men and were good at mediating conflicts. They had natural moral authority and greater talent for self-restraint than men, and this made them ideally suited to preserve culture and morality. Consequently, women would, if given more political power, increase social responsibility, ennoble the tone of politics, rally the nation behind the most important issues, and raise morality and culture. These maternal qualities were assumed to exist regardless of whether a woman was a mother in a biological sense. The idea about women’s innate maternal qualities was called “spiritual motherhood.” The general ideology of gender difference stressing these qualities was called “maternalism.”10 Whereas the maternalist ideology was shared by most women active in the political parties of the Weimar Republic, different shadings existed with respect to its consequences for women’s roles in society. Here a more emancipatory interpretation competed with a more conservative one. Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer, the key theorists of the bourgeois German women’s movement who both joined the German Democratic Party (DDP), represented the emancipatory position by claiming that maternalism did not justify a strict separation of roles for women and men; women should be allowed to do almost everything men did, but they would do it differently, and they would thus make the shared work more complete than it was when carried out by men or women alone. This position, though based on differences of the sexes, was reconcilable with equal status for women and men.11 As Anny von Kulesza, a DVP deputy in the Prussian state diet, wrote: “To assign only certain fields to women in public and political life would be wrong. It will not be possible for the woman to insert into political work the necessary complement to the work of the man without applying her judgment to all fields, as is necessary given the interconnectedness of our political and economic life. In foreign policy, too, women should be heard in addition to men, even if the man may continue to make the decisions.”12 Many women on the right, however, endorsed a more restrictive interpretation of maternalism by wanting to tie women’s political work more closely to the sphere of mothers and housewives. These women also tended to put a higher value on biological motherhood and the family and thus welcomed women particularly in roles that were compatible with being a mother and housewife – while recognizing that professional careers for women were an economic and social necessity, particularly after the losses of the First World War had increased the majority of women in the German population from over one million to over two million.13 This interpretation was probably most powerful at the grass-roots level of both parties, whereas most of their women activists shifted between the two positions. In Weimar politics, the leading women of the DVP and DNVP merged the older idea of spiritual motherhood with their claims to work for the Volksgemeinschaft. This mirrored a powerful concern of the German bourgeoisie –3–

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Mothers of the Nation in 1918–19 that was soon ignored by the men in the bourgeois parties while the women and the youth groups tried to uphold it. Articulated most notably by the bourgeoisie in its response to the German Revolution of 1918–19, the Volksgemeinschaft idea implied hope for reconciliation between the classes, national unity, and harmonious cooperation between the groups involved in production – all the things that right-wing women believed they could achieve best. Privilege and party conflict should be overcome by a focus on the common (national) good. The Volksgemeinschaft appealed to the increasingly mystical feeling of national unity of August 1914, when Kaiser Wilhelm II claimed not to know any parties any more and when German men of all classes marched united into the trenches, while women hastened to organize a broad range of auxiliary services on the home front.14 After the defeat, Volksgemeinschaft was meant to overcome the harshness of domestic conflict. When the bourgeois parties regrouped in November and December of 1918, they all appealed to the Volksgemeinschaft in their programs, and the DVP and DNVP did so even in their party names (Volkspartei).15 Yet, while the women politicians in the DVP and DNVP continued to appeal to the Volksgemeinschaft and tried not to behave as mere representatives of women’s interests, the fragmentation of middle-class economic interests and the related competition of special-interest groups tore Germany’s bourgeois parties apart. This prepared the ground for the proliferation of small-interest parties and, ultimately, the rise of the catchall National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). The women of the DVP and DNVP thus held up a vision that was increasingly discredited by the developments in their own parties. In the end, that portion of the female electorate which they had successfully mobilized (over a third by 1924) found little difficulty in transferring its loyalties to the NSDAP, which, according to historian Peter Fritzsche, in the early 1930s conveyed a more credible commitment to the Volksgemeinschaft than the bourgeois parties by appearing to be socially more inclusive and less bound to special interests.16 The stress on the Volksgemeinschaft, with the concomitant rejection of interest politics, helped the leading women of the DVP and DNVP to achieve their mobilization goal. By casting the nation as an enlarged family in need of women’s help and by representing the right to vote as a national duty, they overcame the reservations of many conservative women toward their new rights and provided a justification for previously shunned political activity.17 This ensured that women provided the majority of votes for the DVP and DNVP. This was true already in January 1919 and remained so in every major election of the Weimar Republic. Although votes were never counted separately by sex in the entire country, those districts that did count them separately are diverse enough to constitute a statistically meaningful sample.18 Whereas the DVP drew about 52 to 55 percent of its votes from women, the share of women in the DNVP elec–4–

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Introduction torate (about 56 to 60 percent) was the second highest in the nation. Only the predominantly Catholic Center Party together with its Bavarian sister, the Bavarian People’s Party (Bayerische Volkspartei, BVP), had a slightly higher percentage of women voters.19 Without this boost to conservative and religious positions provided by women’s participation in elections, the Weimar Republic would have been significantly more left-leaning – for better or worse. This becomes visible particularly in those fields in which conservative women showed strong interest: education, public morality, social politics, and the status of the churches. As Cornelie Usborne has shown, the women of the DNVP and – to a lesser extent – the DVP often aligned with their colleagues from the Center Party and BVP to leave a powerful conservative imprint on legislation in these areas.20 A widespread explanation of Weimar women’s statistical preference for right-wing parties stresses that the conditions for women’s liberation (such as jobs making women independent of men) were not present in Weimar Germany. This argument implies, however, that women would have voted for the Left if these conditions had existed. Given the powerful ideological ties of conservative women to the right-wing parties (in terms of religion and nationalism, for example), this seems highly unlikely. But conservative women would in that case have forced the right-wing parties to take a more welcoming position toward women’s rights.21 As will be shown below, a commitment to the Volksgemeinschaft did not rule out insistence on women’s rights. By referring to the Volksgemeinschaft, the women activists of the DVP and DNVP were also able to gloss over tensions within their own ranks. The claims of academic and professional women in both parties differed from those of urban and rural housewives, whose interests also were not identical – with urban housewives being consumers and rural housewives usually being both, producers and consumers. The housewives, the largest and best organized women’s constituency of both parties, wanted above all to upgrade their economic situation and status and showed little interest in women’s professional rights. Women teachers, however, saw their work as a lifelong vocation and therefore aimed to strengthen women’s rights in the professions and ease the double burden of work and family. Yet, many women in the postal service were more interested in endof-contract benefits than in professional rights because they hoped to quit when they got married. Many of these groups used the Volksgemeinschaft to mask their own particular economic interests. Sometimes, groups with downright contradictory economic interests found themselves in the same party. In the DNVP, for example, urban housewives’ representatives clashed with representatives of domestic employees over social legislation for the employees, who in 1925 still made up one-ninth of Germany’s female workforce.22 Right-wing women also disagreed on political issues such as participation in government and reparations agreements with the victors of the war. One finds nostalgic monar–5–

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Mothers of the Nation chists and conservative Christian women of the “old right” shoulder to shoulder with women associated with the radical nationalist leagues of the “new right”.23 Sometimes these political fault lines followed the border between the DVP and DNVP, but often they did not. Yet, the Volksgemeinschaft rhetoric provided a screen behind which many of these tensions could be mediated or hidden. It gave political women an alibi to stay out of divisive disputes within their party. Women in the DNVP, for example, were largely able to circumvent the most disruptive inner-party conflicts with reference to their reconciling and idealistic mission for the Volksgemeinschaft – although their acquiescence often implied tacit support for the dominant faction in the party.24 The Volksgemeinschaft rhetoric also contained some ambiguities, however. One of them had to do with the relation between national interest and party interest. In their appeals to the Volksgemeinschaft, right-wing women implied that women, with their allegedly “natural” aversion to special-interest politics, observed a greater loyalty than men to party principles and national interest. Obviously, the professions of loyalty to party principles clashed with the women’s claims to uniting the nation by overcoming party divisions. How might insistence on the party program – rather than compromise across party lines, even at the expense of the program – rally a nation shaken by defeat in the First World War and internal turmoil? The women’s equation of their party’s principles with national interest was therefore partisan and not conducive to creating a Volksgemeinschaft across party lines. A second ambiguity arose from the fact that their ideology forced the women politicians to fight for women’s interests while denying the legitimacy of interest politics. To allow women’s expected reconciling influence to work, parties had to accord more parliamentary seats to women and strengthen their position in the nation. If male party leaders refused to recognize this, the women politicians would be forced to do exactly what they denounced: to fight for the special interests of women. Oddly, the representation of women’s interests was thus consistent with the female politicians’ anti-interest rhetoric. The Volksgemeinschaft concept could be used to advance women’s interests, but it could also come to haunt the women politicians of the two parties. Perhaps the most profound ambiguity of the Volksgemeinschaft idea resulted from a problem of definition. Who belonged to it, and who did not? This was largely a question regarding the status of German Jews, most of whom were assimilated and patriotic. The war and the trauma of defeat in 1918, however, had fuelled German anti-Semitism, and many people on the Right excluded the Jews from their vision of the Volksgemeinschaft and demanded that the civil rights of German Jews be restricted. Whereas the DVP did not embrace this cause, the DNVP leadership welcomed anti-Semites while refusing to let anti-Semitism dominate its agenda. This led to the secession of the party’s most radical racists in October 1922.25 Right-wing women were divided on this issue along similar –6–

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Introduction lines as those of right-wing men. Some of them emphatically included German Jews in the Volksgemeinschaft. The DVP politician Emma Ender, for example, claimed in 1920 that “it is completely unjustified to construct a contradiction between ‘German’ and ‘Jewish’.”26 Not all leading women in the DVP took such a clear stand, but they did not promote anti-Semitism either. In the DNVP, the chair of the National Women’s Committee, Margarethe Behm, agreed with Ender. In a speech to the DNVP party convention of 1919, she praised the patriotism of German Jews during the war and asked them to join her party, provoking angry heckling from some men.27 At the same time, however, Käthe Schirmacher, a DNVP deputy in the National Assembly, wrote in her diary: “The only thing uniting us with Poland is our common hatred of Juda.” The propaganda leaflets published by the DNVP women’s committees, moreover, contained anti-Semitic messages, particularly in their attacks against the Democratic Party, which was believed to be directed by Jews.28 When Anna von Gierke, one of the most active DNVP deputies in the National Assembly, was denied a promising place on the party ballot for 1920 presumably because her mother was Jewish, the leading DNVP women did nothing to defend her.29 At a national meeting of DNVP women in 1922, Johanna Richter, a deputy from the state diet of Baden, claimed that Jewish influence on German culture represented a problem but asked that it be fought with spiritual methods and not with the antiSemitic outbursts typical for the radical racists. Her talk met with widespread approval, even though in the discussion following it some women pointed out that Jews had passionately supported the German cause in the contested border areas with Poland.30 No notable DNVP women joined the racist secession in 1922, but several of them became active in the DNVP’s National Völkisch Committee (Völkischer Reichsausschuss), which continued to stress anti-Semitic and racist arguments after the split.31 While most women’s activists in the DVP and some in the DNVP continued to see the Volksgemeinschaft as the national solidarity of all Germans regardless of race, a growing number of women in the DNVP defined the Volksgemeinschaft in racial terms as the community of Aryan or Nordic people. This tendency became dominant among the DNVP women during the last years of the Weimar Republic. It should be noted that the Volksgemeinschaft discourse of bourgeois women, which was shared by women from the moderate left all the way to the Nazis, has inspired the thesis that the German bourgeois women’s movement as a whole drifted consistently toward Nazi positions after giving up its left-leaning agenda in 1908. In his pioneering work on the German bourgeois women’s movement 1890–1933, Richard Evans advanced this thesis with respect to the largest umbrella organization of bourgeois women, the Federation of German Women’s Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, BDF). The surrender of the BDF to the Nazi regime and the ambivalent role of its former leader, Gertrud Bäumer, –7–

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Mothers of the Nation in the Third Reich seemed to add credibility to this argument. Following Evans, other historians have accused the bourgeois women’s movement of preparing the ground for Nazism, mostly through its adherence to a strict separation of gender roles and a motherly image of woman. But this argument has also drawn criticism.32 Undoubtedly, the BDF opened itself more to the right after 1918, particularly under the influence of the recently founded housewives’ leagues, its largest member organizations. But I have previously argued that party political differences mattered for women’s stance and that the emphasis of the women’s movement on gender difference and motherhood mixed with a broad range of political programs from the moderate left to the radical right. It left room for both opposition to Nazism and support for it.33 Even women in the DVP and DNVP related differently to the rapidly growing NSDAP from 1930 on, particularly to its racism and anti-Semitism. A comparative study of the DVP and DNVP reveals that both parties appealed largely to the same constituency. Both recruited the bulk of their supporters from a predominantly bourgeois, nationalist, and Protestant milieu. The DVP, formed out of the National Liberal Party of the Wilhelmine Empire, rallied a variety of business groups, industrialists, housewives (mostly urban), civil servants, representatives of the Evangelical Church, and other sections of the middle classes.34 Its program included a commitment to monarchism but also expressed the party’s willingness to participate in the Weimar system.35 Nevertheless, rejection of the democratic Weimar Constitution remained strong in the DVP, as was shown when it joined the DNVP in voting against the Constitution on 12 July 1919 and when high-ranking DVP members supported plans for a coup d’état in October 1923.36 The DVP’s antidemocratic stands mattered less on the national (Reich) level, where the party entered numerous government coalitions, than on the state level. In Prussia, by far the largest single state, the left-to-center “Weimar Coalition” of Social Democrats (SPD), Center Party, and Democratic Party ruled for most of the period 1919 to 1932, and the DVP constituted the right-wing opposition together with the DNVP until the victory of the Nazis in the state elections of April 1932. The DVP experienced its strongest phase in 1920–22, when its vocal opposition role attracted many disillusioned voters of the Democratic Party. In June 1920, the DVP received 14 percent of the national vote, up from 4.4 percent in January 1919. Yet, the DVP remained a party dominated by influential men (Honoratioren) and without effective grass-roots support. It never built a stable financial base through membership fees and instead remained dependent on contributions particularly from German big industry, which helped to alienate some of its middle-class constituencies.37 The DVP therefore experienced losses at the polls even while its leader Gustav Stresemann (Foreign Minister 1923–29) won widespread recognition for his moderate and pragmatic foreign policy. The –8–

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Introduction decline of the party was accelerated dramatically after Stresemann’s death on 3 October 1929. The DNVP was formed out of the conservative, Christian-social, and antiSemitic parties of the Wilhelmine Empire. Its program was reactionary, antirepublican, and monarchist. The DNVP rallied many factions on the right including anti-Semites, monarchist officials and officers, large landowners, businessmen, representatives of the Evangelical Church, housewives (rural and urban), as well as a section of the non-socialist workers’ movement.38 In its social base the DNVP thus resembled the DVP, except that it drew more support from the large landlords and rural workers east of the Elbe River, particularly in Pomerania and East Prussia.39 The DNVP captured about 10 percent of the vote in January 1919 but doubled its share until 1924 through its strict opposition to the Weimar system and its advocacy of a confrontational foreign policy. Yet its hesitant and frustrating participation in government in 1925 and 1927–28 exposed a rift in the party between moderate pragmatists and radical anti-democrats that resulted in the election of hard-liner Alfred Hugenberg as party chairman on 20 October 1928.40 In his efforts to transform the party into a battering ram against Weimar democracy, Hugenberg alienated the DNVP’s working-class constituencies and pushed out the moderates.41 Although the DNVP experienced a less dramatic electoral decline than the DVP after 1929, it was still too weak to become more than a junior partner of the NSDAP after Hitler’s accession to power on 30 January 1933. Although the leading men of the DNVP and DVP had either opposed women’s suffrage or supported it only at the very last moment, they did invite women to run for parliamentary seats in late 1918 and supported the buildup of a nationwide structure of women’s committees headed by a National Women’s Committee (Reichsfrauenausschuss, RFA) in each party. They encouraged women’s participation within areas that were deemed typical women’s issues, such as family and motherhood, education, religion, and women’s professions.42 Women were allowed to write those sections of the party program relating to women’s and family issues, and the leading right-wing women found avenues to inscribe their views on the legislative process touching on these areas. The women tried to broaden their sphere of influence particularly by addressing foreign policy, a traditional preserve of men. Occasionally they criticized their relegation to stereotypically “female” fields, and often they complained about too little consideration for women candidates on the party ballots. Yet, the women of the DVP and DNVP in general conceded to work within the confines set for them by their parties. This meant that their input on the major issues dividing the party leadership was often marginal despite the fact that the chair of the RFA was also a member of the party’s leading committee. With their stress on the Volksgemeinschaft and women’s “innate” maternal abilities, they tended –9–

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Mothers of the Nation to stay at the periphery of inner-party battlefields, trying to exert a reconciling and uniting influence. Like most men in their parties, almost all prominent women in the DVP and DNVP came from the bourgeoisie, often from the educated professional classes (the Bildungsbürgertum), while a few women came from the nobility. The predominant professional group were teachers, which was due to the fact that a schoolteaching diploma was one of the few avenues in higher education open to German women before 1914. Most women in the teaching profession were unmarried because a law abolished only in 1919 demanded the dismissal of married women in the civil service, including teachers. Some women used their teacher’s diploma as a springboard for a higher education once German universities began to open their doors to women (after 1900), and acquired doctorates. Many of the women who were not teachers identified themselves as housewives, but their extensive activities for their organizations meant that they spent little time in their own homes. Almost all of the notable women in the two parties were born between 1859 and 1881. They therefore belonged to two generations of politicians identified by historian Detlev Peukert as the Wilhelmine generation (the age group of emperor Wilhelm II, who was born in 1859) and the generation of the Gründerzeit (the first decade after the foundation of the German Empire in 1871). For the members of these generations the Wilhelmine Empire provided the formative experiences. Members of these age groups were predominant in the political and economic life of the Weimar Republic.43 Given that women were not allowed to join political organizations until 1908, the differences between these two generations were less important for women than for men. For women, the decisive rupture was therefore 1908 or perhaps the outbreak of war in 1914. Altogether, the leading right-wing women displayed a broad range of personalities and interests that contrasts with the relative homogeneity of their social background, which they shared with most women active in the BDF, the Democratic Party, and the Center Party.44 These women certainly did not fit the stereotype of the bespectacled, lifeless spinsters that antifeminists liked to portray when they spoke about politically active women.45 One may wonder about the absence of younger women, given that members of the bourgeois women’s movement often complained about young women’s lack of appreciation for the ideas and accomplishments of the prewar movement.46 But the age bracket of leading DNVP and DVP women was very similar to the age bracket of leading male politicians in the Weimar Republic – except for the extremist parties, whose leadership had a more youthful profile. Promising younger women were present in the women’s committees of the DVP and DNVP, but they had no chance of winning parliamentary seats once the electoral fortunes of their parties began to decline in the second half of the 1920s. Aside from the importance of anti-Semitism and racism among DNVP women, the worldview of the leading right-wing women was remarkably – 10 –

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Introduction similar. Whether they focused on school reform, public morality, housewives’ issues, sports, or foreign policy, the women of the DNVP and DVP always assumed essential differences between the sexes, as expressed in the theory of spiritual motherhood. A look at the most popular idols of women from the two parties confirms this. The most celebrated woman was Auguste Viktoria, the wife of Kaiser Wilhelm II (r. 1888–1918). Auguste Viktoria was a weak political figure but dearly remembered as the patron of many women’s charity organizations.47 Her birthday (22 October 1858) and the anniversary of her death (11 April 1921) were ritually commemorated in the DVP and DNVP women’s press – at both the national and local level. The articles and speeches produced for these occasions were almost identical. Auguste Viktoria appeared as the passive sufferer, the compassionate mother of her children and “her” people, the selfsacrificing wife, the charitable and religious woman – in short: the incarnation of German women’s loyalty and selfless grandeur. Commemorating her birthday and her death continuously offered right-wing women new opportunities to contrast the supposedly lax morality of the present with her high-standing figure.48 Festivities for Auguste Viktoria belonged to the standard activities of women in the local party sections, so much so that the National Women’s Committee of the DNVP in 1928 published a blueprint for these celebrations.49 Many women from both parties undertook pilgrimages to Auguste Viktoria’s grave in Potsdam to lay wreaths, pray, and sing patriotic songs, and leading women promoted her as the best possible role model for German youth and as the ideal of German womanhood.50 Right-wing women also used Auguste Viktoria’s enormous popularity among conservative women in their efforts to reconcile conservative women with their new political rights after 1918. A DNVP speaker in East Prussia, for example, argued that women’s suffrage was a precious thing because it contained the three pearls fallen out of Auguste Viktoria’s crown during the revolution: family, church, and fatherland. Previously, the empress had cared for them; now, it was the duty of all German women to protect them.51 Another widely revered woman was Queen Luise of Prussia (1776–1810), who had played a political role in the wake of Prussia’s defeat against Napoleonic France in 1806. Like Auguste Viktoria, she was the wife of a male ruler, not a ruler in her own right. But Luise, whose birthday (10 March) was frequently commemorated by right-wing women, potentially represented a different ideal of womanhood. With an energy and courage that contrasted with the helplessness of her husband and his ministers, Luise had tried to induce Napoleon I to grant mild peace conditions to Prussia. She had thus assumed an independent and active role at a time when the leading men of her country were weak and the kingdom in disarray. To right-wing women of the Weimar Republic, Luise appeared as a woman who had quietly rallied the defeated and demoralized – 11 –

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Mothers of the Nation nation against the invader – although she did not live to see Prussia’s liberation in 1813.52 Käthe Schirmacher, a prominent DNVP activist, claimed that Luise was not simply a loving wife and mother but a mother of the country and the people with “strong, combative mother love.”53 Another woman from the DNVP considered Luise the “soul” of Germany’s resistance against Napoleon and called her the “genius of Prussia’s liberation.”54 Yet Luise’s self-assertive role was often watered down by right-wing women. In the same breath with which they praised Luise for inciting German resistance to Napoleon, they also described her as the perfect loving wife and mother, the graceful woman, and the generous queen. One DNVP woman, for example, stressed that Luise had achieved much while preserving her femininity – unlike the more imperious English queen Elizabeth I and the Russian tsarina Catherine the Great. The author claimed that German women were never imperious – conveniently ignoring that Catherine the Great was of German origin.55 The DNVP and DVP women competed with their claims to Luise. The DVP women’s committees in the Berlin and Potsdam area, for example, regularly laid wreaths and flowers at Luise’s grave or her monument in Berlin’s Tiergarten (central park), while national DVP women’s politicians insisted that Luise would have supported the DVP. They argued that Luise had promoted the Prussian pragmatic reformers over the reactionaries – the political ancestors of the DVP over those of the DNVP – and conducted Realpolitik in Stresemann’s sense.56 The DNVP also promoted a rich array of Queen Luise festivities and named Luise’s birthday the “Day of the German Woman.” A women’s organization associated with the veterans’ league Stahlhelm and with ties to the DNVP called itself Bund Königin Luise.57 References to Luise were made by DNVP women in connection to Weimar politics, as when Käthe Schirmacher claimed that Luise would never have signed the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Locarno.58 Luise was, according to historian Andrea Süchting-Hänger, part of an “invented tradition” (Hobsbawm) of right-wing women. Her image stressed national heroism in combination with motherly character.59 Another object of women’s admiration, though less ritually celebrated, was the figure of the great male leader. Many women politicians from both parties expressed their longing for a powerful national leader, a male authoritarian savior. The DVP Reichstag deputy Katharina Kardorff-von Oheimb, for example, hoped that women’s reconciling mission might prepare the German people for the acceptance of a charismatic man as the national savior, who would presumably complete the unifying work of women and free the Germans from the Treaty of Versailles.60 Other women in the DVP expressed similar feelings, as did many DNVP women who made no secret of their dislike for the mechanics of parliamentary majorities. Although the women longing for a great man and national savior often envisioned a new Bismarck or Frederick the Great, they also revered – 12 –

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Introduction some male figures associated with Weimar politics. Women from both parties venerated Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, war hero and German president 1925–1934, who received a majority of his votes from women in 1925 and at his reelection in 1932.61 The leading women of the DVP expressed much admiration for their party leader Gustav Stresemann that turned into worship after his death, and women in the DNVP adored Karl Helfferich, the party’s leading financial expert who died in a train accident in April 1924. The DNVP women considered German women particularly indebted to Helfferich because they saw him as the heroic conqueror of hyperinflation in 1923 and thus as the savior of many threatened German households. In 1928, DNVP women established a yearly Helfferich prize for the best article on a suggested topic. After 1928, women in the DNVP were instrumental in fostering the cult of their new leader, Alfred Hugenberg, in competition with the Hitler cult of the NSDAP.62 That activists in both parties endorsed such a passive and suffering role model as Auguste Viktoria is revealing. Except for some charitable activities, she really did not do much, and all the aspects for which she was praised must have been poison to all claims to women’s rights. Luise, a much more energetic and colorful personality, had emancipatory potential, but that aspect of her persona was so domesticated that she often appeared merely as a more fortunate Auguste Viktoria. It is plausible that the veneration of male leaders, together with the Auguste Viktoria cult, expressed a nostalgic monarchism prevalent among many right-wing women.63 This monarchism is tangible enough, although DVP and DNVP women never made restoration of Wilhelm II to his throne a priority of their political work. Through his erratic personality and his flight to the Netherlands at the end of the war, the former Kaiser had discredited himself even in the eyes of many monarchists – although they would never have criticized him openly. Indeed, the Auguste Viktoria cult sometimes implied a muted critique of Wilhelm II in suggesting that the empress had suffered at his hands, too.64 In any case, the longing for a great male leader shows that right-wing women, after rallying the nation together, still expected men to lead.

Notes 1. Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender & Nation (London: Sage, 1997), chapters 1 and 5; Ute Planert, “Vater Staat und Mutter Germania: Zur Politisierung des weiblichen Geschlechts im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.” In idem, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2000, pp. 17–19; Ute Planert, “Zwischen Partizipation und Restriktion: Frauenemanzipation und nationales Paradigma von der Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg.” In Dieter Langewiesche and Georg Schmidt, eds., Föderative Nation. – 13 –

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Mothers of the Nation

2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

Deutschlandkonzepte von der Reformation bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Munich: Oldenburg, 2000; Dieter Langewiesche, “Nation, Nationalismus, Nationalstaat: Forschungsstand und Forschungsperspektiven.” Neue Politische Literatur 40 (1995), pp. 216–17. See Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), and Ute Daniel, Arbeiterfrauen in der Kriegsgesellschaft: Beruf, Familie und Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1989). Richard J. Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany 1894–1933 (London and Beverly Hills: Sage, 1976), pp. 228–30. Cornelie Usborne, The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 16–32. Emma Stropp, “Der neue Reichstag,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 26, 1 July 1920; see also Stropp, “Friede und Frauen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 3, 15 January 1920. Raffael Scheck, “Women Against Versailles, Maternalism and Nationalism of Female Bourgeois Politicians in the Early Weimar Republic.” German Studies Review 22 (1999): pp. 22 and 33. Doris Kaufmann, “Die Ehre des Vaterlandes und die Ehre der Frauen oder der Kampf an der äusseren und inneren Front: Der Deutsch-Evangelische Frauenbund im Übergang vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik.” Evangelische Theologie 46 (1986): 277–92. See also Scheck, “Women Against Versailles,” pp. 21–2 and 30. Peter Fritzsche, “Breakdown or Breakthrough? Conservatives and the November Revolution.” In Larry E. Jones and James Retallack, eds., Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance: Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945. Providence and Oxford: Berg, 1993; Peter Fritzsche, Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); and Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany, Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare 10 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). On the use of the Volksgemeinschaft idea in the German People’s Party, see Stephen G. Fritz, “The Search for Volksgemeinschaft: Gustav Stresemann and the Baden DVP, 1926–1930.” German Studies Review 7, no. 2 (1984): 249–80, which stresses Gustav Stresemann’s lifelong commitment to the Volksgemeinschaft idea. See also Peter Lambert, “German Historians and Nazi Ideology: The Parameters of the Volksgemeinschaft and the Problem of Historical Legitimation, 1930–1945.” European History Quarterly 25, no. 4 (1995): 555–82. – 14 –

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Introduction 9. Karen Offen claims that this view has been more prevalent in Continental European than in American (and to some extent British?) feminism, which for a long time tended to stress gender equality and to downgrade theories of gender difference as conservative and anti-emancipatory: Karen Offen, “Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14 (1988): 119–57 (particularly pp. 123–25 and 135–37). 10. See, in particular, Christoph Sachße, Mütterlichkeit als Beruf: Sozialarbeit, Sozialreform und Frauenbewegung 1871–1929, Edition Suhrkamp, Neue Folge (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), pp. 115–16; Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800–1914 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), pp. 2–13; Bärbel Clemens, Menschenrechte haben kein Geschlecht: Zum Politikverständnis der bürgerlichen Frauenbewegung, Frauen in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 2 (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1988), pp. 79–101; Ute Frevert, Frauen-Geschichte: Zwischen Bürgerlicher Verbesserung und Neuer Weiblichkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), p. 166. See also Irene Stoehr, “‘Organisierte Mütterlichkeit’: Zur Politik der deutschen Frauenbewegung um 1900.” In Karin Hausen, ed., Frauen suchen ihre Geschichte: Historische Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1983; and Irene Stoehr, Emanzipation zum Staat? Der Allgemeine Deutsche Frauenverein – Deutscher Staatsbürgerinnenverband (1893–1933), Forum Frauengeschichte 5 (Pfaffenweiler: CentaurusVerlagsgesellschaft, 1990). 11. Angelika Schaser, Helene Lange und Gertrud Bäumer: Eine politische Lebensgemeinschaft (Cologne, Vienna, Weimar: Boehlau Verlag, 2000), pp. 81–3; see also Allen, Feminism and Motherhood, pp. 2–9. 12. Anny von Kulesza, “Sonderaufgaben der Frauen im neuen Reichstag,” NLC 51, no. 65, 3 April 1924. 13. See the perceptive observations derived from a local study in Nancy Reagin, A German Women’s Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880–1933 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), chapters 8 and 11. On the demographic aspect of the crisis, see Atina Grossmann, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 3–8. 14. See Verhey, The Spirit of 1914, pp. 1–11, on the importance of this myth. 15. See Fritzsche, “Breakdown or Breakthrough?,” pp. 305 and 311, and Fritzsche, Rehearsals for Fascism, p. 23. For the youth movement, see Elizabeth Harvey, “Serving the Volk, Saving the Nation: Women in the Youth Movement and the Public Sphere in Weimar Germany.” In Larry E. Jones and James Retallack, eds., Elections, Mass Politics, and Social – 15 –

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16.

17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

Change in Modern Germany: New Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Peter Fritzsche, Germans Into Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 209–10. See also Larry E. Jones, German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar Party System, 1918–1933 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), and Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1983). See Scheck, “German Conservatism and Female Political Activism in the Early Weimar Republic”, pp. 40–1. Jürgen Falter, Hitlers Wähler (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1990), pp. 139–40. Jürgen Falter, Thomas Lindenberger, and Siegfried Schumann, Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik: Materialien zum Wahlverhalten 1919–1933, Statische Arbeitsbücher zur neueren deutschen Geschichte (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1986), pp. 81–5. See also Gabriele Bremme, Die politische Rolle der Frau in Deutschland: Eine Untersuchung über den Einfluß der Frauen bei Wahlen und ihre Teilnahme in Partei und Parlament (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1956), pp. 25–30, 70–1, 243, and 248, and Joachim Hofmann-Göttig, Emanzipation mit dem Stimmzettel: 70 Jahre Frauenwahlrecht in Deutschland (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1986), pp. 28–35. Usborne, Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany, p. 72. For an example of this argument, see Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, “Beyond Kinder, Küche, Kirche: Weimar Women in Politics and Work (Revised version).” In Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossman and Marion Kaplan, eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984. Ute Frevert, Women in German History (Oxford: Berg, 1989), p. 334. Geoff Eley, “Conservatives and Radical Nationalists in Germany: The Production of Fascist Potentials, 1912–28.” In Martin Blinkhorn, ed., Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in Twentieth-Century Europe. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990. See Raffael Scheck, “Women on the Weimar Right: The Role of Female Politicians in the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP).” Journal of Contemporary History 36, no. 4 (2000), p. 551. Werner Liebe, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei, 1918–1924, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien, 8 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1956), pp. 61–73; Lewis Hertzman, DNVP. Right-Wing Opposition in the Weimar Republic, 1918–1924 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), pp. 124–64. The most detailed work on the DNVP and anti-Semitism is Jan Striesow, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei und die – 16 –

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26.

27. 28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

Völkisch-Radikalen 1918–1922. 2 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Haag + Herchen Verlag, 1981). Emma Ender, “‘Nationaler Frauenbund’ Eine Erwiderung von Emma Ender, Hamburg,” Die Frau in der Politik. Monatsbeilage der “Deutschen Stimmen,” 3, no. 2, 18 January 1920, pp. 16–18, in BA Koblenz, ZSg. 1–42 (DVP), vol. 5. “DNVP-Parteitag, 12. und 13. Juli 1919,” Die Post 1919 (Sonderausgabe). See also Striesow, pp. 114, 121, and 128. “Ostmark u. Auswärtige Politik,” Nachlass Schirmacher, Universitätsbibliothek Rostock, vol. 948/014. For examples of anti-Semitic propaganda, see “An die deutschen Frauen,” in BA Koblenz, ZSG 1–44 (DNVP), Band 8 (Flugblätter); “Wir Landfrauen” and “An die weiblichen Hausangestellten!”, in GStA Berlin-Dahlem, XII Hauptabteilung, IV, Flugblätter und Plakate, vol. 187. Indeed, they put the blame on her because she had allegedly refused to take a place on the ballot for the Prussian state diet offered to her by the party leadership: “Zum Austritt der Abgeordneten Anna von Gierke,” Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei 3, no. 115, 29 May 1920; Scheck, “German Conservatism,” p. 51; and Striesow, p. 62. “Tagung des erweiterten RFA,” Frauenkorrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei (henceforth: Frauenkorrespondenz), vol. 3, no. 25, 20 September 1922. Striesow, pp. 114, 121, and 128. For Behm’s speech, see “DNVP-Parteitag, 12. und 13. Juli 1919,” Die Post 1919 (Sonderausgabe). Of the more prominent women, only the writer Pia-Sophie Rogge-Börner joined the secessionists, but she had not played an important role in the DNVP and became known only later on. See Hans Jürgen Arendt, Sabine Hering, and Leonie Wagner, eds., Nationalsozialistische Frauenpolitik vor 1933. Dokumentation (Frankfurt am Main: dipa-Verlag, 1995), p. 342. The adjective “völkisch” is impossible to translate into English. In the context of DNVP activists, it usually implied a commitment to a racial and antiSemitic definition of the Volksgemeinschaft, but it was sometimes used by people from other parties without a racist underpinning – as a mere adjective to Volk (people). Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany 1894–1933, particularly pp. 235–37, where Evans equates the Volksgemeinschaft with völkisch-racist thought, an equation that I think is too narrow given the broad appeal of this concept in the revolution of 1918–19, as shown in the works of Peter Fritzsche; for an argument compatible with Evans’s thesis, see Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987). See my summary of this debate in Scheck, “Women against Versailles,” pp. 22–3. Critical of Evans’s thesis are Angelika Schaser, “Gertrud Bäumer – ‘eine der wildesten Demokratinnen’ – 17 –

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33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

39.

oder verhinderte Nationalsozialistin?” In Kirsten Heinsohn, Barbara Vogel and Ulrike Weckel, eds., Zwischen Karierre und Verfolgung: Handlungsräume von Frauen im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland. Frankfurt am Main, New York: Campus, 1997, and Schaser, Helene Lange und Gertrud Bäumer, pp. 314–36. For evidence that even SPD women used the Volksgemeinschaft rhetoric, see Heide-Marie Lauterer, “Republikanerinnen des Herzens? Sozialdemokratinnen und Nation 1914–1933.” In Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne. Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 2000. Scheck, “Women against Versailles,” pp. 22–3. Jones, German Liberalism, pp. 20–7; Arnold Ruge, “Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) 1918–1933.” In Dieter Fricke et al., eds., Lexikon zur Parteiengeschichte 1789–1945: Die bürgerlichen und kleinbürgerlichen Parteien und Verbände in Deutschland. Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut, 1981–86, vol. 2, pp. 422–5; Wolfgang Hartenstein, Die Anfänge der Deutschen Volkspartei 1918–1920, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien 22 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1962), pp. 19–28; Ludwig Richter, Die Deutsche Volkspartei 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2002), chapter 10. See also Detlef Lehnert and Klaus Megerle, “Identitäts- und Konsensprobleme in einer fragmentierten Gesellschaft – Zur politischen Kultur der Weimarer Republik.” In Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Jacob Schissler, eds., Politische Kultur in Deutschland. Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung. (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1987), and Karl Rohe, Wahlen und Wählertraditionen in Deutschland: Kulturelle Grundlagen deutscher Parteien und Parteiensysteme im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Neue Historische Bibliothek (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992). I should note that, for simplicity’s sake, I spell Evangelical Church with two capitals although I am aware that there were only provincial churches (Landeskirchen) but no unified national church. Ruge, “Deutsche Volkspartei,” pp. 425–28; Hartenstein, Die Anfänge der Deutschen Volkspartei, pp. 106–20. Günter Arns, “Die Krise des Weimarer Parlamentarismus im Frühherbst 1923.” Der Staat 8 (1969): 181–216. See also Richter, Deutsche Volkspartei, pp. 88 and 92. Jones, German Liberalism, pp. 47–54. Lewis Hertzman, “The Founding of the German National People’s Party (DNVP), November 1918–January 1919.” Journal of Modern History 30 (1958): 24–36. An excellent study of DNVP politics in Pomerania is Shelley Baranowski, The Sanctity of Rural Life: Nobility, Protestantism, and Nazism in Weimar Prussia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). See also Amrei – 18 –

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40.

41.

42. 43.

44.

45.

46. 47.

48. 49.

Stupperich, Volksgemeinschaft oder Arbeitersolidarität: Studien zur Arbeitnehmerpolitik in der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei 1918–1933 (Göttingen and Zurich: Musterschmidt Verlag, 1982), on the often overlooked rightwing workers. Robert P. Grathwol, Stresemann and the DNVP: Reconciliation or Revenge in German Foreign Policy (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1980), which delineates carefully the conflicts regarding DNVP participation in government and, in particular, its agonizing relationship to Stresemann’s foreign policy. See also Manfred Dörr, “Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei 1925 bis 1928” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Marburg, 1964). For this period, see Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen, “Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei.” In Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey, eds., Das Ende der Parteien 1933. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1960. Scheck, “German Conservatism,” pp. 53–4. Detlev J. K. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main: Edition Suhrkamp, 1987), pp. 26–9. Older women in the entire bourgeois women’s movement in the 1920s often complained about the indifference of the younger generation, which took for granted rights for which the older generation had fought. See Irene Stoehr, “Neue Frau und alte Bewegung? Zum Generationenkonflikt in der Frauenbewegung der Weimarer Republik.” In Jutta Dalhoff, Uschi Frey, and Ingrid Schöll, eds., Frauenmacht in der Geschichte. Düsseldorf, Schwann, 1986. Claudia Koonz, “Conflicting Allegiances: Political Ideology and Women Legislators in Weimar Germany.” In Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1, no. 1 (1976): 663–83 (here pp. 668–9). For one of the most notorious examples, see the speech of the Bavarian Landtag deputy Dr. Rudolf Herrman Buttmann (NSDAP), as quoted in Arendt, Hering, and Wagner, eds., Nationalsozialistische Frauenpolitik vor 1933, p. 152. Stoehr, “Neue Frau und alte Bewegung?” See Andrea Süchting-Hänger, “‘Gleichgroße mut’ge Helferinnen’ in der weiblichen Gegenwelt: Der Vaterländische Frauenverein und die Politisierung konservativer Frauen 1890–1914.” In Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2000, pp. 136–42. See for example Annagrete Lehmann, “Zum 22. Oktober,” Deutschnationaler Volksfreund 5, no. 23, 28 October 1923. RFA, “Kaiserin-Gedächtnisfeier,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 37, 13 September 1928. See, for example, Der Parteifreund for many references to commemorative celebrations of East Prussian DNVP women’s groups in 1920–22 and beyond. – 19 –

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Mothers of the Nation 50. For two examples of many, see the appeal to lay wreaths in Berliner Stimmen 8, October 1931, and the report about a celebration of the DNVP’s Provincial Women’s Committee of Hamburg: Die Deutschnationale Frau 13, no. 16, 15 November 1931. See also Clara Mende, “Auguste Viktoria zum Gedächtnis,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 14, 7 April 1922, and the report from the third party conference in DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, nrs. 48/49, 9 December 1920. When Marie Bernays at this conference spoke of Auguste Viktoria as the last German empress, hecklers contradicted her by calling “not the last one!” 51. “Kaiserin-Geburtstagsfeier in Cranz,” Der Parteifreund. Amtliches Blatt der deutschnationalen Volkspartei, Landesverband Ostpreußen 1, no. 26, 4 November 1920. 52. Annagrete Lehmann, “Was bedeutet uns deutschen Frauen der 10. März?” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 13, 1 March 1924. 53. Käthe Schirmacher, “Zum 19. Juli, dem Todestag der Königin Luise,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 12, no. 28, 10 July 1930. 54. Annelise Spohr, “Königin Luise,” Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 14, 4 March 1925, and Spohr, “Gekröntes Leid,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 9, 3 March 1927. 55. A. Ritthaler, “Johanna von Puttkamer. Zu ihrem Todestag am 27. November,” Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 88, 20 November 1925. 56. “‘Unsere’ Stellung zu Locarno,” NLC 52, no. 232, 15 December 1925; M. S. [Martha Schwarz], “Königin Luise in ihrer Beziehung zur Gegenwart,” NLC 53, no. 43, 5 March 1926. For the celebrations in the Berlin-Potsdam area, see Berliner Stimmen 2, no. 11, 14 March 1925. 57. Scheck, “German Conservatism,” pp. 51 and 54. More research has convinced me that I overemphasized the self-assertive and emancipatory aspect of Luise’s historical persona for the DNVP women in this article. The Bund Königin Luise figures prominently in Süchting-Hänger, Das “Gewissen der Nation”. 58. “‘Unsere’ Stellung zu Locarno,” NLC 52, no. 232, 15 December 1925. Schirmacher was in the DNVP but the NLC was a DVP newspaper. Occasionally women from the DNVP and DVP published articles in the other party’s media. 59. Süchting-Hänger, Das “Gewissen der Nation,” pp. 286–98. For the term “invented tradition,” see Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Süchting-Hänger considers Luise the most important idol of right-wing women. This may be true for the radical nationalist women’s leagues, but my reading of the women’s party press in both the DVP and DNVP leads me to conclude that Auguste Viktoria was even more present than Luise. – 20 –

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Introduction 60. See Katharina von Oheimb, “Was will der Nationalbund Deutscher Frauen und Mädchen?” and “Ziele und Aufgaben des Nationalbundes Deutscher Frauen,” both in ADEF, vol. O 12, and the materials in BAK, Nachlass Kardorff-von Oheimb, volumes 19a, 25, and 37. For von Oheimb’s general outlook, see her autobiography, Politik und Lebensbeichte. 61. Falter et al., Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik, p. 83. 62. Clara Mende, “Deutschlands Hoffnung,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 52, 30 December 1920, and Mende, “1871–1921,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 3, 20 January 1921; Elsa Matz, “Zum Tode unseres Führers Stresemann” and “Abschied von Stresemann,” both in NLC 56, no. 202, 9 October 1929. For the DNVP, see “Weimarer Brief II,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 7, 16 February 1928, and Hannah Brandt, “Der Bismarck in uns!” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 30, 26 July 1928; Annagrete Lehmann, “Zum Todestage Helfferichs,” Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 26, 15 April 1925; and Lehmann, “Der Helfferich-Preis der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 30, 26 July 1928. For the Hugenberg cult of DNVP women, see chapter 9. 63. Even DDP member Elly Heuß-Knapp, on an electoral campaign tour in late 1918, saw it necessary to acknowledge the monarchism in her female audience: Elly Heuß-Knapp, Die Deutsche Demokratische Partei und die Frauen (Berlin: Boll, 1918), pp. 5–6. 64. See Süchting-Hänger’s comments on Schirmacher’s monarchism, which did not exclude criticisms of Wilhelm II (Das “Gewissen der Nation,” pp. 147–8). Süchting-Hänger errs, however, when she claims that Schirmacher decorated Wilhelm II’s bust in the Reichstag building in 1919. The bust under consideration represented Wilhelm II’s grandfather, Wilhelm I, a much less controversial Kaiser. See Walzer, p. 88. Some right-wing women (and men) found it hard to accept that Wilhelm II remarried quickly after the death of Auguste Viktoria: see Beda Prilipp, “Entweihtes Märtyrertum,” in Die deutsche Frau, 1922, no. 19, p. 26. I owe this reference to Christiane Streubel.

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–2– Women’s Entry into Party Politics We [the women] want to try to reconcile and mediate, as should be the nature of women, who are not meant to hate with others but to love with others. Party strife has to cease whenever the big common interest of Germany is on the line. An anonymous DVP woman in DVP-Nachrichtenblatt, 15 January 1920. Although women had received a formal – albeit extremely constrained – place in the predecessor parties of the DVP and DNVP only shortly before the First World War, they had been active within a wider spectrum of associations connected to right-wing politics for a long time. Charity organizations and the women’s section of the Red Cross (Vaterländischer Frauenverein) had already tied many middleand upper-class women to the German dynasties and the nation in the course of the nineteenth century.1 Church-based organizations had also done much to mobilize conservative Protestant women, above all the Evangelische Frauenhilfe and the German Evangelical Women’s League. The former was a large charity organization for women led by men, whereas the latter emphasized women’s participation in the Church and advocated broader rights for women – though not the suffrage at the national level. Nationalist leagues for women had also been founded before the war. Although they were much smaller than the Vaterländischer Frauenverein or the Evangelische Frauenhilfe, they helped to put foreign-policy issues such as the colonies and the navy on the minds of conservative women.2 Yet, the introduction of women’s suffrage created a situation for which conservative women were poorly prepared. Most of them had either opposed the suffrage or seen it as a desirable reform only in the distant future. Any discussion of suffrage reform before 1918 inevitably brought up the demand to democratize Germany’s highly unequal state suffrages, which supported the privileges of the very social groups to which many conservative women belonged. After the introduction of the suffrage, however, the leading men and women of both parties encouraged a rapid mobilization of their potential female supporters because they feared a victory of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) together with the more radical Independent Socialists (USPD) at the election for the National Assembly. The buildup of a women’s structure in the DNVP and DVP started in an improvised fashion during the campaign for the elections to the National Assembly, the – 23 –

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Mothers of the Nation first elections in which German women were allowed to vote. The circumstances of the campaign were chaotic. The provisions of the peace treaty were still unknown, and the reintegration of the returning soldiers posed enormous problems. Socialist unrest rocked the cities and industrial regions, and a second, more radical, revolution by the Independent Socialists or the Communists was threatening. While preparing for the elections, the parties of the right faced serious organizational challenges. They had done almost nothing to prepare conservative women for voting, and it was expected that, in addition to women’s suffrage, the lowering of the voting age from twenty-five to twenty would benefit the left. The new proportional voting system, moreover, canceled many advantages the old majority vote had given to their predecessors in the Wilhelmine Empire. The newly formed DVP and DNVP also had no time to build up a solid organization and party statutes before the elections; rallying their supporters for the national and state elections in early 1919 took priority. Only after the elections to the provisional Prussian state diet (Landtag) on 26 January 1919 did the DVP and DNVP begin to formally constitute themselves, a process that lasted well into 1920. Because of its failed attempts to form a united liberal party with the Democratic Party, the DVP got off to a later and more difficult start than the DNVP.3 As a consequence, the mobilization of women and the buildup of a women’s organizational structure proceeded faster in the DNVP than in the DVP. The accounts of DNVP members on the foundation of the party and its first activities directed toward women reveal a spirit of adventure, danger, and excited improvisation. Although some observers expected that a majority of German women would sympathize with religious or conservative parties rather than with the socialists, the question was whether these women would vote in large enough numbers to prevent an absolute majority of the socialist parties, which conservatives saw as a fundamental threat to the capitalist order, the churches, and the integrity of the nation. The SPD, as the only party having advocated women’s suffrage for a long time, had begun to integrate the socialist women’s movement several years before the war.4 The newly formed Democratic Party had the elite of Germany’s bourgeois women’s movement in its ranks, including Gertrud Bäumer, one of the leading personalities in the BDF, whereas the Center Party could rely on a network of Catholic women’s groups to mobilize Catholic women for the elections.5 The DNVP’s founding manifesto, released on 24 November 1918, stated, “The cooperation of the woman in public life is called for,” but the party leaders were pessimistic about the possibility of mobilizing right-wing women in great numbers.6 Their spirits were lifted, however, by a woman with much experience in organizational life and a burning will to mobilize conservative women: Margarethe Behm. Behm requested to be invited to a party board meeting, and the party leaders gave her a warm welcome and, according to Behm, immediately accepted the work of women as of “equal value.” Behm – 24 –

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Women’s Entry into Party Politics received the green light to constitute a National Women’s Committee (Reichsfrauenausschuss, RFA) for the DNVP and was offered a seat on the seven-member executive party board. The RFA of the DNVP got funds, an office, and some space in the official party newsletter where it could publish its own news. On 6 December 1918 it held its first meeting.7 The DNVP leaders were lucky to have found Margarethe Behm. An approachable and good-humored politician, she became the most popular woman from the DNVP. Her concern for socially disadvantaged women and her open-mindedness won her admiration from people in different political camps. Born in 1860, Behm came from a wealthy land-holding family in Eastern Germany. She was an unmarried teacher who had gained a national reputation before 1918 as a skillful organizer and leader of the Gewerkverein der Heimarbeiterinnen (Union of Female Home Workers), a pressure group for pre-industrial cottage workers. These workers, predominantly women, were left out of the state insurance legislation that covered factory employees. With the vocal support of Empress Auguste Viktoria, Behm lobbied the prewar Reichstag to pass a sicknessinsurance bill for the home workers. Her interest in workers induced her to get involved in Adolf Stoecker’s Christian Social Party, one of the DNVP’s predecessors, which aimed at wooing Germany’s working class with a mixture of social welfare, Christian values, and anti-Semitism – which she rejected after 1918.8 Behm won great respect for her buildup of the RFA and her work in the election campaign for the National Assembly. At the first national party convention in July 1919, she was given the honor to report on the DNVP’s work in the National Assembly right after the initial address by chairman Oskar Hergt. Behm pointed out the historic importance of that moment: “For the first time in Germany, possibly for the first time in the whole world, a woman stands up to report on the work of a parliamentary group.”9 Behm enlisted dedicated helpers, above all Margot von Bonin, a wealthy landowner, Countess Emma von Westarp, the niece of Kuno von Westarp, the leader of the Conservative Party, and Margarethe Wolff, the secretary of Behm’s Union of Female Home Workers. Together they designed pamphlets and skillfully organized party propaganda toward women. Behm wrote to a myriad of bourgeois women’s organizations and to Protestant ministers’ wives all across Germany to spread DNVP propaganda and enlist help at the local level. Having only a small number of trained female speakers at its disposition, the RFA relied heavily on door-to-door propaganda by women who sympathized with it. Behm further initiated the foundation of Provincial Women’s Committees and local women’s committees in some areas. Whereas a nationwide net of these committees materialized only slowly between 1918 and 1923, Behm’s pleas to women’s organizations and the wives of ministers elicited a strong and immediate response from Protestant women, above all from the DEF and its umbrella organ– 25 –

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Mothers of the Nation ization, the VEFD. The main messages of the RFA’s propaganda must have resonated with these groups: by working and voting for the DNVP, women would help defend the church against the anticlerical policies of the socialists, protect family and marriage against disintegration, and ensure that Germany would adopt a proud and defiant posture toward its enemies.10 The chaotic events in early Soviet Russia and the anticlerical policy of Prussia’s education minister, Independent Socialist Adolf Hoffmann, seemed to endow these messages with credibility. Right-wing newspapers supported the propaganda of the RFA by publishing summonses to women to vote and by giving practical suggestions on how women could interrupt their work and vote even in remote places. Some newspapers even suggested that landowners organize common trips to ballot offices to ensure that all rural workers, particularly the women, would vote.11 It was essential to convince conservative women that they had to make use of the right to vote even if they had opposed it so far. The DNVP propaganda never tired of stressing that, given the threat to Church and the family, voting was a duty, not a right, for the German woman.12 Altogether, the RFA of the DNVP under Behm engineered an impressive propaganda campaign and soon became the envy of other parties. The party’s guidelines for the elections, released on 27 December 1918, reflected the influence of Behm and her staff. Women now received a warmer welcome than the founding manifesto had afforded them: “Through her admirable wartime performance the German woman has gained a full right to cooperation in the shaping of our public life. We heartily welcome the woman, with equal rights, as a co-worker for the recovery of our people.” The guidelines defined the religious and moral education of the young as women’s primary task but also demanded protection for professional women.13 By justifying women’s rights with their performance in social services during the war, the DNVP rejected the idea of the suffrage as a natural right of women. Behm must not have objected to this, since she sat on the executive party board that released this proclamation, and party leaders tended to leave the formulation of clauses on women to the RFA. The elections to the National Assembly appeared to reward the DNVP women’s efforts. Particularly encouraging were the estimates on women’s voting behavior, generalized from a number of districts with separate voting. They indicated that the DNVP had received a majority of its votes from female voters, whereas the socialist parties had fared poorly among women.14 To the relief of all bourgeois parties, the SPD and Independent Socialists together received only 45.5 percent of the vote. Without women’s suffrage, Joachim Hofmann-Göttig argues, the socialist parties might have won an absolute majority tempting them to impose a socialist rather than democratic political system on Germany. Yet, even if these calculations are correct, a common policy of SPD and Independent – 26 –

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Women’s Entry into Party Politics Socialists was hardly a practical possibility any more after police under SPD orders had shot at workers associated with the Independent Socialists in the weeks preceding the elections.15 The disproportionate support of women for the DNVP (and, to a lesser extent, the DVP) set a pattern that was confirmed at every major election for the national parliament and the Prussian state diet. The surplus of women’s votes for the DVP and DNVP was highest in Protestant regions, whereas both parties tended to attract slightly fewer women than men in Catholic regions, where the Center Party or BVP were strong.16 Given that women’s participation in elections was – except for January 1919 – significantly lower than men’s, the share of the DVP and DNVP in the general women’s vote must have been considerably higher than their share in the general male vote. This provoked much irony in the right-wing press, because the party most instrumental in introducing women’s suffrage, the SPD, fared poorly among women, whereas the parties least supportive of women’s suffrage, such as the DNVP, benefited most from it. It was also noted that the Democratic Party did not receive a significant surplus of female votes, although it liked to call itself the “Party of Women” because the most famous representatives of the BDF, including Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer, supported it. With glee, the rightwing Deutsche Tageszeitung wrote in 1924: “The electoral statistics illuminated the family life of the left-wing parties in a rather funny way. The members of the majority SPD and even more the Communists had to realize with anguish that a large number of their wives had committed ‘political adultery’ and cuckolded them most wonderfully.”17 The newspaper ignored, however, that the massive surplus of women in the German population made it impossible to ascribe with certainty the strong women’s vote for the right-wing parties to the wives of leftwing men. The elections of 1919 brought three DNVP women into the National Assembly: Margarethe Behm herself, Anna von Gierke, and Käthe Schirmacher. Von Gierke (1874–1943) was perhaps the most outspoken DNVP woman in the National Assembly. She was well known as director of a model youth institution in Charlottenburg, a town incorporated into Greater Berlin in 1920.18 In the National Assembly, she fought for the recognition of housekeeping as a profession and addressed an impressive range of social policy questions. The DNVP lost a versatile and eloquent politician when she left the party in response to its anti-Semitism in 1920 (her mother was from a Jewish family that had converted to Protestantism).19 Käthe Schirmacher (1865–1930) was an unusual figure in DNVP politics. Coming from a wealthy merchant family from the east German port city Danzig (today Gdansk, Poland), she had studied French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and later at the University of Zurich, where she received her doctorate in 1895. Schirmacher had played a prominent role in the left-wing women’s movement before 1914, serving for many years as secretary of the – 27 –

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Mothers of the Nation International Council of Women, and she maintained a lesbian relationship with Klara Schleker, who was a DNVP deputy in the state diet of MecklenburgStrelitz in 1919–20.20 After 1900, Schirmacher had begun to embrace an increasingly fanatical and racist German nationalism even while maintaining her commitment to women’s rights. At the same time, she expressed hatred of democracy, whose weakness and decadence she claimed to have observed in France. Schirmacher’s move to the right isolated her in the women’s movement, so that she had resigned, or been urged to resign, from all of her positions in international and German women’s organizations by 1914.21 During the war, she called for a compulsory women’s service that would drill young women in the art of housework, gardening, and childcare and instill strict discipline and nationalist values in them.22 When her home town was threatened by Poland at the end of the war, Schirmacher rallied Danzig’s German majority behind a posture of national defense and joined the DNVP. Her energetic work won her instant admiration, and she was elected as a representative of West Prussia to the National Assembly in 1919. In the National Assembly, Schirmacher spoke mostly on foreign policy issues.23 Her stay in the national parliament was cut short because she did not receive a place on the party ballot for the Reichstag elections in June 1920. Her electoral district (Danzig-West Prussia) had ceased to exist because of Germany’s territorial losses in the Treaty of Versailles, and the party leadership did not offer her a promising spot elsewhere. Her feminist past may have influenced this decision.24 Schirmacher remained active, however, in the RFA and other party committees until her death in 1930. In the elections to the provisional Prussian Landtag on 26 January 1919, only one DNVP woman was elected: Elisabeth Spohr. Spohr was a teacher who addressed a broad range of topics in parliament, ranging from education to the status of midwives. She remained in the Prussian Landtag without interruption until its replacement by an all-male Nazi body in the spring of 1933.25 After these elections the DNVP developed statutes that refined the structure and purpose of the RFA. Its chair automatically received a seat in the executive board of the party.26 According to the 1925 budget, the administrative leader (Geschäftsführerin) of the RFA got a yearly salary of 3816 marks, a substantial salary. Also salaried were an archivist (1920 marks), a secretary (Schreibkraft; 1320 marks), and an auxiliary secretary (912 marks). For its administrative needs the RFA could draw on 1200 marks per year.27 The RFA also included ten to twenty members who were paid from a different budget or performed voluntary service. The RFA chair was probably paid as a member of the party’s executive board, whereas some RFA members were parliamentarians and thus had an independent income as long as they retained their seats. Other RFA members were paid by related organizations to which they belonged (for example the Union of Female Home Workers). After a while, the RFA constituted a larger committee – 28 –

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Women’s Entry into Party Politics with less executive power, the “Enlarged National Women’s Committee” (Erweiterter RFA), to which it invited representatives of the provincial women’s committees. To expedite policy decisions, the RFA also formed a smaller executive committee of eight members.28 A proclamation of the RFA from January 1919 named twenty-three members, but the size of the RFA varied in the following years.29 The RFA occupied a room in the party headquarters in Berlin. The members of its executive committee were in almost daily contact whenever the Reichstag or the Prussian Landtag were in session. Usually the RFA organized a national women’s meeting preceding the annual national party conference, and a leading RFA member spoke on the status of women’s work in the party during the national party conference.30 According to its statutes, the primary tasks of the RFA were to organize propaganda among women and to advise the party leadership in all matters concerning women and children.31 The RFA was also to act as a coordinator of similar activities by regional and local women’s committees, whose buildup it had to encourage and supervise. Thus every DNVP organization in a Prussian province or non-Prussian state should receive a Provincial Women’s Committee (Landesfrauenausschuss, LFA), every district a Kreisfrauenausschuss, and every town or village an Ortsfrauenausschuss. By analogy to the RFA, these regional and local women’s committees were funded by the corresponding party organization, to which they were accountable. The chair of the women’s committee always had a seat and a vote on the board of the corresponding party organization. But the women’s committees also were responsible for keeping in touch with the women’s committees on other levels and, in particular, with the RFA.32 They were expected to subscribe to the newsletter of the women in the party, which the RFA began to publish in September 1919 as Frauenkorrespondenz der DNVP, after 1925 as Frauenkorrespondenz für Nationale Zeitungen, and from April 1931 on as Die Deutschnationale Frau. Thus all women’s committees in the DNVP were integrated into two different structures, a horizontal party structure including the men, and a vertical structure of women’s committees from the local level up to the RFA. The primary allegiance of the local and regional women’s committees was not to the RFA but to the corresponding party organization, which was usually dominated by men. The party statutes of 1920 stated that LFA members were to be elected by the general party organization in the area, the Landesverband. The same applied to women’s committees on the local level. The chair of the RFA was appointed by the party’s executive board, but the RFA co-opted its members and was not responsible to the party at large for its selections.33 This structure treated the women like an economic or professional interest group in the party. The workers, for example, also had their national committee (with a slightly smaller budget than the RFA), their local committees, and their – 29 –

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Mothers of the Nation newsletter.34 From the start, DNVP women doubted that this structure was adequate for the representation of women’s interests. Women, for one thing, were economically and professionally about as diverse as men. As RFA member and Reichstag deputy (1920–1932) Paula Mueller-Otfried stated, a female factory worker would not likely consider herself represented by a female academic in parliament.35 It made little sense subsuming these groups under one women’s structure while men received a say in all the other committees organized according to economic and professional interests. The DNVP leadership did make some concessions to this concern by stating that women should belong to all party institutions “in adequate numbers” and by granting women representation in the DNVP Professions Committee, which had subcommittees for nurses, midwives, housewives, female domestic servants, and other professions dominated by women. Incidentally, the first chair of the subcommittee for housewives was party chairman Oskar Hergt!36 Yet “adequate numbers” was an elusive formulation, and the problem remained that the few women with seats in parliaments could hardly cater to the diversity of women’s professional groups. A woman writing to the DNVP program committee thus argued that, if indeed separate structures were to be founded (which she did not consider a good solution), the party should be consistent and set up women’s structures fully parallel to men’s.37 This proposal aimed at building gender equality into the party rather than making the women’s committees an appendix of a party that as a whole was still dominated by men. Some local women’s committees that had formed spontaneously at the first hour even tried to resist their inclusion in the local party organization. The very dynamic Dresden women’s committee, for example, protested that the local DNVP section was too passive and that the women’s committee would do better work if it remained independent.38 Other party members, however, argued against separate structures altogether and suggested that, given the dismal state of Germany overall, the emphasis should be on gender cooperation rather than on separate organization, which to them suggested rivalry. Women in the Berlin-Steglitz section of the DNVP refused to form a women’s committee because they had worked so well together with the men that they saw no need for dividing duties and for meeting separately.39 When the DNVP section of the Potsdam district held its yearly conference in 1922, the LFA Potsdam declined to hold the customary women’s meeting before the conference. Although the LFA admitted that there were important issues to be discussed by women, it declared its preference for concentrating on the essential questions of the German people and for making a statement on the unity of men and women in the party.40 Although these women felt that their concerns would be taken seriously in the party even without women’s committees, anti-feminism was also a motivation for rejecting a separate women’s structure. Major Olberg, one of the people involved in the drafting of the party – 30 –

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Women’s Entry into Party Politics statutes, suggested that women’s committees should be called recruiting committees (Werbeausschüsse) and that they should do no more than devise propaganda strategies for women and train female speakers. The women’s committees thus would belong to the party’s general propaganda division and not be tempted to act as a vehicle for women’s interests.41 Although Olberg’s ideas were not adopted by the party board, the circumstances of the elections to the National Assembly reveal that the RFA of the DNVP came into being primarily as a propaganda office charged with mobilizing as many conservative women as quickly as possible. Early party documents typically align the RFA with the DNVP’s Press Committee and thus reveal that the party leaders considered propaganda toward women as the main purpose of the RFA.42 That the women’s committee structure prevailed had to do with the fact that it already existed in many places and had done good work during the election campaigns in January 1919. Behm, who continued to cooperate closely with the male party leaders, considered the women’s committees a good solution for the time being. Given that women had not voted before and were new party members, committees devising propaganda specifically for women and coordinating activities with those of sympathetic women’s organizations made sense. A memorandum on party structures from early 1919 recognized the success of the women’s committees in spite of resistance (supposedly from men), but stressed that regional and local women’s committees that still worked independently should be tied to the regular party organization.43 The leading women, for their part, tried to invalidate the objections of the men. Margot von Bonin, the vicechair of the RFA, suggested at a party meeting in early February 1919 that women should not, in principle, be organized in separate groups, but that the formation of women’s committees was necessary primarily for propaganda reasons. The RFA even encouraged the women’s committees to invite men to their meetings.44 After the elections of January 1919, the RFA focused on the buildup of women’s committees at all levels. The party newsletters steadily reported the foundation of new women’s committees, a process that was interrupted by the inflation in 1923 but resumed in 1924, albeit at a slower pace. A clear picture is difficult to convey because women’s committees in many places faltered with the death or moving away of the chair and had to be founded again later on. Many women’s committees may only have existed on paper, and sometimes men headed the local or regional women’s committee. Wolfgang Kapp, for example, was listed as chair of the East Prussian women’s committee in early 1919 before becoming a putschist a year later – a unique career for the chair of a women’s committee!45 Specific information exists on the Prussian province Pomerania, one of the regions where the DNVP was strongest. In Pomerania, 233 women’s committees existed in September 1920, and in August 1921 the number had almost doubled (430). This extraordinary success was ascribed to Hannah – 31 –

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Mothers of the Nation Brandt, the chair of the Pomeranian LFA. Brandt later put her organizational talent at the disposal of the RFA in Berlin.46 In Bavaria, where the DNVP (called the Bayerische Mittelpartei, BMP) was weak, the buildup of women’s committees proceeded much more slowly, so that Lenore Kühn, the editor of the DNVP women’s newsletter and member of the RFA, decided to visit the state in late 1919 to identify the problems and to encourage progress. The situation was depressing. Some women’s committees had been formed, but many had become dormant and were presided over by men after the leading women had withdrawn. In some places, the wives of male party leaders tried to build up a women’s committee, but the problem was that most women in the Bavarian DNVP were either not interested in becoming active or considered themselves unfit for political work. They called for speakers and organizers from Berlin.47 The RFA nevertheless drew an optimistic picture in August 1922 after having gathered data on the women’s organization in all parts of Germany. Thirty-eight Provincial Women’s Committees (LFAs) had been constituted, covering the entire country. A total of 1,900 women’s committees existed at all levels, but, as the examples of Pomerania and Bavaria show, the distribution was very uneven. In addition, the DNVP had 2,748 Vertrauensfrauen (women of confidence) carrying out some of the tasks of a local women’s committee where none existed. There was a tendency for the women’s committee structure to be best developed in those areas where the party itself was strongest. Annagrete Lehmann (1877–1954), Behm’s successor as chair of the RFA since February 1923, used this correlation later to claim that women’s work benefited the party, since the DNVP was strongest where women were most active. But she could not prove that she did not invert causality.48 The RFA of the DNVP took its propaganda and education mission very seriously. It built up a file containing the addresses of sympathetic women’s organizations and women, distributed blueprint speeches to members of provincial and local women’s committees, lent out folders with materials on specific political topics, and organized conferences and meetings for women in the party.49 The RFA further organized political education courses, which enlisted the elite of the party (men and women) as speakers and focused on political organization skills as well as nationalist ideology.50 Until August 1922, eleven provincial women’s committees had offered training workshops with practical exercises on speech and the running of political assemblies.51 In September 1919 the RFA began publishing the Frauenkorrespondenz, while continuing to print most of its contents in the official party newsletter. The Frauenkorrespondenz was sent to women’s committees, individual subscribers, and to newspapers, which were encouraged to print its articles. As editor of the Frauenkorrespondenz, the RFA enlisted the highly able Lenore Kühn. Born in 1878 in Riga to a Baltic German family, Kühn had a PhD in philosophy from the University of Freiburg (1907) – 32 –

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Women’s Entry into Party Politics and was a freelance author and journalist. She was an excellent pianist and acquired some expertise in archeology and physics.52 Kühn was the key figure in the DNVP women’s publications in the early Weimar years. In 1921 she began publishing an intellectually more demanding DNVP women’s periodical until the inflation forced her to give it up in 1923.53 Her scandalous private life, however, reduced her standing in the DNVP and may have influenced her decision to step down as editor of the Frauenkorrespondenz in December 1923, making room for Elisabeth Spohr. A highly attractive woman even in her mature years, Kühn had many male admirers and a colorful private life: divorced from her first husband in 1919, she married the painter Hermann Frobenius in 1922 but soon started a passionate and painful liaison with an Italian nobleman, which led to her second divorce in 1926.54 The inflation in 1923 hampered the activities of the women’s committees by exacerbating the already bad financial situation of the party. The Frauenkorrespondenz had to make frequent pleas for rapid payment of the subscription fees because currency depreciation made delayed payments worthless. Trains became so expensive that many women could not afford to travel to meetings in other towns, and the Frauenkorrespondenz had to substitute the cheap blueprint technique for the black-and-white newspaper print in early 1923. Whereas the Frauenkorrespondenz had appeared biweekly in 1921 and 1922 (twenty-six times per year), the RFA had difficulties delivering it more than once a month in 1923. Only in the spring of 1924 did regular publication resume, and in 1925 the Frauenkorrespondenz intensified the frequency of publication to twice a week (ninety-eight issues per year).55 The DVP adopted the DNVP model for the organization of women with only minor modifications. The National Women’s Committee (RFA) of the DVP constituted itself in the first weeks after the foundation of the party under the leadership of Clara Mende. Mende was the key woman in the early Weimar years that Behm was in the DNVP. Born in Erfurt (Thuringia) in 1869, she became a teacher and was promoted to the rank of Oberlehrerin before she got married and consequently had to leave her teaching job. While working as a housewife, Mende fostered contacts to the National Liberal Party and the women’s movement. Before the war, she was a co-founder of the German League for Women’s Suffrage (Verein für Frauenstimmrecht) and became the chair of the women’s committee formed by the National Liberal Party after the liberalization of the Law of Associations in 1908. This role and her frequent contributions to the party press established her as an important presence in the party during the First World War. When the National Liberal Party reconstituted itself as the DVP, Mende signed the new party’s first proclamation and became its second vice-chair in April 1919.56 She was the only female DVP representative in the National Assembly (1919–1920) and sat in the Reichstag from 1920 to 1928. Mende, who – 33 –

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Mothers of the Nation travelled through the entire country during election campaigns, had a reputation as an excellent speaker and debater.57 She was the mastermind behind the establishment of the DVP’s committee structure for women and acted as chair of the RFA until 1924.58 The women’s propaganda of the DVP for the elections of January 1919 stressed the same themes the DNVP addressed but presented them in a more rational and less polemical tone.59 The RFA of the DVP received room for its communications in the party’s newsletter DVP-Nachrichtenblatt and in the daily newspaper Nationalliberale Correspondenz, but it never published its news independently, as the DNVP women did. Such a step was discussed in 1920 but rejected because of financial constraints.60 The chair of the RFA in the DVP was elected by the party’s Executive Committee (Geschäftsführender Ausschuss). In the fall of 1920 the RFA gave itself statutes that broadened membership in the RFA approximately along the lines of the Erweiterter RFA in the DNVP: all female DVP parliamentarians and all female DVP members on the National Economic Council became members. Every electoral district was entitled to name a woman as deputy to the RFA, which could offer membership to leaders of influential women’s organizations willing to cooperate with the DVP. The RFA also decided to invite a well-known male party member to join it. It chose the chairman of the DVP’s Hessian section, Dr. Eduard Dingeldey, because of his openness to women’s issues; Dingeldey, however, was overwhelmed by his other duties and often asked to let himself be replaced by Dr. Paul Moldenhauer, member of the DVP group in the National Assembly. Since the RFA after its enlargement became too unwieldy, it elected a smaller Executive Committee from its own ranks – as did the RFA of the DNVP.61 The provincial sections of the DVP were organized according to electoral districts, not provinces or federal states as in the DNVP, and their women’s committees thus were called Wahlkreisfrauenausschüsse (Electoral District Women’s Committees, WkFA). This did not always make a difference, since some states and provinces were identical with electoral districts. The statutes of the DVP women’s committees put more emphasis on the political training of women than the DNVP’s, but the context suggests that political training was meant primarily to enhance women’s propaganda skills.62 This was not true, however, for the political training courses of Katharina von Oheimb, one of the DVP’s representatives in the Reichstag (1920–1924). Von Oheimb was an unusual figure among the DVP women. She was independently wealthy, married four times, the mother of six children, a passionate hunter, and acquainted with leading military and political figures of the Weimar period. Divorced from her first and third husbands, she had inherited a fortune from her deceased second husband. In 1927 she married Siegfried von Kardorff, a DVP Reichstag representative who had left the DNVP in protest against its anti– 34 –

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Women’s Entry into Party Politics Semitic tendencies.63 From the start of the Weimar Republic, Kardorff-von Oheimb saw it as her mission to educate women for their role in politics by offering and financing educational workshops for women politicians at her home in Goslar (south of Braunschweig). She invited nationally known speakers from various bourgeois parties, men and women, to lectures for her workshops. To combat partisan spirit, the course participants were forbidden to use the names of the German parties throughout the workshop.64 Kardorff-von Oheimb thus helped train a crowd of women politicians from the DVP and other predominantly bourgeois parties. After the Reichstag elections of June 1920, in which the DVP tripled its share of the vote, DVP women intensified their efforts to build up a nationwide women’s structure. Mende and other well-known DVP women undertook many trips across Germany to encourage the foundation of local women’s committees – with some success.65 In Silesia, where Mende had frequently spoken, the number of women’s committees tripled between the summer of 1920 and February 1921. Even if one should be suspicious of the RFA’s tendency to report too optimistically (it failed to give absolute numbers for Silesia), the evidence suggests that the women’s structure began to become denser.66 Yet, the DVP always lagged behind the DNVP: In October 1920 the RFA of the DVP was still encouraging the formation of women’s committees in many electoral districts, which shows that this had not yet happened consistently at a time when the DNVP was already done with it.67 At the end of 1922 the RFA sent out questionnaires to gauge the status of women’s work in the provinces. The result showed that the DVP had 500 women’s committees altogether (compared to the DNVP’s 1,900 in August 1922); a women’s committee (WkFA) now existed in all but three of Germany’s thirty-five electoral districts.68 As in the DNVP, however, the women’s structure was very uneven. Whereas the women’s committee of Schleswig-Holstein boasted 400 women’s committees at the end of 1921 (a number that seems exaggerated in the light of the RFA’s total of 500), the province of East Prussia had reported only fifteen about a year earlier.69 Problems similar to those experienced by the DNVP were common. Few women outside the big cities agreed to do political work, and fewer yet had the qualification to do so. In April 1922 Martha Schwarz, the secretary of the DVP’s RFA, wrote that politically untrained women had done much damage by sending out confusing messages on the DVP’s stands. There were not enough experienced women politicians to train women at the local level, and a shortage of funds stifled much local initiative (the DVP was haunted by the same financial problems as the DNVP). In 1923, the inflation further obstructed women’s work in the DVP.70 Even the most successful women’s committee of the DVP, the one in Schleswig-Holstein, had to overcome strong resistance from women themselves to getting involved. Otherwise its recruitment appeals to women would not have – 35 –

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Mothers of the Nation repeated many times over that the women’s committees were not separate political organizations but worked for the benefit of the party as a whole. The women leaders of Schleswig-Holstein even encouraged women to invite men to their committees, since that would ease cooperation within the party. Given that many women were novices to political life, the leading women asked women to follow the lead of men in shared committees while learning to speak and think independently in their own committees.71 In spite of these problems, women joined the DVP in great numbers from the start; at the second party meeting in October 1919 it transpired that one third of party members were women, and in the spring of 1920 the RFA claimed that women formed the majority of DVP members (later, however, party sources again spoke of one-third).72 A picture of the structures of women’s work within the parties would be incomplete without consideration of organizations that cooperated with the women’s committees of the DNVP or DVP, and often both. All German bourgeois parties had more or less formal alliances with political or economic interest organizations, and many people from these organizations were also party members, while their leaders received seats in the party’s parliamentary groups and committees. A variety of organizations had such ties to the women’s committees of the DVP and DNVP. From the start, the German Evangelical Women’s League (DEF) was one such organization, although its ties to the DNVP were stronger than those to the DVP. When the chair of the Evangelical League, Paula Mueller-Otfried, joined the DNVP, she created some controversy in her organization, which had pledged neutrality in party politics. But the secularization policies of the Prussian government in 1918–19 allowed the conservative DNVP to appear as the stronger bulwark of the Evangelical Church than the liberal DVP. Cecilie Brickenstein, a member of the Evangelical League’s national board, was also a DNVP activist in Bremen, and Asta Rötger, Mueller-Otfried’s deputy in Berlin, was a DNVP expert on urban women and DNVP representative in the Berlin city parliament.73 The Evangelical League’s most important contribution to the DNVP was likely its chairperson. A grim and serious figure, MuellerOtfried became the longest-serving and most active Reichstag member among the DNVP women (1920–32). Born in 1865 to the family of a high-ranking civil servant, Mueller-Otfried became a teacher. She lived in Hanover for most of her life and remained unmarried. As chair of the DEF since 1901, she had – like Behm – a national reputation before joining the DNVP. She was also active in the Conservative Party, the most important predecessor of the DNVP, and played a leading role in the women’s committee founded by this party in 1913. To build a conservative counterweight to the BDF, the umbrella organization of German bourgeois women’s leagues, Mueller-Otfried helped to found a new umbrella organization of Evangelical women’s leagues, the Vereinigung Evangelischer Frauenverbände Deutschlands (VEFD, Union of Evangelical Women’s Leagues – 36 –

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Women’s Entry into Party Politics of Germany). With twenty-seven associated leagues numbering nearly two million members, the VEFD was the largest women’s organization of the Weimar Republic.74 Its chair, Magdalene von Tiling (1877–1974), represented the DNVP in the Prussian Landtag (1921–30) and the Reichstag (1930–33). She was a teacher who became well known through her pedagogical and theological writings and received an honorary degree in theology.75 Although the DVP did not attract the leaders of the Evangelical women’s movement, it counted among its ranks an important woman politician who occupied various posts in the hierarchy of the Evangelical Church: Elsa Matz (1881–1959). Matz became Mende’s successor as chair of the RFA in 1924 and sat in the Reichstag from 1920 to 1933, with a short interruption in 1924. Born in the Pomeranian capital Stettin (today: Szczecin, Poland), she studied German philology, philosophy, and history at the universities of Kiel and Berlin and graduated with a PhD. Matz started her career as a teacher in Stettin, where she achieved the prestigious rank of Oberstudiendirektorin. She became active in the professional organization of women teachers of Pomerania, and in 1929 she was appointed director of a high school for girls in Berlin-Charlottenburg, a wealthy section of town.76 Matz, who was involved in the DVP from the very beginning and had a seat on the DVP’s Party Board (Parteivorstand) for most of the Weimar years, was the most energetic and active Reichstag representative among the DVP women. She addressed almost every topic from Church and education issues to sports and the international traffic of women. Other organizations with ties to both parties were nationalist leagues such as the Navy League of German Women, the Women’s League of the German Colonial Society, the German Women’s League (Deutscher Frauenbund), and the women’s branch of the League for Germans Abroad (Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland). Women from both parties were represented in the leadership of these organizations and attended their conferences. Some nationalist leagues were even founded by women from the two parties during the Weimar Republic, such as the German Women’s Committee against the War-Guilt Lie (Deutscher Frauenausschuss zur Bekämpfung der Schuldlüge, DFBS). Clara Mende was involved, and the DNVP, which reported almost every meeting of this organization, was represented by Annagrete Lehmann, deputy in the Prussian Landtag 1921–28 and Behm’s successor as chair of the RFA. Some women from the Center Party and the Democratic Party participated half-heartedly; the BDF initially became a member but soon left the organization, which it considered hyper-nationalistic.77 Another league supported by the National Women’s Committees of both parties was the German Young Women’s Service (Deutscher Jungmädchendienst), a nationalist and conservative group that set up work camps for young women in which it emphasized service, obedience, and selfsacrificing nationalism. Both parties also had ties to the BDF, but those of the – 37 –

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Mothers of the Nation DVP were stronger, as indicated by the role of Emma Ender, who represented the DVP in the diet of Hamburg (1919–24) and was chair of the BDF from 1924 to 1931.78 Although the DNVP sent representatives to the BDF, it was initially very critical of it and considered it a puppet of the Democratic Party.79 This criticism softened as the BDF moved to the right and gave the DVP and conservative organizations more say, but it never disappeared. Both parties, moreover, had strong ties to the housewives’ leagues, a conservative force in the BDF until they left it in 1932.80 Altogether, the women’s committee structure, as it was adopted by the DNVP and DVP, represented a compromise. Women were organized separately but with strong ties to their corresponding party organization, to which they were primarily responsible and upon which they depended financially. The parties’ interests were well served by offering women special committees charged with attracting a new voter group and with communicating its interests to the party at large. Any attempt to create parallel women’s and men’s committees on all levels, however, would have encountered resistance from most men and many women in both parties, not to speak of the difficulties arising from the lack of politically trained women and the state of party finances. The women’s committee structure eased communication between the national women’s leaders and grass-roots women, and it gave women a separate space in which they were able to discuss their ideas independently. By the same token, it also helped to limit women’s influence and to consign their political activities to specific sectors. In 1928, the women’s activist and BDF member Agnes Zahn-von Harnack observed that women had difficulties making a career in the parties because they were too closely tied to the women’s committee structure, whose influence was narrowly circumscribed. To men, in contrast, a broad range of committees was open.81 It certainly was an injustice to treat the majority of voters for both parties as one single interest group on a par with specific male or mixed groups, such as farmers and artisans, industrialists, and blue-collar workers. Yet, the women themselves rarely objected to their consignment to specific sectors and were afraid that in mixed committees they would soon leave initiative and leadership to men, whereas their own committees might better prepare them for a political role. Even when they tried to build up a power position within the parties, they usually claimed rights only in the realms they considered as women’s spheres and did not demand that women should have a say in all matters. A motion DVP women submitted to the first national party conference, for example, demanded that the party leadership support women’s rights and women’s committees and request a memorandum from the RFA on all issues of concern to women. But the DVP women did not object when no vote on the motion took place and when Stresemann, as party chairman, suggested that the motion be made into a mere recommendation for the party board. This decision then received unanimous approval.82 – 38 –

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Women’s Entry into Party Politics The women’s committee structure in the DNVP and DVP was more elaborate than in the other non-socialist parties. The Center Party developed something similar to the RFA only in 1922 (Reichsfrauenbeirat). Earlier, the Catholic Women’s League of Germany (Katholischer deutscher Frauenbund, KDF) had taken over important aspects of women’s work on all levels of the party; Hedwig Dransfeld, its chair, had a seat in the Reichstag and on the party board.83 In the Democratic Party, women created their own RFA as early as the DNVP and DVP but built up a much weaker structure of provincial and local women’s committees and relied more on Vertrauensfrauen and random grassroots activity. It is unclear whether this was by choice or necessity, but it is plausible that the Democratic Party’s dramatic losses after the elections to the National Assembly dried up the resources for a more ambitious women’s structure before it had really gotten under way.84 Many women’s committees in the Democratic Party, unlike those in the DVP and DNVP, financed themselves. A report on the south German women’s activities of the Democratic Party from November 1919 stresses that only the Bavarian women’s groups of that party received funding from the local party organization.85 Their relative independence may have given the women’s committees of the Democratic Party more latitude in pressing for women’s demands. In general, the women from the Democratic Party put more emphasis on women’s rights than their sisters on the right did. DDP member Regine Deutsch, for example, demanded that the Democratic Party’s program allow women to be admitted to all party committees in proportion to their share of membership and wanted to commit her party to fighting the vagueness of the passage on equal rights of men and women in the Weimar Constitution, which granted equality only “in principle.”86 Other women from the Democratic Party stressed that the suffrage was neither a gift nor an imposed obligation but simply a natural right, an argument rarely heard in DVP and DNVP circles.87

Notes 1. Jean H. Quataert, Staging Philanthropy: Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany, 1813–1916 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001); Süchting-Hänger, Das “Gewissen der Nation”, chapter 2; Süchting-Hänger, “‘Gleichgroße mut’ge Helferinnen’ in der weiblichen Gegenwelt: Der Vaterländische Frauenverein und die Politisierung konservativer Frauen 1890–1914.” In Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne. (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 2000). 2. Roger Chickering, “‘Casting Their Gaze More Broadly’: Women’s Patriotic Activism in Imperial Germany.” Past and Present 118 (1988): 156–85; Lora – 39 –

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3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, 1844–1945. (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2001). Ilka Riemann, “‘Er mit der Waffe, sie mit Herz und Hand’: Die Rolle der Frauenvereine in der Sozialpolitik, insbesondere der Vaterländischen Frauenvereine.” In Jutta Dalhoff, Uschi Frey, and Ingrid Schöll, eds., Frauenmacht in der Geschichte (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1986). Larry E. Jones, German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar Party System, 1918–1933 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 17–22; Werner Liebe, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei 1918–1924 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1956), pp. 7–50; Dennis Paul Walker, “The German Nationalist People’s Party: The Conservative Dilemma in the Weimar Republic.” Journal of Contemporary History 14 (1979): 627–47; Lewis Hertzman, “The Founding of the German National People’s Party (DVNP), November 1918–January 1919.” Journal of Modern History 30 (1958): 24–36, and Hertzman, DNVP: Right-Wing Opposition in the Weimar Republic, 1918–1924 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), chapter 3. Jean H. Quataert, Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 142–6 and 184–5; Renate Pore, A Conflict of Interest: Women in German Social Democracy, 1919–1933, Contributions in Women’s Studies (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1981), p. 20; Werner Thönnessen, The Emancipation of Women: The Rise and Decline of the Women’s Movement in German Social Democracy 1863–1933. Trans. Joris de Bres (London: Pluto, 1973). For the Catholic women’s movement, see Gisela Breuer, Frauenbewegung im Katholizismus: Der Katholische Frauenbund 1903–1918 (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 1998), and Birgit Sack, Zwischen religiöser Bindung und moderner Gesellschaft: Katholische Frauenbewegung und politische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik (1918/19–1933) (Münster: Waxmann, 1998); and Sack, “Katholizismus und Nation: Der katholische Frauenbund.” In Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne. Frankfurt (Main): Campus, 2000. “Aufruf der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” in Liebe, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, pp. 107–8. Margarethe Behm, “Wie kam es doch!” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 49, 6 December 1928. For a detailed description of the RFA’s constitution and first activities, see Süchting-Hänger, Das “Gewissen der Nation”, pp. 134–49. Emma von Westarp, “Margarethe Behms Lebensgang,” and Paula MuellerOtfried, “Margarethe Behm im Parlament,” both in: Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 32, 8 August 1929. On Behm’s rejection of anti-Semitism, see Jan – 40 –

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9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18.

19.

Striesow, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei und die Völkisch-Radikalen 1918–1922. 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Haag & Herchen, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 114, 121, and 128. “Parteitag 1919,” special issue of Die Post, July 1919, p. 2. Margarethe Behm, “Wie kam es doch!”; Scheck, “German Conservatism and Female Political Activitism in the Early Weimar Republic,” pp. 41–4; Liebe, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, p. 36. For a summary and critique of the DNVP’s propaganda in the early Weimar Republic, see Sneeringer, Winning Women’s Votes, pp. 42–51. See, for example “Die deutsche Frau in der neuen Staatsordnung,” Deutsche Tageszeitung 26, no. 3, 2 January 1919, and the November and December 1918 issues of the Neue Preußische Zeitung (Kreuz-Zeitung), particularly nos. 582, 607–8, 610, 637. Scheck, “German Conservatism,” pp. 43–4, and, for propaganda materials, BA Koblenz, ZSG 1–44 (DNVP), particularly vols. 8 and 11, as well as GStA Berlin, XII, IV, vols 176–78. “Aufruf des Vorstandes der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” in Liebe, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, pp. 109–12. Scheck, “German Conservatism,” p. 44. Joachim Hofmann-Göttig, Emanzipation mit dem Stimmzettel: 70 Jahre Frauenwahlrecht in Deutschland (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1986), pp. 28–9. See also Annagrete Lehmann, “Ziel und Entwicklung der deutschnationalen Frauenarbeit.” In Max Weiß, ed., Der nationale Wille. (Essen: Wilhelm Kamp, 1928), p. 321; Max Weiß, “Organisation.” In idem, ed., Der Nationale Wille, p. 371. Hofmann-Göttig, Emanzipation mit dem Stimmzettel, pp. 28–9. Falter et al., Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik, pp. 81–5. See also Gabriele Bremme, Die politische Rolle der Frau in Deutschland (Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1956), pp. 25–30, 70–1, 243, and 248, and Hofmann-Göttig, Emanzipation mit dem Stimmzettel, pp. 28–35. “Die gehörnten Linksparteien,” Deutsche Tageszeitung, 16 April 1924, in BA Berlin, Reichslandbund Pressearchiv, 7988, p. 3. Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800–1914 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), pp. 215–28; Marie Baum, Anna von Gierke: Ein Lebensbild (Weinheim and Berlin: Julius Betz, 1954). Hildegard Goetting, Deutschnationale Vertretung der Fraueninteressen in der Deutschen Verfassunggebenden Nationalversammlung. Deutschnationale Flugschrift, 91. Berlin: Deutschnationale Schriftenvertriebsstelle, 1921, pp. 4–9 and 11; GStA Berlin, XII, IV, vol. 173. Von Gierke later made a futile attempt to start a women’s party in Berlin; in 1930 she ran for the Reichstag on the ballot of the Conservative People’s Party (Konservative – 41 –

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20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

Volkspartei), a group of former DNVP members alienated by Hugenberg, but she was not elected. Walzer, Käthe Schirmacher, pp. 26 and 79; Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 96. See also Johanna Gehmacher, “Der andere Ort der Welt. Käthe Schirmachers Auto/Biographie der Nation.” In Sophia Kemlein, ed., Geschlecht und Nationalismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa 1848–1918. (Osnabrück: fibre, 2000), pp. 99–112. Walzer, Käthe Schirmacher, pp. 66–8. Käthe Schirmacher, Frauendienstpflicht. Bonn: Marcus & Weber, 1918, p. 6. See below, Chapter 7. See Raffael Scheck, “Women in the Non-Nazi Right,” in Paola Bacchetta and Margaret Power, eds., Right-Wing Women Across the Globe (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 146–8. Spohr, by the way, also lost her electoral district of 1919 (Posen), but the party leadership offered her a good alternative. She was not burdened by a feminist past. See “Deutschnationale Frauenversammlung,” Der Parteifreund. Amtliches Blatt der deutschnationalen Volkspartei, Landesverband Ostpreußen 3, no. 35, 28 September 1922. The statutes do not say how the chair of the RFA was determined, but when Behm stepped down in early 1923, her successor, Annagrete Lehmann, was appointed by the party’s executive board. See Lehmann, “Ziel und Entwicklung der deutschnationalen Frauenarbeit,” p. 329. “Haushaltsplan für das Jahr 1925,” in Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Osnabrück, Erw. C. 1, DNVP, no. 17, vol. 2, pp. 17–18. Lehmann, “Ziel und Entwicklung deutschnationaler Frauenarbeit,” pp. 320–3; Liebe, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, p. 36. “Ihr deutschen Frauen in Stadt und Land!” in Wahl-Zeitung des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins Greifswald 1, 8 January 1919 [printed 1918]. In the SPD, the male party leadership had forbidden the women to meet before the general party conference because they feared that women would thus have an opportunity to formulate demands that they could present to the general party conference. See Pore, A Conflict of Interest, pp. xvi and 59. “Satzung der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 1, pp. 31–6; “Frauenfragen,” in Max Weiß, ed. Politisches Handwörterbuch (Führer-ABC). Berlin: Deutschnationale Schriftenvertriebsstelle, 1928, p. 209. Liebe, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, (p. 36) uses slightly different names for the committees that were maybe used by the DNVP activists whom he interviewed in the 1950s. My information follows the contemporary documents. – 42 –

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Women’s Entry into Party Politics 32. “Satzung der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 1, pp. 31–6; Liebe, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, pp. 124–5. For the structure of the DNVP, see Liebe, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, pp. 34–9. 33. “Satzung der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” in Liebe, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, pp. 124–5. 34. “Haushaltsplan für das Jahr 1925,” in Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Osnabrück, Erw. C. 1, DNVP, no. 17, vol. 2, pp. 17–18. 35. Paula Mueller-Otfried, “Frauenlisten oder Mitarbeit in der Partei,” Frauenkorrespondenz 1, no. 22, 10 July 1920. 36. This may be explained by the argument, widespread among DNVP women in this period, that housewives and mothers should ideally stay at home. For Hergt’s chairmanship in the subcommittee, see Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 6, 4 December 1920. See also “Satzung der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 1, p. 32. 37. Frau C. Rentsch, “Entwurf zur Organisation einer Partei,” in BA BerlinLichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 1, pp. 160–1. 38. BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 485, p. 93. 39. Meißner to Behm, 14 March 1919, BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 486, pp. 25–6. 40. Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 12, 4 March 1922. 41. Major Olberg, “Zur Frage der Organisation der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 1, pp. 144–5. 42. See the documents quoted in Weiß, “Organisation,” p. 367. 43. “Die Aufgaben der Partei,” in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 1, pp. 183–93. 44. “Bericht über den Verbandsvertretertag in Berlin, 7./8. Februar 1919,” in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 1, pp. 199–200; “Tagung des erweiterten R.F.A. der Dn. Vp.,” Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei 4, no. 284, 3 December 1921. 45. See list of the Landesverband Ostpreußen, in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 1, p. 104. Kapp had built up the Fatherland Party in 1917–18, and this party helped mobilize many nationalist women. See Heinz Hagenlücke, Deutsche Vaterlandspartei: Die nationale Rechte am Ende des Kaiserreiches (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1997), pp. 184–5. 46. Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 1, 18 September 1920; Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 23, 20 August 1921. 47. “Bericht über den Stand der Frauenausschüsse der deutschnationalen Volksvereine (Ortsgruppen der bayr. Mittelpartei),” in BA BerlinLichterfelde, DNVP, vol. 26, pp. 163–71. 48. Annagrete Lehmann, “Aus der Arbeit unserer Landesfrauenausschüsse,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 13, no. 8, 15 July 1931. – 43 –

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Mothers of the Nation 49. Lehmann, “Ziel und Entwicklung der Deutschnationalen Frauenarbeit,” pp. 322–3. 50. See, for example, the report on one such course in Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 2, 2 October 1920. 51. “Deutschnat. Frauenarbeit im Lande,” Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 23, 23 August 1922. 52. BA Koblenz, Nachlass Kühn, vol. 72 (Autobiographische Lebensläufe und Werke) and vol. 77 (Lebenslauf in Jahrzehnten). See also the extensive biographical information in Christiane Streubel and Gregor Pickro, eds., Nachlass Lenore Kühn (1878–1955). Findbuch des Bundesarchivs Koblenz. Koblenz, 2002, pp. XI-LXII. 53. Elisabeth Spohr, “An unsere Leserinnen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 13, no. 13, 26 March 1931. The newsletter founded by Lenore Kühn in 1921 was called Die Deutschnationale Frau and should not be confused with the official DNVP women’s periodical published under the same name from 1931 to 1933. 54. BA Koblenz, Nachlass Kühn, vol. 8 (diary 1921–22), entries of 10 June 1921 and 22 June 1921. See also vol. 72 (Autobiographische Lebensläufe und Werke) and vol. 77 (Lebenslauf in Jahrzehnten). 55. For the difficulties during the inflation of 1923, see for example Lehmann, “Ziel und Entwicklung der Deutschnationalen Frauenarbeit,” pp. 328–9. 56. Eberhard Kolb and Ludwig Richter, Nationalliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik: Die Führungsgremien der Deutschen Volkspartei, 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1999, vol. 1), p. 36. 57. See the notes on her trips in DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 20, 20 May 1920. 58. M.S. [Martha Schwarz], “Tagung des Reichsfrauenausschusses,” NLC 51, no. 113, 10 July 1924. 59. “Was will die Deutsche Volkspartei?” in GStA Berlin-Dahlem, XII, IV, vol. 157 (DVP, 1919 Erstaufrufe u. a.). See also vol. 158 (DVP, 1919, Wahl zur Nationalversammlung am 19. January 1919). For a more detailed discussion of DVP women’s propaganda, see Sneeringer, pp. 30–4. 60. “Sitzung des RFA,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 16, 22 April 1920. 61. Clara Mende, “Zusammensetzung der Aufgaben des Reichsfrauenausschusses,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 44, 4 November 1920. See also the lists of RFA members in DVP-Nachrichtenblatt vol. 2, no. 1, 2 January 1920 and no. 18, 6 May 1920. At this time the RFA had twenty members. 62. For examples see Elisabeth Cimbal, “Die Frauenorganisation der Deutschen Volkspartei in Schleswig-Holstein,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 1, no. 12, 15 August 1920; “Aus der praktischen Vereinsarbeit. Frauenausschüsse,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 2, no. 12, 7 July 1920; and “Aus der praktischen – 44 –

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63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

72.

73.

Vereinsarbeit: Tätigkeit der Frauenausschüsse,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 2, no. 13, 21 July 1920. See also Kolb and Richter, eds., Nationalliberale Politik in der Weimarer Republik, p. 388 (meeting of the DVP Executive Board of 19 October 1920); Emma Ender, “Anregungen für die Arbeit der Frauenausschüsse,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 1, no. 9, 27 November 1919; “Arbeitsprogramm für die Frauenausschüsse,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 42, 21 October 1920. Kardorff-von Oheimb, Politik und Lebensbeichte (Tübingen: Hopfer, 1965), pp. 74–80 and 94–5. BA Koblenz, Nachlass Katharina Kardorff-von Oheimb (N 1039), vols. 25 and 37. See, for example, DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 45, 11 November 1920. DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 5, 3 February 1921. “Aus den Frauenausschüssen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 3, 15 January 1920. “Volksparteiliche Frauenarbeit 1922,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 5, 2 March 1923. “Aus dem Geschäftsbericht der Gesamtpartei,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 3, no. 24, 23 December 1921; “Gründung des Wahlkreisfrauenausschusses der Deutschen Volkspartei Ostpreußens,” Mitteilungen der Deutschen Volkspartei Ostpreußen 2, no. 9, 15 December 1920. Martha Schwarz, “Organisationsarbeit der Frauen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 14, 7 April 1922; “Finanzfragen der Frauenausschüsse,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 4, no. 2, 19 January 1923. “Aus der praktischen Vereinsarbeit: Frauenausschüsse,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 2, no. 12, 7 July 1920; “Aus der praktischen Parteiarbeit. Tätigkeit der Frauenausschüsse,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 2, no. 13, 21 July 1920; and “Die Frauenorganisation der Deutschen Volkspartei in Schleswig-Holstein,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 1, no. 12, 15 August 1920. Clara Mende, “Frauenarbeit in der Partei,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 2, 8 January 1920; “Bericht über den Zweiten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei am 18., 19. u. 20. Oktober 1919,” p. 59; “Das Wort der Frau während der Wahlvorbereitung” [by Emma Stropp], DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 9, May 1920. On Brickenstein, see Hannelore Cyrus et al., eds., Bremer Frauen von A bis Z – Ein biographisches Lexikon (Bremen: Verlag in der Sonnenstrasse, 1991); on Rötger, see “Eine deutsche und evangelische Frau,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 22, 15 November 1932. – 45 –

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Mothers of the Nation 74. On the DEF and VEFD, see foremost Ursula Baumann, “Religion und Emanzipation: Konfessionelle Frauenbewegung in Deutschland 1900– 1933.” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte 21 (1992): 171–206; Baumann, Protestantismus und Frauenemanzipation in Deutschland (Frankfurt, New York: Campus, 1992); and Doris Kaufmann, “Die Begründung und Politik einer evangelischen Frauenbewegung in der Weimarer Republik.” In Jutta Dalhoff, Uschi Frey, and Ingrid Schöll, eds., Frauenmacht in der Geschichte. Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1986. See also SchneiderLudorff, Magdalene von Tiling, p. 39. 75. For a short biography, see Schneider-Ludorff, Magdalene von Tiling, pp. 25–45. 76. “Zum 50. Geburtstag von Dr. Else [sic] Matz,” NLC 57, no. 90, 5 May 1931. For Elsa Matz’s church connections, see Agnes von Zahn-Harnack, Die Frauenbewegung. Geschichte, Probleme, Ziele (Berlin: Deutsche BuchGemeinschaft, 1928), p. 351. 77. See Archiv des KDF, folder “Auslandskommission 1920–1928, 1–122–2;” Klaus Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine in der Weimarer Republik 1919–1933 (Egelsbach, Frankfurt, Washington: Hänsel-Hohenhausen, 1995), pp. 132–3. 78. Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, pp. 33–4 and 38. 79. See L.R.K. [Lenore Ripke-Kühn], “Die Tagung des Bundes Deutscher Frauenvereine in Hamburg,” Frauenkorrespondenz 1, no. 3, 4 October 1919. 80. On the relationship between the housewives’ leagues and the BDF, see Hiltraud Schmidt-Waldherr, Emanzipation durch Professionalisierung? Politische Strategien und Konflikte innerhalb der bürgerlichen Frauenbewegung während der Weimarer Republik und die Reaktion des bürgerlichen Antifeminismus und des Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt: Materialis Verlag, 1987), pp. 104–6, and Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine in der Weimarer Republik, pp. 131–42. 81. Zahn-Harnack, Die Frauenbewegung, p. 322; Scheck, “German Conservatism,” p. 45. 82. Bericht über den Ersten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei am 13. April 1919. Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1919, pp. 47–8, 66–7, and 103–4. 83. Rudolf Morsey, Die Deutsche Zentrumspartei, 1917–1923 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1966), pp. 140 and 292; Birgit Sack, “Katholizismus und Nation,” p. 294: Helen Boak, “Women in Weimar Politics.” European History Quarterly 20, no. 3 (1990): 369–99, particularly p. 383, where 1921 is given as the date when the Center Party’s RFA was formed (I took 1922 from sources closer to the events); Emmy Wingerath, “Die Tagung des Reichsfrauenbeirats der Deutschen Zentrumspartei,” and “Satzungen des Frauenbeirats der Deutschen Zentrumspartei,” both in Mitteilungen des – 46 –

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84. 85.

86.

87.

Reichsfrauenbeirats der Deutschen Zentrumspartei, 1927, no. 8, MaiAugust 1927, pp. 14–16. For the context, see Jones, German Liberalism, pp. 59–60. Catharina von Meyer, “Süddeutsche Frauentagungen,” Das Demokratische Deutschland, 1918/1919, no. 50, 23 November 1919, pp. 1155–9, in GstA Berlin-Dahlem, XII, III, vol. 10. Regine Deutsch, “Die Frau als Staatsbürgerin,” Das Demokratische Deutschland, 1918/1919, no. 17, 5 April 1919, pp. 399–402, in GStA Berlin, XII, III, vol. 9. The formulation in the constitutional paragraph was criticized for leaving room for discrimination. See Barbara Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland 1894–1933, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 46 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1981), pp. 168–9. W. Krobiell, “Frauen und deutsche Demokraten,” Das Demokratische Deutschland, 1918/19, no. 36, 17 August 1919, pp. 839–40, in GstA BerlinDahlem, XII, III, vol. 10.

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–3– Hostility to Women in Politics

Ladies and gentlemen, women understand that it is not easy for man to accept that we now stand next to him in political life (aha!). It is difficult. I believe the sympathetic men to be in a minority. (Laughter and applause.) … Men have not yet had an opportunity to learn that our influence in public life is necessary. Else Lange in a speech at the DVP’s first party conference, April 19191 It comes as no surprise that politically active women encountered hostility and discrimination from men in the DNVP and DVP. The welcome messages of the parties toward women in 1918 could not obscure the anti-feminism or defensive attitude of most men from both parties. Rejection of women’s political engagement sometimes also came from women who did not approve of the suffrage and questioned the legitimacy of women’s representation in parliaments. But wherever they came from, open attacks on the women’s political role were one thing; the often daily observation of political women that men were uncomfortable working with them and doubted their competence was another. These doubts were often shared by the women politicians themselves: they were newcomers to parliamentary life, and only a few of them had been involved in party work before 1918. Their involvement in women’s organizations had prepared many of them for negotiating with men, speaking in public, and working connections to their benefit. Yet party life, particularly in parliaments, was different. Most of the leading male parliamentarians were experienced and claimed to know how parliamentary work should be done; they often made it difficult for women to articulate and introduce their own ideas.2 Women, however, sought ways to strengthen their self-confidence and to get better acquainted with political matters, hence the emphasis of women in both parties on the political education of women in speech and debate workshops and their sometimes exaggerated clinging to topics where their qualifications were least doubted by men. But women in the two parties also protested against discrimination on several occasions. The more explicitly feminist women from the Democratic Party or the Left had no monopoly on this. One example of a woman being thrown into political life without much preparation was Anni Kalähne, who was DNVP representative to the Volkstag

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Mothers of the Nation (diet) of the Free City of Danzig for most of the Weimar period. (Although Danzig was under League of Nations sovereignty, its mostly German population had formed local branches of all major German parties.) All the political experience Kalähne had was her political discussions with her father, the PanGerman historian Dietrich Schäfer. Yet the revolution and defeat, particularly the threat of a Polish invasion or annexation of her home town, turned Kalähne into a dedicated DNVP activist. She did not bother to ask her husband, who was still in the army, for permission, when Käthe Schirmacher drafted her to give a patriotic speech in late 1918. Kalähne became a highly active politician well known in her home town as well as among the Germans in the contested border areas with Poland. Her husband, who also joined the DNVP, tolerated but did not appreciate her political engagement; despite her frequent invitations, he never came to one of her speeches. Kalähne got a reputation as a nationalist speaker not afraid of Polish or Socialist hecklers and rapidly built up an impressive women’s organization for the DNVP in Danzig, but she felt poorly prepared for parliamentary work and always had difficulties getting her ideas heard within the DNVP. She quickly learned, however, that the most promising way to get her plans realized was to discuss them first with two influential male members of parliament who were her friends, and then let them present her ideas to the DNVP group as their own. Her two friends opposed equal rights for women but took her ideas seriously, which most other men did not. Kalähne, who was herself no feminist, complained that it was impossible for most of her male colleagues to admit that sometimes a woman had a better idea than a man.3 The experiences she describes were probably shared by many political women, particularly at the local and regional level. But few of them became as successful as Kalähne; many may simply have withdrawn from politics. Not only in daily work did women encounter prejudice and hostility, their very presence in the parties and, particularly, in parliaments was contested.4 This angered the women in the DVP so much that they articulated their concerns as early as the first party convention in April 1919. Ilse Szagunn, the chair of the Greater Berlin women’s committees, and a deputy from Bielefeld, Else Lange (not to be confused with Helene Lange, member of the Democratic Party and veteran of the women’s movement), claimed that there was still too much resistance against women’s political work in the party from men but also from women, who did not yet accept their new rights and duties. Szagunn asked the men in the party to support the women better, and Lange attacked the injustices of demobilization to the many women who were dependent on their income. She criticized in particular the fact that many well-educated men were ignorant of the women’s movement but still dared to make judgments on women’s issues.5 Party chairman Stresemann noticed that the discontent of the DVP women was expressed even – 50 –

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Hostility to Women in Politics more strongly in the hallways than in the speeches and thus decided to address it in his final speech. Women, he said, should not be concerned with the numerical aspect of their representation but should instead “send us the most able women, the ones who can work creatively. A single personality here can have a greater effect than formal equality of numbers.”6 Stresemann admitted that men had the advantage of longer political training but claimed that this would change. He admonished women not to be concerned exclusively with women’s issues but to get involved in other matters as well. That would ease their acceptance by the men in the party. He further stressed that increased cooperation would overcome the ignorance of the men, and that at some point men and women would work together so smoothly that no separate women’s committees would be necessary.7 Stresemann’s emphasis on personality over numbers jibed well with the DVP’s stress on individual values over numerical strength, but it did little to mitigate the frustration of many DVP women. At the second party convention in October 1919, the Prussian Landtag deputy Margarethe Poehlmann again expressed anger over the lack of understanding on the part of men, particularly the younger ones, and demanded that women receive a high position on every DVP ballot.8 In the women’s section of the DVP-Nachrichtenblatt the critique continued: Emma Stropp, member of the RFA, claimed that men reacted “with clearly manifest discomfort – to put it mildly” whenever women referred to the passage of the Weimar Constitution on equal rights, and she complained that newspapers sympathetic to the DVP still considered women’s issues unimportant.9 And Luise Marelle, the DVP’s expert on women in the professions, commented that the widespread anti-feminism of men had condemned women to passivity in parliament. “Most female deputies chose the best option by not saying anything. (One hears then that ‘they work well in the committees’).”10 The anger of the DVP women even intensified in the months preceding the Reichstag elections of June 1920. Although the DVP anticipated a vast increase in seats, women received only poor consideration on the ballots. Stropp, who emerged as the DVP women’s most vocal critic, mentioned that some women had threatened to withdraw their support for the party’s electoral campaign and that all women in the party were angry: “They experience the poor consideration accorded to female candidates on the ballots as an offense to all women activists and as a sign of low esteem for their political activity and its importance for Germany’s recovery. Often a female candidate has only been placed as a token candidate on a hopeless spot of the ballot.”11 The structure of Stropp’s critique was always the same: first came sharp attacks on anti-feminism, combined with references to the fact that women formed a majority of potential voters and, in 1920, also a majority of DVP members; then Stropp admonished the DVP women to continue their precious work for the DVP – usually with strong nationalist undertones. Implicit was the threat that they would stop if they were not better rewarded in the future.12 – 51 –

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Mothers of the Nation When the DVP’s share of Reichstag seats tripled in June 1920, women’s representation kept pace with the party’s overall increase (three instead of one – and four following a special election to fill the seat of a deceased male deputy in February 1923). But frustration over limited acceptance by the men in the party produced more protests. In July 1920, Stropp wrote that women from all parties shared the feeling that men ignored their concerns. It was at this time that she made her powerful plea for women’s rights, so that women could help salvage a nation that resembled a damaged ship in a storm.13 Stresemann took these concerns seriously enough to visit the women’s meeting preceding the third national party conference in December 1920. In a speech to the assembled women, he admitted that the opinion of women had to be heard first on many matters but rejected the charge that not enough women were represented in the new DVP Reichstag group. Again he asked women to put the emphasis on ability rather than numerical representation according to gender. In her response, Julie Bassermann, the widow of Stresemann’s predecessor Ernst Bassermann, agreed but demanded that this principle be applied to men as well; fewer men should get seats simply because they represented certain social strata or professions. Stresemann stayed for an open discussion of these matters and promised to make the women’s concerns heard in the party leadership.14 Although Stresemann hardly made substantial concessions to the women in the party, the fact that he listened to them, took their concerns seriously, and visited their meeting did win him respect from the DVP women and may have helped to mitigate their discomfort. Preceding the Prussian elections of February 1921, the Prussian members of the RFA protested again that female candidates were not receiving enough consideration, but they also admitted that too few women were willing to compete for seats in parliaments because they considered themselves unqualified and preferred to let men represent their interests.15 Despite these claims, however, DVP women fared very well in the Prussian Landtag elections. There were six women in the DVP’s 58-member Landtag group (a seventh woman joined them in December 1922, replacing a man). Women thus made up 10.3 percent of the DVP’s Landtag group (12 percent after 1922), much more than in any other bourgeois party in the Prussian Landtag – and the Reichstag. With its 12 percent from December 1922 on, the DVP had the highest share of women in the Landtag, surpassing even the SPD (11.4 percent)!16 It seems that the DVP leaders, and later their colleagues from the DNVP, agreed to give women better consideration for Prussian Landtag elections than for the Reichstag, claiming that “female” concerns such as social policy played a larger role there than in the Reichstag, where “male” concerns such as foreign policy and military matters were important. The DVP women’s criticism of anti-feminism softened after the Prussian elections of 1921, although there is little evidence that conditions in the party – 52 –

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Hostility to Women in Politics improved. In March 1924, with new Reichstag elections scheduled for May, the RFA secretary Martha Schwarz mentioned that many women had become disillusioned but continued to work for the party nonetheless, since it was woman’s nature to make sacrifices and to work.17 The RFA got the two “secure” places for women on the national ballot that it had demanded, and both women on these places were elected (Mende and Dr. Frances Magnus-von Hausen). Thus women lost one seat in the DVP Reichstag group, but it was also true that the party overall suffered losses. Unfortunately, women’s representation got no better when the DVP recovered some seats in the Reichstag elections of 7 December 1924. (Mende remained and was joined by Elsa Matz.). At the Prussian Landtag elections of the same date only five women, instead of seven, got elected to the DVP group. Shortly thereafter, Mende argued that politically active women had to remain alert, “so as to make it clear to the men that there are essential differences between the sexes but that there is no monopoly of men on certain portions of wisdom, logic, discretion, and political ability.” (Mende was referring to a DNVP proposal to exclude women from sensitive foreign policy jobs because of their “inborn inability to keep secrets.”)18 The elections to the parliaments of the Prussian provinces on 29 November 1925 again triggered massive criticism from the DVP women because the regional party sections had largely ignored women candidates. In a letter to Stresemann, Mende complained that “women, who from the start have done the most loyal and self-sacrificing work … are systematically being excluded from the party’s work and even from their own spheres of activity.” The DVP’s Executive Board decided at its next meeting to write to the regional sections and to stress the importance of women as candidates and members of parliaments.19 Criticism remained muted for several years. The female DVP activists knew that, however difficult it was to overcome the prejudice of men, the disinterest and passivity of women did not help either. Stropp, for example, claimed that many women put too much trust in big-interest organizations and understood neither why they should get politically active themselves nor why their rights needed to be expanded. The Prussian Landtag member Marie Siegert, moreover, explained that women’s political activism was lacking even in communal politics, often described as the ideal stage for women’s political engagement because women could work close to home; rarely could the DVP find enough women willing to run for election to city parliaments. Others pointed out that women often blindly trusted male candidates and were too divided and too critical of each other’s abilities.20 Some women in the DVP also denied that there was antifeminism in the party; Käthe Rahmlow, a DVP activist from Dortmund, claimed that women and men in her province (Westphalia) cooperated in a spirit of complete camaraderie.21 In the DNVP, the women remained mostly quiet during the first years although they were hardly treated better than their counterparts in the DVP. Initially some – 53 –

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Mothers of the Nation DNVP men suggested that women’s suffrage should be revoked, but most of them accepted it once they saw how much it benefited their party. The former chair of the Conservative Party, Count Kuno von Westarp, for example, admitted that he continued to oppose women’s suffrage but found it inopportune to express this opinion when he realized that women’s suffrage “did not have as radical effects as I had expected” and was impossible to revoke in the short run. He debated the issue with Behm, who told him frankly that politically active women did not cherish his old-fashioned “chivalry” toward them but wanted equal rights in the party, in politics, and in the professions. Westarp remained unconvinced of this goal but expressed respect for women’s work in the DNVP. In a telling relativization of the equality claim, Westarp declared that he granted women all equal rights and practical possibilities necessary for their work.22 The women, in turn, did not challenge their place in the party nearly as much as the DVP women had done from the start. Clotilde von der Groeben, a member of the East Prussian LFA, claimed that men in general handled women’s interests well and that only women representing major female professional groups had a right to sit in parliaments.23 Women reporting about their activities in local assemblies stressed that the men in the DNVP respected their work – often more so than men in the Democratic Party and DVP seemed to do (although this may also have been due to the fact that DNVP women challenged the men in their party less).24 The first open challenges to women’s work in the DNVP came from women, not men. In early 1919 some right-wing women outside the DNVP gathered signatures for a petition against women’s suffrage. The DNVP leadership condemned this action, however, and declared that people who supported it could not belong to the party.25 In 1920 Lenore Kühn had to counter the charge leveled by a woman in the extreme right-wing newspaper Deutsche Zeitung that the DNVP women had secret sympathies for the “democratic” BDF and for feminism and that the DNVP’s parliamentarians were not representative of German women because none of them was a mother. In her reply, Kühn denied feminist sympathies and pointed out that mothers did their most valuable work at home, not in parliament, and that the example of Margarethe Behm showed that women could be motherly even without being biological mothers.26 In 1922 an article in the conservative Kreuzzeitung written by a woman associated with the social organizations of the Evangelical Church and the German League against the Emancipation of Women stirred up a conflict. The author attacked the DNVP women for putting feminist concerns over nationalist ones. While morality in Germany was sinking to unprecedented depths, the author claimed, Behm and Mueller-Otfried were watching by the sidelines and trying to advance women’s rights together with women from the Left. Instead, truly conservative women should stress that it behooves women to be self-sacrificing, obedient, and submissive to the authority of men.27 Kühn’s defense on behalf of the RFA was – 54 –

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Hostility to Women in Politics severely cut by the editors of the Kreuzzeitung, so she published the full article in the Frauenkorrespondenz.28 Politically active DNVP women were angry at the way the Kreuzzeitung handled the affair, but party chairman Hergt and Westarp, as editor of the Kreuzzeitung, tried to make amends at a leadership meeting of the regional DNVP sections a few days later. Hergt praised the women’s work for the party and stressed that they had always avoided a one-sided emphasis on women’s rights. Women had represented their interests within the party with tact and restraint and never tried to form a “state within the state.” Westarp explained the behavior of the Kreuzzeitung in ways that restored the honor of the RFA, and Hergt appealed to all regional chairmen to further the work of women within the party.29 The male party leaders thus defended women activists against the attacks by anti-emancipatory women by attesting to them that they had not worked for women’s rights. The irony of this may seem glaring to a present-day observer, but it is doubtful that most DNVP women saw it that way. In the months before the Reichstag elections of May 1924, however, DNVP women expressed frustration over the poor consideration their candidates received on the ballots – at a time when the DNVP expected gains at the polls. In the Deutsche Tageszeitung, the RFA published a call to women not to abstain from voting, but behind this plea lurked a critique of anti-feminism in the DNVP. Everywhere, the RFA claimed, the work of women was being pushed back and restricted. It was understandable, though still to be condemned, if women reacted with abstention.30 After the elections, the Reichstag group of the DNVP, which had become the strongest in union with the allied National Rural League (Reichslandbund, RLB), included four women, who had all been elected by narrow margins. This was one woman more than before the elections but still a weak representation in comparison to other parties (just over 4 percent). After the elections, the DNVP journalist Beda Prilipp claimed that the party owed its impressive gains at the polls primarily to women. In a sideswipe at the economic interest groups in the party, she added: “This has to be valued all the more, because the women of our party did not receive promises regarding any privileges.” Prilipp complained that the share of female parliamentarians had not kept pace with the growth of the party at the polls, and she was also alarmed about the failure of Klara Klotz, the DNVP’s leading woman in Württemberg, to get reelected to the Landtag of Württemberg, where state elections were held on the same day as the Reichstag elections. Altogether, she warned that the anti-feminism of the men in the DNVP would strengthen the Democratic Party and help revive the ailing women’s movement.31 Like the DVP in 1921, the DNVP reacted to this criticism by making efforts to increase the women’s representation in the next Prussian Landtag elections. The DNVP Landtag group elected in 1921 had included five women in a group of seventy-five; after the elections of December 1924 it had nine women in a group of 109, which raised the women’s share from – 55 –

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Mothers of the Nation 6.67 to 8.25 percent. At the Reichstag elections, held on the same day, five women instead of four were elected to a DNVP group that had hardly changed in size. Despite these modest improvements the conditions of women’s work in the party remained difficult. In 1925, for example, the RFA complained to the party leadership that many regional party sections refused to make enough funds available to their women’s committees. This complaint induced the party secretary to send out an admonition to the chairmen of the regional branches to better support women’s work within the party.32 When the electoral fortunes of the DNVP began to decline in the later 1920s due to competition from special-interest parties, the pressure on female candidates increased again. At the Reichstag elections of 20 May 1928, the DNVP lost over one quarter of its seats, but women’s representation went down even more dramatically from five to two (Mueller-Otfried and Lehmann). In the Prussian Landtag, elected on the same day, the DNVP as a whole lost as heavily, but women’s representation went down only from nine to eight (their share thus increased from 8.25 to 9.7 percent). The situation improved later in the year when two women were elected to replace deceased male deputies, which gave women a record 12.2 percent of the DNVP’s seats. The decline of women’s representation in the Reichstag, however, came as a shock to many DNVP women.33 RFA chair Annagrete Lehmann showed that the reduced number of female parliamentarians meant a severe loss of expertise in all questions of concern to women. The few remaining women would be overloaded with work. Considering that in electoral districts with gender-separated counting the DNVP had received between fifty-five and fifty-nine percent of its votes from women, the RFA calculated that a strictly proportional representation would give women forty-two of the seventy-two DNVP Reichstag seats. Instead they had only two (2.7 percent) – the lowest share of any major party.34 But, as earlier, Lehmann admonished the DNVP women to redouble their efforts for the party, so that it would do better in future elections and offer women more seats.35 The crisis years after 1929 brought new challenges to women that will be discussed later. What is important here is that they managed to defend their participation in the parliamentary groups even though the decline of the two parties’ share of the vote made it even harder for them to compete with men for the few remaining seats. With more and more electoral districts electing only one or two candidates – if any at all – for the DVP and DNVP, women had little hope of winning a seat through the districts because they were almost never listed above the third place on the district ballot. Thus, women were more dependent than ever on their party’s list of candidates to be elected from the surplus votes of the local districts (Reichsliste or Landesliste). But it has to be said that the male leaders of the DVP and DNVP, by placing one or two women high on that list, made sure that women were always represented in their Reichstag groups. – 56 –

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Hostility to Women in Politics The proportion of women in the reduced party groups therefore did not decline. Ironically, it reached its highest point after the elections of July 1932, when the DVP had one woman (Matz) among only seven deputies (14.29 percent) and the DNVP still had three women out of thirty-seven (8.1 percent). What weapons did women have against anti-feminism? One was direct confrontation, which was chosen for example by Käthe Schirmacher in a written exchange with her male party colleague Gottfried Traub, who sat with Schirmacher in the National Assembly. When Traub addressed her in a letter with the diminutive “Fräulein” (Misses) used for an unmarried woman (and a neuter noun), Schirmacher sent back the envelope to Traub after having corrected “Fräulein” to “Frau” and written above: “The member of parliament is no neuter being. The woman representative carries the title ‘Frau’.”36 But Schirmacher’s outspoken defense of women’s rights angered and alienated many men and women in the party. When the district that had elected her to the National Assembly was separated from Germany, the DNVP leaders did not offer her a promising place elsewhere, thus ending her parliamentary career (though not her engagement in the party).37 A less dangerous and perhaps more common weapon against anti-feminism was irony, which the DVP women employed with mastery. Lange’s speech at the first party conference was full of it, and Reichstag deputy Margarethe Poehlmann used it at the second party conference when she suggested that prejudice against women was proportional to the youth and inexperience of men. The DVP’s household expert Hilde Margis added to this by claiming that anti-feminism was often less visible in “men with distinctly masculine qualities” than in “other” men.38 Women from both parties often bolstered their claims for better representation by pointing out that their parties received more votes from women than from men. But this argument did not hold much water once the men realized that the placement of women candidates had little influence over how women cast their votes.39 It also smacked of democracy, which both parties rejected; as Stresemann had argued, members of parliaments should be chosen for their abilities, not for the numbers of voters they represented. Probably more effective was the argument that women worked for the good of the nation and that Germany needed their full participation and input to recover. Women of the DVP and DNVP never got tired of saying that they did not primarily represent specific women’s interests but worked to make women’s innate abilities more beneficial to the whole nation. Another weapon was the threat to form a women’s party or to create separate women’s ballots associated with the existing parties. The discussions about a women’s party have been represented in much of the literature as a reaction to the poor consideration for women’s interests demonstrated by the bourgeois parties.40 Yet, the idea of a women’s party was more. Take the words of Helene Lange, the veteran and leading theorist of the bourgeois women’s movement, – 57 –

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Mothers of the Nation who in 1920 contemplated the mission of a women’s party on the following terms: “The formation of a women’s party means to create an institution that will basically serve the construction of the whole, the unification of interests, the reconciliation of conflicts – but not by horse trading on a case to case basis but rather by searching for ways in which truly national politics can be realized.”41 The women’s party thus was not meant to be just another economic “pressure group” but rather a reform party whose central mission, according to Lange, was nothing other than the Volksgemeinschaft. Lange, and almost all others who discussed the women’s party, readily admitted that it was not feasible for practical reasons, and separate women’s lists were rejected on similar grounds.42 Women from the DNVP and DVP echoed this judgment. Lenore Kühn, for the DNVP, admitted that not enough women were represented in the parties, but – like Stresemann – she considered personalities more important than numbers and believed a women’s party would become a powerless splinter party because women were already too closely tied to the existing parties.43 Stropp, for the DVP, argued that a women’s party would increase political fragmentation in circumstances that called for national unity. Despite her bitter critique of antifeminism, she claimed: “Politics can and should no longer … be divided according to gender difference; this would be a grave sin against Germany’s recovery.” Rather than forming a separate party, women should work hard within the existing parties to overcome male prejudice, an argument Clara Mende supported as well.44 But Stropp got so exasperated over anti-feminism in May 1920 that she warned that a women’s party would soon become a reality if men did not help enforce the equal rights clause of the Weimar Constitution.45 Anna von Gierke, the DNVP deputy in the National Assembly who left the party because of its anti-Semitism, did indeed create a local women’s list for the Greater Berlin town elections in July 1920. The DVP women observed this experiment with interest and presented it to their party leaders as a manifestation of women’s dissatisfaction with the existing parties.46 This was ill considered, however, because von Gierke’s list received only 936 votes, not even enough for one seat in Berlin’s city parliament. Paula Mueller-Otfried saw this result as a confirmation of the DNVP women’s rejection of a women’s party. She argued that women’s interests were too heterogeneous to fit into one party, but she also warned that women would not support indefinitely a mixed party that claimed to take care of women’s interests by tolerating a few women in parliaments as representatives of all women.47 A second experiment with a women’s list in Münster in 1928 did not fare much better than von Gierke’s.48 The discussion of a women’s party was powerfully revived in the early 1930s, when the growth of the anti-feminist NSDAP threatened to undercut women’s demands in the other parties.49 But the consensus remained that a women’s party would stand no chance at elections and would only serve to further the alarming fragmentation – 58 –

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Hostility to Women in Politics of bourgeois party politics and thus exacerbate the very ills of German political life that women were so eager to cure. Whereas men in the rightist parties hardly took the discussion of a women’s party seriously, they felt threatened by the cooperation of women across party lines. The women in the DVP were usually more open-minded about such cooperation than women from the DNVP. In the Greater Berlin area, the DVP women’s committees took an active role in the founding of a local umbrella organization for women’s groups, the Political Cooperative of the Women of Greater Berlin (Politische Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Frauen von Groß-Berlin). This organization evolved out of the old Berlin League for Women’s Suffrage (Berliner Verein für Frauenstimmrecht) and included women from the Left and a broad spectrum of bourgeois organizations. Its goals were to deepen women’s political education and to work for equal rights for men and women. It insisted on the broadening of women’s access to all professions and on equal pay for equal work, and it claimed to be a forum for the issues that united women from all parties. The chairwoman was Adele Schreiber, a Social Democrat. Although even some DNVP members (notably Margarethe Behm) belonged to the board of this organization, the DVP was much more engaged than the DNVP.50 Emma Stropp wished that the Political Cooperative of the Women of Greater Berlin would help overcome the disinterest and ignorance that many female DVP members displayed toward the women’s movement, and the DVP’s Anna Mayer appealed at the organization’s constitutive meeting to revive women’s solidarity across party lines.51 The DNVP, however, soon denounced the Political Cooperative as too feminist and too hostile to the parties. The DNVP’s Frauenkorrespondenz largely ignored it.52 After less than a year, even DVP women got worried that the organization would take a too pacifist stand, but with demonstrations against the “Black Horror on the Rhine” and an exhibition about production with the use of German rather than foreign materials the Political Cooperative reemphasized its nationalist credentials.53 This was enough to ease the concerns of DVP women for the time being, but they appear to have lost interest after 1923. The DNVP women, in turn, tended to downplay common women’s concerns and became thoroughly antagonistic to women’s cross-party cooperation in the later years of the Weimar Republic, when Hugenberg led the DNVP into sharp opposition to the Weimar system and all moderate parties. As the DNVP’s Erika Altgelt argued in 1929, DNVP women recognized no common basis of women’s politics, claiming that such a thing did not and should not exist. In a similar vein, Annagrete Lehmann wrote in 1931 that women’s solidarity was worthless, even destructive, if it did not imply a common stand based on a shared world-view.54 Although women from all parties chose to focus on similar political fields, powerful ideological divides – particularly between socialist women and the religious women associated with – 59 –

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Mothers of the Nation the Center Party and the DNVP – undercut the chances for a consensus among women in the parliaments. On balance, women successfully defended their position in the two parties throughout the Weimar Republic, but they did so by consistently stressing their commitment to the nation and the party and by limiting or downplaying their struggle for specific women’s interests. One time when women in the DVP got particularly frustrated over the men’s lack of support for their work, for example, Mende called on the women not to fall prey to “female egoism” but rather to comprehend and fulfill the civic and political duties of women toward the party even more deeply and seriously.55 In the DNVP, women always put so much more stress on women’s duties than on their rights that they hardly needed to publish such disclaimers against “female egoism.” This went so far that in early 1924 Reichstag member Hedwig Hoffmann from Bochum, who had succeeded a deceased male DNVP deputy in December 1921, exchanged her spot on the ballot for a less promising one so as to make room for a male worker likely to attract more votes than she was expected to receive.56 The male party leaders occasionally lent an open ear to women’s concerns, as shown by Stresemann’s discussions with DVP women, the DNVP secretary’s answer to the RFA’s request for more funding, or both parties’ efforts to strengthen women’s representation in the Prussian Landtag. But the confinement of women to fields stereotypically defined as “female,” though emphatically encouraged by most right-wing women, left them little prospect of expanding their influence and advancing women’s rights, as many may have hoped after the introduction of women’s suffrage. It did, however, help to increase their representation in the influential Prussian Landtag, where there was a stronger emphasis on “women’s fields” than in the Reichstag.

Notes 1. Bericht über den Ersten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei, pp. 70–1. 2. Thomas Mergel, Parlamentarische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik: Politische Kommunikation, symbolische Politik und Öffentlichkeit im Reichstag (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2002), pp. 104–8, and Heide-Marie Lauterer, Parlamentarierinnen in Deutschland 1918/19–1949 (Königstein (Taunus): Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2002), pp. 70–85. In a survey of parliamentarians in the National Assembly and the Reichstag, Claudia Koonz has shown that there was a significant minority of men who were also new. The majority, however, had been in the Reichstag before 1919, and this was certainly true for the leadership of the parties. Koonz, “Conflicting Allegiances,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1, no. 1 (1976): 666–70. – 60 –

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Hostility to Women in Politics 3. Anni Kalähne, “Lebenserinnerungen,” in Staatsarchiv Bremen, Nachlass Dietrich Schäfer, folder 7.21. 4. See the case study on DDP women in Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland, pp. 162–6. 5. Bericht über den Ersten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei, pp. 47–8, 66–7, and 70–1. 6. Ibid., pp. 94–5. 7. Ibid. Stresemann had expressed similar ideas at meetings of the DVP’s Executive Board: Kolb and Richter, eds., Nationalliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik, pp. 13 and 30 (meetings of 29 January and 13–14 April 1919). 8. Bericht über den Zweiten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei am 18., 19. u. 20. Oktober 1919, pp. 130–2. 9. Emma Stropp, “In Arbeit getreu,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 1, 2 January 1920, and E. St. [Stropp], “Die Reichsfrauentagung,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 16, 22 April 1920. 10. Luise Marelle, “Antifeminismus und Berufswertung,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 19, 13 May 1920. 11. Emma Stropp, “Wahlmüdigkeit?” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 20, 20 May 1920. 12. [Emma Stropp], “Das Wort der Frau während der Wahlvorbereitung,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 2, no. 9, 13 May 1920. 13. As quoted above in the “Introduction” (from Emma Stropp, “Der neue Reichstag,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 26, 1 July 1920). 14. “Die Reichsfrauentagung in Nürnberg,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt, 2, nos. 48/49, 9 December 1920. 15. “Sitzung des Reichsfrauenausschusses (preußische Mitglieder),” DVPNachrichtenblatt 3, no. 3, 20 January 1921. 16. For the results, see DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 8, 24 February 1921. 17. Martha Schwarz, “Frauenwürde und Wahlkampf,” NLC 51, no. 45, 26 March 1924. See also Clara Mende, “Die Frau als Vertreterin ihres Volkes,” NLC 51, no. 60, 23 April 1924; Ender’s statements in “Fünfter Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei in Hannover am 29. und 30. März,” special edition of NLC; and Martha Schwarz, “Tagung des Reichsfrauenausschusses,” NLC 51, no. 46, 1 April 1924. 18. C.M. [Clara Mende], “Kampf gegen Frauen,” NLC 52, no. 38, 25 February 1925. 19. Kolb and Richter, eds., Nationalliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik, p. 649 (meeting of 27 January 1926). 20. Emma Stropp, “Verantwortlichkeit,” Schleswig-Holsteinische Stimmen 4, no. 15, 7 August 1922; Marie Siegert, “Frauenarbeit im Stadtparlament,” – 61 –

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Mothers of the Nation NLC 51, no. 157, 25 September 1924. See also “Frauenkandidaturen,” Berliner Stimmen 1, no. 21, 24 December 1924. 21. Käthe Rahmlow, “Wege und Ziele weiblicher Politik,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 2, no. 33, 19 August 1920. 22. Kuno von Westarp, Konservative Politik im Übergang vom Kaiserreich zur Republik. Teil I: Von der Deutschkonservativen Partei zur Deutschnationalen Volkspartei. Manuscript, Nachlaß Westarp, Gärtringen, chap. 4. 23. Clotilde von der Groeben, “Frauenvertretung in den Parlamenten,” Der Parteifreund 2, no. 11, 17 March 1921. 24. Margarethe Pohle, “Aus der Erfurter Gemeindevertretung,” Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 17, 20 May 1922, and “Parlamentarische Kleinarbeit deutschnationaler Frauen in Provinz- und Gemeindevertretungen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 21, 29 July 1922. 25. Scheck, “German Conservatism and Female Political Activism in the Early Weimar Republic,” p. 45; Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei 2, no. 35, 11 February 1919. See also “Zurückweisung einer demokratischen Verdächtigung,” Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei 2, no. 200, 1 September 1919. 26. LRK [Lenore Ripke-Kühn], “Frau und Volksvertretung,” Frauenkorrespondenz 1, no. 18, 15 May 1920. The opinion that women did their best for the state as mothers and housewives was typical for anti-emancipatory arguments. Compare the statements of Hans Philipp, member of the German League Against the Emancipation of Women, in a newsletter of the National Liberal Party: “Die Anteilnahme der Frau am Staatsleben,” Die Frau in der Politik. Monatsbeilage der “Deutschen Stimmen” 1, no. 2, 24 February 1918, p. 13, in BA Koblenz, ZSg. 1–42 (DVP), vol. 16. 27. “Wir und die Anderen,” Neue Preußische Kreuzzeitung, no. 88, 21 February 1922 (evening). 28. Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 12, 4 March 1922, and no. 13, 18 March 1922. See also “Die Frauen in der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” Neue Preußische Kreuzzeitung, no. 107, 4 March 1922. 29. Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 14, 1 April 1922. 30. “Wahlaufruf zum 4. Mai 1924,” Deutsche Tageszeitung, no. 187, 20 April 1924; copy in Reichslandbund-Pressearchiv, BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, vol. 7988, p. 3. 31. Beda Prilipp, “Und die Frauen – ?” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 21, 28 May 1924. 32. Rundschreiben 103 (9 May 1925), in Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Osnabrück, Erw. C 1 (DNVP), vol. 17, part 2, p. 109. 33. The RFA also mentioned poor results for women in other state elections on 20 May. There were elections in Anhalt, Bavaria, Oldenburg, and – 62 –

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Hostility to Women in Politics

34.

35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

44.

45. 46.

Württemberg, but I did not find evidence that the DNVP had any women in those parliaments immediately preceding the 1928 elections. The RFA claimed that after 20 May 1928 Johanna Richter (in Baden) was the only DNVP woman in any state parliament except Prussia, but that is not accurate. There was still a DNVP woman in the diets of Hamburg, Lübeck, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and Saxony. In the early 1930s, DNVP women returned to the diet of Bremen and Württemberg. Annagrete Lehmann, “Zum Wahlausfall,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 22, 31 May 1928, and “Die Wahlbeteiligung der Frauen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 23, 7 June 1928. “Deutschnationale Frauen in den neuen Parlamenten,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 21, 24 May 1928; Annagrete Lehmann, “Zum Wahlausfall,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 22, 31 May 1928. Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Nachlass Traub (N 1059), volume 67 (correspondence). Walzer, Käthe Schirmacher, p. 89. Hilde Margis, “Wir Frauen und die Wahl,” NLC 51, no. 67, 2 May 1924. Boak, “Women in Weimar Politics,” p. 385. Focusing on the Democratic Party, Barbara Greven-Aschoff has shown that women became frustrated when time and again they got pushed to lower places on the ballot by representatives of powerful economic interest groups: Greven-Aschoff, Bürgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland, pp. 162–66. Helene Lange, “Politische Zerstörungsmethoden,” Die Frau 27, no. 7 (April 1920): 193–5. Greven-Aschoff, Bürgerliche Frauenbewegung, p. 158; Boak, “Women in Weimar Politics,” pp. 386–8; and Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, p. 247. See also the discussion on the women’s party at a BDF board meeting in October 1930, in Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine in der Weimarer Republik, pp. 257–65. LRK [Lenore Ripke-Kühn], “Frauenlisten und Frauenparteien,” in Frauenkorrespondenz 1, no. 4, 18 October 1919; see also Lenore RipkeKühn, “Frauenfragen und Parteiarbeit,” Frauenkorrespondenz 1, no. 9, 27 December 1919. Emma Stropp, “In Arbeit getreu,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 1, 2 January 1920; Clara Mende, “Frauenarbeit in der Partei,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 2, 8 January 1920. Emma Stropp, “Clara Mende und andere,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 21, 27 May 1920. Emma Stropp, “Die Groß-Berliner Stadtwahlen von allgemeinen Gesichtspunkten betrachtet,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 23/24, 17 June 1920. – 63 –

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Mothers of the Nation 47. Paula Mueller-Otfried, “Frauenlisten oder Mitarbeit in der Partei,” Frauenkorrespondenz 1, no. 22, 10 July 1920. 48. Lotte Garnich, “Frauenlisten,” Berliner Stimmen 5, no. 17, 10 November 1928. 49. In 1931, Martha Schwarz (DVP) again reminded her readers that the discussion of a women’s party was not about special interests: Martha Schwarz, “Frauenpartei?!” NLC 58, no. 166, 27 August 1931. See also Kardorff-von Oheimb, Brauchen wir eine Frauenpartei? (Berlin-Frohnau: Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, 1931). 50. “Politische Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Frauen von Groß-Berlin,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 1, no. 12, 18 December 1919. 51. Emma Stropp, “Politische Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Frauen,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 2, no. 2, 8 January 1920; “Politische Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Frauen von Groß-Berlin,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 8, 19 February 1920. 52. E. St. [Emma Stropp], “Verrat an der eigenen Partei,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 10, 4 March 1920. 53. M. Regenbogen, “Die politische Arbeitsgemeinschaft,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 47, 25 November 1920. 54. Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 41, 10 October 1929; Annagrete Lehmann, “Vormarsch der nationalen Opposition,” Deutschnationale Frau 13, no. 14, 15 October 1931. 55. Clara Mende, “Frauenarbeit in der Partei.” For similar statements with regard to the priority of national interest, see Emma Stropp, “Der neue Reichstag,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 26, 1 July 1920, and Stropp, “In Arbeit getreu,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 1, 2 January 1920. 56. Die Frauen im neuen Reichstag,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 19, 10 May 1924.

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–4– Women’s Rights and Housewives’ Power

The state has to consider higher interests than the loss of a woman civil servant. If this civil servant gets married, has children, and raises them in the enclosed sphere of the family, a higher interest is served. Magdalene von Tiling, DNVP (1928)1 The broad hostility toward women in politics as well as the ideology of rightwing women limited their ability and willingness to advance women’s rights. Their engagement for women’s rights was slanted toward the concerns of some select professional groups, and it was regarded with suspicion by the representatives of urban and rural housewives, who had different priorities than professional women. Even when DVP and DNVP women took up the cause of women’s rights, they often weakened their momentum because they insisted that women should work primarily in “female” spheres and that the role of housewife and mother was woman’s ideal profession. This has to be understood in the context of the widespread perception that the suffrage had been a terminal achievement for women and automatically gave them full equality. Even women from the Democratic Party, which prided itself on its openness for women’s concerns, complained that many men and women from their party believed that women’s issues did not matter any more after the suffrage had been won.2 Right-wing women, of course, had always tended to regard even women’s suffrage with ambivalence or downright hostility. They stressed after 1918 that the only way to use the suffrage was to make women’s influence felt for the benefit of the whole nation and not for specific women’s issues, as becomes clear in a speech by the DNVP’s Magdalene von Tiling: “… only the thought of the Volksgemeinschaft and the damage that has to be repaired urges woman to leave her narrow private sphere. This is not at all a question of women’s rights …”3 Although all leading right-wing women believed that women now had to permeate society with their cultural influence, they continued to stress that they had not entered Weimar politics to advance women’s rights. Frequently they denied in public that they were interested in women’s rights per se and, in keeping with their Volksgemeinschaft ideology, emphasized that they pushed for women’s rights only whenever their neglect threatened to harm the nation.4

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Mothers of the Nation Yet, important women’s rights issues had to be addressed. Although the Constitution adopted in August 1919 granted women equal rights “in principle” and stressed equal rights for men and women in the professions and in marriage, the German civil law code and the criminal code remained discriminatory toward women and needed to be changed.5 Women still received lower pay for equal work, faced restricted opportunities for advancement, and were excluded from some careers. In civil law, women were disadvantaged particularly in marriage; married women had almost no legal power over their income and property or over the education of their children. The DNVP women formulated a program in 1920–21 that addressed most of these injustices and promised to redress them. Their program stressed equal rights as a principle and demanded support for working women including equal pay for equal work.6 The DVP women insisted on similar concerns and convinced their party in 1919 to include the demand for equal standing for women and men in politics, law, and economic life in the party program.7 Although women from the DVP and DNVP initially considered the revision of the civil law code important, they paid little attention to basic women’s rights later on. Given their widespread notion of women fulfilling different tasks than men, right-wing women did not even fight to cut the addendum “in principle” from the constitutional clause that stated that women and men had equal rights. This formulation established a gray zone for laws that discriminated against women, but when a motion came before the National Assembly to cut the words “in principle,” the DNVP women helped to defeat it. Mende, the only female DVP deputy in the National Assembly, was absent during the vote.8 Some women from both parties sought to impart a greater understanding of the injustices contained in the civil law code and to commit their parties to fighting them. Dr. Anna Mayer, the DVP’s expert on women and the law, campaigned for redress of the clauses that made family law discriminatory toward women, although she refused, in accordance with the idea of essential differences between men and women, to demand symmetrical rights for husband and wife.9 Erna von Birkhahn, as member of the DNVP’s RFA, argued along similar lines, while Else von Sperber in the Reichstag and Elisabeth Spohr in the Prussian Landtag tried to strengthen the legal power of the divorced mother over the upbringing of the children.10 Yet, efforts for a revision of women’s rights in marriage and family frequently got lost in parliamentary discussions, and no vocal economic-interest group stepped in to pressure the lawmakers. Not even a comparatively minor issue came to a solution: the right of a woman who married a foreign national to choose between her citizenship and the citizenship of her husband. In Germany, as in many other countries, a woman automatically lost her citizenship when she married a foreign national. International women’s organizations pressed for a harmonization of national law codes and for the right of women to choose, although they disagreed on the desir– 66 –

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Women’s Rights and Housewives’ Power ability of mixed-nationality marriages.11 For German women politicians, the question had some importance because after Versailles many German citizens lived in foreign countries where women might lose all contact with Germany after marrying a foreign national and thus forfeiting their German citizenship. The DVP Reichstag group, led by Matz, Doris Hertwig-Bünger, and Wilhelm Kahl, requested a revision of the German law in 1928, and the DVP women’s press continued to push for the woman’s right to choose.12 The DNVP women agreed in principle that the woman should choose her nationality but worried about mixed-nationality couples in wartime. The Reichstag twice recommended a revision of the law, but the government did nothing.13 One area where women from the DVP and DNVP became more active was the defense of women’s right to work. Right-wing women recognized that, given the large “women surplus” after the war and the hard economic times, women were dependent on access to the professions and needed to be protected there as much as possible. Already during the first national party conferences, the DVP women pushed their colleagues hard to recognize that women needed to work. While attempting to direct women mostly to “female” jobs, the women of the DVP insisted that the party address the rights and needs of working women.14 In a speech published as a pamphlet, the DVP’s Bavarian Landtag representative Gertraud Wolf in 1921 pushed for an extension of women’s rights in the professions. She criticized the mass dismissal of women in the course of demobilization in 1919–20 (which Mende, however, had supported in late 191815), demanded equal salaries for equal work for men and women, and encouraged women to strengthen their professional-interest organizations.16 Throughout the 1920s, DVP women promoted specific rights for professional women, but the Great Depression again put the legitimacy of women’s presence in the professions under attack. DVP women once more had to stress that most women needed to work in order to support their families and relatives and that the summary dismissal of women would not solve the problem of mass unemployment. These arguments also belonged to the arsenal with which DVP women tried to fight the Nazi challenge after 1930.17 The DNVP women pledged to support the expansion of professional women’s rights in their programs, but they stressed even more strongly than the DVP that women, with only a few exceptions, should choose “women’s” professions. The DNVP’s Elisabeth Spohr, for example, often fought for equal rights for professional women in the Prussian Landtag, but she also emphasized that a woman should not be “degraded” to being a man’s competitor on the job market.18 Beate Bartels, a contributor to the Frauenkorrespondenz, went so far as to praise domestic service as the ideal women’s profession and an excellent character-building school for women; she argued that by encouraging obedience and humility, domestic service was the best path to the realization of the “German ideal of womanhood.”19 – 67 –

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Mothers of the Nation A primary battlefield for women’s professional rights was the status of married female civil servants. Although they constituted only a very small percentage of all employed women, their status attracted much attention because the employment practices of the state could serve as a precedent for the treatment of the much larger group of married women working in the private sector.20 Until 1919, German law forced women in the civil service to quit their jobs and to give up their pension claims when they got married. The Weimar Constitution abolished this rule, but various government decrees designed to reduce the number of civil service personnel in 1923 reintroduced some of the old restrictions. This concerned some well-organized professional women, above all the postal and telegraph workers (in the service of the Reich) and the school teachers (in the service of the states). Both of these groups had representatives in the DVP and DNVP. Yet, their interests differed slightly. The Union of the Female Postal and Telegraph Workers (Verband der deutschen Reichspost- und Telegraphenbeamtinnen, VRPT) refrained from pushing hard against the state’s right to dismiss married civil servants because most of the union’s members were young and did not expect to keep their jobs as telephone operators or telegraph transmitters after marriage. Their interest was, above all, to get a compensation payment for lost pensions. Female teachers, however, had longer training and often felt a life-long, personal commitment to their jobs; they therefore more forcefully resisted dismissal because of marriage – regardless of compensation.21 The status of the married civil servant was entangled with other contentious issues, such as the programs to cut civil-service jobs (Beamtenabbau) and the debate over the privileged status of civil servants. Given the strained finances, the Reich and state governments often looked to married women in the civil service as a tempting target for job cuts, claiming that these women were “double-earners” and could, if dismissed, rely on the income of their husbands. The bourgeois parties often feared, however, that the dismissal of tenured female civil servants might poke a hole into the system of life-long job security in the civil service, a privilege already under attack by the working-class parties. For a long time this conflict obstructed a permanent settlement of the issue. From 1923 on, the Reichstag and various state governments adopted temporary rulings that allowed the dismissal of married women from the civil service in exchange for a token compensation. In 1929 the Reichstag reinstituted the original clause from the Constitution, which satisfied women who cherished job security but angered those women who wanted to quit when they got married and needed the indemnification payment to start a family. Yet at a time of renewed pressure on the employment of married women (and of women in general), the Reichstag in May 1932 passed a law that allowed the Reich to dismiss women after marriage in exchange for a small compensation payment. Most German states had similar bills in the pipeline, which quickly became laws in the Third Reich.22 – 68 –

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Women’s Rights and Housewives’ Power In their argumentation over this highly publicized issue, women from the DVP and DNVP generally stressed the woman’s freedom to choose whether she wanted to quit or to combine work and family. Beginning with the debates on the Constitution in the National Assembly, women in both parties argued – against initial opposition from men in the DNVP – that a woman who felt able to reconcile work and family should be allowed to stay in her job. If she chose to quit, however, she should receive compensation for the pension payments that she would forfeit. Both parties, together with the VRPT, for many years followed this line of argument.23 Under the pressure of the economic crisis after 1929, however, the DNVP women became more conservative, justifying the right of the state to dismiss female civil servants – except in economic emergencies – while still stressing that the dismissed woman deserved a compensation payment. They therefore welcomed the law of 1932.24 The DVP women, represented by Elsa Matz in the Reichstag, Anny von Kulesza in the Prussian Landtag, and Doris Hertwig-Bünger in the Saxon Landtag and the Reichstag, defended the women’s right to stay in their jobs more energetically and stressed that only a few “doubleearner” couples were wealthy enough to survive on the husband’s income alone.25 The DVP women thus were critical of the law of 1932. Elsa Matz, the only woman in the DVP Reichstag group at that time, abstained during the vote while the men of her party joined the DNVP, NSDAP, Center Party, and SPD in passing it.26 Yet, while defending women’s right to keep working after marriage, women from both parties agreed that women ideally should leave employment when they got married, so as to devote their energies to their “most important” tasks as mothers and housewives. Paula Mueller-Otfried of the DNVP expressed this in a Reichstag debate in 1923 when she said: “… in all parties, I assume, the wish prevails to lead as many women as possible to their most satisfying and normal occupation – being a wife and mother.”27 Women from both parties feared that having to decide between dismissal without compensation and marriage would tempt a woman to enter into illicit love relationships and thus accelerate the widely proclaimed decline of morality.28 The state should therefore facilitate the transition of the female civil servant from work to motherhood through a compensation payment. A more specific question was whether a woman in the civil service who had an illegitimate child should be dismissed without any compensation. The interest organizations of professional women disagreed on this. Pointing out that public servants should serve as role models, the VRPT demanded that the woman civil servant with an illegitimate child should be subject to disciplinary measures including dismissal, whereas the Union of Female Civil Servants in the Social Sector opposed any disciplinary action.29 This was a thorny topic because there was no agreement on whether the law should treat fathers and mothers of illegitimate children the same way (some disciplinary procedures that were less – 69 –

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Mothers of the Nation dramatic than dismissal were already in place against the fathers of illegitimate children). In the spring of 1922 the issue was debated in the Reichstag, with the DNVP and the Center Party insisting on the immediate dismissal of a female civil servant with an illegitimate child. Mueller-Otfried argued, however, that male civil servants with illegitimate children should continue to face punitive consequences, too. The DVP, represented by Mende, refused to follow the DNVP’s hard line and demanded that each case be examined on its own.30 During the final vote, however, the Center Party switched sides to vote down punitive measures for the mother of an illegitimate child in the civil service, whereas the DVP joined the ranks of the DNVP in the minority that insisted on automatic disciplinary measures. The DNVP women, together with the VRPT, argued that the existing law disadvantaged men by leaving in place some disciplinary procedures against the fathers of illegitimate children while granting women freedom from prosecution. The DNVP’s Hedwig Hoffmann-Bochum claimed in the Reichstag that the law, by giving women this freedom, would further undermine the sanctity of marriage, but her comments provoked the laughter of many deputies from other parties, as the DNVP women’s press noted with outrage.31 In their continuing struggle against this provision, DNVP women were supported by men in their party.32 Apart from civil servants, some other professions also attracted the attention of women from the two parties. They agreed, for example, that the exclusion of women from the legal professions was a major injustice. The DNVP women’s program of 1921 demanded that women be allowed to work as lawyers and be consulted in all trials involving young people. Women from both parties supported bills designed to broaden women’s rights in the legal professions in the Reichstag and various state parliaments.33 Yet, they had to proceed cautiously because many men in their parties rejected the opening of this prestigious male preserve to women and because many women of the rank and file and in the local party organizations shared this reaction. In March 1921, Mueller-Otfried and Behm caused a stir when they broke party discipline and voted for a Communist Reichstag bill providing for women’s right to serve on juries.34 Men in the DNVP Reichstag group were outraged, and local party women insinuated that the party’s female Reichstag representatives here were advancing the selfish women’s rights agenda that they had promised to shun.35 The Communist-sponsored bill, however, failed to get the approval of Germany’s Federal Council. The question therefore returned to the Reichstag, which discussed another bill proposing to give women access to jury duty in April 1922. During the new debate, two men took the stage for the DVP and DNVP, with women making some informal comments during their speeches. For the DVP, Wilhelm Kahl, one of the most respected deputies, argued that service in juries did not accord with the nature of women and that men simply did not like being – 70 –

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Women’s Rights and Housewives’ Power judged by women. Kahl claimed that a majority of German women would reject the bill if they were asked. When a socialist woman denied this claim, women from the bourgeois parties interrupted her and said that Kahl was right. The DNVP’s speaker, Adelbert Düringer, supported the bill but pointed out that many in his party did not. Düringer admitted that “a healthy and natural feeling for justice” was as likely to be found in women as in men and that women would be stricter than men when judging crimes involving brutality or sexual violence. He and the women of his party had tried to build exemption clauses into the law that would have allowed women to reject jury duty during menstruation, but this amendment had failed. The bill passed on 6 April 1922 with the votes of most DNVP and DVP representatives.36 When a bill allowing women to become judges came before the Reichstag not much later, the majority of the DVP deputies including its women supported it, whereas the DNVP voted against it. Leading DNVP women had supported the idea of women as judges, but it appears that resistance against it in the party – among men and women – was particularly strong. Already during the debates on women’s jury service the DNVP women had been forced to deny that the admission of women to jury duty was a precedent for women’s right to serve as judges.37 The buildup of a female police force was another initiative that opened opportunities for women in traditionally male areas while respecting accepted gender differences and hierarchies. The DVP’s Anna Mayer, who occupied a high position in the Prussian Ministry of People’s Welfare, helped direct a pilot project to train and deploy women in the police for specific jobs – mostly the surveillance of prostitutes, the interviewing of children in “problem families,” and other tasks at the intersection of law enforcement and social work. Mayer argued that the female police force showed how women’s enlarged influence could work for the welfare of state and society without undermining the women’s maternal abilities. The DNVP watched these efforts with interest. When Elisabeth Spohr addressed the issue in the Prussian Landtag in 1928 she did not object to women in the police per se but argued that, given the strained state finances, the female police should rely primarily on unpaid volunteers. She probably hoped that the female police would thus broaden the activities and the influence of religious socialwork organizations allied with the DNVP.38 When Saxony adopted a project similar to Prussia’s, the DVP’s Saxon Landtag representative Doris HertwigBünger found it necessary to stress that the female police was no competition to men in the police forces because the women would receive a different training and take over different tasks. She had to justify, in particular, the fact that the women in Saxony received some training in the use of a weapon, which she considered necessary for self-defense.39 Of special interest to the women of the DVP and DNVP were domestic employees and midwives. Both became important because of socialist initiatives. – 71 –

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Mothers of the Nation The SPD and the Communist Party wanted to extend basic workers’ rights to domestic employees, who had until 1918 stood under a restrictive special law, the Gesindeordnung. Domestic employees, virtually 99 percent women, should receive the right to a limited work day and a vacation, maternity protection, and a more specific definition of the tasks they had to perform. Separate bills were debated in 1921–22, 1925, and 1927–30, but the legal situation of domestic employees, who still made up one ninth of all employed women in 1925, remained unresolved; a bill was passed by the Reichstag in 1930 that was never fully implemented.40 With respect to midwives, the Prussian Landtag passed an SPD-sponsored reform law in 1922 that established professional standards for midwives and gave them some social security. But this law had to be revoked because its provisions for a state-controlled network of midwives were found to contradict the law of free movement.41 In both cases, the bourgeois parties opposed what they saw as the socialization of professions that allegedly relied on women’s idealism and defied standard labor regulations. The female politicians of the DVP and DNVP, who took center stage in the discussion of these issues, agreed that the relationship between servant and employer was too personal to allow for a rigid contract in accordance with the labor laws applicable in other professions. They pointed out that the demands of housewives, who usually supervised domestic servants, required an unusual flexibility on the part of the domestic personnel particularly during family reunions and during the housewife’s pregnancy and childbearing times. Clearly, bourgeois women wanted to protect the rights of employers at a time when the economic decline of the German middle classes made domestic servants hard to afford. Many specific issues were debated: the right of the servant to vacations, the maximum period of work without a break, the right of the servant to go to church on Sundays, the registration of domestic employees (including a photo-identification card), protection for the servant before and after the birth of her own child, and many others. Whereas the DVP women, with their close links to the urban housewives’ league (RDH), generally took the side of the employers, the DNVP could not disregard the interests of the female domestic servants, who often voted for it. The DNVP women, feeling pressure from the interest organizations of both sides, thus tried to mediate between the two and to avoid a clear stand. This was made possible because the domestic employee organizations allied with the DNVP were very moderate in their demands and agreed with the housewives on many arguments against greater social security.42 On midwives, the DVP and DNVP women sought a compromise between mothers and midwives, with whose professional organizations both parties kept in contact. While recognizing the need to give more job security to midwives and to establish standards for their training and work, DVP and DNVP women tried to minimize state control and maximize the choice of – 72 –

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Women’s Rights and Housewives’ Power mothers. In the Prussian Landtag, Margarethe Poehlmann of the DVP attacked the SPD bill on midwives as an attempt to socialize this profession and to deprive Christian women of their right to choose a Christian midwife. Her speech received broad applause from the Center Party and the right wing of the Landtag, and Elisabeth Spohr later articulated similar points for the DNVP.43 But the DVP and DNVP women supported the bill after it was revised so as to give mothers the free choice of a midwife.44 Another labor group consisting primarily of women had powerful defenders mostly in the DNVP: the workers employed in domestic industry. This group, a descendant of the proto-industrial cottage system, did manual piecework at home for a distant merchant, usually combining this work with farm and household tasks. This type of work was widespread in some regions of Saxony, Thuringia, and Silesia, particularly in the production of refined textiles and toys. People employed in the home industry lacked most of the social provisions that covered workers in factories.45 DNVP women often argued that work in the domestic industry should be promoted because it allowed women to reconcile work and family and helped small family farms that would not be financially viable without the extra income from the domestic industry.46 Margarethe Behm, as founder and leader of the Union of Female Home Workers, was the most outspoken advocate of this labor group. She used her Reichstag seat to push through social-security legislation for the workers of the home industry, culminating in the passage of a bill granting them extensive insurance coverage in 1922.47 Recognizing her role in this success, the press dubbed the law the “Lex Behm.”48 Her engagement for poor women won her the reputation of being a just and caring mother (or grandmother), and she came to be called “Muttel” Behm (a tender version of “Mother Behm”). On her sixty-fifth birthday in 1925, the Medical Faculty of the University of Greifswald awarded her an honorary doctorate.49 The interest of one women’s group, however, dominated the agenda of rightwing women on women’s issues: the housewives. The economic pressures of the First World War had made most Germans painfully aware of the importance of homemaking. Nobody doubted any more that the role of the housewife as a consumer, as a daily preparer of food, and – in the countryside – as a producer had national importance. Schirmacher had expressed this most powerfully in 1918: “The world war has taught us that cooking and homemaking are service to the country, defense of the country, and a form of citizenship. Not only the sword is a weapon – in the ‘hunger war’, the cooking spoon is equally important.”50 The war had indeed triggered a movement to professionalize homemaking so as to maximize the use of scarce food resources. An avalanche of scientific information and practical advice became available to housewives, who were also recognized as extremely important consumers – given that two-thirds of the national – 73 –

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Mothers of the Nation wealth went through their hands every year. Mindful of many women’s triple load of household, family, and work, home economics experts encouraged women to adopt effective time management, rationalize the household, and adopt certain guidelines for shopping. During the war, urban and rural housewives had formed their national interest organizations, the RDH and the RLHV. The economic crises of the Weimar years lent renewed urgency to the efforts begun during the war, and the housewives’ movement gained mass support. In 1922 the league of urban housewives (RDH) had 250,000 members, and the membership of the league of rural housewives (RLHV) peaked around 100,000 in 1929.51 Housewives’ representatives campaigned to get homemaking recognized as a profession. Many of them saw homemaking and motherhood as woman’s true calling and were suspicious of the claims of women in other professions. They wanted to upgrade the public image of homemaking and to make it economically viable for more (middle-class) women to devote their full energy to the household and family. Most DVP and DNVP women agreed with the housewives’ leaders on women’s ideal calling. In defense against the charge that few politically active women were married and had children, Lenore Kühn had explained that mothers and housewives should not be burdened with political work.52 From this notion followed the claim, however, that single women active in politics had to work for the interests of housewives and mothers. The concerns of housewives indeed stood at the center of the DVP’s and DNVP’s political agenda on women. Kühn herself was very much aware of this when she worked for the RFA in the early 1920s. In daily contact with the DNVP’s women deputies in the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag, she often felt alienated by their excessive stress on housewife issues and their apparent disinterest in educated professional women. After getting particularly exasperated about her work, she confided to her diary in June 1921: “Oh, I wish I was rid of it all, particularly because we academics are really not wanted. The best thing would be to give up my academic title.”53 But Kühn, with her high-flying intellectual interests, probably expressed the point of view of a small minority.54 References to the household as the model for male-female cooperation appeared frequently in the statements of right-wing women. They often suggested that the common sense of the housewife should be inserted into politics and occasionally represented themselves as the housewives in the party household, charged with making new members feel welcome and at home.55 Mende, in particular, stressed the contribution the common sense of housewives would make to political life. She argued that Germany’s economy in the First World War would have worked much better had the authorities drafted more women with housekeeping skills into the administration, and, in a critique of men in the National Assembly in 1919, she claimed that women tended to be more energetic and practical because of their household experience.56 – 74 –

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Women’s Rights and Housewives’ Power The personal connections between the parties and housewives’ groups are striking.57 The rural housewives were strongly involved in the DNVP. The leader of the RLHV, Elisabet Boehm, belonged to the RFA of the DNVP. The urban housewives of the RDH had their closest ties to the DVP. Maria Jecker, chair of the RDH from 1927 on, belonged to the National Women’s Committee of the DVP. Housewives’ activists were also represented in the parliamentary groups of both parties. Among the most notable in the DNVP were Therese Deutsch from East Prussia, who sat in the Prussian Landtag 1921–1932 (with a short interruption in 1928), Else von Sperber, also an East Prussian who sat in the Reichstag from May 1924 to May 1928, and Elsa Hielscher-Panthen from Silesia, who served in the Prussian Landtag from 1924 to 1932. All three were respected rural housewives’ representatives. Another expert on rural homemaking was the home-economics teacher Maria Schott (born 1878), who sat in the Landtag of Sachsen-Weimar and later the Reichstag (March 1923 to May 1928). Two outstanding representatives of urban housewives in the DNVP were Hedwig Hoffmann-Bochum, an urban home-economics expert from Bochum sitting in the Reichstag from 1921 to 1924, and the Silesian noblewoman Freda Freifrau von Rechenberg, who served in the Prussian Landtag from 1924 to 1928 and was the vice-chair of the RFA from 1927 to 1932.58 In the Landtag of MecklenburgSchwerin, the DNVP’s Hanny Voß represented housewives’ interests, and the DNVP also included some well-known housewives without parliamentary seats, such as Martha Voß-Zietz, who chaired the RDH in the early 1920s, and Bertha Hindenberg-Delbrück, a nationally known activist for the same organization in Hanover.59 Besides Jecker and Clara Mende, who had built up her own homeeconomics school in Berlin-Tempelhof, the DVP boasted Charlotte MühsamWerther, the housewives’ representative on the National Economic Council, in its ranks. The DVP’s most important representatives of housewives in parliaments were Milka Fritsch, Reichstag member 1923–24, and Lotte Garnich, Prussian Landtag member 1919–1924. Hedwig Heyl, the prestigious founder of the urban housewives’ movement, was active for the DVP in the city parliament of Berlin.60 Finally, Hilde Margis, a well-known home-economics expert, was chair of the DVP housewives’ committee. Given the intense connections between the housewives’ leagues and the two parties, it comes as no surprise that the DVP and DNVP women supported energetically the policies of these leagues. The “buy German” campaigns of the two housewives’ leagues, in particular, received outspoken support in the women’s press of the DVP and DNVP. Women from both parties criticized the preference of German consumers for white flour over the “German” rye and for tropical fruit over apples grown in Germany. They also encouraged the purchase of German consumer goods by stressing the superior quality of German-made crafts over mass-produced foreign goods – a misleading argument because many – 75 –

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Mothers of the Nation German goods were also mass-produced. Sometimes the “buy German” arguments became rather absurd, as when Else von Sperber mixed health arguments with racial notions in 1930: “In the nordic countries, in particular, the once almost exclusive consumption of rye has led to a beautiful, tall, and strong human type.” (Sperber failed to explain, however, why this had presumably not happened in Poland, where the diet was equally dominated by rye.61) Mende always wrote “meat” in quotation marks when she meant imported meat, and the DNVP’s Martha Voß-Zietz admired Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s measures to restrict the import of foreign food: “How can a responsible citizen today not wish for a man like Mussolini, who ends with a strike of the pen the import of bananas and teaches Germans to eat German apples …?”62 Mussolini’s declaration of a weekly “rice day” to further the appreciation of Italian rice also received the praise of a DNVP commentator, who wished that the German government would introduce a “rye bread day”.63 In the charged nationalist atmosphere of the post-Versailles period, buying German produce and consumer goods appeared as a national duty. The leading women in the two parties often backed up their “buy German” campaigns with calls for higher tariffs on foreign food and consumer goods. This policy, of course, appealed to the economic interests of important voter groups – the East Elbian landowners in the DNVP and small producers and retailers in the DVP. In close contact with the housewives’ leagues, women from the two parties also supported efforts to teach German housewives more efficient ways of cooking and housekeeping. They displayed interest in new developments in household machinery, architecture, and city planning, and they reported extensively about exhibitions on these topics. DNVP women in the Prussian Landtag secured state funds for agricultural schools and research institutions, and the DVP’s Hilde Margis was instrumental in building up a network of courses for urban housewives.64 The stress on household rationalization, however, was not always intended to ease the household work of employed women or to free the housewife so that she could get paid employment outside the house. DNVP women, in particular, hoped that efficient housework would give the (bourgeois) housewife more time for the education of her children and more opportunities for increasing the size of the family – an important task in view of DNVP women’s worries about the low birthrate, particularly that of the middle class.65 The leading women in the DVP and DNVP knew that the availability of cheap labor was of concern to both housewives’ leagues. Right-wing women therefore supported various schemes for a compulsory service year for girls in an urban or rural household. This measure would have ensured a steady supply of essentially free labor to housewives (in fact, some proposals even stipulated that the girls would pay for their “training”!). Also, women in the DVP and DNVP took into – 76 –

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Women’s Rights and Housewives’ Power account the housewives’ opposition to labor legislation upgrading the rights of domestic employees and rural workers – with the DNVP being more constrained here by virtue of its ties to domestic employee organizations.66 Since the proposals for a compulsory service year never came to fruition in the Weimar Republic, right-wing women supported the buildup of voluntary service arrangements instead.67 The housewives’ leagues helped to facilitate such arrangements, while one organization made women’s service and preparation for housework its primary aim: the German Young Women’s Service (Deutscher Jungmädchendienst). Founded in 1923, it enjoyed support from the women of the DVP and DNVP. In its camps, young women learned basic housekeeping, nursing, and infant-care skills and enjoyed the hiking, marching, and fireside singing typical for so many German youth leagues of the period.68 Several right-wing women suggested that the Jungmädchendienst become a model for the compulsory service year. Should this happen, DNVP Reichstag deputy Maria Schott predicted that “a physically and morally healthy Volkstum would blossom again.”69 In conclusion, the women from the DVP and DNVP pushed for women’s rights in some areas but their initiatives often lost their bite due to the women’s own argument that women’s rights should not always be equal to men’s rights because women were not equal to men. If one considered motherhood and housekeeping as women’s first and “natural” duties, then fighting against the dismissal of married female civil servants did not make much sense – particularly if the state agreed to ease the dismissed woman’s transition to housekeeping and motherhood by paying her a compensation sum. Making housekeeping more viable and more effective appeared as a worthy cause, and no interest organization of women had as much power and representation in the DVP and DNVP as the housewives’ leagues. Their concerns therefore dominated the women’s agenda of the two parties, and the discrimination of women in the civil law code received far less attention. Here, the BDF, as the umbrella organization of German bourgeois women, was widely considered the group charged with doing the political legwork, but it was hampered by its strongest members, the two housewives’ leagues.70 Whereas the weight of the housewives’ organizations often acted as a brake on women’s rights demands in the DVP and DNVP, it worked as a push for most of their initiatives with regard to families, youth, education, and morality.

Notes 1. Magdalene von Tiling, “Die verheiratete Beamtin und Artikel 14 der ReichsPersonalabbau-Verordnung,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 51, 20 December 1928 (supplement). – 77 –

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Mothers of the Nation 2. W. Krobiell, “Frauen und deutsche Demokraten,” in Das Demokratische Deutschland 1918/19, no. 36 (17 August 1919): pp. 839–40, in GStA Berlin, XII, III, vol. 10. 3. See the summary of Tiling’s speech: “Tagung des erweiterten RFA der Dn. Vp.”, Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei 4, no. 284, 3 December 1921. 4. See for example Elisabeth Cimbal, “Frauenausschüsse und ihre Arbeitsgebiete,” Schleswig-Holsteinische Stimmen 4, no. 2, 29 January 1922. 5. Frevert, Women in German History, p. 170; Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society (London: Croom Helm, 1975), p. 6; for a good summary of the issues, see Britta Lohschelder, “Die Knäbin mit dem Doktortitel”. Akademikerinnen in der Weimarer Republik, Forum Frauengeschichte 14 (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1994), pp. 8–15. 6. “Deutschnationale Frauenpolitik: Richtlinien der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei für Frauenfragen,” p. 31; “Grundsätze der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei vom Jahre 1920,” in Liebe, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei, pp. 112–19 (points 10 and 29). 7. “Der Parteitag in Leipzig,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 1, no. 5, 30 October 1919. On the genesis of the party program, see Wolfgang Hartenstein, Die Anfänge der Deutschen Volkspartei 1918–1920 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1962), pp. 106–20. See also Clara Mende, Die Deutsche Volkspartei zur Frauenfrage (Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1919), p. 7. 8. Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland 1894–1933, pp. 168–9. 9. Anna Mayer, Die Rechtsstellung der Ehefrau und der ehelichen Mutter, Flugschriften der Deutschen Volkspartei III-9 (Berlin 1921). 10. Erna von Birkhahn, “Eherechts- oder Ehescheidungsreform?” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 19, 9 May 1929; Elisabeth Spohr, “Die elterliche Gewalt der Mutter,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 17, 28 April 1927. 11. Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 146–8. 12. Elsa Matz, “Die Staatsangehörigkeit der Ehefrau,” NLC 57, no. 231, 27 November 1930. See also VdR 1930–1932, vol. 445, pp. 1419–20. 13. “Staatszugehörigkeit der Ehefrau,” Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 2, 14 January 1925; Eli Nathans, “Political Rights and Ethnic Duties: Citizenship Regimes and the Nationality of Married Women in Germany, France, and the United States, 1900–1930,” unpublished manuscript (2001). See also Eli Nathans, The Politics of Citizenship in Germany: Ethnicity, Utility and Nationalism (Oxford: Berg, forthcoming July 2004). 14. Bericht über den Ersten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei am 13. April – 78 –

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15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

1919, pp. 70–1, and Bericht über den Zweiten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei am 18., 19. u. 20. Oktober 1919, pp. 180 and 205. See Clara Mende, “Neue Aufgaben für die deutschen Frauen,” Die Frau in der Politik. Monatsbeilage der “Deutschen Stimmen” 1, no. 11, 24 November 1918, p. 83, in BA Koblenz, ZSg. 1–42 (DVP), vol. 16: “… no woman may leave a returning soldier insecure about his job, not even for a minute.” Gertraud Wolf, Frauenberufsfragen und Politik, Flugschriften der DVP 53, Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1921 (in GStA Berlin, XII, III, vol. 16). See, for example, Martha Schwarz, “Frauen in der Preußischen Unterrichtsverwaltung” and “Leistungsprinzip oder soziale Gehälter,” both in NLC 59, no. 28, 11 February 1932, and J. Lange, “Das junge Mädchen,” NLC 59, no. 34, 18 February 1932. On the reaction to the Nazi challenge, see below, Chapter 9. Elisabeth Spohr, Deutschnationale Vertretung der Fraueninteressen in der Preußischen Landesversammlung (Berlin: Deutschnationale Schriftenvertriebsstelle, n.d. [1920?]), pp. 3 and 14–17. Beate Bartels, “Die Frau gehört ins Haus,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 22, 2 June 1927. See also Elisabeth Spohr, “Berufswahl der Mädchen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 7, 17 February 1927. According to the census figures of 1925, there were only about seven thousand married women in the civil service, as compared to 3.7 million married women working outside the civil service (2.5 million of them were working together with the husband in the family business or the family farm) and a total of 11.5 million working women. These numbers were probably even lower during the Depression. See Lotte Garnich, “Krise und Frauenberufsarbeit,” NLC 59, no. 23, 4 February 1932, and Rosa Kempf, Die deutsche Frau nach der Volks-, Berufs- und Betriebszählung von 1925 (Mannheim: Bensheimer, 1931). Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland, pp. 172–80; Frevert, Women in German History, pp. 197–8; Ursula Nienhaus, “‘Neue Frauen’ im öffentlichen Dienst: Der Frauenverband der deutschen Post- und Telegraphenbeamtinnen (1905–1933).” Internationale Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 34, no. 3–4 (1998): 426–40. “Gesetz über die Rechtstellung [sic] der verheirateten Beamtin,” Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 10, 15 May 1932; Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland, p. 173. See “Frauenfrage,” in Deutschnationaler Rednerführer 1920, pp. 264–5; Hildegard Goetting, Deutschnationale Vertretung der Fraueninteressen in der Deutschen Verfassunggebenden Nationalversammlung (Berlin, 1921), – 79 –

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24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35.

p. 7; and Annagrete Lehmann, “Abfindungssumme für verheiratete Beamtin abgeschafft,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 13, 28 March 1929. Annagrete Lehmann, “Rechtliche Stellung der verheirateten Beamtin und Lehrerin,” Deutschnationale Frau 13, no. 3, 1 May 1931. Ilse Neumann advanced the same argument in the Prussian Landtag: “Aus dem Preußischen Landtag,” Deutschnationale Frau 13, no. 17, 1 December 1931. Anny von Kulesza, Frauenfragen der Gegenwart, Flugschriften der Deutschen Volkspartei 79 (Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1931), pp. 9–11. See also Doris Hertwig-Bünger’s Reichstag speech in VdR, 1928–1930, vol. 424, pp. 1547–8; “Die Unkündbarkeit der verheirateten Beamtin,” NLC 56, no. 67, 28 March 1929; and Anny von Kulesza, “Frauenarbeit – Doppelverdiener,” NLC 58, no. 37, 19 February 1931. “Gesetz über die Rechtstellung [sic] der verheirateten Beamtin,” Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 10, 15 May 1932, and “Reichstagsentscheidung zur Frage der verheirateten Beamtin,” NLC 59, no. 105, 2 June 1932. As quoted in Frauenkorrespondenz 5, no. 6, 23 May 1923. For the DNVP, see Magdalene von Tiling, “Die verheiratete Beamtin.” For the DVP: DVP-Wahlhandbuch 1924, pp. 508–9, and DVP-Wahlhandbuch 1928, pp. 437–8. See the resolution of the VRPT in Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 18, 11 June 1921, and Nora Hartwich, “Die uneheliche Mutterschaft der Sozialbeamtin,” Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 10, 4 February 1922. For a summary of the Reichstag debate, see Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 15, 22 April 1922. “Aus Rt. und Lt.,” Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 20, 15 July 1922. See also VdR, 1920–1924, vol. 354, p. 6932. See Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 21, 29 July 1922, and “Aus Rt. und Lt.,” Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 20, 15 July 1922. For the support of Reinhard Mumm, also a DNVP Reichstag deputy, see Reinhard Mumm, “Der Kampf um die Ehe,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 37, 17 September 1924. “Deutschnationale Frauenpolitik,” p. 31; DVP-Wahlhandbuch 1924, pp. 506–7. Die Deutschnationale Fraktion des Reichstags und die Reichsregierungen Fehrenbach u. Dr. Wirth (Juni 1920–August 1921), Deutschnationales Handbuch 8, Berlin 1921, pp. 108 and 233. Ilse Prehn, “Über weibliche Laien- und Berufsrichter,” in Der Parteifreund 2, no. 23, 9 June 1921; for a resolution of the women’s group of Königsberg against women in juries, see Der Parteifreund 2, nrs. 27/28, 7 July 1921, and on the reaction of DNVP men: Nachlass Westarp, Gärtringen (in private possession), Briefwechsel 1920–22, A–Z. See also Ute Planert, – 80 –

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36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41. 42.

Antifeminismus im Kaiserreich (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1998), p. 247. VdR, 1920–1924, vol. 354, pp. 6913–18. For the text of the law, see Reichsgesetzblatt Teil 1, Jahrgang 1922. Berlin: Verlag des Gesetzessammlungsamts, 1922, p. 465. “Nochmals: Die Frau als Schöffin und Geschworene,” Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 18, 11 June 1921; Die Frau in Familie und Staat, Deutschnationales Rüstzeug 7, Berlin: Deutschnationale Schriftenvertriebsstelle, 1924, p. 20 (in: GstA Berlin, XII, III, vol. 2); LRK [=Lenore Ripke-Kühn], “Weibliche Schöffen und Geschworene,” Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 14, 9 April 1921. Anna Mayer, “Weibliche Polizei in Preußen,” NLC 54, no. 38, 23 February 1927; “Weibliche Polizei,” Frauenkorrespondenz 8, no. 13, 25 March 1926; “Aus dem preußischen Landtage,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 7, 16 February 1928. See also DVP-Wahlhandbuch 1928, pp. 435–6. Doris Hertwig-Bünger, “Weibliche Polizei,” NLC 54, no. 82, 3 May 1927. For background, see Ursula Nienhaus, Nicht für eine Führungsposition geeignet: Josefine Erkens und die Anfänge weiblicher Polizei in Deutschland, 1923–1933 (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1999). Ingrid Wittmann, “‘Echte Weiblichkeit ist ein Dienen’ – Die Hausgehilfin in der Weimarer Republik und im Nationalsozialismus.” In Frauengruppe Faschismusforschung, eds., Mutterkreuz und Arbeitsbuch: Zur Geschichte der Frauen in der Weimarer Republik und im Nationalsozialismus. (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1981), pp. 15–16; Frevert, Women in German History, p. 195; Ute Gerhard, Unerhört: Die Geschichte der deutschen Frauenbewegung (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990), p. 364; Renate Bridenthal, “Class Struggle Around the Hearth: Women and Domestic Service in the Weimar Republic.” In Michael Dobrowski and Isidor Wallimann, eds., Towards the Holocaust: The Social and Economic Collapse of the Weimar Republic. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1983), pp. 247–51. Cornelie Usborne, The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 52–3. Freda von Rechenberg, “Zum Hausgehilfengesetz,” Frauenkorrespondenz 12, no. 1, 2 January 1930; F.W., “Hauswirtschaft und soziale Lasten,” NLC 55, no. 53, 22 March 1928; Maria Jecker, “Zum Entwurf eines Gesetzes über die Beschäftigung in der Hauswirtschaft,” NLC 56, no. 168, 20 August 1929; Theone Polaczek, “Ein Wort zur staatsbürgerlichen Erziehung der Hausangestellten,” NLC 57, no. 165, 27 August 1930. The DNVP usually invited representatives of both sides to meetings on this issue: See the speech by domestic employee Auguste Rhode at the big – 81 –

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43.

44.

45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55.

DNVP women’s meeting in 1921: “Frauenversammlung der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 11, 26 February 1921. For evidence of the conservatism of a domestic employee union linked with the Catholic Church, see Wittmann, “ ‘Echte Weiblichkeit ist ein Dienen,’ ” p. 23. VdL, 1919–1921, vol. XII, pp. 15557–65 and 15599–15601. See also Margarethe Poehlmann, “Das Hebammengesetz,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 5, 3 February 1921. Margarethe Poehlmann, “Das neue preußische Hebammengesetz,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 3, no. 37, 15 September 1922, and Elisabeth Spohr, “Der neue Regierungsentwurf des Hebammengesetzes,” Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 21, 23 July 1921. See also VdL, 1921–1924, vol. VIII, pp. 10596–7. Jean H. Quataert, Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 35–6 and 165–74; Barbara Franzoi Bari, “‘… with the wolf always at the door …’: Women’s Work in Domestic Industry in Britain and Germany.” In Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert, eds., Connecting Spheres: European Women in a Globalizing World, 2nd edn (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Erika Altgelt, “Erhaltung der Heimarbeit,” Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 36, 20 May 1925. Reinhard Mumm, “Der Ehrentag Margarethe Behms,” Der Parteifreund 3, no. 14, 15 April 1922. Ibid. Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 1, 7 January 1925. Käthe Schirmacher, Frauendienstpflicht. Bonn: Marcus und Weber Verlag, 1918, p. 6. Bridenthal, “Class Struggle around the Hearth,” p. 246, and Bridenthal, “Organized Rural Women and the Conservative Mobilization of the German Countryside in the Weimar Republic.” In Larry E. Jones and James Retallack, eds., Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance: Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945 (Providence and Oxford: Berg, 1993), p. 390. Lenore Kühn, “Frau und Volksvertretung,” Frauenkorrespondenz 1, no. 18, 15 May 1920. BA Koblenz, Nachlass Kühn, vol. 8 (diary 1921–22), entry of 22 June 1921. Besides, she downplayed the high respect other DNVP women still showed for her at this time: “I am highly respected and miserably paid.” BA Koblenz, Nachlass Kühn, vol. 8 (diary 1921–22), entry of 11 July 1921. See the appeal of the DNVP’s National Women’s Committee in Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 13, 26 March 1921, and Luise Marelle, – 82 –

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56.

57.

58. 59.

60.

61. 62.

“Antifeminismus und Berufswertung,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 19, 13 May 1920. See Mende’s speech, in 10 Vorträge gehalten auf der Schulungswoche in Darmstadt vom “Deutschen Frauenausschuß zur Bekämpfung der Schuldlüge.” (1925), in BA Koblenz, ZSg. 1–121, p. 41, and Clara Mende, “Die praktische politische Arbeit und die Frauen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 1, no. 3, 17 October 1919. Mende did not imply that women should take over the tasks of men. She merely signaled that if women acted in their fields as energetically as an efficient housewife did, men would do their part, too. On housewives’ issues, see Renate Bridenthal, “‘Professional’ Housewives: Stepsisters of the Women’s Movement.” In Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossman, and Marion Kaplan, eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), and Bridenthal, “Organized Rural Women;” Schmidt-Waldherr, Emanzipation durch Professionalisierung?; Nancy Reagin, “Comparing Apples and Oranges: Housewives and the Politics of Consumption in Interwar Germany.” In Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt, eds., Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Nancy Reagin, “The Foreign Housewife and the German Linen Cabinet: Household Management and National Identity in Imperial Germany.” In Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2000). See also the extensive literature cited in Karen Hagemann, “Of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Housewives: Everyday Housework and the Limits of Household Rationalization in the Urban Working-Class Milieu of the Weimar Republic.” International Review of Social History 41 (1996): 305–30 (here pp. 306–7). Annagrete Lehmann, “Zum Wahlausfall,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 22, 31 May 1928. On Hindenberg-Delbrück, see Nancy Reagin, A German Women’s Movement (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 226–32. On Heyl, see Heidi Koschwitz-Newby, “Hedwig Heyl. Die beste Hausfrau Berlins.” In Christiane Eifert and Susanne Rouette, eds., Unter allen Umständen. Frauengeschichte(n) in Berlin (Berlin: Rotation Verlag, 1986). Else von Sperber, “Unser täglich Brot –,” Frauenkorrespondenz 12, no. 13, 27 March 1930. Martha Voß-Zietz, “Kauft deutsche Waren!” Frauenkorrespondenz 12, no. 3, 16 January 1930; Clara Mende, “Das Interesse der Hausfrau an der Steuer- und Zollpolitik,” NLC 52, no. 160, 1 September 1925. – 83 –

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Mothers of the Nation 63. Dr. Wanda Anger, “Warum Roggenbrot?” Frauenkorrespondenz 12, no. 18, 1 May 1930. 64. Hilde Margis, “Der Aufgabenkreis für die Rationalisierungsbestrebungen im Haushalt,” NLC 54, no. 151, 25 August 1927, and Margis, “Sachlichkeit und Lebensführung,” NLC 57, no. 10, 16 January 1930; “Tagung des Reichsfrauenausschusses der Deutschen Volkspartei,” NLC 54, 27 November 1928 (special edition). See also Deutsch’s speech in VdL, 1924–1928, vol. XII, pp. 17686–9. 65. Elisabeth Spohr, “Volkserstarkung oder Untergang,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 28, 16 July 1924; Reagin, A German Women’s Movement, p. 231. The information about effective cooking and housekeeping may well have been appreciated broadly, but the economic constraints made a mechanization of the German household a unique prerogative of the upper classes. See Reagin, “Comparing Apples and Oranges,” pp. 243–5 and 254, and Hagemann, “Of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Housewives,” p. 305. 66. Bridenthal, “Class Struggle around the Hearth,” pp. 251–3; Reagin, A German Women’s Movement, p. 232; Bridenthal, “Organized Rural Women,” pp. 396–8. 67. See, for example, Asta Rötger, “Vom freiwilligen Arbeitsdienst der Frauen,” Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 18, 15 September 1932; Hannah Brandt, “Dienst,” Frauenkorrespondenz, 22 December 1923; Elisabeth Spohr, “Frauendienstpflicht,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 26, 2 July 1924; Ilse Szagunn, “Idee der Arbeitsdienstpflicht,” NLC 52, no. 4, 5 February 1925. 68. “M.S. [Martha Schwarz], “Deutscher Jungmädchendienst,” NLC 51, no. 126, 1 August 1924; Hannah Brandt, “Völkische Erziehung der deutschen Jungmädchen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 25, 25 June 1924. 69. Maria Schott, “Die weibliche Jugend und die Erwerbslosenfürsorge,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 29, 23 July 1924. 70. Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine in der Weimarer Republik, chapters 2 and 3.

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–5– Family, Youth, and Morality

The German women see their main task as the preservation and strengthening of the German family. It is for us a positive moral value, the basic form of an ethical community, and the basic unit of all cultural life. Marie Bernays at the DVP’s national conference in October 1919.1 Studies by Claudia Koonz and Helen Boak on the parliamentary activities of women from all Weimar parties show that women spoke mostly on topics close to their agreed “maternal” sphere: education, family, social policy, and morality.2 Although foreign policy mattered more than these studies suggest, and enough to justify an extra chapter below, this characterization fits most of the political activities of DVP and DNVP women. The DVP, for example, had twenty women representatives in the Reichstag and the state parliaments in early 1924, and all but one were members of the social-policy committee of their parliament; fourteen of them also belonged to the committee on cultural policy, which dealt with education and matters of morality. The DNVP women showed a preference for the same committees.3 The men in the two parties never questioned that women should take the lead in social and cultural affairs and generally supported their work in these fields. Women from both parties saw the family as the central unit and corner stone of the Volksgemeinschaft. They tended to conceive of their party and the German nation as an extended family in which they played the role of the mother and housewife.4 Just as they saw the Volksgemeinschaft, imagined as a national family, threatened by dissolution, they also believed that the actual family in Germany was in crisis. It did nothing to diminish the passion of their arguments that the “happy” family life of before 1914, which they contrasted with the postwar situation, resembled more a nostalgic vision than a memory of reality. As the main dangers to the postwar family they identified the economic and existential distress caused by the strains of war and the upheavals of the postwar period. Also, the buildup of the secular Weimar state, attempts by the Left to “socialize” the family, and the widespread decline of religious feeling alarmed right-wing defenders of the family. They feared that hedonistic individualism and tolerance for public displays of immorality were eroding the ethical foundations

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Mothers of the Nation of marriage and parenthood at the same time as the material conditions for family life deteriorated. Overworked men and women no longer seemed to have the time and will to foster a harmonious, nurturing, and religious family life for which they often lacked a basic precondition: an adequate apartment. The result of this trend appeared to be the decline of the birthrate, which all right-wing Germans considered a threat to the military strength they hoped Germany would regain in the future. This analysis of the situation induced women from the two parties to support a variety of legislative measures to benefit families (particularly large ones), to halt the secularization of education, and to rein in public displays of immorality. The DVP women were often torn between their religiously motivated conservatism with regard to family and morality and their liberal preference for individual autonomy. Whereas they worked out several compromises between these positions, they never wavered on their goal to increase the birthrate in Germany, a concern motivated by their nationalism. As early as at the second national party conference of the DVP in October 1919, Marie Bernays, a DVP representative in the Landtag of Baden and director of a social women’s school in Mannheim, stressed that the preservation of the German family was the foremost task of German women. She appealed for measures in favor of families with many children and argued that the decline of the birthrate was not due to new professional opportunities for women, as critics of women’s emancipation claimed, but rather to the economic plight of the middle classes.5 In the following years, women from the DVP consistently advocated state support for kinderreiche (“child-rich” or large) families. Through tax relief and rent subsidies, the state should encourage Germans to have more children and improve the situation of those who already had many children. In the rhetoric of DVP women, a “healthy” family policy and support for large families were the same thing. The DVP supported several Reichstag interpellations calling on the government to help large families and to better protect mothers after childbirth.6 When new census figures released in 1925 showed a further decline of the birthrate, Elsa Matz warned in a leader article for the Nationalliberale Correspondenz that the Germans would soon become a dying people. Criticizing a bill that would have worsened the situation of large families, she asked: “Who wonders in the face of these facts that in Germany the ‘fear of having a child’ constantly increases?”7 In a similar vein, she demanded that the government fund more research into the causes of German emigration.8 To bolster their argument for the national importance of an increased birthrate, DVP women occasionally alluded to France, where the birthrate had declined that much earlier than in Germany. Else Broekelschen-Kemper, a DVP deputy in the Prussian Landtag, drew a particularly alarmist picture in 1929. Regarding the single child as power-hungry and greedy, Broekelschen-Kemper argued that the preponderance of single-child – 86 –

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Family, Youth, and Morality families in France had replaced an older hospitable culture with a selfish, hedonistic society and that the low birthrate had created a labor shortage leading to the decline of agriculture and the rise of foreign immigration.9 Concern about the birthrate also informed the policies of DVP women in other issues regarding the family. With respect to the status of illegitimate children, for example, the DVP women adopted a compromise formula between their religiously motivated will to protect marriage and their aim to increase the birthrate. They opted for improving support for the illegitimate child while insisting on the inferiority of the child’s position compared to the position of legitimate children.10 The legalization of abortion, which was demanded by several bills presented by the Communists and the SPD, drew opposition from the DVP not only for religious reasons but also because of fears regarding the declining birthrate. Dr. Ilse Szagunn, as the DVP’s medical expert, defended the illegality of abortion but supported a reduction of the severe punishments for it.11 A bill drafted along those lines passed in 1926 with the votes of the DVP, the socialist parties, and the Democratic Party, but it was opposed by the DNVP and Center Party.12 The reform of divorce law, debated in the Reichstag in 1926, had a less compelling connection to the birthrate but forced the DVP and its women to steer a middle course between religious respect for marriage and liberal criticism of the cumbersome and prohibitive divorce regulations of German civil law. To protect the family, DVP women wanted to ensure that divorce could not be achieved easily, but they also recognized that in some cases marriages were unsalvageable and should be ended.13 DVP women did not ignore the social conditions that worked against large families, such as low income and inadequate housing. When advocating relief of these conditions, DVP women had to walk a thin line between proposing effective improvements and supporting policies advanced by the Left, which usually offended the DVP’s liberal distaste for massive state intervention. This becomes clear in the stands of the DVP’s expert on housing and urban development, Doris Hertwig-Bünger, who sat in the Saxon Landtag and later in the Reichstag. Hertwig-Bünger stressed repeatedly that state incentives for the building of apartments were a basic form of support for families with many children. When the Communists presented a Reichstag bill supportive of these goals, however, Hertwig-Bünger opposed it because she found in it too much emphasis on state control, excessively permissive provisions regarding abortion, and unrealistic financial demands.14 Minimizing state control over family life was a concern also when the DVP women opposed a Communist bill for the establishment of mandatory Kindergartens for all children at least three years of age.15 Whereas eugenic arguments played an important role in the controversies over reproduction during the Weimar Republic, particularly on the Left, DVP women only marginally participated in that debate.16 Bernays’ reference to the plight of – 87 –

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Mothers of the Nation the middle class in her speech on the decline of the birthrate makes it clear that DVP women thought primarily of increasing the family size of the middle classes, which tended to have a lower birthrate than the working class (although the birthrate was declining across the board). But this class bias was rarely spelled out; generally DVP women restricted themselves to pushing for a generic increase of the population through fiscal and social measures. Szagunn agreed on the need to include eugenic perspectives in the abortion debate but did not push that argument.17 That eugenics and abortion found little resonance among DVP women may also have been because the Communists and SPD took the initiative in these fields for much of the Weimar Republic. At the DVP women’s national conference in May 1929, for example, Broekelschen-Kemper warned that state-supported information agencies on family questions could be used to disseminate left-wing ideas on reproduction and to hand out contraceptive devices. This warning reflected the typical distrust all right-wing women felt toward the SPD-led Prussian government, which was doing pioneering work in its centers for eugenic advice.18 The DNVP women took similar stands to DVP women on family and reproduction but tended to stress their conservative and religious views more and were much more likely than DVP women to place their concerns into a racial context. The DNVP guidelines for women’s work in the party articulate clearly the religious foundation of the DNVP women’s family policies: “The German Nationalist woman sees in the Christian family the basis of a prospering people and state and thus stands primarily for the safeguarding of Christian marriage and for Christian childrearing … All measures beneficial to the foundation of families and providing relief to families with many children are to be supported energetically.”19 In all parliaments, the DNVP acted accordingly. In the Reichstag, it pushed successfully for an increase in the unemployment benefits for workers with families in 1924.20 In the Prussian Landtag, Elisabeth Spohr and Ilse-Charlotte Noack demanded priority for large families in the distribution of apartments and land by the state of Prussia, and their colleague Therese Deutsch pushed for greater benefits for these families as well: “The state has to show clearly that it regards these families as the sources of strength for the future.”21 Deutsch also demanded higher state funding for the National League of Large Families (Reichsbund der Kinderreichen), with which the DNVP fostered close contacts. (The leader of this organization, Martha Storost, ran on the DNVP ticket in Prussia in 1924 – though unsuccessfully.)22 Most DNVP women probably agreed with the comments of the DVP’s Broekelschen-Kemper on the low birthrate in France, although this argument would take a more explicit racist tone in the DNVP. A woman writing for the official DNVP yearbook for 1920, for example, declared that the two-child family was a “Latin disease” indicating racial decline.23 – 88 –

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Family, Youth, and Morality On abortion and divorce, the DNVP opposed liberalization together with the Center Party. In a typical diatribe against abortion, Elisabeth Spohr argued that the thought of a person’s right to his or her body was “poison” poured out by the same circles that had undermined the Germans’ will to demonstrate obedience and service and thus caused Germany’s breakdown in 1918. Spohr claimed that the middle classes would sink into the proletariat all the faster if they limited their fertility and that the unskilled worker would procreate so much that he would soon represent the physical and mental “type” of the German. How a large number of children would economically benefit middle-class families, however, remained Spohr’s secret.24 With respect to divorce law, the DNVP women emphasized the sanctity of marriage and praised self-control and self-discipline as the best remedy for unhappy marriages, although many of them also pointed out the injustices to women contained in the existing law.25 On illegitimate children, DNVP women took the same position as DVP women, seeking to improve the social situation of these children while denying them the same rights as “legitimate” children.26 The campaign of DNVP women for the family resorted much more readily to simplified, paranoid, and racist images than did the rhetoric of DVP women. Often the women from the DNVP invoked the vision of social chaos in the Soviet Union and the fear that Poles and Russians, who had a much higher birthrate than the Germans, might soon overrun Germany. DNVP women thus connected the widespread concern about the “bleeding border” in the east – the notion that the drawing of the German-Polish border after 1918 had disadvantaged Germany and was causing great suffering for the Germans on both sides – to the vision of Slavs and Bolsheviks overwhelming a declining German people.27 At the DNVP’s national conference in Königsberg (East Prussia) in September 1927, Annagrete Lehmann argued that the dissolution of the family and the dechristianization of culture in Germany would lead to a situation similar to the one that existed in the Soviet Union: hundreds of thousands of abandoned children would roam through the cities and the countryside, divorce would be easily available, and the sexual license of young men would go unchecked.28 Often DNVP women implied that Communists, Social Democrats, and atheists all formed a fifth column for the eastern menace in Germany. The RFA secretary Hannah Brandt, for example, accused socialists of wanting to dissolve the family by establishing communal Kindergartens and by upgrading the status of unmarried couples. She called this policy a “Bolshevization of German notions of custom and morality.”29 When Lehmann spoke in the Reichstag against a Communist proposal for the liberalization of abortion, she argued that the decline of the birthrate could only be ascribed to the rise of atheism that was killing the commitment to having a child.30 In the Prussian Landtag, Dr. Helene von Watter argued in February 1929 that social legislation had failed to reverse the decline – 89 –

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Mothers of the Nation of the birthrate and that only “a different moral, ethical, and Christian attitude” could help. Watter alluded to the high birthrate in Russia and Poland when she warned: “If our people fails to fundamentally change in this respect over the coming years then we will soon be overgrown and overpopulated [überwuchert und übervölkert] by the other countries and states – and this without war or other external events.”31 This mood reached fever pitch in the last years of the Weimar Republic, when concern about a further decline of the birthrate due to the Great Depression, and anxiety about the spread of atheistic movements from the Soviet Union to Germany, gripped many on the German right. The renewed attacks of the Stalin regime against the Churches in the Soviet Union and the growing strength of the Communist Party in Germany further fueled these fears.32 A memorandum written by DNVP women in February 1932 stated that the Germans would soon be a “dying people” because their governments had made them bear too much economic hardship since 1918.33 In a sharp attack on the social policies of the German government, Reichstag deputy Magdalene von Tiling argued a few months later that the government had strengthened the trend toward families with only one or two children. In 1950 the population of Germany would therefore sharply decline, and the Germans would no longer be a “people without space” but would have to open themselves to the “inflow of Slavic blood.”34 In the election campaigns of 1932, Annagrete Lehmann often conjured up the image of a final struggle between the national-Christian camp and the international-atheistic “forces destructive of the family” associated with the Slavs in Eastern Europe and the Communist Party in Germany.35 The racist connotations of these horror scenarios fit well with the racial hygienic ideas that came to dominate the thinking of some DNVP women on reproductive issues.36 The leading exponents of this trend among the DNVP women were the völkisch women’s activists, above all Käthe Schirmacher, Ilse Hamel, and Erna von Birkhahn, member of the RFA and chair of the DNVP’s provincial women’s committee in Mecklenburg.37 They combined a commitment to women’s rights with a racialized vision of the Volksgemeinschaft similar to the one promoted by leading Nazi theorists. In an article on “völkisch longing,” for example, Erna von Birkhahn argued that a true Volksgemeinschaft could only develop among people of the same race. Therefore, mixed-race marriages should be discouraged and only “German-blooded people” (Deutschblütige) should be allowed to shape German culture and law.38 Whereas Birkhahn did not explicitly refer to Jews, Ilse Hamel argued that “a natural, unbridgeable antagonism” exists between Aryans and Jews. Believing that the Germanic woman would instinctively choose a partner with the same racial background, she accused Jews of interfering with that racial intuition through their corrupting cultural influence. Hamel concluded with an urgent call to all German mothers to instill in their children the “horror of mixed marriages and the dangers of hybrid blood.”39 – 90 –

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Family, Youth, and Morality Hamel repeatedly stressed that it was the task of the German woman to strengthen the Nordic element of the population (Aufnordung), a point also made by Schirmacher in speeches at the 1925 meeting of the DNVP’s Völkisch Committee and the national party conference in 1926.40 These ideas, propagated by the völkisch women’s activists throughout the 1920s, became predominant in the thinking of DNVP women after 1930 with the encouragement of RFA chair Annagrete Lehmann. Related to the concern about the family and the birthrate, issues regarding education and youth also figured prominently on the agenda of DVP and DNVP women. Given the strong representation of schoolteachers in the ranks of politically active women, the interest of these women in school legislation and all aspects of youth comes as no surprise. In several regions, the women’s committees of both parties inspired the creation and helped in the development of youth committees.41 Women from both parties considered youth concerns and education a central aspect of women’s activity, and they often hoped to create the legislative framework for a new generation educated in a more patriotic and religious spirit.42 Right-wing women agreed that German women should raise a new generation of more patriotic, self-sacrificing, and determined Germans. As the DNVP’s Klara Klotz, chair of the LFA Württemberg, put it before the DNVP women’s conference of September 1926: “Through us mothers, the family should become Germany’s psychological and mental arms factory.”43 For the DVP, Marie Bernays had already written in 1920 that instilling a nationalist attitude in children must become a universal mission of German schools: “We, the women, will always protest if critics argue that education toward a nationalist attitude is tantamount to the political influencing of youth. We do not want the talk of tolerance and the reconciliation of peoples to allow our children to forget that their fathers died for our freedom.”44 The idea that women or mothers had the power and duty to raise a new generation in a more nationalist spirit appeared frequently in the deliberations of DVP women on foreign policy. The Reichstag deputy Katharina Kardorff-von Oheimb, for example, spoke of children as a “sleeping army,” and Emma Stropp declared it a special duty of women to protest national humiliation by considering the future of German children.45 Here was a vital connection between women’s activities in education and morality and their nationalism. Believing that Germany’s defeat in 1918 had been in part an outcome of moral weakness already manifest before 1914, right-wing women wanted to strengthen the moral fiber of the nation by working for a more nationalist and authoritarian education. While emphasizing this connection, right-wing women also made a point for the national importance of their primary fields of interest, often belittled by men. In their statements about youth, women from the DNVP and, to a lesser degree, the DVP often revealed a patronizing and authoritarian pedagogy, as exemplified – 91 –

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Mothers of the Nation by the Martin Luther statement quoted in a DNVP pamphlet: “The apple has to lie next to the whip.”46 Women from both parties agreed that the lowering of the voting age from twenty-five to twenty in 1919 was a mistake. In the National Assembly, Margarethe Behm spoke against this reform in an amused atmosphere: “The male youth, in particular, is real cider in this age group, (very good! On the right) it can turn into beautiful wine, better than the one we get nowadays, (laughter and approval) but it still is only cider, (very true! On the right) and we have to wish that it turns only into the most noble wine.”47 Occasionally DVP and DNVP women admitted their fears that the lower voting age benefited mostly the extremist parties, but they always justified a higher voting age on pedagogical grounds.48 Tiling often stressed that the young person, particularly the girl, should not be confronted with too many adult matters. At an RFA meeting in 1928, Lehmann gave this argument a racist twist by arguing that the Nordic girl had the tendency to mature more slowly than others but that Jewish influence in pedagogy was forcing her to confront sexual matters earlier than would be natural for her.49 But the raising of the voting age, although demanded by the programs of both parties, was hard to effect. The biggest debates on youth and education thus focused on other matters, particularly the school system. The Weimar Constitution stated that three types of school should exist: common schools for children of all religious denominations, religious schools where the teachers and the majority of students would belong to the same denomination, and secular schools without any religious orientation. The first type of school received a preferential position, but the Constitution left the specifics to be defined by the Reichstag in a national school law. The Reichstag debated the issue repeatedly in the early 1920s, but only in 1927 did the government present a bill that seemed to have a chance to pass. The DNVP’s Interior Minister Walter von Keudell had presided over the drafting of the bill; the school experts Elsa Matz from the DVP and Ulrike Scheidel from the DNVP were involved in the committee deliberations, and Prussian Landtag deputy Magdalene von Tiling had been consulted as well.50 The National School Bill, supported by the Center Party, the BVP, and the DNVP, proposed to abolish the preferential treatment of the common school and to provide for an easier transformation of common schools into denominational schools according to the wish of parents. The bill was debated from October 1927 to February 1928. The leftwing parties and the Democratic Party opposed it because they claimed that it gave an advantage to denominational schools. Decisive was the fact that the DVP, which was at this time seeking to reaffirm its liberal principles, dragged its feet. When the Center Party proved unwilling to compromise on some DVP demands for revision that would have allowed the DVP to save its liberal face, the coalition government of DVP, Center Party, and DNVP broke apart and negotiations on the bill collapsed.51 – 92 –

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Family, Youth, and Morality The DVP women watched the fate of the National School Bill with ambivalence. Given that Matz and other DVP women were well-connected to the Evangelical Church, the improved position of religious schools cannot have offended them. In fact, they had repeatedly demanded better protection for denominational schools. Margarethe Detmering, a DVP representative in the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had even managed to push the Landtag to increase the amount of religious instruction in public schools from two to three hours a week.52 When the National School Bill was published, Clara Mende welcomed it and offered criticism only of some details.53 Yet, the DVP women’s press remained remarkably silent over the following months. Probably Matz and her colleagues decided to follow the more critical party line. After the collapse of the government, the DVP women again addressed the bill in public, but mostly in order to deny the polemical charge from the Center and DNVP that the DVP had caused the collapse because it wanted to ban religion from the schools.54 The DNVP was outraged after the failure of the bill, most of all Magdalene von Tiling. As a prolific author of pedagogical works, Tiling had published a pamphlet on the National School Bill, which she regarded to some extent as her personal cause, even though she was not (yet) in the Reichstag.55 Tiling and other DNVP women had always defended the influence of religion in the schools and the value of denominational schools. They resented the fact that the spirit of Christianity did not have to permeate all classes in the privileged common schools, although these schools did offer religion lessons. That some common schools had been transformed into secular schools angered the DNVP women particularly. They kept a watchful eye over developments at these schools, mostly in Berlin, and brought to nationwide attention what they considered their most glaring abuses. In early 1924, for example, the DNVP claimed that some secular schools in Berlin had allowed students of both sexes to perform naked dances. Gertrud Becker, a DNVP deputy in the Berlin city parliament, publicized the story and demanded legal measures to prevent a recurrence of this event. The DNVP even brought the issue before the Landtag and used it in its campaign for the May 1924 Reichstag elections.56 In 1926, the DNVP women protested against the appointment of an atheistic school councillor as head of the schools of Dortmund. This appointment provoked angry reactions from Christian parents, who even initiated a “school strike” by refusing to send their children to school. A male Prussian Landtag deputy from the DNVP argued that it was a scandal that religious schools should be put under the supervision of somebody who “considers the truths of the Christian religion mistakes.”57 In 1928, Hannah Brandt, the secretary of the RFA, exposed one secular school in Berlin after it distributed communist song books to its students, and another after its students were required to sing the Communist International while marching.58 In the same year Lehmann attacked a new Prussian government decree stating that students in – 93 –

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Mothers of the Nation state schools had to sing republican songs and to receive instruction on the League of Nations, which Germany had joined in 1926. This contradicted the DNVP’s demand – advanced also by DVP women – that instruction on the Treaty of Versailles and the “war-guilt lie” be made mandatory at all schools.59 Frequently the DNVP women played on anti-Semitic stereotypes by pointing out that some of the school officials presiding over the Berlin schools were Jewish. Gertrud Becker in 1924 depicted Jews as the seducers of German youth by insinuating that Jews had inspired the naked dances. Berlin’s school councillor Dr. Kurt Löwenstein became the target of special resentment from DNVP women because of his Jewish background: as early as 1920, a speaker at a DNVP women’s conference in Königsberg exclaimed: “It is outrageous that the government dares to offer us a Dr. Löwenstein as supreme school councillor.”60 Memory of the perceived outrages at secular schools loomed large when DNVP women enthusiastically welcomed the illegal overthrow of the SPD-led caretaker Prussian government by Chancellor Franz von Papen on 20 July 1932.61 Whereas the DVP women stayed aloof from the DNVP women’s struggle against the secular schools, women from both parties agreed on the defense of private education against the encroachments of the state, while also demanding state support for these schools. Private girls’ schools, in particular, received much attention from them. Many of these schools had been built up by charismatic women before 1914. The DVP women often stressed the pedagogical value of the girls’ schools and argued that coeducational schools tended to make girls feel more apprehensive and shy than single-sex institutions. The DVP school expert Dr. Marie Bernays, herself the director of a girls’ school, argued that such institutions were more flexible and innovative than the state schools and more inspired by the spirit of morality. Bernays also pointed out that these schools were crucial for girls because the teachers were mostly women. Elsa Matz, who was the director of a girls’ school in Stettin (Pomerania), made the same argument several times in the first Reichstag (1920–24), and Dr. Gertraud Wolf repeated it in the Bavarian Landtag. Margarethe Poehlmann, who had founded a girls’ school in Tilsit (Russia – after 1918: Lithuania) before the war, represented the interests of girls’ schools in the Prussian Landtag until her death in December 1923.62 But with all the stress on the need for a different curriculum for girls, the DVP women also demanded that the degree of the girls’ schools must be equivalent to the degree from the mainstream Realschule.63 They therefore combined the argument for essential difference between the sexes with a claim for equal opportunities. The DNVP women saw the girls’ school primarily as a threatened space where German girls still received a reliable national and Christian education – far from the allegedly internationalist and hyper-intellectual training that girls received in the state schools. Tiling argued that girls’ schools should continue to emphasize – 94 –

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Family, Youth, and Morality subjects that related to Germany’s cultural heritage and to religious ethics. Together with other DNVP women, she often stressed that the girls’ school should offer a different curriculum from that of coeducational or boys’ schools because girls suffered from an overly intellectualized curriculum.64 DNVP women thereby put less emphasis on equal opportunities than their DVP colleagues, but women from both parties were in complete agreement that the faculty of girls’ schools should consist mostly of women and that women should, as a rule, be their directors. They fought several changes of state regulations that threatened to reduce the number of women teachers in the girls’ schools.65 In connection with youth and education, women from the two parties frequently raised public-health issues, particularly the dangers of alcohol abuse. The physical damage alcohol inflicted on young people was seen as a threat to the future viability of the Volk.66 In the Reichstag, Mueller-Otfried attacked the government in 1921 for doing too little to combat alcohol abuse: “How much longer will the patience of those people be strained who do no longer want to see our people’s potential and its force squandered by increasing alcohol abuse?”67 Therese Deutsch, as DNVP deputy in the Prussian Landtag, suggested that train stations should promote the sale of milk and reduce the sale of alcoholic beverages, and Elisabeth Spohr, also in the Prussian Landtag, sharply criticized the German government for permitting advertisements for alcoholic beverages on the national railroad. 68 Spohr called for a broad information campaign on the model of American temperance campaigns. Like many other political women, she believed that the fight against alcohol abuse was a special cause of women: “We, the women, are looking for positive tasks that contribute to the rebuilding of the people (Volksaufbau). Here is a task where women have to participate with special energy.” Spohr also hit a note frequently used by women from the DVP and DNVP when she deplored the waste of sugar, fruit, and other nutrients in the production of alcoholic beverages.69 A special concern about alcohol abuse in public was raised by Klara Klotz, the DNVP’s only female legislator in the Landtag of Württemberg, during the Ruhr Occupation in 1923: “In this deadly serious time of suffering – and out of respect for the heroic Ruhr population and its horrible suffering – our public life has to become pure and German again.”70 The women of the DVP also made temperance a central element of their policies regarding families and youth.71 In the Prussian Landtag, Margarethe Poehlmann demanded more protection for young people against the dangers of alcohol and smoking, and Gertraud Wolf voiced similar concerns in the Bavarian Landtag.72 In 1928 Wolf published an article with the title “More Milk!” describing Bavarian projects to propagate the health benefits of milk consumption and to accustom young people to drinking milk regularly; the call mehr Milch! may have reminded educated Germans of the motto mehr Licht! (more light!) – Goethe’s often quoted last words.73 Wolf and other women also pushed – 95 –

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Mothers of the Nation for a revision of laws that considered drunkenness an extenuating circumstance.74 To rein in alcohol abuse, women from the two parties demanded or supported a variety of measures. They asked the state to become more active in alcohol-awareness education, to limit or ban the sale of alcoholic beverages to young people, to raise taxes on alcohol consumption, and to restrict the advertising of alcoholic beverages. The temperance struggle had a long tradition in the German and international women’s movement, and women from the DVP and DNVP here advanced nearly identical proposals that were frequently supported by women from the Democratic Party and other parties as well, though with little success, given the opposition of the beer and wine lobby connected to male legislators on the right. Women from both parties watched with interest the enactment of prohibition legislation in the United States, but they usually doubted that fullscale prohibition would be possible in Germany and worried about its effects in America. After Clara Mende had visited the Washington conference of the International Council of Women in 1925, she argued that prohibition legislation in the United States had led to a lowering of morals and an increase of alcohol consumption among young people, particularly girls.75 Whereas the alcohol issue concerned mostly the prevention of a physical and moral danger to youth, women legislators were also active in promoting measures to enhance the health of the people, in particular the young. More than the men in their parties, women of the DVP and DNVP encouraged sports. Although gymnastics had a long and honored tradition in Germany beginning with the exercises of “Vater” Friedrich Ludwig Jahn in the aftermath of the liberation wars against Napoleon, most schools still lacked facilities and a commitment to physical education in the 1920s.76 Matz repeatedly assured the Reichstag that supporting sports was meant more to benefit the people’s health and morality than to encourage the pursuit of top-performance sports and the “Schmeling hype” – the wave of national excitement created by the exploits of boxing star Max Schmeling. Yet she did point out to the Reichstag that German successes at the Olympic Games of 1928 had enhanced Germany’s reputation abroad – particularly “considering the friendliness toward sports in the Anglo-Saxon countries” – and thus demanded more state support for the German Olympic team.77 In a paradigmatic statement, Matz explained to the Reichstag in 1928 that exercise strengthened the will and self-control of young people while making them less susceptible to “those pleasures that tend to destroy the body and the spirit.” Obviously, her remarks provoked some smiling among men in the Reichstag, to which she reacted with the following words: “I know very well that my talking about these things does not cause general happiness in the Reichstag, but I want to stress that a little more personal experience with gymnastics and sports would do many of the members of this high house no harm.”78 In the DNVP, several women in the Prussian Landtag took up similar causes. Therese Deutsch asked – 96 –

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Family, Youth, and Morality the state to support youth hiking by funding the network of youth hostels that was being built up on the initiative of General Rüdiger von der Goltz.79 Freifrau Helene von Watter, also a DNVP Landtag deputy, was on the board of the German Gymnastics League (Deutsche Turnerschaft) and demanded in the Prussian Landtag that sports be emphasized more because they helped Germans “to preserve their last good, their genetic heritage.”80 Beate Bartels argued in the DNVP’s Frauenkorrespondenz that sports lessons in school had to stress character formation and not “American striving for records.” Otherwise, she argued, the school would stir up ambition and arrogance, which Bartels considered twice as obnoxious in girls as in boys.81 Directly related to youth issues was the women’s concern over public morality. This theme played a key role in the work of women legislators and activists from both parties. The absence of many fathers and the increasing problems of policing the home front had already created a widespread sense of alarm among educators during the First World War. Later, the upheavals of the postwar period appeared to prevent the restoration of the protective environment that youth deserved, as the Weimar Republic seemed to have given free rein to public displays of vice. Images of neglected, aggressive, and hedonistic youngsters abounded. A contributor to the DVP-Nachrichtenblatt, for example, claimed in 1920 that young people spent all their money on beer and cigarettes and had to be taught respect for spiritual work, a task that only women’s educational influence could achieve.82 One of the key points of the DNVP women’s program of 1921 was the fight against public displays of immorality – against the proliferation of “trash and dirt” in literature, film, and theater.83 Women from almost all parties in the Reichstag agreed on the need for restrictive legislation, although they differed on how much control and censorship could pass before fundamental freedoms were violated. In August 1925, the DNVP’s Interior Minister Martin Schiele proposed a bill to the Reichstag to tighten censorship rules and to establish a reviewing board charged with identifying publications containing dangers for youth. Reichstag members Elsa Matz from the DVP as well as Ulrike Scheidel and Paula Mueller-Otfried from the DNVP helped to draft the bill and to promote it afterwards. The bill was debated for over a year and became law on 18 December 1926 with the support of the DVP, DNVP, and the Center Party, serving, in the words of historian Cornelie Usborne, as “a reminder of the importance of conservative forces amidst the social revolution of the ‘roaring twenties’.”84 Typical for right-wing women, an author in the Frauenkorrespondenz in early 1926 justified the bill and demanded that women play a central role in its implementation. “It [the bill] calls for women who are ready to fight with their maternal feeling for women’s dignity.” She claimed that women had a particular role in fighting public immorality because they had a more refined sense of shame and were more likely than men to be denigrated by immoral literary or – 97 –

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Mothers of the Nation artistic products.85 After the passage of the bill, Elsa Matz was appointed to the highest national control committee on film (Filmoberprüfstelle). How inclusive her definition of immorality and danger to youth was became clear when she justified the banning of the anti-war film “All Quiet on the Western Front” in late 1930, blaming the film for damaging German prestige abroad, offending veterans, and provoking unrest.86 Whereas DNVP women had no problem with censorship, DVP women occasionally saw the need to justify their positions in this field in front of the men in their party. Matz admitted that, against her advice, the majority of the DVP Reichstag group had voted against the ban of “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Therefore, Prussian Landtag deputy Anny von Kulesza took pains to explain to the DVP’s national conference in 1930 that the struggle against public displays of immorality did not contradict liberal principles, even though she advocated such illiberal positions as censorship and the employment of religious persons as teachers.87 In the context of public morality, prostitution was an important topic because it revealed a double standard of morality for men and women and because most bourgeois women considered it a great danger to the health of the Volk through its role in the spread of venereal disease. Already before the First World War, the German women’s movement had attacked the arbitrary control and regulation of prostitutes by the police as an injustice that rested on double standards of morality.88 After the war, this claim was revived in the context of concern over venereal diseases that were believed to have spread dramatically during the war.89 DVP and DNVP women argued that police regulation provided a false sense of security against the spread of venereal disease because the vast majority of prostitutes were “wild,” meaning unregistered, practitioners of their trade. Women from both parties urged lawmakers to rein in prostitution in general and thus to prevent the spread of venereal disease. They also criticized the inconsistent state policy that declared prostitution illegal while helping to organize it. In 1927, the Reichstag finally abolished police regulation and decriminalized prostitution through the Law on the Struggle Against Venereal Disease. Women from both parties welcomed the change, but the DNVP commentator, Reichstag member Ulrike Scheidel, demanded that the new law be followed up by a law allowing the police to take some prostitutes into custody. Scheidel argued that three out of four prostitutes were mentally disturbed and should be sent to rural work colonies.90 Women from both parties also pressed hard for bans on the employment of young women in bars that used the sexual appeal of these women to lure male customers and to increase their alcohol consumption (Animierkneipen). The National Assembly passed a law restricting this abuse in December 1919, and when the Prussian Landtag in 1921 deliberated a law on the employment of women in the hotel and restaurant sector, Margarethe Poehlmann and Lotte Garnich of the DVP as well as Elisabeth Spohr and Ilse-Charlotte – 98 –

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Family, Youth, and Morality Noack of the DNVP demanded a complete ban of the Animierkneipen in Prussia – but to no avail.91 In general, women from the DVP and DNVP pursued similar policies with respect to family, youth, and morality, with the former being occasionally a little more liberal (divorce, abortion) and the latter more religious and racially oriented. With respect to these issues, the DNVP and often the DVP thus belonged to the “moral” or “religious” Right and cooperated with the Center Party and the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP).92 Women from both parties had important connections to the Evangelical Church and to prestigious male Reichstag members associated with it: Wilhelm Kahl in the DVP and Reinhard Mumm in the DNVP.93 The racist element in the DNVP women’s discourse on the birthrate, health, and morality shows that some DNVP women already thought of the Volksgemeinschaft in strictly racial terms, but this thinking had no obvious equivalent in the DVP. Yet all the policies adopted by women from both parties were consistent in their aim to strengthen morally and physically a nation weakened by the effects of war and economic crisis. Their efforts to strengthen the family, increase the birthrate, and fight amorality in education and public displays aimed at making the German people united and strong. This meant to stem a widely perceived decline but could also be seen as a preparation of the Volkskörper for a new war in which a “healthy”, purged Germany would do better than it had in 1914–1918. Klotz’s reference to mothers as Germany’s “arms factory” points in that direction.

Notes 1. Bericht über den Zweiten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei am 18., 19. u. 20. Oktober 1919, pp. 177–8. Emphasis in the original. 2. Boak, “Women in Weimar Politics”, p. 379 (calls social and cultural policies a “not very prestigious area”); Koonz, “Conflicting Allegiances,” pp. 671–4 (stresses the division of political concerns of legislators along sex lines). One should point out, however, that some of these spheres, such as welfare, occupied center stage in Weimar politics. 3. DVP-Wahlhandbuch 1924, Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1924, p. 493. 4. For examples see “Grundsätze deutschnationaler Frauenarbeit,” as quoted in Annagrete Lehmann, “Ziel und Entwicklung der deutschnationalen Frauenarbeit.” In Max Weiß, ed., Der nationale Wille (Essen: Wilhelm Kamp, 1928), pp. 326 and 328, and DVP-Wahlhandbuch 1924, p. 496. 5. Bericht über den Zweiten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei am 18., 19. u. 20. Oktober 1919, pp. 177–8. 6. DVP-Wahlhandbuch 1928. Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1928, pp. 425 and 428. See also Helene Fock, “Bevölkerungsbewegung und Steuer– 99 –

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7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20.

politik,” NLC 52, no. 189, 14 October 1925 (FR 35), and M. S. [Martha Schwarz], “Probleme der Bevölkerungspolitik,” NLC 56, no. 218, 30 October 1929 (FR 35). Elsa Matz, “Familienschutz und Steuerpolitik,” NLC 52, no. 223, 30 November 1925. See also her Reichstag speech, in VdR, 1924–1928, vol. 388, pp. 4938–9. For background, see Atina Grossman, Reforming Sex (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 3, and Usborne, The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 166–73. VdR, 1924–1928, vol. 392, pp. 9697–8. Broekelschen-Kemper, “Probleme des Geburtenrückgangs,” NLC 56, no. 104, 22 May 1929. See the report of the DVP women’s meeting during the national party conference in Nürnberg in December 1920: “Die Reichsfrauentagung in Nürnberg,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 48/49, 9 December 1920. See also Anna Mayer, “Der neue Gesetzentwurf über die Rechtstellung der unehelichen Kinder und die Annahme an Kindesstatt,” NLC 56, no. 27, 6 February 1929. Ilse Szagunn, “Paragraph 218,” NLC 51, no. 132, 12 August 1924. Usborne, Politics of the Body; p. 172; Grossman, Reforming Sex, pp. 82–3. Clara Mende, “Zur Reform der Ehescheidung,” NLC 53, no. 62, 8 April 1926. See also DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 15, 20 July 1923, and “Fortbildungskurs für Frauen in Neuruppin,” Berliner Stimmen 4, no. 6, June 1927. On religious opposition to the reform of family law, see Usborne, Politics of the Body, p. 92. VdR, 1928–1930, vol. 424, pp. 1331 and 1788–9; vol. 426, pp. 3610–12; and vol. 428, pp. 5994–6. DVP-Wahlhandbuch 1928, pp. 428–9. Ann Taylor Allen, “Feminism and Eugenics in Germany and Britain, 1900–1940: A Comparative Perspective,” German Studies Review XXIII, no. 3 (2000): 477–505 (here pp. 489–94). Ilse Szagunn, “Paragraph 218,” NLC 51, no. 132, 12 August 1924. Szagunn, however, supported the eugenic policies of the Nazi Regime in 1934. See Grossman, Reforming Sex, p. 155. Else Frobenius, “Mitarbeit der Frau an der Politik. Reichsfrauentagung der Deutschen Volkspartei in Bremen,” Berliner Stimmen 6, no. 20, 18 May 1929. See also Usborne, The Politics of the Body, pp. 72 and 172. “Grundsätze deutschnationaler Frauenarbeit,” as quoted in Lehmann, “Ziel und Entwicklung der deutschnationalen Frauenarbeit,” p. 326. Maria Schott, “Die weibliche Jugend und die Erwerbslosenfürsorge,” Frauenkorrespondenz 5, no. 29, 23 July 1924. – 100 –

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Family, Youth, and Morality 21. Frauenkorrespondenz 4, no. 3, 7 March 1923;VdL, 1928–32, vol. III, pp. 4091–2. See also RFA, “Fürsorge für kinderreiche Familien,” Frauenkorrespondenz 5, no. 45, 12 November 1924. 22. For the DNVP’s contacts with the Bund der Kinderreichen, see for example Lenore Kühn, “Der Bund der Kinderreichen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 26, 4 October 1922, and the list of DNVP candidates in Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 46, 26 November 1924. 23. Emma Föllmer, “Die nationale Frau,” Jahrbuch 1920 der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei. Berlin: Schriftenvertrieb der Dn. Vp.: [1920], in BA Koblenz, ZSg. 1–44 (DNVP), vol. 4 (2). 24. Else von Sperber, “Zur Ehescheidungsreform,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 3, 20 January 1927; Elisabeth Spohr, “Volkserstarkung oder Untergang,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 28, 16 July 1924. 25. Freda von Rechenberg, “Gefährdung der Eheauffassung,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 11, 22 March 1928; Else Meyer, “Jugendnot und Ehereform,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 48, 29 November 1928. 26. “Die Stellung des unehelichen Kindes,” Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 9, 21 January 1922; see also “Deutschnationale Frauenpolitik: Richtlinien der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei für Frauenfragen,” in Jahrbuch 1921 der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei. Berlin: Deutschnationale Schriftenvertriebsstelle [1920], p. 30. 27. On women’s concern over Germany’s border with Poland, see Elizabeth Harvey, “Pilgrimages to the ‘Bleeding Border’: Gender and Rituals of Nationalist Protest in Germany, 1919–1939.” Women’s History Review 9, no. 2 (2000): 201–29, which does not, however, mention the fear of the high birthrate in Poland and the Soviet Union, which was a crucial aspect of DNVP women’s thinking about the border. 28. Summary of Lehmann’s speech: “Die Frauenversammlung auf dem Deutschnationalen Reichsparteitag in Königsberg,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 38, 22 September 1927. 29. “Der Kampf um die deutsche Familie,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 16, 19 April 1928. See also Asta Rötger, “Neugestaltung oder Vernichtung,” Frauenkorrespondenz 12, no. 52, 24 December 1930. 30. VdR, 1928–30, vol. 424, p. 1330. 31. VdL, 1928–32, vol. III, pp. 3956–7. 32. Lange, Protestantische Frauen auf dem Weg in den Nationalsozialismus, p. 170; Kurt Nowak, Evangelische Kirche und Weimarer Republik (1918–1932) (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1981), p. 313. 33. Lindequist, “Warum sind wir deutschnational?” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 4, 16 February 1932. – 101 –

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Mothers of the Nation 34. Magdalene von Tiling, “Kulturfragen,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 11, 1 June 1932. 35. See for example Annagrete Lehmann, “Deutsche Frauen, Volk und Staat rufen Euch!” Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 13, 1 July 1932. 36. Whereas eugenics – the theory on how to raise the genetic quality of the offspring – was generally pursued outside a racist framework (and frequently by the Left), racial hygiene often tended to build eugenic principles into a ranking of races by genetic value. See Paul Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 135–8, and Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), particularly chapter 1. 37. See Christiane Streubel, “ ‘Eine wahrhaft nationale Frauenbewegung’: Völkisch-Nationale Feministinnen in der Weimarer Republik.” In Eva Schoeck-Quinteros and Christiane Streubel, eds., Frauen der politischen Rechten 1890–1933: Aktionen – Organisationen – Ideologien (Berlin: Trafo-Verlag, in print). I prefer to call these women “völkisch women’s activists” rather than “völkisch feminists,” “national feminists,” or “oppositional fascists,” as they are called in other sources. They were not feminists in the sense of being interested in advancing universal women’s rights, and their idea of women’s rights implied not much individual freedom (see below, p. 173). “National feminists” is also misleading insofar as most women promoting women’s rights would have cringed at the thought of being excluded from the label “national.” The term “oppositional fascists” makes sense only in the light of these women’s opposition to right-wing men’s mysogyny. 38. Erna von Birkhahn, “Völkisches Sehnen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 11, 2 February 1924. 39. Ilse Hamel, “Völkische Mütter – starkes Volk,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 12, 16 February 1924. 40. Ilse Hamel, “Völkisch als Rassebegriff,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 26, 2 July 1924; Käthe Schirmacher, “Frankreichs farbige Truppen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 51, 13 July 1925; and Schirmacher, “Die Schwarze Schmach,” Bundesarchiv Koblenz, ZSg. 1–44 (DNVP), vol. 3. 41. See the organizational news in the first two volumes of Der Parteifreund. Amtliches Blatt der deutschnationalen Volkspartei, Landesverband Ostpreußen; Elisabeth Lürßen, “Die weibliche Jugend in den Jugendgruppen der D. Vp.,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 1, no. 4, 26 October 1919. For the strength of the teaching profession among women legislators, see Koonz, “Conflicting Allegiances,” p. 669. 42. Marie Bernays, “Eindrücke der Tagung des Vereins Frauenbildung– 102 –

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43.

44. 45.

46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

56.

Frauenstudium in Heidelberg vom 15. bis 17. Juli,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 30, 29 July 1920. “Unsere Familie soll durch uns Mütter die seelische und geistige Waffenschmiede Deutschlands werden!” in “Deutschnationale Frauentagung in Köln,” Frauenkorrespondenz 8, no. 37, 9 September 1926. Marie Bernays, “Eindrücke der Tagung des Vereins FrauenbildungFrauenstudium in Heidelberg vom 15. bis 17. Juli.” Katharina von Oheimb, “Das schlafende Heer,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 2, 19 January 1923; Emma Stropp, “Das Auslieferungsverlangen,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 2, no. 7, 12 February 1920. Die Frau in Familie und Staat, Deutschnationales Rüstzeug 7, Berlin: Deutschnationale Schriftenvertriebsstelle, 1924, p. 16. Verhandlungen der Nationalversammlung, vol. 327, p. 1266. See also Reinhard Mumm, “Weibliche Beredsamkeit,” in Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 12, 12 March 1921. On the DVP’s stand, see Marie Bernays, “Die weibliche Jugend und die Reichstagswahlen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 22, 3 June 1920. “Weimarer Brief,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 6, 9 February 1928; for Tilings’s argument, see VdL, 1924–1928, vol. XII, p. 18093. See Magdalene von Tiling, Die christliche Frau und das Reichsschulgesetz, Aus Deutschlands Not und Ringen 2, Berlin: Deutschnationale Schriftenvertriebsstelle, 1928, and Schneider-Ludorff, Magdalene von Tiling, pp. 86–8. Jones, German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar Party System, 1918–1933, pp. 295–7; Dennis Walker, “The German Nationalist People’s Party,” Journal of Contemporary History 14 (1979), pp. 629–30. Die Frauen in der Politik der Deutschen Volkspartei, Flugschriften der Deutschen Volkspartei 53, Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1924, pp. 8–9. Clara Mende, “Ein Berufsausbildungsgesetz,” NLC 54, no. 174, 4 October 1927. DVP-Wahlhandbuch 1928, p. 419. Tiling, Die christliche Frau und das Reichsschulgesetz; C.S., “Das Reichsschulgesetz,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 35, 1 September 1927; “Sitzung des Erweiterten Frauenausschusses,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 45, 10 November 1927 (with Tiling’s speech on the National School Bill). Gertrud Becker, “Sittliche Gefährdung unserer Kinder,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 12, 16 February 1924; Annagrete Lehmann, “Frauenwelt und Wahlen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 11, 2 February 1924; Monatsmitteilungen für die Vertrauensmänner und Mitglieder der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei Kreisverein Soldin 6, no. 1, 31 January 1924; Frau Waschmeyer, “Rhytmisch-gymnastische Nacktübungen, Nationalpost – 103 –

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57.

58. 59.

60.

61.

62.

63. 64.

65.

6, no. 7, 17 February 1924; Die Frau in Familie und Staat, Deutschnationales Rüstzeug 7, Berlin: Deutschnationale Schriftenvertriebsstelle, 1924, pp. 14–15. For the Landtag motion, see VdL, 1921–1924, vol. 13, p. 7938. RFA, “Der Schulkonflikt in Westfalen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 8, no. 52, 23 December 1926; RFA, “Der Kampf um die christliche Schule,” Frauenkorrespondenz 8, no. 50, 9 December 1926; Schneider-Ludorff, Magdalene von Tiling, pp. 69–70. “Zustände an weltlichen Schulen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 17, 26 April 1928. Annagrete Lehmann, “Was steht am 20. Mai zur Entscheidung?” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 16, 19 April 1928. For the DVP position, see Die Frauen in der Politik der Deutschen Volkspartei, Flugschriften der Deutschen Volkspartei 53, Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1924, pp. 6–7. “Frauenversammlung der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei,” Der Parteifreund. Amtliches Blatt der deutschnationalen Volkspartei, Landesverband Ostpreußen 1, no. 25, 28 October 1920. See also Mitteilungen des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins “Berlin-Nordwest” 16, no. 13, 1 October 1920. See Ilse Hamel, “Rückkehr zu deutscher Sitte und Art,” Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 17, 1 September 1932; Annagrete Lehmann, “Überwindung der Revolution?” Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 15, 31 July 1932. Marie Bernays, “Das Schicksal der privaten Mädchenschulen,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 2, no. 15, 15 April 1920. For Matz’s speeches, see VdR, 1920–1924, vol. 345, p. 1111, and vol. 354, p. 6948; Milka Fritsch, “Margarethe Poehlmann† Was sie uns gewesen ist!” NLC 51, no. 13, 21 January 1924. On Wolf, see DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 8, 13 April 1923. For a summary biography of Bernays, see Ira Hochreuther, Frauen im Parlament: südwestdeutsche Abgeordnete seit 1919 (Stuttgart: Theiss Verlag, 1992), pp. 54–5. See for example Die Frauen in der Politik der Deutschen Volkspartei, p. 11. Magdalene von Tiling, “Mädchenschulfragen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 20, 9 July 1921; Magdalene von Tiling, Wir Frauen und die christliche Schule (Berlin: Vaterländische Verlags- und Kunstanstalt, 1928). See also VdL, 1924–28, vol. XII, pp. 18091–6. See for example “Die Deutschnationalen und das Mädchenschulwesen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 1, no. 14, 6 March 1920 (discussing a proposal regarding girls’ schools made by Spohr in the Prussian Landtag); “Frauenfragen im Hauptausschuß des Preußischen Landtages,” NLC 51, no. 151, 12 September 1924; “Forderungen zur Mädchenschulbildung,” NLC 52, no. 154, 24 August 1925. – 104 –

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Family, Youth, and Morality 66. VdL, Landesversammlung 1919–1921, vol. XI, pp. 14163–70 (Poehlmann). 67. VdR, 1920–1924, vol. 357, pp. 9211–12. 68. VdL, 1928–1932, vol. III, p. 4092; Elisabeth Spohr, “Die Alkoholfrage,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 37, 17 September 1924. 69. Elisabeth Spohr, “Die Alkoholfrage,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 37, 17 September 1924. 70. Klara Klotz, “Aus meiner Landtagsarbeit,” Frauenkorrespondenz 5, no. 11, 19 September 1923. For a summary biography of Klotz, see Hochreuther, Frauen im Parlament: südwestdeutsche Abgeordnete seit 1919, pp. 80–1. 71. “Familie und Wahlen,” NLC 51, no. 67, 2 May 1924. 72. Margarethe Poehlmann, “Sozialpolitische Fragen im Preußischen Landtag,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 21, 26 May 1921, and DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 7, 30 March 1923 (on Wolf). 73. Gertraud Wolf, “Mehr Milch!” NLC 55, no. 49, 15 March 1928. 74. See, for example, Gertraud Wolf’s initiative in the Bavarian Landtag in March 1923: DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 7, 30 March 1923. 75. Clara Mende, “Amerikanisches über den Alkohol,” NLC 52, no. 123, 8 July 1925. 76. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Band 2: Von der Reformära bis zur industriellen und politischen “Deutschen Doppelrevolution”: 1815–1848/49. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1987, pp. 333–5. 77. VdR, 1928–30, vol. 428, p. 5591, and VdR, 1930–32, vol. 445, p. 1419. 78. VdR, 1928–30, vol. 425, pp. 2296–7. 79. VdL, 1928–1932, vol. III, p. 4092. 80. “Die Frau in der Deutschen Turnerschaft,” NLC 55, no. 168, 26 September 1928. 81. Beate Bartels, “Mädchensport,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 40, 6 October 1927. 82. Ella Mensch, “Die Erhalterin von Werten,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 31, 5 August 1920. 83. “Deutschnationale Frauenpolitik. Richtlinien der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei für Frauenfragen,” p. 30. 84. Usborne, Politics of the Body, p. 77. For context, see ibid., pp. 76–81, and Margret F. Stieg, “The 1926 German Law to Protect Youth against Trash and Dirt: Moral Protectionism in a Democracy.” Central European History 23 (1990): 22–56 (here pp. 33–48). 85. Hildegard Ellenbeck, “Die Frau im Kampf gegen Schmutz und Schund,” Frauenkorrespondenz 8, no. 1, 5 January 1926. 86. Elsa Matz, “Endlich,” NLC 57, no. 242, 12 December 1930. Matz only regretted that her own committee had passed the film despite her objections. – 105 –

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87. 88.

89. 90.

91.

92. 93.

It was banned by the Reichstag later on – against the votes of most DVP deputies. 8. Reichsparteitag der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei in Mannheim vom 21. bis 23. März 1930, Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1930, p. 6. Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, pp. 43–4; Frevert, Women in German History, p. 135. See also “Deutschnationale Frauenpolitik: Richtlinien der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei für Frauenfragen,” p. 30. Usborne, The Politics of the Body, p. 109. “Die Gefährdetenfürsorge nach dem Reichsgesetz zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten und den preußischen Ausführungsbestimmungen,” NLC 55, no. 16, 26 January 1928; Ulrike Scheidel, “Das Gesetz zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 4, 27 January 1927. VdL, Landesversammlung 1919–1921, vol. XI, pp. 14163–70 (Poehlmann), 14850–2 (Spohr), 14855–6 (Garnich); “Rückblick,” Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 3, 22 October 1921 (on Noack). Usborne, Politics of the Body, pp. 72 and 76. Nowak, Evangelische Kirche und Weimarer Republik, pp. 24, 29, and 35–7.

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–6– Small Rentiers

Aside from the loss of precious people and the terrible mutilations of disabled war veterans, the fate of small rentiers is particularly touching among the many worries and traumas that affected Germany as a consequence of the war and the revolution … After a life of sacrificing themselves for the public good, these old people are left with nothing and are defenseless against harsh poverty. Paula Mueller-Otfried, 19281 One issue of social policy received consistent attention from women of both parties: the plight of small rentiers. The women chose this issue as a central feature of their social policy because the small rentiers epitomized to them the plight of the middle classes and allowed them to put their maternalist policies in action. That over two-thirds of the small rentiers were women was rarely mentioned because the DVP and DNVP women always sought to avoid giving the impression that they were advancing particular women’s interests. By representing the interests of small rentiers, the women also did a service to their parties: the rentiers initially voted strongly for the DVP and DNVP, and women tried to keep them loyal to their parties at a time when the interests of big business and agriculture tended to win out over the demands of the rentiers. In the end, however, the women’s efforts merely delayed the small rentiers’ exodus to splinter parties and the NSDAP.2 Small rentiers were a poorly defined middle-class group – estimates vary between 200,000 and a million people – that depended on savings to pay for their living costs in old age or to supplement their pensions.3 The male members of this group had typically been officers, white-collar workers, or independently employed small businessmen. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of this group were women, however.4 They included widows of members of the former groups and the so-called Haustöchter, women who had never married but had instead taken care of their parents or other family members on whose inheritance they had hoped to survive in old age. The preponderance of women over men in the small-rentier group resulted from women on average living longer than men and also from the fact that women generally had a harder time than men finding

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Mothers of the Nation employment to relieve their dependence on savings in old age. Moreover, many women had invested their wartime income in government war bonds.5 Devaluation and inflation, however, had by the end of 1923 destroyed the savings of small rentiers and eroded their pension payments, if they ever had any. A Reichstag law granting some relief to small rentiers was passed in February 1923 but failed to stabilize their situation, and the revaluation legislation of early 1924, while promising some compensation payments, denied them the hoped-for restitution of their savings. Many rentiers thus became dependent on poor relief, which they found insufficient, degrading, and inconsistent. Poor relief was administered at the municipal level, and complaints abounded about the arbitrary way in which financially strained municipalities dealt with the claims of rentiers.6 The small rentiers, represented by the German Rentiers’ League (Deutscher Rentnerbund) with between 90,000 and 170,000 members, blamed the Weimar state for their plight because they believed that its tax policies and its abandonment of the gold standard had ruined them. Therefore they demanded restitution from the Reich – often exaggerating their prewar or pre-inflation wealth. Pointing out that they had saved for a lifetime for their retirement and had made many investments in government or war bonds, they depicted themselves as a patriotic and civic-minded group distinct from those poor pensioners who had not owned any savings (Sozialrentner). Small pensioners often implied that the Sozialrentner had been impoverished due to their own moral failure and not due to misguided or evil state policies.7 In tandem with the German Rentiers’ League, women from the DVP and DNVP (and to some extent the Democratic Party) became the primary spokespeople of the small pensioners. Their approach was two-fold: at the grass-roots level, women from the two parties attempted to organize direct help for the small rentiers, particularly during the worst period of the inflation. On the legislative level, they pushed for fast relief measures and demanded a law giving restitution to the rentiers for a substantial part of their lost savings. They emphasized that it was degrading for members of the middle classes to stand in line for social-welfare checks together with social dropouts and the lowest strata of the working class. At the very least, they demanded that the state separate support for the small rentiers from poor relief. Already in the National Assembly, the DNVP’s Anna von Gierke had demanded relief measures for the small rentiers. Pointing out that most rentiers had invested their money in government papers and war bonds, she argued that the state had the duty to support them now that these papers were rapidly losing their value.8 In 1922, Elisabeth Spohr of the DNVP repeatedly demanded relief measures in the Prussian Landtag, pointing out that desperation had induced many small rentiers to commit suicide.9 In late 1923, Annagrete Lehmann called on DNVP members to invite small rentiers to dinner and to make a heated room – 108 –

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Small Rentiers available to them for part of the day.10 When the Reich government in February 1924 fell far short of paying restitution for the lost assets of the small rentiers, Paula Mueller-Otfried took up the battle in the Reichstag. In accordance with the claim of the German Rentier’s League, she demanded that a law be passed that recognized the rentiers’ right to restitution and argued that the existing relief was inadequate and poorly administered. When confronted with a proposal for an across-the-board increase in poor relief, she echoed the claims of the small rentiers by arguing that the Reichstag had to make a distinction between people who had been impoverished through their own fault and those who had been impoverished through the mistake of the state. She therefore demanded that state support be increased only for those disabled by the war and for the small rentiers. The proposal that passed did incorporate this suggestion.11 In the campaign for the Reichstag elections of December 1924, the DNVP made extensive restitution promises to the rentiers that soon came to haunt the party. Although many DNVP supporters had been creditors hurt by the inflation, influential party groups associated with big industry and agriculture belonged to the debtors who had fared reasonably well. These circles rejected any effective revaluation legislation that would have benefited the creditors including the small rentiers. The opponents of revaluation had kept a low profile during the election campaigns of 1924 because they knew that the DNVP’s pro-creditor rhetoric attracted many voters in the two Reichstag elections of that year. But they reasserted their influence in the spring of 1925, when the Reichstag began discussing a revision of the previous year’s revaluation legislation. This was at a time when the DNVP leaders, participating for the first time in the Reich government, found it difficult to deny the financial impossibility of substantial revaluation – which they had ignored during the election campaign. Things came to a head in May 1925 after the DNVP signed on to a revaluation compromise that belied its campaign promises. The rentiers were outraged and accused the DNVP of voter fraud. Indeed, as one historian of revaluation concludes: “The DNVP was not alone in making elastic promises, but its were the most elastic.”12 It became known that DNVP leaders, while making their campaign promises, had all along doubted the financial feasibility of extensive restitution and known about the strong, though initially passive, resistance against revaluation in their party. The whole affair revealed the cavalier attitude of DNVP leaders toward the electorate and dealt a severe blow to the party’s credibility.13 Whether the leading women of the DNVP deserved the criticism that rentiers now hurled at the DNVP leaders is unclear. They certainly tried hard to win back the confidence of the small rentiers after the disaster. Paula Mueller-Otfried in the Reichstag as well as Elisabeth Spohr and Therese Deutsch in the Prussian Landtag pushed for relief measures, while stressing that only a law on restitution could bring justice to the small rentiers. But DNVP women now at least warned – 109 –

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Mothers of the Nation their audiences that the financial situation made full restitution of lost assets impossible.14 Mueller-Otfried quickly became a nationally recognized expert on the issue; she published several pamphlets on the small rentiers in which she argued that the suffering of the small rentiers came directly from the loss of the war (which she blamed on socialists and democrats) and the misguided government policies up to 1925 – before the DNVP joined the Reich government. Mueller-Otfried displayed an impressive knowledge of the issue in all its legal and financial complexities, but she consistently ignored the resistance of prodebtor groups in her party. Although she did acknowledge in passing that the DVP women were working in the same direction, her overriding claim was that the DNVP was the rentiers’ only forceful representative and that all would be well for the small rentiers if only the DNVP had twice as many Reichstag seats.15 The small-rentier issue became important again at the time of the Reichstag elections in May 1928. In late 1927, the Reich government and the Reichstag had agreed to raise payments to rentiers slightly without making a distinction between small rentiers and social-welfare recipients. Mueller-Otfried and the DNVP, considering the raise unsatisfactory, had fought hard to channel the scarce financial resources to the small rentiers alone, but this time they failed to prevail against the opposition of the Left, the Center Party, and the Democratic Party.16 After the breakup of the center-to-right coalition over the National School Bill in February 1928, DNVP women revived their campaign for the rentiers in preparation for the elections. They increasingly shifted their claim from the controversial revaluation of lost assets to the right to a secure income for rentiers, urging the government and the Reichstag to help quickly and effectively and not to wait until most small rentiers hurt by the inflation had died. But the DNVP women had to defend their party’s record on small-rentier rights against fierce attacks from new splinter parties that made revaluation their primary cause. Mueller-Otfried and her colleagues pointed out that these splinter parties would have no power in the Reichstag and argued that the much larger DNVP was still loyal to the rentiers’ cause.17 Although weakened by the elections of 1928, the DNVP resumed its struggle for a rentier’s compensation law in the new Reichstag. In February 1929, Annagrete Lehmann, speaking in the place of the ailing Paula Mueller-Otfried, demanded that the Reichstag draft a rentier bill on short order. She again stressed that the small rentiers deserved compensation because they had been hurt by the state, and that they should not be grouped together with welfare recipients. Her initiative again floundered on the resistance mainly of the SPD, the Communist Party, and the Center Party, who proposed to draw the circle of aid recipients much larger, thus diluting the expected benefits.18 With the onset of the Great Depression, the suffering of small rentiers again captured the attention of the leading DNVP women. In the summer and fall of – 110 –

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Small Rentiers 1930, Mueller-Otfried made the most passionate pleas to date in the Reichstag, attacking the government under Center Party chancellor Heinrich Brüning for “cold-heartedly” ignoring the fate of weak and well-meaning people and calling on the government to “finally heal this bleeding wound.”19 The DNVP women continued to demand a compensation law in principle, but the economic crisis after 1929 made such thoughts unrealistic, so that most initiatives from DNVP women now centered on more coincidental relief for the small rentiers. The Reichstag and successive governments paid lip service to the small rentiers’ cause, but nothing happened. In late 1931, Mueller-Otfried wrote an open letter to the Reich Labor Minister, imploring him to stop treating the rentiers like a dying caste, but to no avail. The only notable success came in Danzig, where DNVP Volkstag member Anni Kalähne drafted and promoted a restitution law for small rentiers that was passed in June 1931.20 The DVP women pursued almost parallel policies with respect to the small rentiers, and they also faced difficulties from the pro-debtor groups in their party, mainly big industry. The DVP, too, made campaign promises in 1924 that it was unable to fulfill, but the fact that it participated in government almost permanently from 1922 to 1931 made it more respectful than the DNVP of the Reich’s financial realities. Among the DVP women, Prussian Landtag deputy Jane Voigt played a pioneering role. In her home town Flensburg in Schleswig-Holstein, she had already started a pilot program to support small rentiers in 1920. Voigt convinced the town government to open a heated room for small rentiers during the winter; she collected money from businesses and distributed it to nearly five hundred rentiers; and she organized free lunches for rentiers in the homes of wealthy citizens. To these services she later added a work registry for small rentiers and a series of initiatives to grant small rentiers rebates on the cost of electricity, gas, and coal, the predominant heating fuel.21 Voigt’s success inspired efforts by the DVP’s women’s committee in Schleswig-Holstein to introduce similar services in all of the province. Work registries were particularly successful; they allowed older women, who had a hard time finding employment, to earn something by, for example, doing needlework for wealthy families.22 In the RFA, Voigt formed a special committee for the small rentiers that issued guidelines on how DVP women could help rentiers through advising, practical help, and social events. The initiatives of Flensburg thus became the model for a nation-wide effort.23 Elsa Matz soon took up the issue in the Reichstag. She was a candidate in Pomerania, where many small rentiers lived. Matz was instrumental in the deliberations leading to the Reichstag law that was passed in February 1923. Like Mueller-Otfried, she established herself as a national authority on small-rentier questions. In reaction to Mueller-Otfried’s pamphlet, Matz wrote her own, which was less polemical and propagandistic than Mueller-Otfried’s although Matz, – 111 –

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Mothers of the Nation too, said nothing about the pro-debtor interests in her party.24 Matz tried consistently to put the small rentiers on the same level as war veterans – claiming that they had been patriotic citizens who had supported the state in its time of greatest need. Thus, she sometimes called them the “veterans of work.”25 Probably to exclude working-class people with very small savings from restitution, Matz insisted that compensation was feasible only if people with a minimum of 10,000 marks in lost savings were reimbursed – whereas the SPD demanded a minimum of one thousand marks. To make that distinction clearer, Matz began using the term “capital rentier” (Kapitalrentner) instead of “small rentier” (Kleinrentner) in her speeches and articles.26 After the disappointing government compromise of May 1925, for which the DVP shared responsibility with the DNVP, Matz, Voigt, and other DVP women sought to keep the issue alive. Frequently they demanded a Reich law and a Prussian law together with the DNVP women. Matz published a stream of articles on the issue in the Nationalliberale Correspondenz. Almost all of these articles appeared in the main section of the newspaper and not in its biweekly women’s supplement. Many of them even appeared as leader articles on the front page of the newspaper. This shows that the issue was taken seriously by the party as a whole and that Matz had established herself as the leading DVP expert on the small rentiers.27 Matz shared the disappointment of the DNVP women when the Reich government missed what seemed to be a good opportunity for a new rentiers’ law in late 1927 and early 1928; she further shared their frustration over the attacks from the German Rentiers’ League on the DVP and DNVP.28 At least the DNVP had left the coalition government in time (February 1928) to formulate its own demands without concern for the actual implementation of policies, an advantage it preserved when it stayed out of the Grand Coalition government formed with DVP support after the May 1928 Reichstag elections.29 Matz fought many Reichstag battles for the small rentiers. On one occasion, she got into a rhetorical duel with Center Party deputy Hermann Esser and announced: “whoever wants a fight should also get it from a woman.” This comment was received with such disruptive laughter that Reichstag President Paul Löbe (SPD) had to call the Reichstag to order.30 But Matz also expressed frustration over the limits that continuous government responsibility imposed on the DVP’s ability to make promises: “The German People’s Party has over the last couple of years done everything it could for the rentiers. We were, of course, bound by the governments in which we participated and unable to make the farreaching demands that the Democratic Party and the DNVP were able to advance after joining the opposition.”31 Matz recognized that a satisfactory law securing the income of small rentiers was unrealistic after the onset of the Great Depression, but she kept pushing for relief measures without giving up the claim for a restitution law.32 Seeing the rentier’s issue being pushed to the background – 112 –

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Small Rentiers by the problems of mass unemployment, Matz tried to effect relief for the rentiers in various government emergency decrees throughout the depression years. As early as 1931 she pointed out that many disgruntled rentiers were turning to the NSDAP for support.33 That she and other DVP women repeatedly called on their Reichstag group to continue pushing for a rentiers’ law suggests that they also had to convince people in the DVP.34 The rentier issue led DVP and DNVP women into the jungle of interest politics that was gnawing at the vital nerve of their parties. Lacking close ties to big industry, they were able to side with the interests of a group of middle-class people who had stylized themselves as the “quintessential victims of the inflation.”35 The small rentiers appeared to embody bourgeois virtues close to the heart of right-wing women such as patriotism and thriftiness. Providing a political voice to this group appealed to the maternalist mission of right-wing women and to their concern for the harmony of the Volksgemeinschaft. Yet the smallrentier issue, to which women from both parties devoted so much energy, did nothing to bolster their claim to healing and strengthening the Volksgemeinschaft. First, they failed to reconcile the interests of diverse economic groups in their parties and to prevent most of the disgruntled rentiers from choosing other parties. Second, they reflected a widespread bourgeois prejudice and revealed a narrowly class-based view of the Volksgemeinschaft when they insisted on separating a socially declining middle-class group as “deserving poor” from the lower-class “undeserving poor.”

Notes 1. Paula Mueller-Otfried, Kleinrentnernot, Aus Deutschlands Not und Ringen 1, 2nd edn, Berlin: Deutschnationale Schriftenvertriebsstelle, 1928. 2. Falter, Hitlers Wähler, pp. 271–2. 3. Robert Scholz, “‘Heraus aus der unwürdigen Fürsorge’: Zur sozialen Lage und politischen Orientierung der Kleinrentner in der Weimarer Republik.” In Christoph Conrad and Hans-Joachim von Kondratowitz, eds., Gerontologie und Sozialgeschichte. Wege zu einer historischen Betrachtung des Alters (Berlin: Deutsches Zentrum für Altersfragen, 1983), p. 332. 4. The higher portion was given by Elsa Matz in “Zahlenmäßige Grundlagen für ein Rentnerversorgungsgesetz,” NLC 54, no. 209, 26 November 1927. Matz included married women who were dependent on the savings of their husbands in her figure. Other figures may only have included the husbands. 5. Gerald D. Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 556–7; David Crew, Germans on Welfare: From Weimar to Hitler (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 104–6; Young– 113 –

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Mothers of the Nation

6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

Sun Hong, Welfare, Modernity, and the Weimar State, 1919–1933 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 103–9. Crew, Germans on Welfare, pp. 99–102, offers some instructive examples. Hong, Welfare, Modernity, and the Weimar State, pp. 91 and 122–3; Feldman, The Great Disorder, p. 556. Verhandlungen der Nationalversammlung, 1919–1920, vol. 333, pp. 5526–7. “Wohlfahrtsfragen,” Frauenkorrespondenz, 3, no. 18, 3 June 1922; see also notes on her speech in the Landtag in Frauenkorrespondenz 3, no. 28, 1 November 1922, and VdL, 1921–1924, vol. IX, p. 12577. Annagrete Lehmann, “Tätige Liebe,” Frauenkorrespondenz, 22 December 1923. VdR, 1924–1924, vol. 381, pp. 536–7 and 642–4; “Die Fürsorgepflicht für die Kleinrentner,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 27, 9 July 1924; “Kleinrentnerfürsorge,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 42, 22 October 1924. Michael Hughes, Paying for the German Inflation (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 114 and 145–8. Ibid., pp. 148–50. Paula Mueller-Otfried, “Kleinrentnerfürsorge,” Frauenkorrespondenz 8, no. 49, 2 December 1926; Mueller-Otfried, “Eine dringende Forderung,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 2, 13 January 1927; “Kleinrentnerfürsorge,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 14, 7 April 1927; Therese Deutsch, “Kleinrentnerfragen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 26, 30 June 1927; Klara Klotz, “Eine dringend notwendige Forderung,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 34, 25 August 1927. See also VdR, 1924–1928, vol. 384, p. 533, vol. 389, p. 5808, vol. 394, p. 12086, and vol. 395, p. 13755. Mueller-Otfried, Kleinrentnernot, particularly pp. 4–8 and 12. Paula Mueller-Otfried, “Wer schimpft, hat Unrecht,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 51, 22 December 1927, and Mueller-Otfried, Kleinrentnernot, pp. 12–16. Therese Deutsch, “Denkschrift über Kleinrentnerfragen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 13, 29 March 1928; Paula Mueller-Otfried, “Nicht Fürsorge, sondern Gerechtigkeit für die Rentner!” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 14, 5 April 1928, and Mueller-Otfried, “Die neueste Entwicklung der Rentnerfrage,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 15, 12 April 1924; see also Erika Altgelt, “Wie wird der Kleinrentner wählen?” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 17, 26 April 1928. VdR, 1928–1930, vol. 424, pp. 1157–9; Paula Mueller-Otfried, “Rentnerversorgungsgesetz gescheitert,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 7, 14 February 1929; RFA, “Der Rechtsanspruch des Rentnerstandes,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 8, 21 February 1929. – 114 –

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Small Rentiers 19. “Kleinrentnerfragen im Reichstag,” Frauenkorrespondenz 12, no. 29, 17 July 1930; VdR, 1930–1932, vol. 444, p. 426. 20. “Aus der deutschnationalen Frauenarbeit,” Deutschnationale Frau 13, 15 June 1931. For Mueller-Otfried’s letter, see “Die Not der Kleinrentner,” Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 1, 1 January 1932. 21. Jane Voigt, “Zur Rentnerfürsorge,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 3, no. 8, 28 April 1921; Voigt, “Rentnerhilfe,” Schleswig-Holsteinische Stimmen 4, no. 19/20, 4 November 1922. 22. Elisabeth Cimbal, “Das Rentnerhilfswerk des WkFA der DVp. in SchleswigHolstein,” Schleswig-Holsteinische Stimmen 4, no. 21/22, 21 November 1922. 23. Elsa Matz, “Zur Frage der Kleinrentnerfürsorge,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 28, 14 July 1922; “Klein-Rentnerfürsorge,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 42, 24 November 1922. 24. Elsa Matz, Kleinrentnerfragen. Das Rentnerversorgungsgesetz, Flugschriften der Deutschen Volkspartei 71 (Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1928). See also Elsa Matz, “Das Kleinrentnergesetz,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 3, 2 February 1923. 25. See the summary of her speech at the 1924 national conference of the DVP: “Fünfter Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei in Hannover am 29. und 30. März,” NLC 51, special issue. See also Matz, Kleinrentnerfragen, p. 4, and Matz, “Zur Frage der Rentnerversorgung,” NLC 54, no. 198, 9 November 1927, and the summary of her speech in front of the DVP small rentiers’ committee in Berliner Stimmen 2, no. 27, 1 October 1925. 26. See for example Elsa Matz, “Die neue Kleinrentnerdenkschrift des Reichsarbeitsministeriums,” NLC 56, no. 5, 9 January 1929. 27. For some examples see Elsa Matz, “Die Kleinrentner-Interpellation der Deutschen Volkspartei,” NLC 53, no. 29, 12 February 1926; Matz, “Reichsarbeitsministerium und Rentnerfürsorge,” NLC 53, no. 89, 21 May 1926; Matz, Reichsrentnertagung,” NLC 53, no. 195, 29 November 1926; Matz, “Regierungsparteien und Kleinrentner,” NLC 54, no. 51, 15 March 1927; Matz, “Eine Notlösung in der Kleinrentnerfrage,” NLC 54, no. 66, 6 April 1927; Matz, “Was nun?” NLC 54, no. 118, 30 June 1927; Matz, “Zahlenmäßige Grundlagen für ein Rentnerversorgungsgesetz,” NLC 54, no. 209, 26 November 1927; Matz, “Die Weihnachtsbeihilfe für die Kleinrentner,” NLC 54, no. 220, 14 December 1927; Matz, “Das Rentnerversorgungsgesetz,” NLC 55, no. 15, 25 January 1928. 28. Elsa Matz, “Die Zukunft des Rentnerversorgungsgesetzes,” NLC 55, no. 62, 4 April 1928, and Matz, “Wahlergebnis und Rentnerversorgungsgesetz,” NLC 55, no. 104, 13 June 1928. 29. Elsa Matz, “Ein Fortschritt in der Rentnerfrage,” NLC 55, no. 226, 14 December 1928. – 115 –

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Mothers of the Nation 30. VdR, 1928–1930, vol. 428, pp. 5958–60. 31. VdR, 1928–1930, vol. 424, p. 1174. 32. Elsa Matz, “Der Stand der Kapitalrentnerfrage,” NLC 57, no. 139, 22 July 1930. See also Elsa Matz, “Die Verzögerung des Rentnergesetzes,” NLC 56, no. 224, 7 November 1929. 33. Matz, “Kapitalrentnernot!” NLC 58, no. 185, 23 September 1931; Matz, “Kleinrentner und Wohlfahrtserwerbslose,” NLC 59, no. 30, 13 February 1932; Matz, “Kapitalrentner und Gesetzgebung,” NLC 59, no. 229, 21 December 1932; Matz, “Beseitigung von Härten in der Kleinrentnerfürsorge,” NLC 60, no. 16, 26 January 1933. The connection between small rentier disappointment and Nazi support is at the center of the argument in Scholz, “‘Heraus aus der unwürdigen Fürsorge’. Zur sozialen Lage und politischen Orientierung der Kleinrentner in der Weimarer Republik.” 34. “Tagung volksparteilicher Parlamentarierinnen,” NLC 56, no. 17. 25 January 1929. 35. Hong, Welfare, Modernity, and the Weimar State, p. 103.

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–7– Foreign Policy

We German women cannot stand back in this struggle. It is a pure, holy, and non-violent struggle for the memory of our dead, who died for Germany, for the future of the children and the unborn who need a Germany where life is worth being lived. Resolution of DVP women on German women’s obligation to fight Versailles, June 19221 The First World War had intensified women’s interest in foreign affairs and shown to what extent international events affected the family and the home. After the defeat, women politicians were aware that the Treaty of Versailles impinged on many spheres of German life and that foreign policy needed to be addressed also as an interest of women.2 Although women were rarely allowed to speak on foreign-policy matters in the Reichstag, they felt that they shared responsibility for Germany’s international standing and that they had to use their new political rights to improve it wherever possible.3 This was particularly important to DVP and DNVP women, who saw a close link between their social and cultural policies and German foreign policy. Their concern about the declining birthrate, their fight for a stricter morality, and the racial hygiene arguments of DNVP women all had a crucial foreign policy component. Given their maternalist ideology, women across the bourgeois party spectrum envisioned a special role for themselves in foreign policy: if even German women with their allegedly instinctive sense of justice condemned the peace treaty and its consequences, then the hostile nations would recognize that Versailles needed to be revised. Women from all bourgeois parties thus organized a series of common protests against Versailles and its implementation. They condemned the demand for the extradition of the Kaiser and the military leaders, protested Germany’s territorial losses, attacked reparation measures such as the delivery of milk cows to France, and led a long campaign against the charge that Germany had started the First World War. They also opposed the military occupation of Western Germany by the victors of the war and vehemently objected to the presence of African soldiers in France’s occupation army.4 Women also saw themselves as guardians of the Germans living in areas annexed by other

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Mothers of the Nation countries after 1918, particularly the territories won by Poland.5 Referring to their thinking about women’s cultural mission, they saw it as their special task to maintain links to all Germans abroad and to support their struggle for preserving their “Germandom” against foreign cultures. Although women from the whole center-to-right spectrum supported these efforts, divisive issues lurked behind their joint demonstrations of national solidarity. Whereas socialist women and some women on the left wing of the bourgeois women’s movement derived a commitment to international reconciliation from their maternalist ideology, most women in the DVP and DNVP expressed a defiant nationalist and at times racist spirit and denounced pacifism. According to them, German women ought to unite their people and educate the young in a defiant nationalist spirit rather than working for international reconciliation. The women on the right considered a lasting peace possible only after an extensive revision of the Versailles peace order in favor of Germany. Many initially even rejected the participation of women in international conferences where they would meet representatives of countries supportive of the “war-guilt lie”. But opposition softened after a while, particularly in the DVP, because nationalist women recognized that they could use these conferences to raise sympathy for Germany abroad and because they hated to leave the representation of Germany to left-wing women. Outrage at the Treaty of Versailles dominated the foreign-policy statements of women from both parties in the early Weimar years. The DVP women, in particular, vociferously protested the policies of the victors and the alleged spinelessness of successive German governments; their talks on nationalism, unlike their speeches on women’s position in the party, always received loud applause by the men at DVP party meetings. Almost every women’s section of the DVPNachrichtenblatt in 1919–1923 contained an angry article on foreign policy. Already at the first party conference in April 1919 Emmy Voigtländer predicted that the peace treaty, which was published a few weeks later, would mean a peace erected on the graveyard of the German people, and she suggested that the denial of the war-guilt charge was Germany’s best weapon against the claims of the victors.6 Jane Voigt, who spoke after Voigtländer, earned enthusiastic applause when she conjured up the patriotic spirit of Germans in the German-Danish border region, where it was already known that the victors of the war would demand a plebiscite to redraw the border. Women made similar professions of nationalism at the second party conference in October 1919, where Marie Bernays gave a widely acclaimed speech that rejected pacifism while stressing that women’s educational activity would strengthen the nation: Knowing “that the best inheritance of the children is the heroism of the fathers,” German women should make their children aware of this inheritance and give the nation new courage for recovery.7 Clara Mende’s attacks on Versailles even induced the – 118 –

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Foreign Policy French authorities in 1922 to prohibit her from speaking in the occupied West German territories, as the DVP press reported with pride.8 In this context, DVP women stressed that Versailles mattered to women not only because of its economic consequences but also because it concerned their role as the “natural” mediators between the generations. They argued that Versailles besmirched Germany’s tradition and its war dead while condemning the next generations to grow up in virtual slavery and dishonor. Unless German women condemned Versailles and sought to revise it, they would be unable to raise their children in the spirit of national tradition and authority they considered crucial for creating a strong and stable society. On the third anniversary of the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, the RFA of the DVP wrote: “We German women cannot stand back in this struggle. It is a pure, holy, and nonviolent struggle for the memory of our dead, who died for Germany, for the future of the children and the unborn who need a Germany where life is worth being lived.”9 In a similar vein, Mende stressed that mothers had to strengthen the national and religious feelings of their children and to keep awake the memory of Germany’s glorious historial periods and great men.10 Another contribution to the women’s section of the DVP-Nachrichtenblatt argued that mothers should strive to preserve the spirit of Imperial Germany’s officer corps and thus to raise their sons to be courageous, obedient, and respectful of authority. “This educational influence of the much-castigated ‘militarism’ should not be lost to us, if we want to maintain a youth capable of fighting.”11 A DVP activist from Prussian Saxony exhorted German diplomats going to an international conference to demand complete equality with other peoples and recognition for Germany’s right to rise again: “For there is one thing that we, the German women and mothers, demand: a future for our children.” German children should grow up as free humans and not as slaves.12 To make every German child aware of his or her chains, the DVP women in the Reichstag proposed that the Treaty of Versailles be taught to all students in their last year of school and that the fate of Germans in the lost or occupied areas be included in the curriculum. Matz justified these demands in talks with the Interior Ministry in June 1922.13 Women in the DVP recognized the need to educate German women generally on matters of foreign policy. They strove to show that reparations were responsible for the rising prices that the housewife had to pay in the shops, and foreign policy often took center stage at the conferences for regional or local women’s councils and in the courses for women of all parties that Kardorff-von Oheimb offered at her home in Goslar.14 Mende and Stropp also advocated a more active role for women in foreign policy. True to the theory that women ought to bring their “female” qualities to all areas of politics and society, Mende encouraged women to take responsibility for matters that had been considered the traditional preserve of men, such as foreign policy, and suggested that German consulates – 119 –

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Mothers of the Nation in neutral countries employ women. These women should play a special role in communicating the misery of the Germans to foreign countries.15 When French troops occupied Frankfurt am Main and other cities east of the Rhine river in early 1920, Emma Stropp wondered what women could do to resist this renewed humiliation. To fight on the “wagon circle,” as Germanic women once did, was futile, even if many German women now longed for the opportunity. But women could improve the situation by voting for the DVP and thus removing incapable and spineless governing men from power: “Our weapon today is the ballot.” Hatred of the men in the government (Regierungsmänner) for a moment even seems to have deflected Stropp’s anger at the men in her own party, whose antifeminism she criticized more loudly than most DVP women.16 It was only consistent that Stropp also called for the admission of women to the diplomatic service, arguing that famous female rulers had conducted an ingenious foreign policy and that the greater sensitivity of women had historically enabled them to understand foreign countries better than men. The poor record of male diplomats in the early Weimar years, according to Stropp, was reason enough to place more confidence in women.17 One method of contesting the peace treaty that was suitable for women was suggested by Voigtländer at the DVP’s first party conference: to deny the warguilt charge. Many Germans believed that the most punitive provisions of the Treaty of Versailles were based on the claim that Germany and its allies had started the war, and that the moral justification of the peace would crumble without that one piece. Since women in all bourgeois parties agreed that morality was primarily a women’s issue and that women, not having fought each other with weapons in hand, would raise a more effective voice for justice than men, women from the DVP and all other bourgeois parties became highly active in protesting the war-guilt charge. In 1921 Voigtländer and Katharina Kardorff-von Oheimb were instrumental in founding a committee to fight it, the German Women’s Committee for the Struggle against the War-Guilt Lie (Deutscher Frauenausschuss zur Bekämpfung der Schuldlüge, DFBS). This committee drew women mostly from the DVP and DNVP, but the Center and Democratic Party were also involved. Mende and Annagrete Lehmann chaired it for many years, and the women’s press of the DVP and DNVP reported every meeting.18 Voigtländer and Mende conducted an emotional campaign against the war-guilt charge, arguing for example that it cost millions of Germans their lives by justifying an immensely stifling and destructive peace.19 Every admission of German atrocities during the First World War, like every even remotely positive statement on Versailles and its implications, was considered by the DVP women as support for the “war-guilt lie” and thus as high treason. When three women from the left wing of the German women’s movement traveled to an international conference in London in 1924 and made some comments that seemed to reveal such a – 120 –

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Foreign Policy tendency, an outraged Mende demanded that the German Foreign Ministry deny exit visas to these women. The Women’s Committee against the War-Guilt Lie published a declaration whose title, “An den Pranger” (“To the pillory”), implied that the three women should be publicly exposed.20 Another way for women to contain the negative effects of Versailles was to foster connections with Germans in the occupied territories and abroad. Consistent with the idea of the woman as the preserver of culture, the women of the DVP agreed that these contacts were a special women’s duty. Women from the DVP (and DNVP) visited almost every women’s meeting of the Großdeutsche Volkspartei in Austria, a pro-German right-wing party, and of the Deutsche Nationalpartei, a party of the German minority in Czechoslovakia.21 Else Frobenius, who presided over the women’s committee of the German Protective League for the Germans on the Borders and Abroad (Deutscher Schutzbund für die Grenz- und Auslandsdeutschen), exhorted DVP women to offer charitable help to Germans expelled from foreign countries and draw them into the DVP. The presumption was that when these Germans one day returned to their previous areas of settlement they would carry the nationalist spirit of the DVP abroad and foster their connections with Germany.22 In a practical effort to strengthen the links among all ethnic Germans, DVP women organized holidays in unoccupied Germany for children from territories under foreign occupation or administration. They gave particular attention to children from the Rhineland so as to undercut French schemes to separate this area from mainland Germany.23 The leading women of the DVP also took part in the public campaign against the extradition of Germany’s wartime leaders, whom the Allies considered suspected war criminals but who were heroes to most Germans. During the National Assembly’s subcommittee meetings examining the causes of Germany’s breakdown, the women’s section of the DVP-Nachrichtenblatt stressed the heroism of the military figures Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, who stood at the top of the Allies’ list of individuals to be prosecuted.24 When the German government in February 1920 hesitated on how to respond to the Entente’s demand for the extradition of suspected war criminals, Stropp claimed that most women, true to their “natural” inclination to unity, stood united behind an indignant rejection of this demand. She even declared the matter a test case for the ability of political women to overcome party differences and demonstrate national unity. Women should live up to their claims of being the “guardians of Germany’s national honor.”25 Women from the DVP were also involved in the notorious protests against the presence of non-European, particularly African, soldiers in the French occupation army in West Germany, dubbed the “Black Horror on the Rhine.” After a few incidents that were blown out of proportion, many German newspapers started a paranoid and racist campaign against the French occupation troops, claiming that – 121 –

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Mothers of the Nation France deliberately sent soldiers from its African colonies to Germany so that they would rape and seduce German women. The press also insinuated that France aimed to spread venereal disease among Germans, so as to undermine German morality and to weaken the German racial stock.26 Through its connections to morality, rape, and reproduction, this slander campaign addressed “female” concerns. Women from all bourgeois parties, particularly the DVP and DNVP, thus showed great interest in it. By emphasizing the perceived outrages of the African soldiers, moreover, women could call into question the morality of the foreign occupation of West Germany and the Treaty of Versailles in general. For the DVP, Stropp set the tone when she wrote about African soldiers in the Palatinate: “With their untamable bestiality, the negroes spread the most dangerous sexual diseases.” She claimed, moreover, that French authorities sent infected prostitutes to cities in the occupied area so as to further the spread of venereal disease in Germany. She admitted that some German women accepted sexual relations with Africans for a piece of chocolate, but the decisive point for her was that the German authorities did nothing to stop all of this. German women thus had to protest the abuses to the whole world so as to stop “the rapes by bestialized savages, the system of brothels and prostitution, and demoralization as well as contamination.”27 When Luise Zietz of the Independent Socialists held a Reichstag speech in which she mentioned German war crimes on one level with the “Black Horror on the Rhine,” DVP women reacted with outrage. How could a German woman make this comparison in the Reichstag? Mende, who answered Zietz, attested to her a severe lack of feeling for her race and people. In a characteristic way, Mende argued that the scandal was not that Africans committed crimes – which she implied they would “naturally” do – but that the French government sent them to Germany.28 Women in the DVP continued to protest the presence of non-European troops in France’s occupation army. They even included the topic in a program paper submitted to the party conference of 1921 by Mende. The paper stated: “It is intolerable that colored troops, representatives of low-ranking masses, exercise sovereignty over a high-standing, white people in the midst of European cultural life. It is intolerable that the purity, health, and strength of the German race are endangered by colored peoples.”29 In the Reichstag, Elsa Matz criticized the prohibition of the demagogic and sexually explicit film Schwarze Schmach by the Reich Government, arguing that the film would have a very useful effect on the public in the United States and elsewhere even though she admitted that it was exaggerated and blatantly distorted.30 Even as late as January 1925, a woman writing for the Nationalliberale Correspondenz conjured up the “bestiality of an occupation force afflicted with venereal disease” and decried the fact that Germany had to pay money for the occupation, which amounted to nothing less than “race shame and the poisoning of the German race.”31 – 122 –

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Foreign Policy The aggressive nationalist tone of the DVP women reached fever pitch in 1923, after French and Belgian troops had occupied the heavily industrialized Ruhr district in response to Germany’s default on reparations payments. The German government called for passive resistance in the occupied area, and a wave of hyper-nationalist outrage swept Germany. DVP women attempted to apply international pressure on France through the remaining international channels of the women’s movement, and in the summer of 1923 the RFA organized a conference of all DVP women parliamentarians in Bielefeld, close to the border of the occupied Ruhr district. The meeting was a nationalist demonstration during which the DVP women issued a series of protest notes.32 After this crescendo, however, the tone got more moderate when Stresemann became chancellor and foreign minister on 12 August 1923. The women’s press of the DVP hardly commented on the cessation of passive resistance by Stresemann on 26 September 1923. Although DVP involvement in the German Women’s Committee against the War-Guilt Lie and other nationalist organizations continued with the same intensity, the opinion of DVP women promptly rallied behind Stresemann’s more conciliatory foreign policy.33 The DVP women also became more compromising with respect to international conferences: whereas they had at first condemned participation of Germans in conferences with representatives of countries supportive of the “war-guilt lie,” they now tended to stress that patriotic women with proud bearing would be able to raise respect and sympathy for Germany at these meetings. Representation of German women abroad should not be left to pacifists, who were not representative of German women as a whole.34 Until the summer of 1923 women in the DNVP and DVP displayed an almost identical attitude on foreign policy. Leading DNVP women, such as Schirmacher and Spohr, were engaged for Germans in the eastern territories divided between Germany and Poland. Schirmacher, always committed to the most radical nationalism, even called for resistance by all Germans, men and women, when hostilities between Polish troops and German irregulars erupted along the disputed border in Upper Silesia in 1921: “A burning country needs burning hearts. Up! Go to the Upper Silesian front, burning hearts of German women!”35 The DNVP women were as involved in the German Women’s Committee against the WarGuilt Lie as their colleagues from the DVP, and the hatred of France manifest in the statements of DVP women in 1923 was even stronger among the DNVP women. The DNVP was also very active in organizing vacations for children from areas under foreign occupation or administration.36 Women from both parties – together with Catholic organizations and housewives’ leagues – launched a campaign for the boycott of French and Belgian goods during the Ruhr occupation.37 The “Black Horror on the Rhine” was also one of the primary concerns of DNVP women in the early 1920s. Paula Mueller-Otfried initiated a – 123 –

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Mothers of the Nation petition to the League of Nations using the same racist language as Stropp’s articles, and Schirmacher addressed the issue several times in the National Assembly. In a question she submitted to the government, she claimed: “The lust of white, yellow, and black Frenchmen for German women leads to daily violence.”38 The women’s committees of the DNVP, which were responsible for propaganda toward women, shamelessly used allusions to the “Black Horror” in election campaigns. An election pamphlet from the state of Baden, for example, asked German women in 1920 to consider that because of the revolution “German women and girls now have to be sacrificed to Moroccans and Negroes from Senegal.” In a leaflet for the May 1924 Reichstag elections, the DNVP warned: “Women! Do you wish the black beasts to come to you, too? Those who defile and rape your sisters on the Rhine and Ruhr? The Reds preach fraternization and reconciliation even with white and black Frenchmen! Do you want to go along? No??? Then vote for the DNVP!”39 As late as 1928 the Frauenkorrespondenz published a blatantly racist article against the few remaining African soldiers in the occupied territories.40 One difference was that women from the DNVP in their statements on foreign policy tended to stress racism more strongly than their counterparts in the DVP. This was not obvious in the “Black Horror” campaign, where almost everybody except the radical Left employed racist language. But when DNVP women justified their interest in Germans abroad, they tended to argue that women, due to their biological disposition as mothers, had a better understanding of race than men. As RFA member Erika Altgelt put it: “The woman has a deeper feeling than the man for the natural and fateful connection with the comrades of the Volk (Volksgenossen), with the German land (Scholle); this is true even if that land belongs to a foreign country.”41 Schirmacher was particularly virulent in defining international conflicts as racial struggles. In a speech to the national conference of the DNVP in 1926, she argued that the First World War had been a struggle of Europe’s mixed races against “the last original and cultural people (Ur- und Kulturvolk) of the Indo-Germanic race, against us Germans.”42 She developed a delirious vision of Germany in the throes of a “negroized France” (an allusion to the African soldiers in the French army) and “animalistic Moscow” (her metaphor for “Jewish” bolshevism). Behind this double threat, she suspected a Jewish world conspiracy. The only defense for the Germans, she claimed, was to keep their race “clean” and to strengthen its Nordic elements. Women, as mothers and educators, would play a primary role in this task.43 She thus gave women a central position in Germany’s international struggle while reaffirming traditional gender divisions and the stress on motherhood. Unlike Schirmacher, however, most DNVP women advocated a stronger gender separation than women from the DVP. Magdalene von Tiling, for example, argued that women needed to become more knowledgeable in foreign policy so that they – 124 –

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Foreign Policy could raise their children in a more patriotic spirit, but she believed that foreign policy would always remain in the hands of men and found nothing wrong with that. Stropp’s and Mende’s calls for the deployment of women in Germany’s foreign service hardly resonated among female DNVP activists.44 DNVP women did not adopt the moderation that the DVP women displayed from the moment Stresemann became the key person in German foreign policy. While the DNVP leadership vehemently attacked the grand coalition government formed by Stresemann on 12 August 1923, particularly after Stresemann decided to call off passive resistance,45 the hateful anti-French rhetoric of DNVP women continued unabated. In January 1924 Spohr wrote that the only possible attitude of German women toward France was an absolute “no”, an attitude required by “the elementary völkisch instinct of self-preservation toward the most brutal and determined conqueror Germany has had to face in a thousand years.”46 Spohr denied that Germany ever had the intention to violate the freedom of other peoples or to annex any territory against the will of its population and claimed that a peaceful understanding with France was impossible. When the DNVP Reichstag group split during the vote on the Dawes Plan, a new reparations agreement, on 29 August 1924, the three women present at the meeting – Mueller-Otfried, Schott, and Sperber – all sided with the intransigent party faction. The Frauenkorrespondenz had claimed that the Dawes Plan was a scheme to transform Germany into a “reparations colony,” that it was in some respects worse than Versailles, and that it implied a renewed recognition of the “war-guilt lie”. The often-invoked loyalty of women to party principles would have made it difficult for DNVP women to vote for the Dawes Plan, although many men did so after having pronounced equally emphatic rejections of the plan.47 While the split vote triggered intense controversy in the party over participation in the government and the course of foreign policy, the RFA, so it seems, attempted to stay above the troubled waters. The leading DNVP women prided themselves on their consistent rejection of the Dawes Plan but tried at the same time to lick the wounds that the party had inflicted on itself and made it clear that they would not oppose the DNVP’s joining the government. An RFA communiqué after the vote, for example, claimed that the majority of women in the party had been strictly opposed to the Dawes Plan but that the main task of women now was to hold the party together and to make sure that their own determined nationalism would become the basis of German foreign policy.48 At a regional DNVP women’s conference in Küstrin, a speaker questioned the party’s opposition to participation in government and stressed: “More than ever the national cause requires the cooperation of women. They have to help restore the heavily shattered confidence [in the party].”49 Although the ritualistic condemnations of the “war-guilt lie” and the outraged reports on the situation of Germans under foreign occupation or administration – 125 –

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Mothers of the Nation continued, DNVP women, together with the party at large, adopted a more moderate position in the following years, when the DNVP participated in two governments that included Stresemann as foreign minister (1925 and 1927–1928). Occasionally DNVP women even began to voice the opinion that patriotic women could do some good at international conferences.50 The main demand of DNVP women, beyond the revocation of the war-guilt clause, was now the disarmament of the victor nations. The Treaty of Versailles included the provision that all nations should disarm after German disarmament had been completed. After Germany’s military might had been reduced to the levels required by the Treaty, the German Foreign Office made the case that France and Britain, in particular, failed to honor their part of the deal. DNVP women wanted to see this position stressed more strongly. In a series of articles for the Frauenkorrespondenz in June 1925, Reichstag member Ulrike Scheidel criticized Stresemann for failing to secure a commitment to disarmament from the victor nations, and from April to June 1927 Hannah Brandt published a series of articles critical of Britain and France for rearming in violation of the clauses in the Versailles Treaty.51 But the moderation in the years after 1924 was tenuous – both in the DNVP at large and among its women. In October 1925, the DNVP women applauded when their party withdrew its ministers from the cabinet in protest against the Treaty of Locarno, in which Germany committed itself not to challenge its western border and signed arbitration treaties with its eastern neighbors Poland and Czechoslovakia. The leading DNVP women supported the party line, which considered Locarno another step of the policy of fulfillment, and they warned against German membership in the League of Nations, envisioned by Stresemann and his conference partners for 1926.52 In June 1927, DNVP women also launched a hateful press campaign against Gertrud Bäumer, who had published a conciliatory article on her visit to the First World War battle site of Verdun. Reporting her impressions, Bäumer expressed doubts about the meaning of the carnage in 1916 and her amazement at the return of life to normalcy on top of this atrocious battle field. In a vicious attack that was widely echoed by DNVP women, the DNVP’s Hanover activist Bertha Hindenberg-Delbrück accused Bäumer of lacking respect for the German war dead and criticized her doubts about the meaning of the German sacrifices as outrageous and frivolous. Bäumer replied that Hindenberg-Delbrück’s critique was distorting and demogogic, but she was forced to make an awkward justification of her remarks while essentially agreeing with the values and interpretations HindenbergDelbrück had stressed.53 In reaction to her article, Bäumer received countless angry letters, some of which accused her of participating in the “Jewish poisoning of the people” and asked her, although she was unmarried, to concentrate on mending her husband’s trousers.54 – 126 –

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Foreign Policy In the second half of 1928, the DNVP women’s press again became more intransigent in foreign policy matters. The DNVP now stood in opposition to the new government, a coalition from the DVP to the SPD under the leadership of Social Democrat Hermann Müller. It could thus attack Stresemann’s foreign policy more sharply than before. Hugenberg’s election to party chair in October 1928, moreover, signified a victory of the intransigent party wing, which had always shunned a realistic foreign policy. Finally, the DNVP women perceived an alarming growth of interest in pacifism in Germany and, in particular, in the German women’s movement. In her leader articles for the Frauenkorrespondenz, Lehmann claimed that Stresemann’s foreign policy had utterly failed and that he had conducted a policy without honor and self-respect. Germany, she argued, had long paid for all war damages inflicted on the enemies, so that all further payments were simply punitive payments based on the “war-guilt lie.”55 When the pacifist International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship (IAW) held a conference in Berlin in June 1929, around the tenth anniversary of the ratification of the peace treaty, women from the DNVP launched massive attacks against the conference’s German organizers.56 DNVP women had tried to convince the organizing committee to include a session on Versailles in the conference program, but to no avail. As a consequence, RFA member Ilse Hamel urged German women not to participate except as unofficial guests who should point out the suffering of Germany as a result of Versailles. Denying that women “by nature” welcomed international reconciliation, she called for women’s demonstrations commemorating Versailles as a contrast to the IAW conference.57 On 23 June, the German Women’s Committee against the War-Guilt Lie indeed staged a big memorial event for Versailles during which Mende and Lehmann spoke. To accentuate the somber tone of the meeting, the Committee had asked the audience to wear dark clothing, and serious music was played between the speeches (the slow movement of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony and a Bach organ fugue). The event was so well attended that Berlin’s large Philharmonic Hall could not hold all visitors.58 The Frauenkorrespondenz underpinned the message of the Versailles memorial event with a barrage of articles arguing that all international women’s solidarity was treason so long as Germans had to suffer from reparations and Versailles. Schirmacher even called for determined resistance against the victors, without revealing, however, how it should be carried out: “Arise, the hour of struggle has arrived!”59 After the IAW conference, DNVP women focused their attacks on the proposed Young Plan, a new reparations settlement that eased some provisions of the Dawes Plan and distributed German reparations payments over a longer period. The DNVP, unencumbered by considerations of joining a centrist government again, categorically opposed any further German payments and commitments. Hugenberg even requested a referendum over a bill that would end all – 127 –

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Mothers of the Nation German payments and threatened those who signed the Young Plan with legal prosecution for high treason. The bill also called for an official revocation of the war-guilt charge. To broaden support for it, Hugenberg joined forces with the NSDAP and other right-wing organizations. A popular vote on 2 November 1929 gave the referendum just enough votes to make a plebiscite over the bill mandatory. The plebiscite, however, failed by a clear margin on 22 December.60 That the Young Plan extended German payments into the 1980s gave DNVP women a welcome opportunity to dust off their argument about women’s obligation to prevent the enslavement of their children. As Spohr put it: “We have no right to load our chains and the war-guilt lie onto the shoulders of our children and grandchildren.”61 The DNVP women were happy that the proposed bill called for an official rejection of the war-guilt charge, and Lehmann defended the provision that people signing the Young Plan would be sued for high treason. This was a thorny issue, because Reich President Hindenburg, who was popular among DNVP women, would have to sign the Young Plan before it could take effect. But Lehmann, who called the referendum a life-and-death question for Germany, argued that the provision was necessary because it showed that the people behind the referendum were serious about it.62 In the Reichstag, Lehmann gave a speech in support of the referendum, claiming that all reparations demands by the Allies were based solely on the “war-guilt lie” and demanding yet again that instruction on Versailles become mandatory in all German schools.63 Shortly before her death, Käthe Schirmacher mustered all her inflammatory rhetoric in support of the referendum: “It is exciting to say no in times of deepest national shame and national surrender – to resist, to fight. The Germanic people were always fighters; their sign was the light-spraying hammer. Be cheerful, optimistic – be Germanic! Swing the bright hammer of the referendum against the lie of Versailles, against tributary payments, against national decadence, against the spoiling of our present and our distant future. We can win, if we want to win. Want it!”64 In the context of their campaign against the Young Plan, DNVP women also revived their critique of women’s alleged affinity to pacifism. At the national party convention in Kassel in November 1929 women made the rejection of pacifism their main cause. Erna von Birkhahn, the chair of the LFA MecklenburgSchwerin, sought to separate pacifism from Christianity by arguing that God gave every people its “race and blood law” and a special task that it could not complete without national self-assertion. She admitted that war contradicts the character of Jesus but claimed that loving commitment to one’s own people and state lends justice to war. Spohr added that the rearmament of Germany’s wartime enemies as well as the quest for independence and expansion of colonized peoples made pacifism and disarmament a foolish thing for Germany.65 Loyal to Hugenberg’s ideas, the DNVP women continued to criticize almost – 128 –

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Foreign Policy every treaty Germany concluded as insufficient, and they frequently pointed at alleged Polish threats to the east of Germany. Efforts of the IAW to prevent rearmament in 1931–32 received harsh critique, with DNVP women arguing that cementing the present disarmament of Germany would perpetuate war rather than preserving peace.66 Consequently, the DNVP women supported the decision of the two housewives’ leagues to leave the BDF in 1932 because of a BDF note on disarmament that the housewives considered too weak.67 The DVP women followed a more moderate line on foreign policy while men from their party occupied the Foreign Office: Stresemann from August 1923 until his death on 3 October 1929 and then Julius Curtius until October 1931. They called for international reconciliation while always stressing that Versailles and, in particular, the “war-guilt lie” were a great injustice to Germany. With anger, they watched the DNVP women’s reaction to the Treaty of Locarno and criticized Lehmann and her colleagues for claiming national feeling only for themselves and their party. The DVP’s Martha Schwarz admitted that German women would not understand most provisions of the treaty, but she naively suggested that they should trust Reich President Hindenburg, who would surely know the matter inside out.68 Hoping to provide support for Stresemann’s foreign policy, DVP women approved of participation in international women’s conferences. In 1926, Elsa Matz and Gertraud Wolf attended the Paris conference of the IAW. But the substantive issues at this conference were overshadowed by a scandal that erupted after the French organizers of the conference mistakenly raised the black-white-red flag of the German Empire before 1918 instead of the black-red-gold flag of Weimar Germany. The women from the left-wing parties and the Democratic Party in the German delegation rushed to take down the old flag and demanded an immediate replacement. The DVP women, who revered the old flag, felt insulted by this act. The affair led to a press campaign between Gertrud Bäumer of the Democratic Party and Gertraud Wolf of the DVP, who had both been present. Emma Ender, as chair of the BDF, finally reconciled the two sides. The issue received so much attention because the German government under Chancellor Hans Luther had just resigned in the wake of a crisis triggered by its initiatives to rehabilitate the old flag.69 DVP women also participated in the IAW’s Berlin congress, which was so much maligned by the DNVP women. In a speech at the conference, Matz sought to undermine the morality of Versailles and the war-guilt thesis by blaming the peace treaty for widespread misery.70 This was exactly how DVP women envisioned supporting Germany’s revisionist aims: to use participation in international conferences as a way of undermining the legitimacy of Versailles and raising the sympathies of foreign women. In the disarmament debate, Matz and other DVP women later criticized the reluctance of France to disarm, but they did not go beyond the position of the German Foreign Ministry.71 – 129 –

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Mothers of the Nation Despite the general preference for reconciliation after 1923, confrontational and chauvinist tones occasionally resurfaced in the DVP. In 1925, for example, Mende vented her frustration over the behavior of the Polish representative at the Washington conference of the International Council of Women in a diatribe against Polish culture, which she ranked much below German culture: “A state that is built up upon the disloyalty of its people toward its previous rulers and upon ingratitude toward its helpers can, of course, not be expected to assume a high moral point of view in international life.”72 DVP women, often in tandem with their sisters in the DNVP, continued to publish propagandistic accounts of the plight of Germans in Poland and along the “bleeding border” in the east.73 Warnings about Poland’s high birthrate occasionally also appeared in their propaganda arsenal. In conclusion, the women from the DVP and DNVP took a very strong interest in foreign-policy matters, but their activity usually reflected their maternalist idea of women’s role in politics. Women, as spiritual or real mothers, were considered to have a special role in fostering the connections of Germans in occupied areas or foreign countries to the German Volksgemeinschaft and in ensuring the continuity of this link across the generations.74 As mothers, women also had to protect future generations of Germans from the dishonor and exploitation associated with Versailles and the “war-guilt lie.” Women’s involvement in foreign policy further revolved around the importance of morality, where women had long claimed a mission of their own. The “Black Horror” campaign, with its strong racist elements, was declared a morality issue, and women from both parties, regardless of whether they supported the official German foreign policy or not, almost always advanced their arguments on the basis of morality – be it the importance of the “war-guilt lie” or the injustice of French military strength when considered in light of German disarmament.

Notes 1. “Zum 28. Juni 1922,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 26, 30 June 1922. 2. See Doris Kaufmann, “Die Ehre des Vaterlandes und die Ehre der Frauen oder der Kampf an der äusseren und inneren Front.” Evangelische Theologie 46 (1986): 277–92. 3. Claudia Koonz, “Conflicting Allegiances.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1, no. 1 (1976): 663–83, here 672–3. From the fact that women legislators rarely spoke on certain topics in the Reichstag we should not infer that they were not interested in them. 4. Raffael Scheck, “Women Against Versailles.” German Studies Review 22 (1999): 21–42, here 24–7. 5. On women’s pilgrimages to the German-Polish border, see Elizabeth Harvey, “Pilgrimages to the ‘Bleeding Border’: Gender and Rituals of – 130 –

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6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Nationalist Protest in Germany, 1919–1939.” Women’s History Review 9, no. 2 (2000): 201–29. Bericht über den Ersten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei (Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1919), p. 86. Marie Bernays, “Wie stärken wir Frauen die deutsche Volkskraft?” Bericht über den Zweiten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei (Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1920), p. 181. “Volksparteiliche Frauen in den neuen Parlamenten,” NLC 51, no. 207, 12 December 1924. “Zum 28. Juni 1922,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 26, 30 June 1922. Clara Mende, “Die nationalen Pflichten der deutschen Frau,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 2, no. 5, 29 January 1920. Helene Wenck, “Die Reichswehr und unsere Söhne,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 27, 8 July 1920. Ina Le Mang-Pfaff, “Die deutschen Frauen in Genf,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 39, 30 September 1920. See, for example, Beda Prilipp, “Die großen Vier am Werk,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 3, no. 24, 16 June 1922, and Magdalene von Tiling, “Zur Frage der politischen Frauenpartei,” Deutschnationale Frau 13, no. 13, 1 October 1931; “Kulturaufgaben des Reiches,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 24, 16 June 1922. BA Koblenz, Nachlass Katharina Kardorff-von Oheimb (N 1039), vols. 25 and 37. Clara Mende, “Wirkungslosigkeit des Frauenstimmrechts?” DVPNachrichtenblatt 3, no. 32, 11 August 1922; “Sitzung des Reichsfrauenausschusses,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 42, 21 October 1920. Emma Stropp, “Feind im Land!”, DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 15, 15 April 1920. For Stropp’s critique of antifeminism in the DVP, see chapter 3. Emma Stropp, “Die Außenpolitik und die Frauen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 41, 10 November 1922. Scheck, “Women against Versailles,” p. 26. Emmy Voigtländer, “Immer noch Begriffsverwirrung,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 13, 31 March 1921. Clara Mende, “Wenn deutsche Frauen ins Ausland gehen,” and “An den Pranger,” both in NLC 51, no. 25, 20 February 1924. See for example “Bericht von der Frauentagung der Dt. Nationalpartei in Troppau,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 3, no. 40, 27 October 1922; “Volksparteiliche Frauenarbeit 1922,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 5, 2 March 1923; “Großdeutscher Frauentag in Wien,” NLC 52, no. 99, 26 May 1925; Annagrete Lehmann, “Vom Großdeutschen Parteitag in Bregenz,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 24, 14 June 1928. – 131 –

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Mothers of the Nation 22. Else Frobenius, “Kulturaufgaben, für die wir eintreten müssen,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 2, no. 20, 20 May 1920, and Luise Marelle, “Der ‘Schutzbund’ – neue Aufgaben der deutschen Frau” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 23/24, 17 June 1920. On Frobenius and her engagement for the Germans living abroad, see also Lora Wildenthal, “Mass-Marketing Colonialism and Nationalism: The Career of Else Frobenius in the ‘Weimarer Republik’ and Nazi Germany.” In Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 2000). 23. Käthe Rahmlow, “Nun erst recht!” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 6, 16 March 1923, and Ilse Szagunn, “Über die Arbeit der Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Frauenausschüsse Groß-Berlins,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 23, 9 November 1923. 24. “Satyrspiel, Beobachtungen und Gedanken einer Frau während der Sitzung vom 18. November des Untersuchungsausschusses,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 1, no. 9, 27 November 1919. 25. Emma Stropp, “Das Auslieferungsverlangen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 7, 12 February 1920. 26. Sally Marks, “Black Watch on the Rhine: A Study in Propaganda, Prejudice and Prurience.” European Studies Review 13 (1983): 297–334; Gisela Lebzelter, “Die ‘Schwarze Schmach’: Vorurteile – Propaganda – Mythos.” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 11, no. 1 (1985): 37–58; and Keith Nelson, “‘The Black Horror on the Rhine’: Race as a Factor in Post-World War I Diplomacy.” Journal of Modern History 42, no. 4 (1970): 606–27. 27. Emma Stropp, “Der sexuale Schrecken im besetzten Gebiet,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 2, no. 18, 6 May 1920. 28. “Aus der Nationalversammlung,” and Clara Mende, “Die zweite deutsche Nationalversammlung,” both in DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 21, 27 May 1920. See also VdR, Nationalversammlung, vol. 333, pp. 5695–6. 29. Die Deutsche Volkspartei und das Versailler Friedensdiktat, Flugschriften der DVP, vol. III-3 (Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1921). 30. VdR, 1920–1924, vol. 354, p. 6949. 31. “Gegen die ‘Kulturschande’,” NLC, 52, no. 13, 21 January 1925. 32. “Gegen Hungerblockade und Schandregiment: Die weiblichen Abgeordneten der D. Vp. an der Grenze des besetzten Gebietes,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 4, no. 14, 6 July 1923. 33. The only explicit report on the break-off of passive resistance in the DVP women’s press I could find was a declaration in support of Stresemann from the WkFA Solingen (DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 22, 26 October 1923). That the RFA did not issue a similar declaration may indicate ambivalence about Stresemann’s measure, which was seen as a shameful capitulation by many rightists. – 132 –

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Foreign Policy 34. “Sturmzeit,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 20, 28 September 1923, and Gertraud Wolf, “Internationale Tagungen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 19, 14 September 1923. 35. Käthe Schirmacher, “Für Oberschlesien,” Frauenkorrespondenz 2, no. 19, 25 June 1921. 36. Scheck, “German Conservatism and Female Political Activism in the Early Weimar Republic,” pp. 49–51. 37. Frauenkorrespondenz 4, no. 4, 28 March 1923. 38. See Verhandlungen der Nationalversammlung, vol. 341, interpellation no. 1898 (quoted), and vol. 343, interpellation no. 2771. See also Scheck, “German Conservatism,” pp. 49–50. 39. “Deutsche Frauen!” BA Koblenz, ZSg. 1–44 (DNVP), vol. 8; Pamphlet in GStA Berlin, XII, IV, vol. 187 (emphasis in the original). 40. Maria Vogts, “Zehn Jahre besetztes Rheinland,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 48, 29 November 1928. 41. Erika Altgelt, “Frauenveranstaltungen beim Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 23, 23 June 1927. See also “Zum Ostmarkentag in Oberschlesien,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 18, 5 May 1927. 42. Käthe Schirmacher, “Die Schwarze Schmach,” in: Führer durch den Reichsparteitag der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei in Köln a. Rh. vom 8. bis 11. September 1926. Berlin: Deutschnationale Schriftenvertriebsstelle, [1926], pp. 30–2. BA Koblenz, ZSg. 1–44 (DNVP), vol. 3 (1). 43. Käthe Schirmacher, “Frankreichs farbige Truppen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 51, 13 July 1925. 44. Magdalene von Tiling, “Zur Frage der politischen Frauenpartei.” 45. Liebe, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei, p. 74. 46. Elisabeth Spohr, “Unser Erbfeind Frankreich,” Frauenkorrespondenz 5, no. 10, 19 January 1924. 47. Helene Freiin von Watter, “Kontroll- und Versklavungsmaßnahmen im Sachverständigengutachten (Teil II),” Frauenkorrespondenz 5, no. 24, 18 June 1924, and other articles by Watter in the following issues. See also Raffael Scheck, Alfred von Tirpitz and German Right-Wing Politics, 1914–1930, Studies in Central European Histories (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1998), pp. 176–9. 48. “Die Entscheidung des 29. August – ein Anfang,” and Dr. von Rundstedt, “Gewissensfragen,” both in Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 35, 3 September 1924. 49. “Landesparteitag der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei in Cüstrin-Neustadt am 18. und 19. Oktober 1924,” Monatsmitteilungen für die Vertrauensmänner und Mitglieder der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei Kreisverein Soldin 6, no. – 133 –

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50.

51.

52.

53.

54. 55.

56.

57.

58. 59. 60.

10, 31 October 1924. See also Annagrete Lehmann, “Besinnung,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 40, 8 October 1924. “Nationalbewußtsein und internationale Zusammenarbeit,” Frauenkorrespondenz 8, no. 35, 26 August 1926. See also “Frauenfragen,” in Weiß, ed., Politisches Handwörterbuch, p. 213. Hannah Brandt, “Zum Zeichen der Abrüstung – I. Programm und Tatsachen” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 17, 28 April 1927, and the following issues until June 1927. Ulrike Scheidel, “Was bedeuten die Abmachungen von Locarno?” Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 90, 26 November 1925; Scheidel, “Und nun … ?” Frauenkorrespondenz 8, no. 6, 4 February 1926; Annagrete Lehmann, “Zum Vertrag von Locarno,” Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 88, 22 October 1925, and Käthe Schirmacher, “Die Stellung der deutschnationalen Frauen zu Locarno,” Frauenkorrespondenz 7, no. 89, 24 November 1925. Bäumer, “Mai über Verdun,” Die Frau 34, no. 9 (June 1927): 513–17; see also Bertha Hindenberg-Delbrück’s open letter to Bäumer, in Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 25, 23 June 1927. The Frauenkorrespondenz refused to publish Bäumer’s response and claimed to have received many letters expressing outrage over her remarks and satisfaction over Hindenberg-Delbrück’s article. See “Schlußwort an Frau Dr. Gertrud Bäumer,” Frauenkorrespondenz 9, no. 28, 14 July 1927. Gertrud Bäumer, “Parteifanatismus über Gräbern,” Die Frau 34, no. 11 (August 1927): 666–72. Annagrete Lehmann, “Rückblick und Ausblick,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 52, 27 December 1928; Lehmann, “Kriegsschuldlüge und ‘Reparationen’,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 3, 17 January 1929. Ulrike Scheidel, “Kriegsächtung und Kriegsverzicht? Entstehung und Bedeutung des Kellogg-Pakts,” Frauenkorrespondenz 10, no. 36, 6 September 1928. For background on the IAW, see Rupp, Worlds of Women, pp. 21–6. Ilse Hamel, “Zum bevorstehenden internationalen Frauenkongreß in Berlin,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 22, 30 May 1929. See also Irene Stoehr, Emanzipation zum Staat? (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1990), pp. 128–31. Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 24, 13 June 1929; Alice Freifrau von Bissing, “Zehn Jahre Versailles,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 26, 27 June 1929. Käthe Schirmacher, “Die Lüge von Versailles,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 25, 20 June 1929. Elisabeth Friedenthal, “Volksbegehren und Volksentscheid über den Youngplan und die deutschnationale Sezession” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Universität Tübingen, 1957). – 134 –

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Foreign Policy 61. Elisabeth Spohr, “Kampf dem Tributplan,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 36, 5 September 1929. 62. Annagrete Lehmann “Das Volksbegehren gegen die Versklavung des deutschen Volkes,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 38, 19 September 1929. See also Lenore Kühn, “Was will der Young-Plan?” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 39, 26 September 1929, and Annagrete Lehmann, “Allerlei Bedenken!” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 41, 10 October 1929. 63. VdR, 1928–1930, vol. 426, pp. 3323–5. 64. Käthe Schirmacher, “Zum Volksbegehren,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 43, 24 October 1929. 65. Frauenkorrespondenz, vol 11, no. 38, 19 September 1929; “Frauenreferate auf dem Parteitag in Kassel: Pazifismus und deutsche Selbstbehauptung I. Referat: Erna v. Birkhahn”, and “Pazifismus und deutsche Selbstbehauptung II. Referat Spohr,” both in Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 47, 21 November 1929. 66. Annagrete Lehmann, “Erklärung nationaler Frauenkreise an die Genfer Abrüstungskommission,” and Erika Kames-Boelcke, “Deutsche Frau und Abrüstungskonferenz,” both in Die Deutschnationale Frau 13, no. 17, 1 December 1931. 67. Freda von Rechenberg, “Generalversammlung der RVDH,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 12, 15 June 1932; see also Schmidt-Waldherr, Emanzipation durch Professionalisierung?, pp. 114 and 135–41, and Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, pp. 131–42, who claims that the BDF declaration was a pretext for the housewives’ leagues, which had wanted to leave the BDF for a long time. 68. M. S. [Martha Schwarz], “Frauengedanken zu Locarno,” NLC 52, no. 219, 25 November 1925. 69. Elsa Matz, “Internationale Frauenarbeit,” NLC 53, no. 119, 8 July 1926; “Noch einmal der ‘Flaggenvorfall’ beim Pariser Frauenkongreß,” NLC 53, no. 125, 21 July 1926; Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, pp. 129–30. 70. “Zum Frauenweltbund-Kongreß” and “Rede der Reichstagsabgeordneten Frau Dr. Matz auf dem Abend der Parlamentarierinnen des Frauenweltbundes,” both in NLC 56, no. 128, 20 June 1929. See also Clara Mende, “Versailles,” and Martha Schwarz, “Politische Betrachtungen zum internationalen Frauenkongreß in Berlin,” both in NLC 56, no. 133, 27 June 1929. 71. Elsa Matz, “Die Abrüstungsfrage und die Frauen,” NLC 58, no. 176, 10 September 1931; Clara Mende, “Die Frauen zur Frage der Abrüstung,” NLC 58, no. 217, 5 November 1931. 72. Clara Mende, “Der internationale Frauenbund in Washington, 4.-14. Mai 1925,” NLC 52, no. 103, 2 June 1925. – 135 –

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Mothers of the Nation 73. “Helft den deutschen Volksgenossen!” NLC 52, no. 157, 27 August 1925; H. M. [Hilde Margis], “Im Schneidemühler Optandenlager,” NLC 52, no. 185, 7 October 1925; Martha Schwarz, “Reichsfrauenausschuß der Deutschen Volkspartei,” NLC 57, no. 236, 4 December 1930; Harvey, “Pilgrimages to the ‘Bleeding Border’.” 74. For a good expression of this feeling, see Emma Stropp, “Friede und Frauen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 3, 15 January 1920.

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–8– Women’s Local Politics

With lovely generosity, she was always willing to put her art of singing into the service of party meetings; giving joy to others was for her a necessity of life. From the obituary for a member of the DNVP women’s group in Stettin (October 1932)1 What activities did women develop at the grass-roots level, and how did these activities reflect the themes of the women who were active at the national level? According to Helen Boak, women in local politics were confined to doing the “dirty work,” such as collecting dues, conducting door-to-door propaganda, and doing low-level administrative jobs. Their thankless work won women the ritual praise of the male party leaders but no political influence, as Boak confirms by using statistics that show women’s representation in political assemblies becoming smaller proportionally to the size of their town or village.2 There is definitely much truth to this picture: women often picked up membership dues at the door – not a pleasant job given the notoriously bad payment discipline of bourgeois party members. During the inflation, dues were sometimes collected in foodstuffs in rural areas, which demanded heavy physical work at a time when few people were motorized. Handing out party leaflets on the streets could be dangerous in regions where violence-prone leftists or, later on, Nazis dominated the scene. Yet, the picture emerging from available local party newsletters from East Elbian regions, Schleswig-Holstein, Westphalia, and Berlin is richer than the emphasis on the “dirty work” suggests. Women in many places developed an intense activism in the DNVP as well as the DVP. As they frequently claimed, they aimed to promote the feeling of “home” and “family” within the local party organization – thus extending their roles as mothers and housewives to the party. They were often responsible for party festivities, made coffee and baked cake, and performed as singers, musicians, or actresses. Women also used many of these festivities to raise funds for the party, for example by setting up lotteries. Another mainstay of local women’s activities was providing social services for the poor – usually party members: women set up soup kitchens, distributed gifts, and organized rural holidays for poor city dwellers. Women from both parties

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Mothers of the Nation also tried hard to improve the political training of local women. In cooperation with the national women leaders, they offered lectures on political and social issues as well as workshops on speech-making and political organization. In the district of Lauban, a city in Western Silesia, for example, a district women’s committee of the DNVP had been formed early on but faltered after the death of its chairwoman in early 1921. A year later, the DNVP district organization revived the women’s committee by inviting female party members to a celebration of the Kaiser’s birthday (27 January). In a keynote address, district secretary Otto Mießner commemorated the Kaiser and praised the monarchy. When he explained why he had chosen the Kaiser’s birthday for the assembly, he pointed out: “The German woman has always been a loyal stalwart of tradition and a priestess of German loyalty. If we add to this the truly female ability to commiserate deeply, then we have the foundations on which today’s celebration rests.”3 The women’s committee constituted itself under a new chairwoman, and Mießner joined its board, which was not unusual because local women’s committees often invited men to make it clear that they pursued no selfish women’s policies. The committee published a declaration in favor of monarchism and the restoration of everything “good” that the Revolution had destroyed; the leaders of the women’s committee participated in the women’s meeting preceding the DNVP’s national conference in nearby Görlitz in October 1922. The chairwoman summarized the meeting in the local party newsletter and led a discussion of the issues raised in Görlitz, particularly the reform of divorce legislation.4 But women in the Lauban district were often most active in places where no women’s committee existed, and the wisdom of forming women’s committees was not recognized everywhere. Frequently the heavy workload of rural women was an argument against forming a women’s committee, even if many women did attend the local party gatherings.5 Women were also active in mixed party meetings and committees. The news bulletins of local party assemblies in the Lauban district frequently mention a strong presence of women, and many women were elected to party offices. At a meeting of the local party committee of the city of Lauban in August 1921, twenty-three board members were elected for the six city subdistricts, including eleven women. But the almost perfect numerical equality is misleading. The context shows that all the men were elected as chair or vice chair of the subdistrict boards, whereas the women’s responsibility was defined as “strict organization, collection of dues, etc.”6 Other incidents confirm that women were primarily responsible for the collection of membership dues, delivered mostly in goods and foodstuffs in 1922–23, and the organization of social events, during which they provided coffee and cake and stage entertainment. Women also made gifts to the party or imparted money from their inheritance to it. They supported the party’s charitable and welfare activities, such as funding for a local nurse and – 138 –

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Women’s Local Politics the collection of food for poor party members. The wealthy widow of a German officer killed in German East Africa was such a generous contributor and active fund-raiser that the local party newsletter honored her with an article about her own activities in East Africa.7 Women’s efforts to promote the feeling of the party as a big family received support from party secretary Mießner, who during social events occasionally played a piano solo or accompanied his wife, a singer. In 1921–23 the local party published its own newsletter, which gave much space to family news, such as weddings and obituaries of party members. The local DNVP also supported a daily newspaper sympathetic to its views, and it was due to women’s financial support that this newspaper once avoided bankruptcy.8 In contrast to most national leaders, a majority of the active women were married – frequently to men from the party. Although the region was famous for a strong presence of the DNVP’s worker group (Deutschnationaler Arbeiterbund), most of the active women belonged to the nobility or were married to white-collar employees or independent tradesmen. The activities of the DNVP women in the Lauban district focused on local concerns. Except for the report on the RFA meeting in Görlitz and a letter by Paula Mueller-Otfried to a local party member (published in the party newsletter), traces of the concerns expressed by the nationally active women of the DNVP are hard to find.9 This may be due to the weakness of the district women’s committee, which even after its restoration did not develop impressive activities, or to limited documentation: the party newsletter faltered, like many others, during the inflation in 1923. In Soldin, a city and district east of Frankfurt an der Oder, the women’s committee left better traces, and the local party newsletter published much more about the DNVP’s national women’s politics. The district women’s committee had connections to the RFA, which organized a political training workshop in Frankfurt an der Oder in 1920.10 In April and November 1922 Margarethe Behm gave talks to the women’s committee, in which she appealed to women to inform themselves about politics and to attack Versailles, which she called the cause of all misery in Germany.11 In July 1924 the district women’s committee organized a rally against Versailles, stressing that only a Germany reconstituted as a great power would become a force for peace in Europe, and in October a woman from the district women’s committee gave an address to the regional party assembly in Küstrin, where she stressed the special role of women in reconciling the party after its Reichstag group had split during the vote on the Dawes Plan.12 Until 1930, when the party newsletter stopped appearing, the women’s district committee displayed continuous activity in contact with the women leaders in Berlin. Elisabeth Spohr repeatedly appeared on the DNVP’s district ballot for the Prussian Landtag elections, and RFA chairs Behm and Lehmann had good relations with women on the Soldin district committee. – 139 –

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Mothers of the Nation Close connections to the RFA were typical also for women’s groups in two districts of the Prussian province of Pomerania: Stolp, in the easternmost tip of the province (just northwest of Danzig), and Stettin, the port city on the mouth of the Oder River. Both districts benefited from the frequent visits of IlseCharlotte Noack, who sat in the Prussian Landtag from 1921 to 1932 and devoted much energy to building up a powerful women’s structure in these DNVP strongholds. As in Lauban, women in Stolp organized coffee parties (Kaffeekränzchen) with political speeches, music, poems, and short patriotic plays. The homemade cakes received as much praise as in Lauban, but the focus on the speeches was stronger. The audience was usually female. Most of the women’s activities here happened in women’s committees built up on the initiative of Noack. As in Lauban, wealthy women, often nobles, were most active in the women’s committees. They organized food distributions to poor regions and established a foundation for free lunches for the poor (“deutschnationaler Mittagsdank”). A girls’ section of the Bismarckbund, the DNVP’s youth organization, effectively supported the DNVP women’s social activities.13 A similar picture emerges from the newsletter for the district of Stettin, the capital of Pomerania, published 1925–32. Noack’s activities here were powerfully assisted by Lotte Plath, a DNVP representative in the Pomeranian provincial diet and contributor to the Frauenkorrespondenz. The women’s committee organized political talks, social events, and “women’s afternoons” (Frauennachmittage) with discussion rounds on specific topics. They also gathered for the commemoration ceremonies on the Kaiser’s birthday, the Queen Luise day, and the memorial days of Auguste Viktoria. The district women’s committee took up some issues debated by the national women leaders such as public morality, women’s role in provincial and communal politics, divorce legislation, and women’s standing in the professions. The local DNVP newsletter reprinted articles from the Frauenkorrespondenz and even published reviews of books from women leaders of other parties. The DNVP women in the district of Stettin were also active in supporting their party’s political agenda, particularly during the presidential elections of 1925 and the campaign for a plebiscite on the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag in 1931. Welfare activities also belonged to their main concerns. They collected coal and potatoes for the poor, who could sign up for free distribution during the winter, and in 1931 they organized a concert for the DNVP winter aid foundation.14 In Stolp and Stettin, where a good structure of women’s committees existed, most of the women’s local activities seem to have taken place in connection with those committees. Exceptionally rich documentation exists for East Prussia, Germany’s exclave on the Baltic, for 1920–22. Therese Deutsch, member of the Prussian Landtag from 1921 to 1932 (with the exception of a few months in 1928), and Else von – 140 –

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Women’s Local Politics Sperber, Reichstag representative from May 1924 to 1928, were particularly active here. Deutsch pioneered the development of the regional women’s structure of the DNVP in 1919–21. She was the secretary of the East Prussian women’s committee, which had an equally diligent deputy secretary, Clotilde von der Groeben. Deutsch and von der Groeben traveled through the countryside, gave talks, and initiated the establishment of many local women’s committees. Both were effective and well-liked speakers who often drew an audience of five hundred people even in small villages.15 In their speeches, they elaborated on the rights and duties of the newly enfranchised women and stressed their responsibility as educators to work for the dissemination of a religious and patriotic spirit.16 In many places, DNVP women forming a women’s committee also inspired the growth of DNVP youth groups. The Volksgemeinschaft idea was particularly strong in this isolated area, where many from the lower classes, notably the rural workers, voted for the DNVP. The social engagement of the women thus assumed special importance. In the winter of 1920 the women’s committee from Königsberg, the capital, organized farm holidays for 137 poor children and forty-six adults from their city, so as to bridge the gap between town and country. The same women’s committee also saw to it that wealthier DNVP members let poor women affiliated with the party repair their clothes and linens. Women’s committees organized lotteries to benefit poor party members and organized food collections for Germans in Upper Silesia, another area where Germans felt threatened by Poland.17 Social events and political training also figured among the activities of the East Prussian DNVP women. The Christmas parties of the Königsberg women’s committee with their “living pictures” (stehende Bilder) of patriotic scenes were famous. In June 1921 the women’s committee in Sensburg, a district city in the south of the province, invited party members to attend a party meeting in folk dress and to participate in a lottery for the treasury of the local party organization. The women sold eight thousand lottery tickets; wealthy party members donated the prizes. The local DNVP newsletter advertised these successful festivities as a model to the whole party.18 To benefit the political education of women, the women’s committees organized courses for female speakers; test speeches could be given on such topics as: “The war-guilt lie”, “What does it mean to be a German?”, and “Antagonisms between town and country.”19 Women’s committees were interested in national issues (particularly the legislation on abortion, the status of midwives, and school reform), and the LFA organized a series of speeches on such topics. Deutsch and other well-known DNVP women offered “office hours” in Königsberg to discuss new bills with party members.20 They fostered contacts with the Danzig women’s group under Anni Kalähne, which regularly organized meetings attended by women from all East German regions. – 141 –

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Mothers of the Nation The DNVP women in East Prussia were enormously active in the early 1920s, but they were even more critical of engagement for women’s rights per se than the national leaders. Many East Prussian DNVP women criticized the women’s rights movement as anti-national and selfish.21 In an article on women’s representation in parliaments, von der Groeben argued that male deputies in most fields represented women well and that the real women’s questions were inseparable from the well-being of the people. She thought that only a few DNVP women should sit in parliament – primarily to advise men on women’s questions and to check the influence of women from parties with a worldview hostile to the DNVP. Von der Groeben wanted only those women to sit in parliaments who represented women’s “true” professions (housewives, mothers, nurses, and educators), but not women motivated by a general political interest, such as Schirmacher.22 The party newsletter printed lengthy articles by women against the right of women to sit on juries and to become judges; here the East Prussian women’s committees opposed the women in the DNVP Reichstag group. With Deutsch and von Sperber, the East Prussian DNVP women had a Prussian Landtag and a Reichstag representative for some time, but the fact that the DNVP group in the provincial diet for East Prussia consisted of twenty-eight men but no woman in 1921 did not seem to bother them.23 Clara Papendieck, the chair of the East Prussian women’s committee in late 1920, summarized their priorities best when she defined the woman as the guardian of three pearls fallen from the crown of the beloved empress: family, church, and fatherland.24 Notable activism of DNVP women can also be traced in Westphalia, where many women’s committees had been formed. Women in this area appear to have done a particularly large share of the thankless party work, such as fund-raising and distributing propaganda for meetings. A report on a meeting of members of the local DNVP group in the town of Bückeburg, for example, praises the women for having ensured that the meeting hall was full. At the end of the meeting, a woman asked for donations for people from the Ruhr district, then under FrancoBelgian occupation.25 The memoirs of Anni Kalähne, the chair of Danzig’s women’s committee and member of the Volkstag, confirm many aspects visible in party newsletters. Kalähne stressed the social activities of the Danzig women’s committee; it encouraged farmers to send monthly packages with foodstuffs to poor rentiers, sent city children to the countryside for vacations, and collected eggs, potatoes, and clothes for distribution to the poor. Kalähne mentioned that she had not much sympathy for women’s rights although she often experienced the condescending attitude of male city officials toward politically active women.26 Berlin, where women’s activities in several local party sections are well documented, differs from the more provincial or rural districts. Here the DNVP’s entire local activity, not only the “dirty work,” relied on women. For the district – 142 –

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Women’s Local Politics of Berlin-Northwest (approximately today’s Moabit section), a unique source exists that offers numerical information on local party membership: from February 1919 to March 1920 the local party newsletter published the names of new party members. Of 2,518 new members, the sex could be determined in 2,435 cases. In this group, there were 1,515 women, who constitute 62.2 percent of the members whose sex is identifiable. Unmarried women (649) were strongly represented and almost equal in numbers to married women (709). Of 157 women the marital status could not be detected. Unfortunately, the lists give the professions of only 158 women, although it is highly probable that in this urban environment a large portion of both unmarried and married women were working. Among the women whose occupation is given, two groups predominate: sisters belonging to religious orders (62) and teachers (56).27 The strength of the first occupation was due to the existence of a house of a religious women’s order in the district, whereas women teachers belonged to the politically most active professional groups in all bourgeois parties. A social profile of the women in the local DNVP is difficult to establish, but there certainly was a mixture of upper-class women (mostly nobles or independently wealthy women), women with academic backgrounds, women from white-collar professions, and lowerclass women, particularly domestic employees. The latter were well organized and politically very active in Berlin.28 Other sources confirm that women joined the DNVP’s Berlin-Northwest group in great numbers. At the end of May 1919, for example, the local DNVP newsletter reported about a DNVP protest meeting against the Treaty of Versailles. The meeting was disturbed by the heckling of young men from the Independent Socialists, whereupon the attending DNVP members yelled back at them, stood up on the benches, and climbed on the podium to better refute the hecklers. The newsletter report insisted that the behavior of the party members had exacerbated the chaos and made it impossible for the trained speaker to effectively rebut the hecklers. The author thus admonished party members to retain discipline in such situations, admitting that “this may be particularly hard for the newcomers in politics, our women, who are more easily carried away by their feelings than the men.” It turns out that the vast majority of the DNVP members present were female party members. The report thus concluded: “By the way, the rioters would have been less bold had more of our male party members been present.”29 Complaints that few men participated in the DNVP’s Berlin sections appear frequently in the local party publications. At a party assembly in BerlinNorthwest the chairman complained that the majority of the audience was female. “But how shall our fatherland recover if our best men remain passive?”30 An article of the DNVP newsletter in the same district thanked women in December 1919 for their work as helpers of the party. They had diligently visited – 143 –

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Mothers of the Nation party members, distributed propaganda, handed out ballots, collected membership fees, and tackled administrative tasks. “Unfortunately there are only a few male helpers. In this respect, too, women embarrass us, the men … Whoever knows how much a woman of the character we respect dislikes working in public and approaching people who she does not know will understand the magnitude of the sacrifice that these female helpers make for our cause.”31 The comparative passivity of men showed even in the “German National Chorus,” which was founded by party members but was restricted in its repertoire by its dramatic shortage of tenors and basses. Some articles scornfully reproached the men for not taking part more enthusiastically in the paramilitary home guards set up as a middle-class defense against worker unrest and asked why women did not pressure their husbands harder to join these units, an exhortation that must have made little sense to the many unmarried women in the party.32 Some activities of the Berlin women resembled those of DNVP women in small towns and rural areas.33 Train rides and boat excursions to idyllic places around Berlin were standard fare of women’s committees in every section of town. So were charitable activities. Party women, for example, signed up as guardians for orphans.34 Women’s committees also gathered donations for distribution as Christmas gifts to poor party members in 1923. But demand soon outgrew the readiness to help: when some women asked the party for free potatoes and for help in finding cheap rooms, the LFA Berlin stated that it was, after all, a political organization and had no resources for such services (although food was later distributed to poor party members by the DNVP women’s committees in Stettin and Danzig).35 Women’s engagement for the social events of the local party, moreover, was less important in Berlin than in the other areas, maybe because far more unmarried women belonged to the party than in rural or smalltown districts. Party meetings thus were not the “family affair” that they might have been in places where husband and wife both belonged to the DNVP. By contrast, the intellectual activities of the Berlin women’s committees were more challenging and vibrant than those of the other districts. Berlin benefited from the presence of Reichstag and Prussian Landtag members as well as the headquarters of the RFA. There was never a lack of female speakers. District women’s committees put on a rich fare of lectures and workshops on all the topics relevant to the national women’s leaders and female parliamentarians, and the party newsletters provided information on most of them. Unlike in the countryside, issues of interest to professional women, who made up a large part of the urban party membership, received much attention. In 1923 the LFA Berlin also organized a series of lectures and workshops on public speaking, which was offered with success in several Berlin districts.36 Women in the Berlin DNVP were much better represented in the local assemblies (the city parliament and the district assemblies) than their party colleagues – 144 –

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Women’s Local Politics elsewhere, although they were still dramatically underrepresented if one considers the probable strength of female party membership and the degree of women’s engagement for the party. But the Berlin DNVP counted in its rows a number of well-known women politicians. Asta Rötger, Gertrud Becker, Margarethe Braunert, and Else Ulbrich were active and influential in the city parliament (Ulbrich later moved to the Landtag), whereas Minna Hölzel, a representative of domestic employees, was most notable in the assembly of the wealthy Tiergarten district. Although professional women probably played an important role in sustaining the Berlin DNVP’s activity, housewives also figured prominently on the ballots and in the assemblies.37 Rötger, a housewife herself, became her party’s foremost expert on local politics. In 1929 she summarized her experience in the Berlin city parliament, expressing longing for the “good old days” before 1918, when a few male notables managed city politics. In typical fashion, she blamed the Left for having introduced partisan politics into communal politics, implying that the old city fathers, all from a socially exclusive group, had stood above it.38 In late 1930, the RFA of the DNVP sent out a questionnaire to the regional women’s committees to gauge the level of women’s activity after party splits had occurred earlier in the year. Selective results were published in Die Deutschnationale Frau throughout the spring and summer of 1931, but their celebratory message belies their informative value. Nevertheless, the kind of women’s activities mentioned in these reports confirms the picture emerging from local newsletters. Strong activism seems to have persisted mostly in those areas where the DNVP was strong, such as Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Danzig, and some areas of Württemberg. All regional women’s committees claimed that most women in the party had remained loyal to Hugenberg, the radical party chairman elected in 1928, although a few admitted having had difficulties. To gain a more detailed picture of the situation, the RFA chair Annagrete Lehmann visited women’s committees in thirteen Reichstag districts in the summer of 1931. Although her report was generally positive, she gained the impression that in several regions the men in the DNVP did not adequately support the activities of the women’s committees. She stressed that women have to make their influence felt not simply through numbers but also qualitatively, by contributing to the party in their own “womanly” way. She praised several fund-raising efforts by women’s committees but urged the women to do more word-of-mouth propaganda and daily small work for the party – the “dirty work.”39 Good documentation for the local politics of DVP women exists mostly for Schleswig-Holstein, East Prussia, and Berlin. In Schleswig-Holstein, at the time still a province of Prussia, the DVP women’s organization got a good start through the lively participation of women in the campaign for the plebiscite in the German-Danish border region (March 1920).40 Jane Voigt, who coordinated – 145 –

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Mothers of the Nation much of that activity, became famous in the process and was elected to the Prussian Landtag a year later. Very active also were the DVP women from Altona, now a suburb of Hamburg but in the 1920s an independent city and part of Schleswig-Holstein. Elisabeth Cimbal, a housewife from Altona, was the engine of the women’s activities and acted as chair of the WkFA SchleswigHolstein. Clara Mende helped the activities of Schleswig-Holstein’s DVP women through lectures in front of party assemblies and women’s committees.41 Unlike the DNVP women in East Prussia, the DVP women of Schleswig-Holstein believed that women had to be represented in the party and in political assemblies in greater numbers. At a women’s conference of the DVP in February 1921, Cimbal argued that women could be particularly effective in instilling families with DVP ideology. But to interest them in party work, the DVP had to invite at least one female speaker to its conferences. Cimbal further argued that too many tasks were waiting in local politics that women could tackle better than men; women should thus press for better representation in all local party offices and assemblies.42 The efforts for better representation appear to have been successful. In the by-elections to the DVP board of the province in early 1921, for example, four women (and no men) were elected.43 The pressure for better representation of women, however, was always accompanied by the assurance that women would only work for the best of the nation or party and not pursue any particularistic goals. In 1922 Cimbal reported: “The women’s rights aspect is completely missing from the work of women in the women’s committees. To stress it would in my opinion be a mistake, even though we, the women, of course have the duty to help our sisters as much as possible and to limit injustice; yet the work of women within the party is not meant to advance specific women’s interests but to contribute to the common good.”44 Although the representation of women in the Schleswig-Holstein DVP appears to have been good in comparison to that in other areas, occasional complaints surfaced regarding the tendency of men to elect women to unimportant committees. Lisbeth Haas, an expert on communal politics, criticized the fact that in one town assembly a woman had been elected to a bath committee, even though no baths existed, and that men before important meetings often informed women poorly.45 In the fall of 1922, Cimbal drew pessimistic conclusions about women’s work in the Schleswig-Holstein DVP, even though she admitted that it had reached an intensity rivaled by DVP women in few other provinces. She complained that prejudice against women in politics was still widespread among women and men – except during election campaigns, where women helped diligently. Cimbal decried the limits thus placed on women’s political activity because she considered women as the natural bearers of the idea of a movement – implying that without their engagement the DVP would become too much of an interest group and would lose its idealistic aspect. She also argued that a woman without polit– 146 –

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Women’s Local Politics ical education could no longer be a true partner to her husband and a responsible parent, because all aspects of life had become politicized.46 The activities of the DVP women in Schleswig-Holstein focused on charity and the political education of women. Help for poor rentiers was the main focus of their charitable work,47 and they also participated in programs to allow children from the occupied areas to spend their vacations in Schleswig-Holstein; four hundred children had thus been served in 1921.48 For their political education, DVP women found ways that spoke for the greater open-mindedness of the DVP in comparison to the DNVP. In Flensburg, women formed a reading circle; they read newspapers from the entire political spectrum and then discussed the different viewpoints of all parties. In Altona, members of the women’s committee attended rallies of other parties and discussed their insights.49 Altogether, Schleswig-Holstein saw successful activity by women in the DVP, in spite of the deficits mentioned above. The intensity of women’s work in the SchleswigHolstein DVP was unique, at least in comparison to other provinces. Only in Berlin did women’s activities assume a similar dynamic, but Berlin was a much smaller and more concentrated political area than Schleswig-Holstein.50 The strong female representation in the party offices of the Schleswig-Holstein DVP also reflected on the engagement of a dedicated group of women. These women were in touch with all the topics of concern to the national DVP women leaders, particularly the fate of Germans in occupied and lost territories and issues regarding motherhood and marriage, on which the DVP’s legal expert Anna Mayer gave frequent talks and seminars in Schleswig-Holstein. The DVP newsletter for the province gave much room to women’s issues and reprinted articles from the women’s section of the DVP-Nachrichtenblatt. Unfortunately the newsletter, like so many others, faltered during the inflation, and activities of women in the province are thus hard to follow after 1923. In East Prussia, the DVP women’s work was encouraged by two nationally known women: Margarethe Poehlmann, member of the Prussian Landtag from 1919 to her death in December 1923, and Milka Fritsch, member of the Reichstag from March 1923 to May 1924. Like Deutsch and von Groeben for the DNVP, Poehlmann and Fritsch made lecture tours through the province to encourage the buildup of women’s committees. Women from the DVP, like the local DNVP women, were also active in building up the party’s youth groups. But their work was less political than that in Schleswig-Holstein and more focused on social events and charity. In a report of its activities, the Königsberg women’s committee in 1920 praised its own efforts to mobilize women, but all activities it mentioned had to do with social events and charity; women had, for example, produced clothes for the children of poor families.51 Characteristic was a report summarizing one of many “tea evenings” of the Königsberg committee: after a heartfelt welcome speech by the chairwoman of the women’s committee, – 147 –

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Mothers of the Nation a patriotic play, titled “Disarmed Germania,” was performed. The play’s message concerned the value of work for the nation. To state the point more clearly and to represent the Volksgemeinschaft of work, people in various professional clothes surrounded the stage during the performance. A piano recital of works by Chopin, Brahms, and Schumann followed, children with flowers danced, and then the guests were invited to the rich buffet grouped around a show of the children’s clothes made by the women’s committee. The commentary in the local DVP newsletter said: “With this event the women’s group has shown once again that art, work, and social enjoyment can go hand in hand with politics.”52 Similar events are reported from smaller towns. But despite the generous efforts of Poehlmann and Fritsch the women’s work of the DVP got a slow start in comparison to that in Schleswig-Holstein and the DNVP’s efforts in East Prussia. Only in late 1920 did a DVP women’s committee for East Prussia formally constitute itself. At this time only fifteen local women’s committees existed in the entire province.53 More activity was reported from Westphalia in 1920: In the district of Hameln the women had divided themselves among the ten electoral subdistricts (ten women for each) and distributed ballots and propaganda leaflets according to a general plan. Women, moreover, had done secretarial work in the DVP’s campaign office and carried out much propaganda work for the party. The DVP advertised the Westphalian women’s committee as a model for women’s engagement in the party.54 In Hamburg, another active women’s committee existed that put much emphasis on social events in addition to the monthly political meetings. Dr. Olga Herschel, member of the local women’s committee, stressed that women had to get used to being in a party, and she hoped that social events would give the “party Moloch” a gentle and human face. Women from the committee visited plays together or organized a Christmas party for children. Herschel suggested: “Should it not be the most noble duty of the woman to insert the female aspect of joy into the busy treadmill of party life?”55 The Berlin women’s organization of the DVP, like its counterpart in the DNVP, developed an unusually intense activity. An inquiry of 1930 showed that nowhere else at the time was the ratio of DVP women’s committees to local party groups as high as in Berlin.56 The DVP women were engaged in an aboveparty organization focusing on women’s issues, the Political Cooperative of the Women of Greater Berlin (Politische Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Frauen von GroßBerlin). The DVP women’s committees of the three electoral districts of Greater Berlin (including Potsdam and many suburbs) also cooperated intensely.57 In 1919 they merged many of their functions under the leadership of Dr. Ilse Szagunn, a physician from Berlin-Charlottenburg.58 The relatively small size of these three densely populated districts and the good public transportation system made such cooperation feasible. Not only did they lower costs by partly – 148 –

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Women’s Local Politics merging their functions, the three Greater Berlin women’s committees also made widely praised attempts to finance their activities through auctions of selfproduced art and Christmas decorations.59 Drawing on the presence of the party’s most distinguished women (members of the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag), the Greater Berlin women organized workshops on the full range of issues relevant to the national women leaders.60 They also did social and charitable work by holding office hours for people in economic difficulties, offering free lunches to rentiers, listing open jobs, and sending city children to the countryside for vacations. They seem to have given the social side of their activity a little less emphasis than their local counterparts from the DNVP, but they often undertook instructive excursions informed by maternalist concerns, such as a trip to the milk distribution center in Berlin-Weissensee.61 In 1924 they started their most famous initiative, the Mother’s Aid Wandering Basket (Mütterhilfe Wanderkorb), which amounted to the lending out of baskets with items necessary for the raising of small children. Mothers with newborns could borrow without charge a package containing everything from baby bottle to stroller. The initiative quickly became so famous that the DVP opened an exhibition on it. The DVP women set up lotteries for its benefit, and the Mütterhilfe Wanderkorb was quickly expanded.62 Patriotic festivities also figured among the activities of the DVP women in Greater Berlin: they organized their share of memorial events for Queen Luise, Auguste Viktoria, and Bismarck. In 1925, they rented the Prussian State Opera House for a celebration of a millennium of Rhineland history that featured “living pictures,” recitals, and music – in short, all the nationalist kitsch typical for provincial DNVP events.63 The engagement for women’s rights played a subordinate role in the women’s committees of Greater Berlin. Although Szagunn, in the name of the three Greater Berlin women’s committees, demanded at the first national party conference in 1919 that women’s rights in the social sphere be widened, she immediately stressed that these rights were only meant to allow women to take over more duties.64 Later, she pointed out that the Greater Berlin women wanted to complement men’s activities in the party but stressed that the women’s work was by no means directed against the men. Instead, she envisioned organic cooperation; in some places the activity of the women’s committees had been so successful already that she claimed there was no need any more for separate women’s committees.65 The social composition of women active in Greater Berlin’s DVP is harder to establish than for the DNVP. But as in the DNVP, housewives and professional women (teachers, nurses, shop assistants) figured strongly among the localelection candidates of the DVP.66 Berlin’s DVP women did have a comparatively good representation in assemblies and on party boards, but there was a steep decline after 1929. They occasionally complained about insufficient representation, but they also criticized the disinterest of local women in city politics – – 149 –

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Mothers of the Nation although more women than men seem to have voted for the DVP in Berlin as well as in the nation at large.67 Regardless of the more spectacular initiatives, such as the Mütterhilfe Wanderkorb, much of women’s local activity happened inconspicuously. Anni Klingspor, for example, chair of the Berlin WkFA and second vice chair of the DVP in Berlin, was not much noted until she died in 1926 and received her obituary in the local party newsletter. Klingspor, so it said, had displayed the best womanly qualities and worked quietly and self-sacrificingly for the party and the poor.68 What do these local studies suggest for the work of DVP and DNVP women on the state and Reich level? First, the communication between women at the local level and the national women leaders of both parties was largely dependent on the personal engagement of prominent women from the center. In Berlin, this communication was very good, but this was not true for some rural districts, although nationally known women representatives, such as Mende, Matz, Behm, and Lehmann, took extensive lecture tours even outside their election districts and beyond election time. In the DNVP, every regional and local group was required to subscribe to the newsletter of the RFA, but in February 1932 a DNVP circular complained that some women’s committees had still not complied.61 It is noteworthy that the local activities of women did not always take place in connection with the district or local women’s committees. Although many women’s committees at least at the district level existed in most places examined, women were sometimes very active even without a local women’s committee. The efforts of both RFAs to train women politically, however, depended on a strong women’s structure or the frequent presence of leading party women. The reading circles of the DVP women in Schleswig-Holstein, the intellectually challenging lectures of both parties in Berlin, and the speakers’ courses of the DNVP in East Prussia were impressive achievements, but other local women’s groups seem to have done very little for the political education of women. The RFAs of both parties often complained about a lack of trained speakers – particularly in the early and late years of the Weimar Republic.70 Regarding the contents of women’s local activity, it becomes clear that women were instrumental in fostering an intense club culture (Vereinskultur) with a variety of social events. In urban areas, this club culture appears to have been more gender-segregated than in rural regions, where the party was often a family affair. In general, women on the local level cooperated more intensely with the men of the party than did the national women’s leadership of the parties. The women in the DVP’s provincial organizations strongly encouraged male participation in women’s committees, and women from both parties were just as eager to organize festivities for women alone as for mixed party groups. A telling example of inconsistent separation was a DNVP women’s committee meeting in a little Westphalian town: the women invited a male speaker for a lecture but took – 150 –

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Women’s Local Politics out their embroidery and discussed their work for the party after the speaker had left.71 Whether the specific women’s events were more frugal than the men’s events, as Nancy Reagin has observed in prewar Hanover, cannot be substantiated, except if one wants to read much (too much?) into the names of meeting places of a Berlin DVP district group: whereas the men met at the hotel Jägerheim (Hunter’s Lodge) for their Stammtisch, the women’s committee held its meetings in the café Rotkäppchen (Red Riding Hood).72 Social welfare and charity work were important in every case study – often in connection with the women’s work for the party’s club culture. This probably came out of the traditional social engagement of women, which the First World War had powerfully reaffirmed, and it mirrored the activities of the leading women in the two parties in the Reichstag and the state parliaments. It also harkened back to the widespread idea among bourgeois women that their new political rights implied a social duty. Almost all local women’s activities reflected the notion of different gender roles. Women took over primarily supportive or maternal roles, be it through cooking and baking or through initiatives such as the Mütterhilfe Wanderkorb. True to their maternalist vision of their own political role, these women conceived of the party as a home and family in which they would play the role of the housewife and mother in a broad sense. Contrary to the teachings of Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer, the notion of different gender roles was not connected to equal rights demands, which played a subordinate role almost everywhere. There can be no question that the leading women from both parties felt next to no grass-roots pressure to pursue women’s rights issues, except maybe in relation to the specific interests of some professional women in urban centers. Many rural areas even restrained the leading women’s temptation to consider women’s rights more directly, as the attitudes of the DNVP women from East Prussia demonstrate. When a DVP guideline for women speakers warned that women’s rights issues should be avoided in front of rural audiences, it reflected a similar state of affairs in the DVP, whose women were more “tempted” than DNVP women to raise such issues.73

Notes 1. Nachrichtenblatt des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins Stettin 8, October 1932. 2. Boak, “Women in Weimar Politics,” pp. 374–5 and 389. 3. “Zum 27. Januar,” Nachrichten der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei des Kreisvereins Lauban 2, no. 2, February 1922. 4. “Aus dem Vereinsleben,” Nachrichten der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei des Kreisvereins Lauban 2, no. 10, December 1922. – 151 –

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Mothers of the Nation 5. “Aus unseren Ortsgruppen,” Nachrichten der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei des Kreisvereins Lauban 3, nos. 4–5, April–May 1923. 6. “Aus unseren Ortsgruppen,” Nachrichten der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei des Kreisvereins Lauban 1, no. 3, August 1921. 7. “Etwas von Frau von Prince,” Nachrichten der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei des Kreisvereins Lauban 2, no. 2, February 1922. 8. Ortsgruppe Lauban, Nachrichten der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei des Kreisvereins Lauban vol. 2, no. 8, October 1922, p. 39. 9. See Paula Mueller-Otfried, “Die Aufgaben der deutschen Frau,” Nachrichten der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei des Kreisvereins Lauban, vol. 3, nos. 4–5, April–May 1923. 10. “Politische Lehrgänge für Frauen,” Monatsmitteilungen für die Vertrauensmänner und Mitglieder der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei Kreisverein Soldin 2, no. 8, 31 August 1920. 11. “Vortrag Margarethe Behm,” in: Monatsmitteilungen für die Vertrauensmänner und Mitglieder der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei Kreisverein Soldin 4, no. 3, 31 March 1922, and “Margarethe Behm. Deutschnationale Frauenversammlung am 1. November 1922,” Monatsmitteilungen für die Vertrauensmänner und Mitglieder der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei Kreisverein Soldin 4, no. 10, 1 November 1922. 12. “Los von Versailles! Deutsche Schwestern!” Monatsmitteilungen für die Vertrauensmänner und Mitglieder der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei Kreisverein Soldin 6, no. 6, 6 July 1924, and “Landesparteitag der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei in Cüstrin-Neustadt am 18. und 19. Oktober 1924,” Monatsmitteilungen für die Vertrauensmänner und Mitglieder der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei Kreisverein Soldin 6, no. 10, 31 October 1924. 13. Alfred Schacht, “Zehn Jahre Kreisverein,” Deutschnationale Blätter (Kreisverein Stolp) 9, no. 2, April–May 1929. 14. “Bekanntmachungen,” Nachrichtenblatt des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins Stettin 1, no. 14, 16 October 1925. See also vol. 7, December 1931. 15. Der Parteifreund. Amtliches Blatt der deutschnationalen Volkspartei, Landesverband Ostpreußen, 1, no. 13, 17 August 1920. 16. See for example Der Parteifreund. Amtliches Blatt der deutschnationalen Volkspartei, Landesverband Ostpreußen 1, no. 13, 17 August 1920. 17. Lilli Karge, “Landaufenthalt unserer Kinder,” Der Parteifreund, nos. 32–3, 23 December 1920, and “Gründung der Frauengruppe der Dnat. Vp. in Königsberg,” Der Parteifreund 2, no. 7, 17 February 1921. See also Der Parteifreund 2, no. 30, 28 July 1921, which also mentions the food collections for Upper Silesia. 18. Der Parteifreund 2, no. 26, 30 June 1921. – 152 –

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Women’s Local Politics 19. Der Parteifreund 3, nos. 11–12, 25 March 1922. 20. Der Parteifreund 2, nos. 45–6, 20 November 1921, and vol. 3, no. 4, 28 January 1922. 21. “Erziehungsfragen” (three parts), Der Parteifreund 1, nos. 27–9, 11, 18, and 25 November 1920, “Über weibliche Laien- und Berufsrichter,” Der Parteifreund 2, no. 25, 23 June 1921, and “Deutsches Recht und deutsche Frauen,” Der Parteifreund 2, nos. 40–1, 16 October 1921. 22. Clotilde von der Groeben, “Frauenvertretung in den Parlamenten,” Der Parteifreund 2, no. 11, 17 March 1921. 23. Der Parteifreund 2, no. 10, 10 March 1921. 24. “Kaiserin-Geburtstagsfeier in Cranz,” Der Parteifreund 1, no. 26, 4 November 1920. 25. Nachrichten aus dem Landesverband Westfalen-Ost der DNVP 2, no. 5, 1 May 1923. 26. Anni Kalähne, “Lebenserinnerungen,” in Staatsarchiv Bremen, Nachlass Dietrich Schäfer, vol. 7.21 (not paginated). See also Anni Kalähne, “LFA Danzig,” Deutschnationale Frau 13, no. 9, 1 August 1931. 27. I thank my research assistant Kerry West, who in October 1998 tabulated the numbers from the 1919 and 1920 issues of the local paper Mitteilungen des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins “Berlin-Nordwest”. 28. See Mitteilungen des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins “Berlin-Nordwest” 17, no. 8, 1 June 1921. 29. “Aus dem Vereinsleben,” Mitteilungen des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins “Berlin-Nordwest” 15, no. 6, June 1919. 30. Mitteilungen des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins “Berlin-Nordwest” 15, no. 7, July 1919. 31. “Unsere Helferinnen,” Mitteilungen des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins “Berlin-Nordwest” 15, no. 12, December 1919. 32. Mitteilungen des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins “Berlin-Nordwest” 15, no. 12, December 1919, and vol. 16, no. 5, April 1920. 33. A good source, besides the already quoted references, is the newsletter Deutschnationaler Volksfreund. (Das amtliche Nachrichtenblatt des Landesverbandes Berlin der DNVP und seiner Kreise), published in 1922–23. 34. Deutschnationaler Volksfreund 4, no. 9, 1 May 1922. 35. Deutschnationaler Volksfreund 5, no. 28, 2 December 1923, and no. 29, 12 December 1923. 36. See Deutschnationaler Volksfreund 5, no. 16, 15/20 August 1923, and no. 25, 11 November 1923. 37. See Mitteilungen des Deutschnationalen Volksvereins “Berlin-Nordwest” 16, no. 9, 15 June 1920, and vol. 17, no. 3, 1 February 1921. – 153 –

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Mothers of the Nation 38. Asta Rötger, “Zur Kommunalpolitik,” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 40, 3 October 1929; “Eine deutsche und evangelische Frau,” Frauenkorrespondenz 14, no. 15, November 1932. See also Nancy Reagin, A German Women’s Movement (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 6–7, on similar feelings expressed by conservative women in Hanover before 1914. 39. Annagrete Lehmann, “Aus der Arbeit unserer Landesfrauenausschüsse,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 13, no. 8, 15 July 1931. 40. Jane Voigt, “Frauenarbeit in der Nordmark,” and Margarethe Karding, “Versammlungen der Ortsgruppen,” both in Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 1, no. 14, 16 September 1919. 41. See for example the report on the party conference of the province, in Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 2, no. 18, 6 October 1920. 42. “Frauentagung der Deutschen Volkspartei in Neumünster,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 3, no. 4, 12 February 1921. 43. Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 3, no. 8, 28 April 1921. 44. Elisabeth Cimbal, “Frauenausschüsse und ihre Arbeitsgebiete,” SchleswigHolsteinische Stimmen 4, no. 2, 29 January 1922. 45. Lisbeth Haas, “Die Frau in der Kommunalpolitik,” Schleswig-Holsteinische Stimmen 4, no. 13, 12 July 1922. 46. Elisabeth Cimbal, “Warum soll die Frau Politik treiben?” SchleswigHolsteinische Stimmen 4, nos. 17/18, 21 October 1922. 47. Jane Voigt, “Zur Rentnerfürsorge,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 3, no. 8, 28 April 1921, and Voigt, “Rentnerhilfe,” Schleswig-Holsteinische Stimmen 4, no. 19/20, 4 November 1922. 48. “Sitzung des Wahlkreisfrauenausschusses in Itzehoe am 9. Oktober 1921,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 3, no. 21, 7 November 1921. 49. Cimbal, “Frauenausschüsse und ihre Arbeitsgebiete.” 50. “Aus dem Geschäftsbericht der Gesamtpartei,” Mitteilungen Deutsche Volkspartei Schleswig-Holstein 3, no. 24, 23 December 1921. 51. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Volkspartei Ostpreußen 2, no. 4, 1 October 1920. 52. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Volkspartei Ostpreußen 2, no. 7, 15 November 1920 (emphasis in the original). 53. “Gründung des Wahlkreisfrauenausschusses der Deutschen Volkspartei Ostpreußens,” Mitteilungen der Deutschen Volkspartei Ostpreußen 2, no. 9, 15 December 1920. 54. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Volkspartei Ostpreußen 2, no. 1, 15 August 1920. – 154 –

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Women’s Local Politics 55. Olga Herschel, “Eine Aufgabe für Frauenausschüsse,” DVPNachrichtenblatt 2, no. 47, 25 November 1920. 56. Berliner Stimmen 7, no. 15, 13 April 1930. 57. See Chapter 3 in this volume. 58. “Aus den Frauenausschüssen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 3, 15 January 1920. 59. “Finanzfragen der Frauenausschüsse,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 2, 19 January 1923. 60. “Aus den Frauenausschüssen,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 8, 19 February 1920. 61. Berliner Stimmen 3, no. 9, 1 June 1926. 62. “Frauenausschüsse der D.V.P.,” NLC 51, no. 93, 11 June 1924, Berliner Stimmen 1, no. 4, 27 April 1924, and NLC 58, no. 15, 12 April 1931. 63. Berliner Stimmen 2, nos. 21 and 24, 23 May 1925 and 27 June 1925. 64. Bericht über den Ersten Parteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei am 13. April 1919, pp. 47 and 66. 65. Ilse Szagunn, “Über die Arbeit der Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Frauenausschüsse Groß-Berlin,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 4, no. 23, 9 November 1923. 66. Berliner Stimmen 2, nos. 27 and 29, 1 October and 10 November 1925, and vol. 5, no. 7, mid-April 1928. 67. Ida Klockow, “An die Frauen,” Berliner Stimmen 6, no. 45, and “Das neue Deutschland und die berufstätige Frau,” Berliner Stimmen 6, no. 44, 10 November 1929, with complaints about the poor representation of women. See also Berliner Stimmen 5, no. 12, Early July 1928, with the assertion that 52.5 percent of the DVP vote in Berlin came from women. 68. Berliner Stimmen 3, no. 7, 1 July 1926. 69. Rundschreiben des RFA, no. 2, 15 February 1932, in NStA Osnabrück, DNVP, vol. 83. 70. Rundschreiben des RFA, no. 13, 24 November 1932, in NStA Osnabrück, DNVP, vol. 83. 71. “Aus dem Landesverband,” Nachrichten aus dem Landesverband WestfalenOst der DNVP 2, no. 3, 1 March 1923. 72. Berliner Stimmen 6, no. 39, 28 September 1929. See Reagin, A German Women’s Movement, p. 42. 73. Elisabeth Cimbal, “Vorschläge zu einem ländlichen Organisationsplan,” DVP-Nachrichtenblatt 2, no. 46, 18 November 1920.

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–9– The Nazi Challenge

“… sounds like an old fairy tale.” A DVP woman commenting on the Nazi image of women (1932)1 Works by Ian Kershaw on public opinion and by Robert Gellately on consent and coercion in Nazi Germany stress the amazing speed with which the Nazis won broad approval after taking power in early 1933. To be sure, the Nazis did unleash a wave of terror directed mostly at the Communists, but the importance of enthusiastic approval for the new government much beyond the previous constituency of the NSDAP cannot be denied.2 Only six months after the end of the conflictridden and extremely polarized Weimar Republic, the Hitler government had destroyed all other parties besides the NSDAP and taken control over a vast array of non-Nazi organizations – in most cases without encountering any resistance. This rapid success would be hard to explain without considering the profound disaffection with the Weimar Republic shared by the widest circles of the German public. In the context of catastrophic unemployment and growing misery, the idea and pratice of government based on a democratically elected parliament had been thoroughly discredited by 1930. The subsequent haphazard attempts to form a presidential regime – relying on a field marshal who turned eighty-five in 1932 and had retired for the first time in 1911! – did not fare much better. How did the women of the DVP and DNVP react to the agonizing crisis of the early 1930s, and how did they relate, and perhaps contribute, to the conditions that allowed the Nazis such a smooth success after January 1933? To answer these questions, it is important to consider that the parameters for women’s politics in the DVP and DNVP changed profoundly after 1930. Until then, much of the women’s political activity had happened in parliaments and parliamentary committees, where right-wing women cooperated constructively with women and men from the middle parties. This work was difficult to carry on after 1930 as parliamentary rule was breaking down and Chancellor Heinrich Brüning increasingly resorted to government by presidential decree. For the women involved in the DVP, the very weakness of their party after the Reichstag elections of September 1930 precluded effective parliamentary work. Only Elsa

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Mothers of the Nation Matz remained in the Reichstag, and, prolific as she was, she could not cover the broad range of issues debated by women from her party in earlier years, particularly after the DVP exchanged participation in government for a powerless and pathetic opposition in the fall of 1931. At the same time, Hugenberg shifted the DNVP’s parliamentary politics from critical cooperation toward fundamental opposition and propaganda, witnessed most spectacularly when the DNVP together with the Nazis walked out of the Reichstag in February 1931.3 Although a few notable women associated with the DNVP workers’ movement left the party in response to Hugenberg’s course, the majority of activist DNVP women frequently applauded him and his strictly anti-democratic course.4 After the July 1932 Reichstag elections, in any case, orderly parliamentary procedures became nearly impossible because the Nazis and Communists now shared more than half the seats and debates easily escalated into fist fights.5 The last pre-Nazi governments tried to convene the Reichstag as rarely as possible because they sought ways to establish a presidential regime independent of parliamentary majorities. None of the DVP and DNVP women elected to the Reichstag from July 1932 on ever spoke a single public word in it. The chaos and paralysis typical for the Reichstag was duplicated in almost every state diet that held elections in the early 1930s. The SPD-led Prussian government, which had stayed in office because no other government could be formed after the Landtag elections of April 1932, was illegally dismissed by Reich Chancellor Franz von Papen in July and replaced by an authoritarian caretaker government. Meanwhile, mass unemployment and political violence led to a breakdown of the social order limiting the opportunities for regular campaigning by all parties between the Communists and Nazis. Meetings were interrupted by armed units of hecklers, violence against political opponents was the rule, and the feverish pace of election campaigns particularly in 1932 – with two Reichstag elections, two rounds of presidential elections, and the Prussian Landtag election – drained the energies of the more moderate parties and spread a sense of resignation among many politicians from the SPD to the DVP and DNVP. With unemployment reaching catastrophic proportions, the position of professional women and of leading women in the bourgeois parties came under increasing threat. Women were pushed to leave the job market and to make room for men. The pressure was strongest on married women (the so-called “double earners”) because of the widespread but erroneous notion that most married women neglected their motherly “duties” only to supplement an already sufficient income from their husbands. Meanwhile, women from the DVP and DNVP watched with a mixture of anxiety and fascination the meteoric rise of the NSDAP, which cut deeply into their own voter pool. After some successes in local and state elections in 1929 and 1930, the NSDAP gained over 18 percent of the national vote in September 1930 (more than six times as much as 1928), – 158 –

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The Nazi Challenge and it doubled that share in July 1932, becoming the largest party in the Reichstag. Its losses in the Reichstag election of November 1932 were too small to allow a revival of regular legislative proceedings. The growth of the Nazi Party, which continued to exclude women from its parliamentary groups, helped diminish the number of women in parliaments, while the militarization of politics by male street fighters did not bode well for women’s voice in politics. As early as January 1930, political women thus became increasingly disillusioned with the promise of equality and with their power in politics, and they reacted with bitterness or resignation. The discussion of a women’s party was revived, but many politically active women seem to have withdrawn into private life. Women from the DVP and DNVP tried to defend women’s place in politics, but the limits imposed on their parliamentary activity tended to encourage ideological stands at the expense of pragmatism in their work. As early as January 1930, Martha Schwarz of the DVP drew a pessimistic picture. In over ten years, she said, women had had little impact on political life, and many had become critical of democracy and the established parties. She stressed that women in parliaments were measured against unusually hard standards; this was particularly unfair given that there were so few of them, and parliamentary women thus had to cover so many fields that it was easy to find them making mistakes. Although Schwarz attested to women’s strong belief in (supposedly male) leadership, of which she herself approved, she believed that the impact of women was necessary for the survival of democracy. Appealing to the cultural mission of the German women’s movement, Schwarz claimed that only women could overcome the corrupt aspects of democracy.6 Later in the year, the poor positioning of women on the DVP’s ballots for the Reichstag elections of 14 September provoked bitter critique from the RFA, which claimed that under these circumstances the DVP would lose the votes of many women. The document attested to male party members’ ” complete lack of psychological understanding for the work and mentality of women.” The Central Board (Zentralvorstand) of the DVP acknowledged the complaint but decided not to change the ballots.7 In the DNVP, the continued poor consideration of female candidates at all levels of political life also drew criticism. The Frauenkorrespondenz pointed out, for example, that the bourgeois party groups in the Saxon Landtag included not one woman after the elections of June 1930.8 In 1931 Annagrete Lehmann criticized that many regional sections of the DNVP seemed to believe that they could dispense with the work of women. She pointed out that the party was most successful in places where cooperation between women and men worked best.9 The stunning success of the NSDAP in spite of its professed hostility to women’s rights, however, undercut the claims of leading right-wing women for better representation. At a BDF leadership meeting in October 1930, Emma Ender warned: “After a party that blatantly ignores the existing political rights of female voters [the NSDAP] – 159 –

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Mothers of the Nation has nonetheless made such big gains, we have to expect that in all parties the already weakened position of women will become even weaker as a consequence of this experience.”10 The defense of women’s rights against the Nazis therefore was a central theme of right-wing women toward the end of the Weimar Republic. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had proposed to limit civil rights to married women. Party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, in his book Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, had defended male polygamy and encouraged Germans to welcome illegitimate children as long as they were of Aryan stock.11 Although the NSDAP tried to downplay its own anti-feminism in the final Weimar years, bourgeois women were concerned that the Nazis would try to consign women to reproduction, mothering, and housework. The NSDAP’s affinities with neo-paganism and Germanic cults, moreover, made many bourgeois women worry about the integrity of the churches after a Nazi takeover. Here, too, the NSDAP tried to allay the worst fears at the time of its greatest electoral successes, but Nazi support for the German Christian movement (Glaubensgemeinschaft Deutsche Christen), a group within the Evangelical Church that promoted a “Germanic Christianity” and embraced much of the Nazis’ völkisch ideology, indicated that the NSDAP aimed to win control over Germany’s largest Church.12 Those women in the DVP and DNVP who were affiliated with the Evangelical Church thus were particularly apprehensive about the Nazi successes. In the DVP, party solidarity prevented the leading women from attacking the cautious rapprochement with the NSDAP engineered by chairman Eduard Dingeldey in response to pressure from the DVP’s right wing.13 The women, however, made no secret of their opposition to the world view and the political methods of the Nazis. They criticized the Nazis in the women’s section (Frauenrundschau) of the Nationalliberale Correspondenz and published a pamphlet that attacked the Nazis’ program and politics in a fictional dialogue between DVP supporter Frau Wächter (meaning Mrs. Guardian) and Nazi supporter “Frau Hilter [sic].”14 They targeted in particular the Nazi view of women. The “Frauenrundschau” frequently quoted or paraphrased the anti-feminist statements of Nazi politicians and scoffed at them. Shortly before the Reichstag elections of July 1932, it reported the claim of a Nazi leader that the ballot offended the dignity of women because it prevented them from relying on the chivalry of men. The commentary said: “We can only heartily wish that the Nazi women will draw the conclusions from this statement and abstain from voting during the next elections. By doing so, they will render a great service to themselves and to the fatherland.”15 With sharp criticism, DVP women demolished the Nazi phrases about the sanctity of motherhood: “What stands behind these words is nothing but a denigration of the woman and her personality, and amounts to her exclusive subjection under her biological task.”16 Referring to – 160 –

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The Nazi Challenge Hitler’s claim that women were too good for the crudity and baseness of politics, Elisabeth Lürßen pointed out that the NSDAP itself had done much to push German politics to such low levels.17 As late as spring 1933, DVP women defended the achievements of the German women’s movement, particularly the right of women to the professions and to political activity. In comparison, the Nazi image of women, according to an article in the Nationalliberale Correspondenz, appeared to come from an “old fairy tale.”18 In the Prussian Landtag, Anny von Kulesza denounced the Nazis’ praise of biological motherhood by appealing to the idea of spiritual motherhood: “broadened spiritual motherhood is the source of strong, precious, life-shaping, and socially effective forces.” Her statement drew applause even from the DNVP.19 The methods and the character of the Nazi movement were another target of the DVP women. Much as they praised authority and powerful leadership, they stressed that subordination under a leader had to happen freely and in full awareness of one’s own responsibility. They usually referred to subordination under a respected and proven leader such as Stresemann or Hindenburg. By contrast, they saw the NSDAP as a party that demanded blind submission to Hitler and lured the masses with materialistic promises. The Nazis, according to DVP women, thus obliterated individual responsibility, a fundamental value of German culture and the Protestant ethic.20 This critique applied also to the style of the Nazis, mostly to their violence and cynicism. One event, in particular, provoked the wrath of DVP women: in 1931 a Nazi youth leader advised high school students to react to unpopular authority figures with a contemptuous smile that they could then deny when confronted. DVP women attacked this advice as a summons to falsehood and cowardice and as an attempt to undermine the authority of teachers.21 Based on their Christian world view, leading DVP women juxtaposed the responsibility of the individual toward God with the mass hysteria unleashed by the Nazis and criticized Nazi support for the German Christian movement.22 In a speech in front of the Prussian Landtag, Anny von Kulesza defined National Socialism as a “Christian form of religious paganism” and pointed out that the Evangelical German Christian movement received its political instructions from the Nazi Gregor Strasser, a Catholic.23 Although the Volksgemeinschaft idea stressed by the Nazis appealed to DVP women, they criticized that the Nazis had emptied the concept of its idealistic and conciliatory content by using it as an appeal to primitive mass instincts; instead of promoting peaceful cooperation among the classes, the Nazis were accused of awakening spurious hopes in the lower classes and thus exploiting class differences for their electoral advantage. Articles by DVP women sought to demonstrate, in particular, that the Nazi vision of Volksgemeinschaft discriminated against women by demanding their return to the home – another case where Nazi rhetoric masked a materialistic goal with idealistic rhetoric. DVP – 161 –

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Mothers of the Nation women also argued that the Nazis’ economic program contained socialist elements. This was tantamount to another charge of materialism because bourgeois politicians saw socialism as a purely materialistic philosophy and thus opposed to the idealistic Volksgemeinschaft. The upshot was that the NSDAP was a “typical party” regardless of its lofty Volksgemeinschaft rhetoric.24 DVP women, moreover, did not share the racist foundation on which the Nazi concept of Volksgemeinschaft rested. In the DVP, the Volksgemeinschaft continued to be defined as a harmonious community of production involving all professional groups. DVP women denied that Germany could be saved through the solution of an imagined race problem and claimed that the Nazis’ antiSemitism was motivated by materialistic concerns, too.25 Although DVP women had participated in the racist “Black Horror” campaign, only very few of them expressed a racist definition of the Volksgemeinschaft. This was mostly true for Else Frobenius, the DVP’s leading expert on Germans residing outside of the Reich, who often stressed the racial ties between Germans around the world.26 Elsa Matz occasionally used völkisch language and alluded to völkisch themes, but nothing in the context indicates that she meant this in a racist way. If she did, she never bothered to spell it out.27 Yet, whereas the sharpness of DVP women’s critique of Nazi anti-feminism left nothing to be desired, their critique of Nazi anti-Semitism was rather muted. To be sure, the Nazis did tone down their antiSemitism in the early 1930s and focused their propaganda on more immediate concerns such as the overcoming of the depression, but Nazi anti-Semitism could not be ignored given that the terror of the paramilitary Nazi SA was frequently directed at Jews even before Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship.28 Occasionally, the DVP women were also implicated in anti-Semitic acts promoted by their party. In October 1932, for example, the DVP organized a campaign rally in Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall featuring speeches by Matz and leading men of the party. Signs were posted at the doors saying that Communists, Nazis, and Jews could not be admitted.29 Whenever their party leadership attempted to pave the way for a rapprochement with the Nazis, the leading DVP women reacted with uneasiness. Party loyalty induced them to justify these moves, but their declarations poorly masked their concerns. When the DVP joined forces with the Nazis by supporting the Stahlhelm referendum for an early dissolution of the Prussian Landtag in 1931, Martha Schwarz, the general secretary of the DVP and editor of the “Frauenrundschau” section of the NLC, defended this step by pointing to the alleged corruption of the Prussian government. But Schwarz employed a rhetorical device that revealed her disagreement: she framed her defense of the Stahlhelm referendum as a series of critical questions each coupled with a response defending the referendum. Whereas the questions were piercing and sharp, the responses were weak and artificial. Obviously, no matter how much – 162 –

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The Nazi Challenge she disliked the left-to-center Prussian government, Schwarz saw little merit in this referendum, which would have dissolved the Landtag less than a year before regular elections were due to take place and brought about a paralyzing Nazi victory in Prussia sooner rather than later.30 The passionate support the “Frauenrundschau” gave to Hindenburg’s reelection campaign a few months later forms a stark contrast to its muted endorsement of the Stahlhelm referendum. When the DVP leadership began advocating the NSDAP’s entry into the government in late 1931, the “Frauenrundschau” got into a similar quandary as during the Stahlhelm campaign. Else Broekelschen-Kemper defended this decision on the surface, but her opposition to the Nazis was unmistakable.31 The DVP women’s rejection of cooperation with the Nazis had already provoked conflicts with some right-wing women’s organizations and the DNVP women before. During the referendum against the Young Plan, DVP women found themselves in opposition to the DNVP and some right-wing women’s leagues that had connections to both parties. The Bund Königin Luise, a women’s league aligned with the Stahlhelm, received strong criticism from DVP women for its support for the referendum against the Young Plan; this led to an exodus of DVP members from the Bund Königin Luise.32 With anger, DVP women also recorded that the women in the DNVP declared themselves time and again to be the only nationally-minded women present in parliaments.33 Yet, behind the defiant anti-Nazi statements of DVP women lurked self-doubt and resignation. They recognized that the rise of the Nazis from a splinter party to a mass movement had been impossible without the support of women. Initially, DVP women stressed that the NSDAP received the majority of its vote from men, which was true until July 1932.34 But their claims that woman was the “natural” protector of the political center because she was opposed to violence, civil war, and revolution sounded increasingly hollow. After all, by September 1930 the Nazis had likely won more women’s votes than the DVP and DNVP together. Gradually, the DVP women admitted that the party system of the Weimar Republic had failed. They quickly attributed this to the materialistic policies of the SPD and the Center Party, but they also criticized themselves for having failed to educate the German woman to be a responsible citizen and thus to be more resistent to the Nazis. It appeared as if the suffrage had come as a surprising and hardly earned breakthrough for which German women were not yet ready. This argument, of course, held women to a stricter standard than men, but it was understandable given the hopes of 1918–19 that women’s involvement would lift politics to a higher moral level. But DVP women also recognized that the poor economic situation during much of the Weimar Republic had undermined the legal gains of women, so that the NSDAP threatened to take away rights whose benefits women had rarely felt. Sometimes, the critique of DVP women was even directed at the hostility toward women in the non-Nazi parties. – 163 –

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Mothers of the Nation Martha Schwarz argued in 1930: “This restraining of women in all parties may well have contributed to the fact that many women voting for the Nazis could hardly have been bothered by the hostility of this party toward them.”35 The mixture of skepticism and resignation was also typical for the attitude of DVP women after 30 January 1933. The “Frauenrundschau” balked at the summary condemnation of the Weimar Republic and the achievements of Stresemann by the new Nazi-led government, and DVP women criticized the decision to schedule new elections because they expected it to produce more upheaval rather than stabilization. But they did not voice any criticism of the massive wave of terror the Nazis now directed against the political left with the help of a purged state and police apparatus. Dingeldey, the party leader, did not want to alienate the new government because he expected a deadlock between the NSDAP-DNVP coalition and the opposition after the next elections, in which case the DVP would be able to tip the scales. Elsa Matz even tried to prepare DVP women for the entry of the DVP into the Nazi-led government. She claimed that National Socialism (NSDAP) and National Conservatism (DNVP) should be complemented by the National Liberalism of the DVP.36 At the Reichstag elections of 5 March 1933, however, the NSDAP together with the DNVP won an absolute majority, and the DVP was reduced to two seats out of 647. There was nothing left but Dingeldey’s dream that the DVP would one day become the refuge for disgruntled NSDAP and DNVP voters. In this sense, the DVP activist Henny Pleimes appealed to her party to preserve the “courage to be in a minority” and to wait until the DVP would become the rallying point of a “true Volksgemeinschaft” for people with liberal and national views.37 The last edition of the “Frauenrundschau,” dated 23 March 1933, contained an article by Schwarz that once again attacked the anti-feminism of the Nazis. Schwarz pointed out that the Nazis still refused to let women serve in parliaments and that the number of women in the Reichstag had further declined due to the Nazi gains. But it finally dawned on her that representation in the Reichstag might soon have no importance any more. It is characteristic of the resignation of DVP women in this period that she considered this thought to be a soothing one. Moreover, Schwarz pointed to a Goebbels speech that seemed to her to indicate that the Nazis would not be as restrictive toward the professional and political work of women as DVP women had feared.38 At this point, the DVP women’s structure seems to have broken down already. Whereas Anny von Kulesza supported Dingeldey’s aim to keep the party alive, Elsa Matz was dismantling the DVP’s Berlin section, encouraging its members to join forces with the “great national movement” of the Nazis.39 Like the DVP women, the leading women of the DNVP reacted with ambivalence to the rise of the Nazis. But while DVP women were torn between opposition and resignation, DNVP women shifted between critique of some points and – 164 –

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The Nazi Challenge emphatic approval of others. Whereas the Nazis’ anti-feminism and their approach to religion provoked strong resistance from DNVP women, too, they widely shared the racism and anti-Semitism of the Nazis. The irrelevance of parliamentary politics, the pressure on women’s rights, the radicalization of the DNVP under Hugenberg, and the competition from the Nazis all helped to make the leading DNVP women after 1930 highly receptive to the ideas of those women who had always combined an engagement for women’s rights with virulent racism: the völkisch women’s activists inspired by the late Käthe Schirmacher. Before 1930, the ideas of the völkisch activists had been powerful but not dominant in the DNVP, but they became the primary agenda of the DNVP women in the last years of the Weimar Republic. That many in the German medical community had meanwhile accepted a connection between racial hygiene and the notion of Nordic supremacy must have boosted the credibility of these ideas among DNVP women.40 The leading DNVP women after 1930 therefore affirmed racial and political goals that were very similar to those of the Nazis, but they simultaneously staked out a claim for German women to participate actively in the buildup of a racial state. This is neatly expressed in the following statement by Ilse Neumann, member of the DNVP group in the Prussian Landtag, from December 1930: “It is impossible for Germanic women’s thinking to leave the fight for the new Germany to men, to let them do all the cleaning up and building up and maybe receive some place in the new Germany later on.”41 The attacks of DNVP women on the anti-feminism of the NSDAP hardly differed from those of the DVP women. Neumann, for example, repeatedly argued that the Nazi cult of motherhood, though in itself praiseworthy, could not be limited to the biological meaning of motherhood. In other words, women with their maternal sense could be beneficial to society in a variety of social functions – as advocates of spiritual motherhood had claimed decades earlier.42 The tone of the critique was particularly sharp in 1932, when Nazi provocations against the DNVP multiplied. DNVP women protested angrily when the Nazis repeatedly rejected DNVP women as candidates for committees in town parliaments by arguing that women should play no role in politics. In some cases, the Nazis thus made possible the election of a left-wing man instead of a DNVP woman.43 The Nazis’ refusal to allow women into their parliamentary groups often drew the criticism of DNVP women, but it also allowed them to point out that the DNVP was the “only” party sending right-wing women into parliaments – the very claim that so angered DVP women.44 Even some of those women who had previously rejected the “Germanic Christianity” cult of the radical right now resorted to the claim that the Germanic tribes had allegedly revered women and accorded them positions of power. Following on this argument, it was possible to deny that the NSDAP was truly völkisch. Here the racist ideas of DNVP women merged – 165 –

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Mothers of the Nation with their defense of women’s rights. As late as February 1933 Alexa von Porembsky, a member of the RFA and the Pan-German League, argued that the NSDAP had a völkisch image of men but a “foreign” image of women. This conjured up the danger, according to Porembsky, that the Nazi man would shun the more self-assertive and bold Nordic woman and choose a more submissive, but racially inferior, wife. This would spoil the “racial quality” of the German people.45 Along the same lines, Porembsky in 1932 had also defended women’s right to work by arguing that the economic system of the Weimar Republic was disadvantageous to women because it was not truly “German” but that this would change in the future völkisch state.46 Given that many women in the DNVP were, like their counterparts in the DVP, connected to the Evangelical Church, they also worried about the Nazis’ attitude toward religion and the Churches. Relentlessly, DNVP women tried to convince the Nazis that the völkisch state had to be built on a religious foundation and that a nationalist movement without connection to God would become self-absorbed and arbitrary. Else Meyer, a DNVP activist from Hildesheim near Hanover, warned that the Nazis would erect a “cultural dictatorship against conscience” should Christianity cease to be the basis of culture and education in the Nazi state.47 The involvement of the German Christian movement in church elections was condemned by DNVP women as a politicization of the Evangelical Church by the Nazis.48 Repeatedly, the DNVP women’s press pointed out that racial thinking and Christianity did not contradict each other and that the former even received “nobility and value” through the latter. This thesis rested on the claim that God had wanted racial differences between the peoples and that he had organized the races in a hierarchy of historical tasks and, implicitly, of values.49 Occasionally the DNVP women’s press condemned acts of violence committed by the Nazis. It was not the Nazi terror in the streets, however, that triggered these condemnations but rather some brawls in the Reichstag involving Nazi deputies. The Deutschnationale Frau used these incidents to drive home its claim that the Nazis sorely needed the leadership and discipline of the DNVP under Hugenberg. Sometimes the confrontation with the NSDAP led DNVP women to stress their conservative view of the state. Magdalene von Tiling, in particular, pointed out that the state rested on divine authority and should not be abused or changed arbitrarily by interest groups and parties. But this approach, probably provoked by the Nazis’ quasi-socialist message, harkened back to the supposed “legitimacy” of the German Empire before 1918 and had nothing to do with the defense of the Weimar Republic.50 The mass hysteria triggered by Nazi propaganda as well as the Hitler cult also figured as targets of DNVP women’s critique. Paula Mueller-Otfried was particularly disgusted by the veneration of Hitler by many German women. But Mueller-Otfried and other DNVP women always tried to distinguish their own veneration of Hugenberg from the Hitler – 166 –

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The Nazi Challenge cult, thereby following the same argumentative paths that DVP women used when justifying their adoration of Stresemann and Hindenburg. Ilse Hamel, for example, argued that submission under the authority of a leader was absolutely Germanic (“urgermanisch”) but that it had to be directed toward an experienced and ingenious leader such as Hugenberg.51 She and other DNVP women insinuated that submission under Hugenberg happened in freedom and self-respect, whereas Hitler seduced the masses and made them devoid of will. DNVP women thus attacked the Nazis for their electoral successes, implying that these successes were unethical because they had been won by the seduction of the masses. Yet, all this confrontation could not erase the feeling of kinship most DNVP women felt toward the Nazis. DNVP women loved to present their own party as the experienced political force and the Nazis as the impatient but wellintended youth at their side. This partnership was symbolized by the mature and portly Hugenberg next to the young and impetuous Hitler. Based on this image, DNVP women claimed that the DNVP deserved a leadership role in the national opposition – or at least equal rights – because the DNVP acted on higher ethical principles than the Nazis.52 Yet in the end, DNVP women above all wanted to ensure that the racial state to be erected by the Nazis, of which they approved, would welcome German women’s collaboration in public as well as private venues. Despite all their criticisms, the DNVP women in this period never forgot what united them with the Nazis, namely their racialized vision of the Volksgemeinschaft. The racist message of the leading DNVP women permeated their articles, speeches, and programmatic writings. Die Deutschnationale Frau poured out a mass of untranslatable völkisch jargon to encourage women to become the breeders and educators of a racially conscious people.53 Elsa von Lindequist, the newsletter’s editor at this time, demanded for example that the “Judaization” of German culture finally be stopped and expressed the hope that all Germans would one day be proud of having a pure race.54 A school program drafted by DNVP school experts – including several women – called for the dismissal of Jewish and atheistic teachers and demanded that racial education be given a central place in the school curriculum.55 Alexa von Porembsky and Dr. Irmgard Wrede, both members of the RFA and the Pan-German League, organized conferences on racial hygiene and presented its concepts in many articles for Die Deutschnationale Frau. The racial hygienicists whose theories were thereby promoted, foremost among them Hans K.F. Günther, divided the German people into a hierarchy of six types, ranging from the most appreciated “Nordic” race to the members of the “eastern-Baltic race”, who were depicted with contempt. As non-Germanic people, the French, the Slavs, and the Jews were considered even lower in value. The basic axioms of these teachings, which received an eminent place in the school curriculum of the Third Reich, stated that the mixture of races – 167 –

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Mothers of the Nation spoiled racial quality and that the higher racial types should be encouraged to procreate more than the others. DNVP women therefore recommended to their readers and listeners that women should “marry up” the quality scale.56 They failed to explain, however, how certain people could “marry up” without members of the higher racial types “marrying down” and thus spoiling the race. A particularly elaborate proposal came from the pen of the DNVP physician Dr. Annemarie Burgund a few weeks before Hitler became chancellor. Burgund demanded that “racially inferior” persons be placed in asylums and that two categories of citizenship be introduced: a privileged one for “people’s citizens” (Volksbürger) of pure Aryan stock, and a lower one for “state citizens” (Staatsbürger) of lesser value or of alien racial background. Burgund also took up the proposal of Pan-German leader General Leopold von Vietinghoff-Scheel to build up a network of so-called “race guardians.” These state-appointed officials would monitor the racial composition of the population and advise the Aryan population in their choice of a marriage partner. Burgund obviously expected that the office of the race guardian would open an excellent job opportunity for women squeezed out of jobs during the depression.57 The culmination of the DNVP women’s embrace of racial hygienic thought was a programmatic document of February 1933 that defined the German woman above all as the guardian of the race.58 The crescendo of racist statements by DNVP women encountered almost no opposition in the party. Only Else Meyer, a DNVP activist with connections to the Evangelical Church, voiced critical remarks after reading the NSDAP’s cultural program in July 1932: “Such a disputed issue as the race question requires the most careful clarification before it is made into an instrument of mass education. Otherwise, it becomes mere phraseology.”59 It is obvious that those women who had the closest ties to the Evangelical Church, such as Paula Mueller-Otfried and Magdalene von Tiling, remained ambivalent about racial hygienic ideas, probably because the women promoting them often referred to theories of “Germanic Christianity”, according to which Jesus was an Aryan whose ideas had been distorted by Jews and other non-Germanic peoples.60 The leadership of the Evangelical Church officially rejected these theories in spite of growing sympathy for them within all ranks of the Church.61 Yet the intensification of the DNVP women’s racism received full support from Annagrete Lehmann, who was chair of the RFA, member of the DNVP’s National Völkisch Committee, and one of the vice-chairs of the party.62 Given its connections to reproduction and education, two agreed-upon women’s spheres, the racist campaign was defined by DNVP women as a specific women’s mission. Although some men in the party, particularly those organized in the National Völkisch Committee, shared in the outpouring of racist ideas, it appears that the women stressed this issue more than the men. Whereas – 168 –

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The Nazi Challenge the Frauenkorrespondenz/Die Deutschnationale Frau was full of racist ideas in 1930–33, the general party newsletter Unsere Partei (later: Deutschnationale Front) contained only a single explicitly racist article in this entire period – written by Alexa von Porembsky!63 But it should also be stressed that the emphasis of the DNVP women’s campaign was on racial hygiene and that they generally avoided hateful anti-Semitic statements. It seemed as if they still followed Johanna Richter’s 1922 recommendation that women should fight Jewish cultural influence not through violent outbursts but through educational work. Yet their approach anticipated the spirit of the discriminatory Nürnberg Laws of 1935 and the Nazi sterilization and euthanasia programs. The DNVP women’s reactions to the appointment of the Hitler cabinet on 30 January 1933 confirmed that the common ground between them and the Nazis was stronger than the dividing power of the Nazis’ attitude concerning women and religion. Die Deutschnationale Frau reacted enthusiastically to the end of the hated Weimar Republic, the repression of the left, and the beginning of a state built on völkisch principles. Even Mueller-Otfried and Tiling, whose Church connections might have evoked more caution, were overjoyed that the Weimar Republic had been destroyed.64 Elisabeth Spohr, the most experienced DNVP representative in the Prussian Landtag, was enthusiastic about what she called the “liberation from the icy wind of the Marxist world view that had frozen all national-völkisch and Christian life with a deadly force.”65 At a time when Nazis murdered and imprisoned their left-wing opponents, Annagrete Lehmann expressed her satisfaction with Hitler’s “fascinating reckoning with Marxism.” Like other DNVP women, she understood that the Nazi terror operated outside the realm of traditional legality but made it clear that she forgave the Nazis their “occasional excesses.”66 At an RFA meeting in the middle of February 1933, Ilse Neumann called on the DNVP to stress its völkisch attitude and its anti-Semitism even more. At this meeting, the RFA presented a short programmatic document that combined the racist engagement of the DNVP women with their more traditional conservative, religious, and militaristic spirit. The first task of the German woman was, according to the document, to be the “guardian and caretaker of the race.” But women should play this role not only, as Nazi ideologues had claimed, in their home and family but also in public life.67 Soon after the March 1933 elections, however, the mood of the leading DNVP women soured. Whereas Lehmann, who was present at almost all meetings of the party leadership, hoped that the DNVP and NSDAP would organically merge and form a synthesis of Hitler’s and Hugenberg’s aims, the reality was that the Nazis bullied DNVP members to join the NSDAP. Hugenberg ran into increasing difficulties with Hitler and the other Nazis in the cabinet. Lehmann was happy that the Nazis either took over or dissolved the traditional women’s organizations, but she could not understand why the DNVP women, having done so much – 169 –

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Mothers of the Nation to fight the democratic tendencies of the German women’s movement, were not invited to participate in this process.68 At the end of June 1933, Hugenberg resigned from the Hitler cabinet and the DNVP dissolved itself, not seeing any remaining avenue for an independent existence. What did the women who had been active in the DVP and DNVP do in the Third Reich after the dissolution of their parties? Evidence is sparse and scattered, but there are examples of prominent women who continued some public activity: Else Frobenius, who published an adulatory book on Nazism and women in 1933 (Die Frau im Dritten Reich), continued her journalistic career throughout the Third Reich.69 She joined the NSDAP on 1 May 1933 and was a member of many specialized Nazi organizations. She published extensively in newspapers and magazines and frequently spoke on the radio. She moved her previous engagement on behalf of the Germans outside Germany, and her promotion of German colonies, seamlessly into the agenda of the Third Reich.70 Elsa Matz remained director of her high school in Berlin-Charlottenburg throughout the Third Reich. She participated in many activities of the NSFrauenschaft, the Nazi women’s organization, and faithfully supported the local NSDAP section. She applied for NSDAP membership in late April 1933 but was rejected almost two years later because of an anti-Nazi remark she had uttered during an election campaign rally in October 1932. Matz then asked Rudolf Hess and the NSDAP Party Court to reconsider her application. She pointed out: “I endeavor to lead my school … in the National Socialist spirit. Many events prove this. I cooperate closely with the NS-Frauenschaft of my local party section and with the NS-Volkswohlfahrt. Mine was the first school that organized the donation of baby baskets for the ‘Mother and Child’ action, and we collected significant sums for the Winter’s Aid program. My work outside my profession, particularly in the Colonial Women’s League and the German Gymnastics League, also corresponds to the goals of National Socialism.”71 As proof that she had fought “against the pacifist lie” and for a national education before 1933, Matz submitted a 1929 article from the left-leaning magazine Die Weltbühne, which depicted her as a tyrannical school director who imposed military discipline on her Berlin school, making her girls walk in goose step and sing nationalist songs.72 Several SS officers acquainted with Matz submitted letters of support for her, but the head of the Party Court, Walter Buch, rejected her plea. As one of the twelve Nazis elected to the Reichstag in 1928, Buch wrote that he did not remember Matz as “the kind of woman whom we like to welcome in our movement.”73 Buch conceded, however, that Matz could be admitted once the restrictions on the admission of new party members were eased. Matz finally was admitted into the party in November 1939, but some party members challenged her membership even then, though apparently without success.74 In late 1941, Matz was asked by the NSDAP to travel to Italy to study the effects of – 170 –

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The Nazi Challenge Mussolini’s school reform on the physical education of girls, but the evidence does not show whether she completed the trip.75 Like Frobenius, Matz easily transferred her activities into the Third Reich; she probably had to change little in the direction of her school, and her work for the Nazi program “Mother and Child” recalls the Mütterhilfe Wanderkorb initiated by the Berlin DVP in the 1920s. The only inconvenience was that she had been in the Reichstag and had made some remarks against the Nazis. Matz remained director of her school until 1946. As a retiree, she resettled in Lower Bavaria and helped organize social services for German refugees. She died in Munich in 1959, having just received the German National Medal (Bundesverdienstkreuz) for her work in the Reichstag and in the development of the German education system for girls.76 Clara Mende, Matz’s predecessor at the head of the RFA, had become disillusioned with the DVP as early as 1928, when she failed to secure reelection to the Reichstag (which she ascribed to the influence of anti-feminism in her party). She then received an appointment as head of the new section for household matters in the Reich Economics Ministry and consequently stepped down from her seat in the DVP’s Party Board (Parteivorstand). Hopeless about the DVP’s future, she joined the DNVP in 1932 but played no role in the leadership of that party.77 After the Nazi takeover, she became a member of the Reichsschrifttumskammer, which allowed her to continue publishing in the Third Reich. Mende also continued working as director of her home-economics school in Berlin-Tempelhof. Her application for NSDAP membership was rejected, however. A report commissioned by the judges of the Party Court found that she had done nothing against the Nazis after their takeover but had occasionally criticized the NSDAP in the Reichstag (the Nazi press used to call her “Lügenklärchen” – Little Lying Clara). That Mende had good contacts to Gertrud Scholz-Klink, who in 1934 became the leader of the NS-Frauenschaft, helped her to continue her professional activity throughout the Third Reich but was not enough to guarantee her NSDAP membership. Mende died in 1947.78 Ilse Szagunn, the physician and energetic organizer of the Greater Berlin women’s committees of the DVP, stayed on as a member of the Prussian State Health Council (Landesgesundheitsrat) and as executive officer of the League of German Women Physicians (Bund Deutscher Ärztinnen); in 1934, she defended the Nazi sterilization laws.79 Unlike Mende and Matz, Anny von Kulesza kept her distance from the NSDAP in the brief period of the Third Reich that she witnessed before her death in October 1934. At her funeral, former DVP chairman Dingeldey gave a speech that vindicated Stresemann and criticized the Third Reich. Everything indicates that she would have approved.80 Evidence on the DNVP women is less complete. Dr. Irmgard Wrede, a young RFA member, got herself arrested by the Gestapo in Breslau on 15 June 1933 for anti-Nazi activities. A friend had denounced her to the secret police for remarks – 171 –

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Mothers of the Nation directed against Hitler. Given her virulent racism, it is likely that she criticized Hitler for his anti-feminism rather than for any abuse of human rights.81 Wrede’s arrest led to a flurry of legal and political initiatives by Hugenberg (then still in Hitler’s cabinet), Annagrete Lehmann, and Axel von Freytagh-Loringhoven, the party’s legal expert. In a personal discussion with Hitler six days after the arrest, Hugenberg received the assurance that Wrede would be freed without delay.82 The fact that she could publish a book in Nazi Germany only two years later suggests that her run-in with the Gestapo did not affect her career in the Third Reich.83 As for Mueller-Otfried, she had to step down from the leadership of the Evangelical Women’s League, but she was close to retirement anyway. She was still working on the board of a league against the international traffic in girls in the later 1930s. She died in 1946.84 Although Tiling had hoped for cooperation with the Nazi regime, she lost her position as leader of the Evangelical umbrella organization VEFD and had to resume her teaching profession until her retirement in 1938. She stayed aloof from the Nazi regime but also did nothing to oppose it.85 Lenore Kühn, who joined the Managing Board of the BDF in the early 1930s, had already promoted the Nazi cause by encouraging her colleagues not to let the Nazis’ anti-feminism estrange the BDF from the NSDAP: “The women’s movement, on the contrary, belongs organically into National Socialism.”86 After the Nazi takeover, she worked briefly for the journal Deutsche Kämpferin edited by the völkisch women’s activist Pia Sophie RoggeBörner.87 She had to supplement the meager income from her publications with occasional work for publishing houses and by giving piano lessons. She left Berlin in 1943 after her home had been destroyed in a bombing raid and pondered working in an ammunitions factory to help avoid Germany’s defeat. She died in West Germany in 1955.88 Ilse Hamel, one of the völkisch women’s acitivists who was acquainted with Kühn and Rogge-Börner, received an appointment as an expert for women’s questions in Joseph Goebbels’ Reichsschrifttumskammer, the office in charge of monitoring literary production in the Third Reich.89 Käthe Schirmacher did not live to see the Nazis’ coming to power, but she was revered by the Third Reich for her nationalism and racism. The Nazis conveniently belittled her engagement for women’s rights and ignored her lesbianism.90 What Annagrete Lehmann did after the dissolution of the DNVP is unclear. Like Hugenberg, she may have spent the rest of the Nazi years in retirement. She died in 1954. Most other DNVP women probably concentrated on working in their own leagues, where this was still possible, or withdrew from public life. Altogether, the women’s response to the Nazi challenge is ambiguous. The harshest criticism launched by the women from both parties was in terms of their defense of women’s rights against the Nazis’ anti-feminism and their concern over the Nazis’ control of the Evangelical Church. The first theme was shared by – 172 –

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The Nazi Challenge most parties; even the SPD used it in its propaganda against the Nazis – with the famous campaign poster showing an angry SA man with a whip watching a woman tie his boot.91 Yet the defense of women’s rights meant different things to women from the DVP and to those from the DNVP. Whereas the leading women of the DVP adhered to ideas that were at least related to the liberal tradition of individual rights, it seems to me that the DNVP activists in this period meant something rather different. The equality of the sexes stressed in particular by the völkisch women’s activists in the DNVP never implied that Germanic women would actually be free to make their individual choices regarding such issues as reproduction, choice of a mate, or upbringing of the children. Völkisch activists simply claimed that a pure-blooded Nordic woman, free of all “foreign” influences, would instinctively choose a prescribed path. This would mean that she would be bold, free, and intensely nationalist, and that she would follow an instinctive sense for racial hygiene that “foreign” cultural influences had allegedly disturbed. If a Nordic woman failed to display this kind of behavior, it would only prove that she was either racially impure or ideologically misled. This line of thought showed all the circular reasoning typical for Nazi hermeneutics.92 It did not leave room for individual choice and freedom. By implying a certain behavior that Nordic women would have to adopt on the basis of their genes, this approach was in reality very constraining. The völkisch women’s activists thus shared an idea of emancipation that was far removed from the western and liberal notion of individual and natural rights. In the worldview of völkisch women, there were rights, but no choices. Ironically, the Nazis’ bark turned out to be worse than their bite with respect to women’s rights and church issues. After an initial push to get women out of the work force, directed mostly against academic women, the Nazi regime felt compelled to reverse its policies. After 1936, with war preparation creating a labor shortage, and particularly in the later years of the war, the regime begged women to join the labor force in ever greater numbers. Even in the initial years, the reverses women faced with respect to their professional rights were less severe than expected. As some of the DNVP women had hoped, moreover, the population policies of the Nazi regime required the work and expertise of many women, be it in social work or in the medical apparatus.93 Whereas the restrictive policies of the Nazis toward women thus did not fully confirm the fears of the DVP and DNVP activists before 1933, the Nazi policies that were designed to encourage motherhood and to raise the birthrate would have found their emphatic approval. Women from both parties had always stressed that actual motherhood was women’s highest profession, even though it should not be the only avenue open to them. Nazi marriage stipends and rewards to mothers of four or more children (secretly called “Karnickelorden” – rabbit medal) breathed the spirit of many DVP and DNVP women’s policies from the Mütterhilfe – 173 –

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Mothers of the Nation Wanderkorb to their joint involvement in the National League for Large Families. The fears that the Nazis would infiltrate and manipulate the Evangelical Church appeared justified in the short run, but this threat, too, turned out to be less serious than predicted. Hitler did appoint members of the German Christian movement to leading positions in the Church, but Nazi control remained incomplete, and Hitler pursued no consistent policy – even losing interest in the German Christian movement after a few years. With massive support for the regime coming out of all ranks of the Evangelical Church, the issue of Nazi control over the Church was a moot point. Although all Churches might have been threatened had the Nazi regime won the Second World War, the regime chose not to put too much pressure on them before and during the war.94 While women from both parties launched a weak critique of the Nazis’ methods, they drastically underestimated the danger of a full-blown dictatorship. Only very late, if at all, did DVP women comprehend that the fight for women’s representation in parliament made little sense in a dictatorship, and DNVP women grossly erred in their belief that Hitler would reward their racism and their fight against the democratic women’s movement by letting them participate in the buildup of the völkisch state. Even the defense of women’s rights made little sense without a defense of the sanctity of law in general.95 This the women of both parties did not do, and they would have been at a loss if asked to explain which state and which law they wanted to uphold. Having thus failed to hold the Nazis to the most basic legal standards during their terror against the Left, women from the DVP and – in particular – the DNVP had no ground to stand on when the Nazis pressed for the dissolution of their parties and organizations. For DVP women, resignation and disappointment with the Weimar system was so strong at this point that they could hardly object to the end of their party activity. DNVP women, in turn, had found so much common ground with the Nazis that the continuation of a separate party organization can hardly have appeared a worthy cause to them. Still, it is possible that right-wing women’s resistance against the NSDAP was important for a while in keeping a disproportionate number of women voters loyal to the DVP and DNVP. Those districts that counted women’s and men’s votes separately for a longer period of time show that the portion of women’s votes for the DVP and DNVP rose to its highest levels after 1928 before dropping down to “normal” levels around 1932 – the year when the NSDAP is assumed to have closed its gender gap.96 At a time when male voters rapidly left the DVP and DNVP for the smaller-interest parties and, ultimately, the NSDAP, there seems to have been a delay in the same movement of women. This would indicate that there was a grain of truth in the often stated claim of bourgeois women that women tended to be more loyal to their parties than men.

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Notes 1. “Kann die berufstätige Frau Hitler wählen?” NLC 59, no. 60, 24 March 1932. 2. Ian Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (London: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 53–62, and Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Peter Fritzsche makes the same point in Germans Into Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 217–35. 3. Hiller von Gaertringen, “Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei.” In Eric Matthias and Rudolf Morsey, eds., Das Ende der Parteien 1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1960), pp. 554 and 618. 4. The two defecting women were Else Ulbrich, member of the Prussian Landtag, and Margarethe Wolff, Behm’s successor at the helm of the League for Female Home Workers. See Günter Opitz, Der Christlich-soziale Volksdienst: Versuch einer protestantischen Partei in der Weimarer Republik, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien, 37 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1969), pp. 150, 178, and 217. For an early example of solidarity with Hugenberg in the DNVP women’s press, see Annagrete Lehmann, “Ernste Entscheidungen,” Frauenkorrespondenz 12, no. 16, 17 April 1930. Numerous articles in Die Deutschnationale Frau from March, April, and October 1932 give testimony to a Hugenberg cult of Lehmann and other leading DNVP women. 5. Thomas Mergel, Parlamentarische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, Droste, 2002), pp. 431–2, 436–8, and 466–9. 6. Martha Schwarz, “Frauen und politischer Zeitgeist,” Berliner Stimmen 7, no. 2, 12 January 1930. 7. Kolb and Richter, eds., Nationalliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik, p. 1111 (meeting of 24 August 1930). See also Elsa Matz’s bitter criticism of the DVP at a BDF meeting later in 1930: Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, p. 269. 8. “Keine bürgerlichen Frauen im sächsischen Landtag,” Frauenkorrespondenz 12, no. 28, 10 July 1930. See also Dora Schwaak, “Wie sind die Frauen in den städtischen Körperschaften vertreten?” Frauenkorrespondenz 11, no. 45, 7 November 1929. 9. Annagrete Lehmann, “Aus der Arbeit unserer Landesfrauenausschüsse,” Frauenkorrespondenz 13, no. 8, 15 July 1931. 10. As quoted in Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, p. 255. 11. Arendt, Hering, and Wagner, eds., Nationalsozialistische Frauenpolitik vor 1933, pp. 101 und 148. – 175 –

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Mothers of the Nation 12. Ernst Christian Helmreich, The German Churches Under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), pp. 126–28; Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); and Kurt Nowak, Evangelische Kirche und Weimarer Republik (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1981), chapter 4. 13. For a detailed account of DVP politics in this period, see Larry E. Jones, German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar Party System, 1918–1933 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), chapters 29 and 31. Hans Booms offers a summary, “Die Deutsche Volkspartei.” In Erich Mathias and Rudolf Morsey, eds., Das Ende der Parteien 1933: Darstellungen und Dokumente (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1960). 14. RFA der DVP, ed., “Wissen Sie schon —, Frau Hilter?” Flugschriften der DVP 78, Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1931. 15. “Nationalsozialisten und Frauen,” NLC 59, no. 46, 4 March 1932 (Frauenrundschau 8). 16. Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt, “Die Stellung des Nationalsozialismus zur Frau,” NLC 59, no. 67, 6 April 1932 (Frauenrundschau 13). 17. Elizabeth Lürßen, “Warum sind wir Frauen in der Politik?” NLC 59, no. 136, 21 July 1932 (Frauenrundschau 24). 18. “Kann die berufstätige Frau Hitler wählen?” NLC 59, no. 60, 24 March 1932 (Frauenrundschau 11). The Evangelical women’s movement shared this rejection of Nazism’s attitude toward women. See Lange, Protestantische Frauen auf dem Weg in den Nationalsozialismus, p. 103. 19. VdL, 1932–33, vol. I, p. 891. 20. Else Broekelschen-Kemper, “Der Nationalsozialismus als Kulturfrage,” NLC 58, no. 3, 6 January 1931 (Frauenrundschau 1). 21. “Frauen und Nationalsozialismus,” NLC 58, no. 42, 25 February 1931 (Frauenrundschau 8); RFA der DVP, ed., “Wissen Sie schon —, Frau Hilter?” pp. 9–10; Anny von Kulesza, Frauenfragen der Gegenwart, Flugschriften der DVP 79 (Berlin: Staatspolitischer Verlag, 1931), pp. 18–19. 22. Elsa Matz, “Kulturpolitische Motive im Wahlkampf,” NLC 57, no. 171, 3 September 1930; “Ist das christlich?” NLC 59, no. 136, 21 July 1932 (Frauenrundschau 24). See also RFA der DVP, ed., “Wissen Sie schon —, Frau Hilter?” and von Kulesza, Frauenfragen der Gegenwart, as well as Nowak, Evangelische Kirche und Weimarer Republik. 23. “Frauengedanken über den Nationalsozialismus,” NLC 59, no. 199, 2 November 1932 (Frauenrundschau 35). 24. “Volksparteiliche Frauenkundgebung in Berlin,” NLC 57, no. 176, 10 September 1930 (Frauenrundschau 29); Johanna Lange, “An der Schwelle – 176 –

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25.

26.

27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

des neuen Jahres,” NLC 57, no. 251, 30 December 1930 (Frauenrundschau 42); “Frauen und Nationalsozialismus,” NLC 58, no. 42, 25 February 1931 (Frauenrundschau 8); “Ist Politik unweiblich?” NLC 59, no. 140, 27 July 1932 (Frauenrundschau 25). See RFA der DVP, ed., “Wissen Sie schon —, Frau Hilter?”; von Kulesza, Frauenfragen der Gegenwart; and “Frauen und Nationalsozialismus,” NLC 58, no. 42, 25 February 1931 (Frauenrundschau 8). See for example Else Frobenius, “Frauenarbeit für deutsches Volkstum,” NLC 53, no. 98, 8 June 1926. See also Helene Fock, “Das bevölkerungspolitische Problem in den Grenzlanden,” NLC 53, no. 179, 3 November 1926. See for example Matz’s comments in the Reichstag in June 1925, VdR, 1924–1928, vol. 386, pp. 2344–6 (particularly pp. 2345D-2346A), which employ völkisch language. See also “Kulturaufgaben des Reiches,” NLC 52, no. 115, 24 June 1925. See Dirk Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt: Judenfeindschaft in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: Dietz, 1999). Geheime Staatspolizei to Präsidenten der RSK, 26 April 1938, in BA BerlinLichterfelde, Berlin Document Center, Reichsschriftumskammer 2100, Clara Mende. MS [=Martha Schwarz], “Volksentscheid in Preußen,” NLC 58, no. 152, 6 August 1931 (Frauenrundschau 22). Else Broekelschen-Kemper, “Die Frauen und der Weg der Deutschen Volkspartei,” NLC 58, no. 243, 16 December 1931 (Frauenrundschau 34). “Frauen und Volksbegehren,” NLC 56, no. 198, 3 October 1929; “KöniginLuise-Bund und Deutsche Volkspartei,” NLC 56, no. 210, 18 October 1929. “Druckfehler-Berichtigung,” NLC 56, no. 148, 16 July 1929. Martha Schwarz, “Der neue Reichstag und die Frauen,” NLC 57, no. 185, 24 September 1930 (Frauenrundschau 30), and Schwarz, “Reichsfrauenausschuß der Deutschen Volkspartei,” NLC 57, no. 236, 4 December 1930 (Frauenrundschau 39). See also Helen Boak, “‘Our Last Hope:’ Women’s Votes for Hitler: A Reappraisal.” German Studies Review 12, no. 2 (1989): 289–310. Schwarz, “Der neue Reichstag und die Frauen.” See also Else BroekelschenKemper, “Reaktion?” NLC 59, no. 221, 8 December 1932, and Martha Schwarz, “Die Frau im öffentlichen Leben der Gegenwart,” NLC 60, no. 53, 23 March 1933 (Frauenrundschau 8). Elsa Matz, “Entschiedenheit und Klarheit bei den Wahlen: Ein Wort an die Frauen,” NLC 60, no. 39. 1 March 1933 (Frauenrundschau 6). Henny Pleimes, “Der Mut zur Minderheit,” NLC 60, no. 44, 8 March 1933 (Frauenrundschau 7). Schwarz, “Die Frau im öffentlichen Leben der Gegenwart.” – 177 –

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Mothers of the Nation 39. Kulesza to Dingeldey, 28 April 1933; Matz to Dingeldey, 29 April 1933, both in Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Nachlass Eduard Dingeldey (N 1002), vol 97. See also Kolonialpolitisches Amt an SS-Sturmführer Grimm, 17 February 1936, in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, Berlin Document Center, Akten des Obersten Parteigerichts Z Kammer. 40. Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 20–30. 41. Ilse Neumann, “Die Verantwortlichkeit der Frau gegenüber Volk und Staat,” Frauenkorrespondenz 12, no. 51, 18 December 1930. 42. Ibid. 43. See for example “Warum sind wir Frauen deutschnational?” Unsere Partei 10, no. 7, 5 April 1932. 44. Annagrete Lehmann, “Entscheidungswahlen,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 7, 1 April 1932; Paula Reincke, “Hamburg muss sich entscheiden!” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, [no number] 10 April 1932. 45. “Die völkische Tagung am 4. und 5. Februar in Berlin,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 4, 15 February 1933. Porembsky believed that the DNVP shared the Nazi image of women – though to a lesser degree because the DNVP, unlike the Nazis, admitted women to parliaments and supported women’s committees. 46. Alexa von Porembsky, “Vom Berufensein,” Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 5, 1 March 1932. 47. Else Meyer, “Nationalsozialismus und Bildungswesen,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 13, 1 July 1932. 48. See Magdalene von Tiling, “Der alte and der neue Staat,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, election issue, 23 October 1932, und no. 21, 30 October 1932; Elisabeth Spohr, “Nationale Frauen und Staatsautorität,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 21, 30 October 1932; and many other articles in Die Deutschnationale Frau during 1932. 49. Pfarrer Steiner, “Der Nationalsozialismus in seiner Stellung zu Christentum und Kirche,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 12, 15 June 1932; see also Neumann, “Die Verantwortlichkeit der Frau gegenüber Volk und Staat.” 50. Tiling, “Der alte und der neue Staat.” See also Schneider-Ludorff, Magdalene von Tiling, p. 42. 51. Ilse Hamel, “Hugenberg – Deutschlands Führer zur Freiheit,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 13, 1 July 1932, und Mueller-Otfried, “Waffen für den Wahlkampf,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 14, 10 July 1932. 52. Elisabeth Spohr, “Kraftvolle Grenzmarkpolitik ist Preußens Pflicht,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 8, 20 April 1932; Elisabeth Spohr, “Das Gesetz unseres Handelns,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 19, 1 October 1932, and the articles in Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, election issue, 23 – 178 –

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53.

54. 55. 56. 57.

58.

59. 60.

61.

62.

63.

October 1932. See also C. Weitzenmüller, “Schulungstagung in Rudolstadt,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 10, 15 May 1933. Ria Jansen, “Wir katholischen deutschnationalen Frauen,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 8, 20 April 1932; Alexa von Porembsky, “Zur Frage der Vererbungsgesetze,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 22, 15 November 1932; “Völkische Tagung in Breslau,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 20, 14 October 1932; Freda Freifrau von Rechenberg, “Von der Rassenkunde zum völkischen Staat,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 22, 15 November 1932. Elsa von Lindequist, “Warum sind wir deutschnational? (Fortsetzung),” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 5, 1 March 1932. “Unsere Schulforderungen an den Preußischen Landtag,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 9, 1 May 1932. Alexa von Porembsky, “Zur Rassenfrage,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 19, 1 October 1932. Annemarie Burgund, “Deutschlands Zukunft im Lichte der Bevölkerungsfrage,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 24, 15 December 1932, and Die Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 2, 15 January 1933. Rundschreiben Nr. 3, 17 February 1933, in Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Osnabrück, Erw. C 1, Band 83, Bl. 9–11; the programmatical document is quoted in “Was hat das bisherige System an moralischen Werten verwirtschaftet?” Die Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 4, 15 February 1933. Meyer, “Nationalsozialismus und Bildungswesen.” See for example Magdalene von Tiling, “Das Problem einer deutschen Religion,” Frauenkorrespondenz 6, no. 28, 16 July 1924. See also Lange, Protestantische Frauen, p. 228. See Kurt Meier, “Der ‘Bund für deutsche Kirche’ und seine völkisch-antijudaistische Theologie.” In Kurt Nowak and Gérard Raulet, eds., Protestantismus und Antisemitismus in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt (M), New York, Paris: Campus, 1994, pp. 177–98), and Nowak, Evangelische Kirche, pp. 244–61. Scheck, “Women in the Non-Nazi Right,” pp. 149–50. Lehmann had close contacts to Hugenberg and access to all party leadership meetings in this period, but she apparently did not promote racial hygienic ideas among the male party leaders. She rarely spoke at the party leadership meetings. For a diary summarizing these meetings, see Hermann Weiß and Paul Hoser, eds. Die Deutschnationalen und die Zerstörung der Weimarer Republik. Aus dem Tagebuch von Reinhold Quaatz 1928–1933, Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 59 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989). Alexa von Porembsky, “Der völkische Gedanke in der DNVP,” Unsere Partei 10, no. 17, 1 September 1932. – 179 –

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Mothers of the Nation 64. Kaiser, Frauen in der Kirche, pp. 163–5; Lange, Protestantische Frauen auf dem Weg in den Nationalsozialismus, pp. 103–4. 65. Elisabeth Spohr, “Vom Eise befreit …,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 8, 15 April 1933. 66. Annagrete Lehmann, “Furchtlos und treu,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 9, 1 May 1933; Annagrete Lehmann, “Nationale Gegenrevolution,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 6, 15 March 1933. 67. Rundschreiben Nr. 3, 17 February 1933, in Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Osnabrück, Erw. C 1, Band 83, Bl. 9–11; the programmatical document is quoted in “Was hat das bisherige System an moralischen Werten verwirtschaftet?” Die Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 4, 15 February 1933. 68. Lehmann, “Furchtlos und treu” and Lehmann, “Volkwerdung,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 11, 1 June 1933. 69. Referring to information in Frobenius’ unpublished memoirs, Lora Wildenthal states that Frobenius left the DVP in 1925: see Wildenthal, “Mass-Marketing Colonialism and Nationalism: The Career of Else Frobenius in the ‘Weimarer Republik’ and Nazi Germany.” In Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2000), p. 337. Frobenius must have erred here. She was reelected to the RFA in November 1928, and she continued to contribute to the “Frauenrundschau” of the Nationalliberale Correspondenz until early 1933; in some of her articles she wrote as a representative of the RFA. For her reelection in 1928, see “Tagung des Reichsfrauenausschusses der Deutschen Volkspartei,” NLC 55, special edition, 27 November 1928. 70. See documents in the folder Reichskulturkammer 2101, Else Frobenius, at the BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, Berlin Document Center. 71. Matz to Hess, 2 May 1935, in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, Berlin Document Center, Akten des Obersten Parteigerichts Z Kammer. 72. “Antworten,” Die Weltbühne, 2 July 1929, pp. 37–8. See also BA BerlinLichterfelde, Berlin Document Center, Akten des Obersten Parteigerichts Z Kammer. 73. Buch to Breithaupt, 8 August 1935, in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, Berlin Document Center, Akten des Obersten Parteigerichts Z Kammer. 74. NSDAP Parteikanzlei Korrespondenz Elsa Matz, BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, Berlin Document Center. 75. “Allgemeine Bermerkungen,” in BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, Berlin Document Center, NSLB Listen. 76. Ilse Brehmer and Karin Erlich (coeditor of vol. 2 only), Mütterlichkeit als Profession? Lebensläufe deutscher Pädagoginnen in der ersten Hälfte – 180 –

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77.

78. 79. 80. 81.

82.

83.

84.

85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91. 92.

dieses Jahrhunderts. 2 vols. Band 2: Kurzbiographien (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1990 (vol. 1) and 1993 (vol. 2)), pp. 175–6. “Notiz,” NLC 55, no. 224, 12 December 1928, and Clara Mende, “Die Frau bei den englischen Wahlen,” NLC 56, no. 122, 13 June 1929. For Mende’s entry into the DNVP, see the note in Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 5, 1 March 1933. See documents in the folder Reichskulturkammer 2100, Clara Mende, BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, Berlin Document Center. Atina Grossman, Reforming Sex (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 155. BA Koblenz, Kleine Erwerbung 860 (Anny von Kulesza), with Dingeldey’s speech and biographical materials. Die Deutschnationale Frau 15, no. 12, 15 June 1933. See also Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Alldeutscher Verband R 8048, Band 489, and “Völkische Tagung in Breslau,” Die Deutschnationale Frau 14, no. 20, 14 October 1932. See the correspondence on Wrede in BA Koblenz, Nachlass Hugenberg (N 1231), vol. 39, particularly Hugenberg to Hitler, 22 June 1933, and enclosed materials. Irmgard Wrede, Gedanken zum Geldproblem (Bückeburg: Grimmesche Hofdruckerei, 1935). The book occasionally mirrors Wrede’s adherence to racial-hygiene theories, as when she rejects the idea of a world currency by arguing that genetics teaches that the universe prefers differentiation (p. 167). “Deutsches Nationalkomitee zur Bekämpfung des Mädchenhandels,” in BA Koblenz, Restnachlass Lang-Brumann (Kl. Erw. 65), vol. 1. See also Kaiser, Frauen in der Kirche, pp. 165 and 168–9. Schneider-Ludorff, Magdalene von Tiling, pp. 43–4. As quoted in Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine in der Weimarer Republik, p. 147. See also ibid., pp. 160 and 284. BA Koblenz, NL Kühn, vol. 72 (Autobiographische Lebensläufe und Werke). BA Koblenz, NL Kühn, vols. 1 and 284. See also Detlef Kühn, “Lenore Kühn – eine nationale Mitstreiterin der Frauenbewegung.” Nordost-Archiv, nrs. 61–62/63–64 (1981): 39–56/31–54. BA Koblenz, NL Kühn, vol. 284 (letter of 25 November 1936). Scheck, “Women in the Non-Nazi Right,” pp. 146–8. Gerhard, Unerhört, p. 376; Sneeringer, Winning Women’s Votes, chapter 5. Compare, for example, Carl Schmitt’s claims that Germany should adopt a democracy without parliamentarism and that it should restrict political participation by excluding certain “undesirables” from political rights. The implication is that the “desirable” Germans would conform to a certain – 181 –

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93.

94. 95. 96.

imagined range of behavior. If they did not, they may likely be “undesirables.” Schmitt thus advocates a democracy with a very restricted latitude for individual choice and freedom. See Carl Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1926). See Angelika Ebbinghaus, ed., Opfer und Täterinnen: Frauenbiographien des Nationalsozialismus, Die Frau in der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt (M): Fischer, 1996); Ute Frevert, “Frauen,” in Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, and Hermann Weiß, eds., Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus, 3rd edn. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1998; Jill Stephenson, “Women, Motherhood and the Family in the Third Reich.” In Michael Burleigh, ed., Confronting the Nazi Past: New Debates on Modern German History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); and Leonie Wagner, Nationalsozialistische Frauenansichten: Vorstellungen von Weiblichkeit und Politik führender Frauen im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt (M): dipa-Verlag, 1996), pp. 102–13. Bergen, Twisted Cross, pp. 192–205; Helmreich, German Churches Under Hitler, pp. 338–43. See the similar argument for the BDF in Hönig, Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine in der Weimarer Republik, p. 149. Falter et al., Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik, pp. 84–5; Falter, Hitlers Wähler, pp, 140–1; Boak, “‘Our Last Hope:’ Women’s Votes for Hitler: A Reappraisal.”

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Conclusion

What did DVP and DNVP women consider most important about their political activity during the Weimar Republic? Most of them would likely give answers centered on their nationalism. They would stress that they hoped to integrate conservative and not yet politicized women into the German nation and to ensure that the state would stop impeding women’s ability to be useful in places where they could strengthen the nation. Building a strong German nation structured according to a harmonious Volksgemeinschaft was their highest priority. This runs like a red thread through all of their activities, from the buildup of a women’s structure in the hectic early years to the protests against Versailles, the struggle against “trash and dirt,” the protection of small rentiers, and to the defense of women’s rights against the Nazis. How successful were they in reaching their aims? The answer here has to be more hesitant and ambiguous. The women from both parties did make great strides in mobilizing women in some areas – the DVP in Schleswig-Holstein and Berlin, the DNVP in East Prussia, Pomerania, and Berlin – but it appears that most of the mobilization successes occurred in the early years of the Weimar Republic (until 1923), when the threat of communist insurrection and foreign aggression loomed large. In 1924, stagnation seems to have set in, and the decline of both parties prevented a revival of women’s activities in the disastrous last years of the Weimar Republic. The claim for women’s rights was always secondary to the DVP and DNVP women’s interest in a strong nation. The guiding principle for the safeguarding or expansion of women’s rights was the well-being of the nation, more than some “natural” right that had to be granted for reasons of justice. The DVP and DNVP women thus did little to promote an expansion of women’s rights and even backed some measures hostile to women’s rights (such as the DNVP’s support for the dismissal of married women from the civil service after 1931). The conservatism of the women in many local party branches and the influence of the housewives’ organizations in both parties meant that a more determined struggle for women’s rights would have alienated much of the rank and file. Still, the leading women of the DVP considered the women’s rights enshrined in the Weimar Constitution important enough to make the rejection of Nazi anti-feminism their strongest line

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Mothers of the Nation of defense against the Nazis. For the DNVP women, the defense of women’s rights after 1930 meant above all a claim to help shape a future racial state together with the Nazis. Even the völkisch women’s activists of the DNVP hardly saw their stress on women’s rights as resistance to the Nazis: if it was the nature of Germanic culture, as they believed, to grant equal status to men and women, then a truly völkisch state would automatically grant women equality. All one had to do was to remind the men on the radical right of this. The focus on Volksgemeinschaft instead of interest politics, besides reflecting the idealistic roots of the German bourgeois women’s movement, allowed political women to gloss over the serious rifts between the interests of the various professional groups they represented. This helped the women politicians of both parties to preserve a large degree of coherence among themselves. There were a few notable defections in reaction to policies of the male party leadership, but these were not a result of controversies within the women’s structure of the parties. It is possible that the women’s Volksgemeinschaft vision, had it been honored and pursued more broadly by their male colleagues, could have become a force for stability in their parties before the conflicts of special interests compromised the parties’ credibility and tore them apart. By the same token, the Volksgemeinschaft vision of right-wing women was not above suspicion. At its best, it was a nostalgic longing for a national unity that many Germans believed had existed in August 1914; at its worst it was a partisan, even racist, ploy to justify middle-class interest politics and to denounce the left-wing parties. Did the women of the DVP and the DNVP help prepare German women for Nazism? The lines of continuity from the mainstream German women’s movement, whose ideological parameters the DVP and DNVP women shared, to Nazism have attracted much discussion. It is easy to highlight continuities from the thinking of Germany’s mainstream bourgeois women’s movement to the Nazis, particularly with respect to allegedly inborn differences between the sexes, but the argument becomes pointless considering that these same mentalities defied conventional categories of left and right and persisted even after 1945.1 As in so many other cases, the connections between the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich are complex and sometimes surprising – attesting to the unusually broad appeal of the Nazis. Who would have thought in the 1920s that the DVP’s Ilse Szagunn, an enlightened and independently minded physician who cooperated with Adele Schreiber, a member of the SPD from a converted Jewish family, would in 1934 defend the eugenic legislation of the Third Reich? Consider also that Käthe Schirmacher and some young DNVP women inspired by her, such as Porembsky and Wrede, combined an outspoken claim for women’s rights with Nazi-style racism. Still, the efforts of DVP and DNVP women to mobilize conservative women for the nation and, in particular, the DNVP women’s demonstrations that racial hygienic thought and Christianity – 184 –

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Conclusion were compatible may well have eased many women’s decision to vote for the Nazis and to support the Nazi regime. Politically passive women from the middle and upper classes did learn from the First World War that their realm was no safe haven protected from the storms of national and international politics. After 1918, the women politicians from the DVP and DNVP made sure that this message was kept alive and led a large number of these women into party political activity. That right-wing women were to some extent mobilized before 1930 cannot have hurt the Nazis during their rapid rise to power in the early 1930s – it might even have helped to accelerate this process. There is no doubt that the bulk of former DVP and DNVP voters sooner or later supported the Nazis. By the early 1930s, the women from the DVP and DNVP had lost their ability to offer a constructive alternative to Nazism. This was typical for the entire political spectrum between the Communists and Nazis, but it was sobering given the ambitious aim with which bourgeois women had entered Weimar politics: to create a Volksgemeinschaft held together by women’s maternal mission for the nation. This mission had misfired both in the parties and in the nation at large. Not through their fault alone, women had failed to acquire a strong enough position in the parties to prevent the parties’ disintegration along the lines of narrowinterest politics, and women’s inter-party connections were never strong enough to reverse this process on a nationwide level. It therefore appears that the Nazi threat turned the women politicians in the DVP and DNVP into what they had struggled for so long not to become: representatives of specific women’s interests. Yet even this is not strictly true. The fixation of right-wing women on defending women’s rights was in a sense an admission that their own mission for a Volksgemeinschaft had failed and that the Nazis offered a more feasible way of building it up – even if most DVP and some DNVP women did not adopt the massive racism implicit in the Nazi concept of Volksgemeinschaft. Devoid of their own political vision, right-wing women essentially wanted to make sure that their maternalist idea would carry over into the new Volksgemeinschaft and that they could participate in its construction. The complaints of the leading rightwing women about the Nazis’ closet socialism, threat to religion, and views on women seemed relatively minor in comparison to what united them with the Nazis. The haste shown by some leading DVP women to join the NSDAP was a logical consequence of the failure of their own mission, and the joy, even ecstasy, with which DNVP women greeted the destruction of the Weimar Republic and the bloody repression of the Left confirms that the bonds uniting them with the Nazis had become more powerful than what separated them.

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Note 1. See Christine Wittrock, Weiblichkeitsmythen: Das Frauenbild im Faschismus und seine Vorläufer in der Frauenbewegung der 20er Jahre (Frankfurt: Sendler Verlag, 1983), p. 1; Wagner, Nationalsozialistische Frauenansichten.

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Reference Sources

Archives and Libraries Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Aurich – Dep. 51: Deutschnationale Volkspartei (Landesverband Ostfriesland und Kreisverband Aurich) Helene-Lange Archiv, Berlin (Landesarchiv Berlin) – Bestand Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde – 60 Vo 1 Deutsche Volkspartei – 60 Vo 2 Deutschnationale Volkspartei – R 8048: Alldeutscher Verband – Nachlass Westarp – Reichslandbund Pressearchiv R 8034 II – Nachlass Julie Ohr (N 2219) – Nachlass Kuno Graf von Westarp – Akten der Reichskanzlei: R 45 II DVP – Berlin Document Center Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin – XII Hauptabteilung, III. Broschüren und Zeitschriften – XII Hauptabteilung, IV. Flugblätter und Plakate – Rep. 169 D: Preußischer Landtag 1920–1934 Staatsarchiv Bremen – Nachlass Dietrich Schäfer: 7.21 Lebenserinnerungen von Anni Kalähne, geb. Schäfer Gärtringen, Privatarchiv Hiller von Gaertringen – Nachlass Graf Westarp

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Archives and Libraries Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte, Hamburg – Various brochures Archiv des Deutsch-Evangelischen Frauenbundes, Hannover – Protokollbuch der Vorstandssitzungen der Ortsgruppe Hannover (1913– 1921) – Protokollbuch der Mitgliederversammlungen der Ortsgruppe Hannover (1915–1927) – Collections A, B, O, Q, V Archiv der Deutschen Frauenbewegung, Kassel – Various brochures Bundesarchiv Koblenz Private Papers: – Nachlass Elisabeth Brönner-Hoepfner (1880–1950) (N 1026) – Nachlass Eduard Dingeldey (N 1002) – Nachlass Alfred Hugenberg (N 1231) – Nachlass Katharina Kardorff-v. Oheimb (N 1039) – Nachlass Lenore Kühn (N 1375) – Nachlass Walter Lambach (N 1069) – Nachlass Marie-Elisabeth Lüders (N 1151) – Nachlass Gottfried Traub (N 1059) Zeitgeschichtliche Sammlung (ZSg.) – ZSg. 1 – E/34 Verein Evangelischer Frauenverbände – ZSg. 1–42 DVP – ZSg. 1–44 DNVP – ZSg. 1–121 Kampf gegen Versailles – ZSg. 1–163 Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine – ZSg. 1–165 Deutscher Verband für Frauenstimmrecht – ZSg. 1–190 Vaterländischer Frauenverein – ZSg. 1–195 Flottenverein – ZSg. 1–228 Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfenverband – ZSg. 2–146 and 147 Französische Rheinpolitik – ZSg. 103/78 Kaiser Wilhelm II Kleine Erwerbungen (Kl. Erw.) – Kl. Erw. 65 Restnachlass Thusnelda Lang-Brumann – Kl. Erw. 268 Helene Lange an Emmy Beckmann – Kl. Erw. 860 Anny von Kulesza Archiv des Katholischen Deutschen Frauenbundes, Köln – 188 –

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Archives and Libraries – – – – – – –

Zentralvorstandsprotokolle Kriegsakten – Verschiedenes Broschüre “Deutscher Volksbund ‘Rettet die Ehre’ ” Auslandskommission 1920–1928 1–122–2 Auslandskommission 1914–1928 1–122–3 1.3.1. DEF; Evang. Frauenhülfe 1906–1932 1–44–9 3.13.2 Friedens- und Abrüstungsfrage: Deutscher Frauenausschuß zur Bekämpfung der Schuldlüge 1–18–5 – 3.14.15 Ruhrkinder 1–21–5 – 3.14.2 Kriegsamt 1917–1918 1–22–2 – Die Christliche Frau Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Osnabrück – Erw. C 1: Akten des Landesverbandes der DNVP, 1921–1934 Universitätsbibliothek Rostock – Nachlass Käthe Schirmacher Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin – Newspapers and brochures

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Bibliography Geschichte. Historische Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1983. ——, “Neue Frau und alte Bewegung? Zum Generationenkonflikt in der Frauenbewegung der Weimarer Republik.” In Jutta Dalhoff, Uschi Frey, and Ingrid Schöll, eds., Frauenmacht in der Geschichte. Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1986. ——, Emanzipation zum Staat? Der Allgemeine Deutsche Frauenverein – Deutscher Staatsbürgerinnenverband (1893–1933), Forum Frauengeschichte 5. Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1990. ——, “Housework and Motherhood: Debates and Policies in the Women’s Movement in Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic.” In Gisela Bock and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s-1950s. New York: Routledge, 1991. Strecker, Gabriele, Der Weg der Frau in die Politik, No. 2. Die Rolle der Frau in den deutschen Parteiprogrammen. Bonn: Eichholz, 1965. ——, Der Weg der Frau in die Politik, überarbeitet von Marlene Lenz. 3rd edn. Untersuchungen und Beiträge zu Politik und Zeitgeschehen 19. Bonn: Eichholz Verlag, 1975. Streubel, Christiane, “‘Eine wahrhaft nationale Frauenbewegung’: VölkischNationale Feministinnen in der Weimarer Republik.” In Eva Schoeck-Quinteros and Christiane Streubel, eds., Frauen der politischen Rechten 1890–1933: Aktionen – Organisationen – Ideologien. Berlin: Trafo-Verlag, in print. ——, and Gregor Pickro, eds., Nachlass Lenore Kühn (1878–1955): Findbuch des Bundesarchivs Koblenz. Koblenz, 2002. Striesow, Jan, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei und die Völkisch-Radikalen 1918–1922. 2 vols. Frankfurt (M): Haag+Herchen Verlag, 1981. Stupperich, Amrei, Volksgemeinschaft oder Arbeitersolidarität: Studien zur Arbeitnehmerpolitik in der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei 1918–1933. Göttingen and Zurich: Musterschmidt Verlag, 1982. Stürmer, Michael, Koalition und Opposition in der Weimarer Republik 1924–1928, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien 36. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1967. Süchting-Hänger, Andrea, “‘Gleichgroße mut’ge Helferinnen’ in der weiblichen Gegenwelt: Der Vaterländische Frauenverein und die Politisierung konservativer Frauen 1890–1914.” In Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne. Frankfurt (M) and New York: Campus, 2000. ——, Das “Gewissen der Nation”: Nationales Engagement und politisches Handeln konservativer Frauenorganisationen 1900 bis 1937. Düsseldorf: Droste, 2002. Sveistrup, Hans, ed., Die Frauenfrage in Deutschland: Strömungen und Gegenströmungen, 1790–1930. 3rd edn New York: K.G. Sauer, 1984. – 220 –

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Bibliography Wittrock, Christine, Weiblichkeitsmythen: Das Frauenbild im Faschismus und seine Vorläufer in der Frauenbewegung der 20er Jahre. Frankfurt: Sendler Verlag, 1983. Wlecklik, Petra, ed., Frauen und Rechtsextremismus. Göttingen: Lamuv, 1995. Wright, J.R.C., “Above Parties”: The Political Attitudes of the German Protestant Church Leadership 1918–1933. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. Yu, Chonghi, “Search for a New Identity: Femal White Collar Employees in Germany, 1918–1993.” Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994. Yuval-Davis, Nira, Gender & Nation. London: Sage, 1997. ——, and Pnina Werbner, eds., Women, Citizenship and Difference. London and New York: Zed Books, 1999. Zeller, Susanne, Volksmütter – mit staatlicher Anerkennung: Frauen im Wohlfahrtswesen der 20er Jahre, Geschichtsdidaktik, Studien, Materialien 47. Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1987. Ziege, Eva-Maria, “Dreizehntes Bild: ‘Die Mörder der Göttinnen’.” In Julius H. Schoeps and Joachim Schlör, eds., Antisemitismus. Vorurteile und Mythen. Munich: Piper Verlag, 1995. ——, “Femmes antisémites et images misogynes de l’‘autre’ juif.” In MarieClaire Hoock-Demarle, ed., Femmes, Nations, Europe. Paris: Publications de l’université Paris 7 Denis Diderot, 1995. ——, “Sophie Rogge-Börner – Wegbereiterin der Nazidiktatur und völkische Sektiererin im Abseits.” In Kirsten Heinsohn, Barbara Vogel and Ulrike Weckel, eds., Zwischen Karierre und Verfolgung: Handlungsräume von Frauen im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland. Frankfurt (M), New York: Campus, 1997. Zilleßen, Horst, ed., Volk – Nation – Vaterland: Der deutsche Protestantismus und der Nationalismus. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1970.

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Index

abortion, 87, 88, 89, 99, 141 alcohol abuse, xii, 95–6, 98–9 Altgelt, Erika, 59, 124 anti-Semitism, 6, 25 DNVP and, 6, 9, 10, 25, 27, 34–5, 58, 90, 94, 124, 165, 167, 169 DVP and, 7, 162 of NSDAP, 8, 162, 165 apartments, see housing Auguste Viktoria, empress of Germany and queen of Prussia, 11, 13, 25, 140, 149 Austria, ix, 121 Baden, 7, 86, 124 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 127 Bartels, Beate, 67, 97 Bassermann, Ernst, 52 Bassermann, Julie, 52 Bavaria, 19, 32, 39, 171 see also BVP and Wolf, Gertraud Bäumer, Gertrud, 3, 7–8, 24, 17, 151 controversy over Verdun article, 126 flag dispute, 129 BDF, 10, 36, 37, 38, 77, 129, 159 and DDP, 24, 27, 38 and Nazism, 7–8, 172, 184 ties to DVP and DNVP, 37–8, 54 Becker, Gertrud, 93, 94, 145 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 127

Behm, Margarethe, 7, 33, 36, 54, 59, 139, 150 biographical background, 25 building up women’s committees, 24–6, 31 defending women’s suffrage, 54 in parliament, 27 legislation for home workers, 73 speech on voting age, 92 voting for women’s access to juries, 70 see also home workers Berlin local elections, 58, 144–5, 149–50 school scandal, 93–4 site of IAW conference, 127, 129 women’s local activism in, 59, 142– 5, 147, 148–50, 164, 171, 183 Bernays, Marie, 85, 86, 87–8, 91, 94, 118 Birkhahn, Erna von, 66, 90, 128 Bismarck, Otto von, 12, 149 Bismarckbund, 140 birthrate, 76, 86–91, 99, 173 relevance for foreign policy, 1–2, 117, 130 Black Horror on the Rhine, 59, 117, 121–4, 130, 162 see also racism Boak, Helen, 85, 137 Boehm, Elizabet, 75 Bonin, Margot von, 25, 31

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Index Brahms, Johannes, 148 Brandt, Hannah, 31–2, 89, 93, 126 Braunert, Margarethe, 145 Brickenstein, Cecilie, 36 Broekelschen-Kemper, Else, 86–7, 88, 163 Brüning, Heinrich, 111, 157 Buch, Walter, 170 Bund deutscher Ärztinnen, see League of German Women Physicians Bund Königin Luise, 12, 20n57, 163 Burgund, Annemarie, 168 BVP, 5, 27, 92, 99

Cimbal, Elisabeth, 146–7 citizenship of women, 66–7 civil law, 66, 77, 87 civil servants, female, 65, 68–70, 77, 183 Communists, 24, 70, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 110, 157, 158, 162, 183, 185 and female vote, 27 on domestic employees, 72 Conservative Party, 25, 36, 54 constitution, see Weimar Constitution cottage industry, see home workers Curtius, Julius, 129 Czechoslovakia, 121, 126

Catherine the Great, 12 Center Party, 37, 60, 73, 87, 89, 97, 99, 163 background of women in, 10 in Prussian government, 8 mobilization of women, 24, 27, 39 National School Bill and, 92–3 on foreign policy, 120 on married women in the civil service, 69–70 on small rentiers, 110–11, 112 women’s votes and, 5 children-rich families, 86, 87, 88, 173–4 see also abortion and birthrate Chopin, Frédéric, 148 Christian Social Party, 25 churches, 11, 24, 26, 37, 72, 90, 142 Evangelical, 8, 9, 18n34, 23, 36, 37, 54, 93, 99, 160, 166, 168, 169, 174 threatened by Nazis, 160, 166, 172–3, 173–4 see also DEF, Evangelische Frauenhilfe, Katholischer deutscher Frauenbund, and VEFD

Danzig, 27–8, 49–50, 111, 140 local women’s activism, 141, 142, 144, 145 Dawes Plan, 125, 127, 139 DDP, 3, 8, 27, 37, 38, 49, 50, 55, 65, 120, 129 and alcohol abuse, 96 background of women in, 10 failed merger with DVP, 24 in Prussian government, 8 National School Bill and, 92–3 on abortion, 87 small rentiers and, 108, 110, 112 target of anti-Semitic propaganda, 7 women’s committees in, 39, 54 women’s movement and, 24 DEF, xi, 23, 25, 36, 172 demobilization, 50, 67 Depression, Great, 67, 90, 110–11, 112–13, 162, 168 Detmering, Margarethe, 93 Deutsch, Regine, 39 Deutsch, Therese, 75, 88, 95, 96–7, 109 building up women’s organization in East Prussia, 141–2, 147

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Index Deutsche Nationalpartei, 121 Deutsche Kämpferin, 172 Deutsche Tageszeitung, 27, 55 Deutsche Zeitung, 54 Deutscher Frauenbund, 37 Deutscher Jungmädchendienst, see German Young Women’s Service Deutscher Rentnerbund, see German Rentiers’ League Deutscher Schutzbund für die Grenzund Auslandsdeutschen, see German Protective League for the Germans on the Borders and Abroad Deutschnationaler Arbeiterbund, 139 Die Deutschnationale Frau, 29, 145, 166, 167, 169 Diehl, Guida, x Dingeldey, Eduard, x, 34, 160, 164, 171 disarmament, see Versailles, Treaty of divorce legislation, 87, 89, 99, 138, 140 domestic employees (servants), 5, 71–2, 77, 143, 145 domestic industry, see home workers Dransfeld, Hedwig, 39 Düringer, Adelbert, 71 DVP-Nachrichtenblatt, 34, 51, 97, 118, 119, 121, 147 East Prussia, 9, 11, 31, 54, 75, 89 DNVP women’s structure in, 140–2, 146, 148, 150, 151, 183 DVP women’s structure in, 35, 147–8 education, see schools Elizabeth I, 12 Ender, Emma, 7, 38, 129, 159–60 Esser, Hermann, 112 eugenics, 87–8, 102n36, 184 see also racial hygiene

Evangelical Church, see churches, Evangelical Evangelische Frauenhilfe, 23 Evans, Richard, 7–8 film, 97, 98, 122 First World War, see World War I France, 86–7, 88, 117–26, 129, 130 Frauenkorrespondenz, 29, 32–3, 55, 59, 67, 97, 124, 127, 140, 150, 159, 169 on Dawes Plan, 125 on disarmament, 126 Frederick the Great, 12 Freytagh-Loringhoven, Axel von, 172 Fritsch, Milka, 75, 147–8 Fritzsche, Peter, xii, 4 Frobenius, Else, 121, 162, 170, 171 Frobenius, Hermann, 33 Garnich, Lotte, 75, 98–9 Gellately, Robert, 157 German Christian Movement, 160, 161, 165, 166, 174 German League Against the Emancipation of Women, 54, 62n26 German Protective League for the Germans on the Borders and Abroad, 121 German Rentiers’ League, 108, 109, 112 German Women’s Committee for the Struggle against the War-Guilt Lie, see war guilt German Young Women’s Service, 37, 77 Germanic women, 120, 165 Gestapo, 171–2 Gewerkverein der Heimarbeiterinnen, see home workers

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Index Gierke, Anna von, 7, 27, 41–2n19, 58, 108 Glaubensgemeinschaft Deutsche Christen, see German Christian Movement Goebbels, Joseph, 164, 172 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 95 Goltz, Rüdiger von der, 97 Groeben, Clotilde von der, 54, 141–2, 147 Großdeutsche Volkspartei, ix, 121 Günther, Hans K. F., 167 Haas, Lisbeth, 146 Hamburg, 38, 146, 148 Hamel, Ilse, 90–1, 127, 167, 172 Helfferich, Karl, 13 Hergt, Oskar, 25, 30, 55 Herschel, Olga, 148 Hertwig-Bünger, Doris, 67, 69, 71, 87 Hess, Rudolf, 170 Heyl, Hedwig, 75 Hielscher-Panthen, Elsa, 75 Hindenburg, Paul von, 121, 128, 129, 157 venerated by right-wing women, 13, 128, 161, 162, 163, 167 Hindenberg-Delbrück, Bertha, 75, 126 Hitler, Adolf cult of, 13, 161, 166–7 on women’s rights, 160 Hobsbawm, Eric, 12 Hoffmann, Adolf, 26 Hoffmann(-Bochum), Hedwig, 60, 70, 75 Hofmann-Göttig, Joachim, 26 Hölzel, Minna, 145 home workers, 25, 28, 73 housewives, 30, 65, 73–77, 85, 119, 123, 137, 142, 145, 149, 183

differences between rural and urban, 5 DNVP and, 9, 38, 75 DVP and, 8, 38, 75 effect of World War I on, 3, 74 leaving BDF, 129 relation to domestic employees, 72 rural, 5, 74–7 urban, 5, 8, 73–7 housing, 86, 87, 88 Hugenberg, Alfred, 127–9, 145, 169–70, 172 as party leader, 9, 59, 127, 165, 166 venerated by DNVP women, 13, 166–7, 175n4 women’s response to his new course, 158, 175n4 illegitimate children, 69–70, 87, 89, 160 Independent Socialists (USPD), 23, 24, 26–7, 122, 143 inflation, 13, 35, 108–10 impact on women’s activism, 31, 33, 35, 137, 139, 147 International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, 127, 129 International Council of Women, 28, 96, 130 Italy, 76, 170 Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig, 96 Jecker, Maria, 75 Jews, 27, 90, 92, 94, 124, 126, 162, 167, 168, 169, 184 Volksgemeinschaft and, 6–7 see also anti-Semitism jury duty, see legal professions

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Index Kahl, Wilhelm, 67, 70–1, 99 Kaiser, see Wilhelm II Kalähne, Anni, 49–50, 111, 141, 142 Kapp, Wolfgang, 31 Kardorff, Siegfried von, 34–5 Kardorff-Oheimb, Katharina von, x, 91, 120 biography, 34–35 longing for a male leader, 12 political training courses for women, 34–5, 119 Katholischer deutscher Frauenbund, xi, 39 Kaufmann, Doris, 2 Kershaw, Ian, 157 Keudell, Walter von, 92 Kindergarten, 87, 89 Klingspor, Anni, 150 Klotz, Klara, 55, 91, 95, 99 Königin-Luise-Bund, see Bund Königin Luise Koonz, Claudia, 85 KPD, see Communists Kreuzzeitung, 54–5 Kühn, Lenore, 54–5, 58, 74, 172 biography, 32–3 Kulesza, Anny von, 3, 69, 98, 161, 164, 171 Lange, Else, 49, 50, 57 Lange, Helene, 3, 27, 50, 57–8, 151 League of German Women Physicians, 171 League of Nations, 50, 94, 124, 126 legal professions, 70–1 Lehmann, Annagrete, 56, 92, 139, 150, 172 anti-Slavic rhetoric, 90 committee on war guilt, 37 critique of women’s solidarity, 59 encouraging racism, 91, 168

on foreign policy, 120, 127, 128, 129 on Nazi takeover, 169–70 on school issues, 93–4 on small rentiers, 108–9, 110 on the connection between declining birthrate and atheism, 89 on the dissolution of the family in the Soviet Union, 89 on women’s committees, 32, 145, 159 Lindequist, Elsa von, 167 Löbe, Paul, 112 Locarno, Treaty of, 12, 126, 129 Löwenstein, Kurt, 94 Ludendorff, Erich, 121 Luise, queen of Prussia, 11–12, 13, 140, 149 see also Bund Königin Luise Lürßen, Elisabeth, 161 Luther, Hans, 129 Luther, Martin, 92 Magnus-von Hausen, Frances, 53 Marelle, Luise, 51 Margis, Hilde, 57, 75–6 marriage, 66, 67, 68–70, 87–9, 90, 147, 168, 173 threat to, 26, 86 maternalism, 3, 107, 117–18, 130, 185 Matz, Elsa, 53, 57, 67, 97, 150, 157–8 and Nazism, 164, 170–1 biography, 37 on anti-Semitism, 162 on birthrate, 86 on black horror, 122 on foreign policy, 119, 129 on physical education and sports, 96

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Index on small rentiers, 111–13 on schools, 92–3, 94 on women in the civil service, 69 role in film censorship, 98 Mayer, Anna, 59, 66, 71, 147 Mende, Clara, 53, 58, 66, 146, 150 and Nazism, 171 biography, 33–4 committee on war guilt, 37 critique of female egoism, 60 on Black Horror, 122 on demobilization, 67 on foreign policy, 118–19, 119–21, 125, 127, 130 on housewives, 74–6 on National School Bill, 93 on prohibition in the United States, 96 on women in the civil service, 69 Meyer, Else, 166, 168 midwives, 28, 30, 71–3, 141 Mießner, Otto, 138–9 Moldenhauer, Paul, 34 Mueller-Otfried, Paula, x, 54, 56, 97, 125, 139, 168, 169, 172 and Black Horror, 123–4 biography, 36–7 critique of Hitler cult, 166–7 joining DNVP, 36 on alcohol abuse, 95 on married women in the civil service, 69–70 on representation of women in the parties, 30, 58 on small rentiers, 107, 109–11 rejection of women’s party, 58 voting for women’s access to legal professions, 70 Mühsam-Werther, Charlotte, 75 Müller(-Franken), Hermann, 127

Mütterhilfe Wanderkorb, 149, 150, 151, 171, 173–4 Mumm, Reinhard, 99 Mussolini, Benito, 76, 171 naked dances, 93, 94 Napoleon I, 11–12, 96 National Economic Council, 34, 75 National Liberal Party, 8, 33 National Rural League, 55 National Völkisch Committee of the DNVP, 7, 91, 168 Nationalliberale Correspondenz, 34, 86, 112, 122 critique of Nazis, 160, 161, 162–3, 164 Navy League of German Women, 37 Neumann, Ilse, 165, 169 Noack, Ilse-Charlotte, 88, 98–9, 140 NSDAP criticized for its anti-feminism, 160–1, 164, 165–6, 172–3, 183, 185 small rentiers voting for, 107, 113 violence of, 137, 157, 158, 159, 164, 166, 169, 174, 185 Volksgemeinschaft idea of, 90, 161–2, 167, 185 voting for dismissal of married women in the civil service, 69 NS-Frauenschaft, 170, 171 NS-Volkswohlfahrt, 170 Nürnberg Laws, 169 Olberg, 30–1 Oheimb, Katharina von, see KardorffOheimb, Katharina von Pan-Germans, Pan-German League, 50, 166, 167, 168

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Index Papen, Franz von, 94, 158 Papendieck, Clara, 142 Peukert, Detlev, 10 physical education, see sports Plath, Lotte, 140 Pleimes, Henny, 164 Poehlmann, Margarethe, 51, 57, 73, 94, 95, 98–9 building up women’s committees in East Prussia, 147–8 Poland, 7, 76, 118, 126, 130 birthrate in, 89–90, 130 threat to East German border, 50, 89, 123, 129, 130, 141 police force, female, 71 Politische Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Frauen von Groß-Berlin, 59, 148 Pomerania, 9, 37, 94, 111 local women’s committees, 31–2, 140, 145, 183 Porembsky, Alexa von, 166, 167, 169, 184 postal workers, 68–70 Prilipp, Beda, 55 prostitution, 71, 98, 122 Prussia female police in, 71 government of, 8, 88, 94, 158, 162–3 Landtag elections of 1919, 24, 28 Landtag elections of 1921, 52 Landtag elections of 1924, 53, 55–6 Landtag elections of 1928, 56 racial hygiene, 102n36, 117, 165, 167, 169, 173, 181n83 see also eugenics racism, 76, 118, 122, 124, 130, 162, 185

DNVP and, 6–7, 10, 28, 88, 89, 90–1, 99, 117, 124, 165–9, 174, 183 see also National Völkisch Committee and völkisch women’s activists Rahmlow, Käthe, 53 Reagin, Nancy, xii, 151 Rechenberg, Freda von, 75 Reichsbund der Kinderreichen, see children-rich families Reichslandbund, see National Rural League RFA, see women’s committees Richter, Johanna, 7, 169 Ripke-Kühn, Lenore, see Kühn, Lenore Rötger, Asta, 36, 145 Rogge-Börner, Pia-Sophie, 172 Rosenberg, Alfred, 160 Ruhr Occupation, 95, 123, 124, 142 Saxony, 71, 73, 75, 119, 159 Schäfer, Dietrich, 50 Scheidel, Ulrike, 92, 97, 98, 126 Schiele, Martin, 97 Schirmacher, Käthe, x, 50, 142 anti-Semitism, 7 biography, 27–8 conflict with Traub, 57 losing her parliamentary seat, 57 in National Assembly, 27 on housewives, 73 on Queen Luise, 12 racism, 28, 90–1, 124, 165, 172, 184 struggle against Versailles, 123, 124, 127, 128 Schleker, Klara, 28 Schleswig-Holstein, 111, 137 and DVP women’s committees, 35–6, 111, 145–7, 148, 150, 183

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Index Schmeling, Max, 96 Schmitt, Carl, 181–2n92 Scholz-Klink, Gertrud, 171 schools, 11, 37, 91–5, 141, 167, 170, 171 girls’ schools, 94–5, 171 National School Bill, 92–3, 110 Schott, Maria, 75, 77, 125 Schreiber, Adele, 59, 184 Schumann, Robert, 148 Schwarz, Martha, 35, 129, 162–3 critique of anti-feminism, 53, 159, 164 Schwarze Schmach, see Black Horror on the Rhine Siegert, Marie, 53 Silesia, 35, 73, 75 DNVP women in Lauban district, 138–9, 140 see also Upper Silesia Soviet Union, 26, 89–90 SPD, 23, 26–7, 52, 89, 127, 163, 173, 184 and women’s suffrage, 24 in Prussian government, 8, 88, 94, 158 on abortion, 87 on domestic employees, 72 on eugenics, 88 on midwives, 72–3 on small rentiers, 110, 112 voting for dismissal of married women in the civil service, 69 Sperber, Else von, 66, 75, 76, 125, 140–2 spiritual motherhood, 3, 11, 130, 161, 165 Spohr, Elisabeth, 28, 66, 73, 88, 98–9, 139 against abortion, 89

defending women’s professional rights, 67 editor of Frauenkorrespondenz, 33 on alcohol abuse, 95 on foreign policy, 123, 125, 128 on small rentiers, 108, 109 on women in the police, 71 welcoming the Nazi takeover, 169 sports, 11, 37, 96–7 Stahlhelm, 12, 162–3 Stahlhelm referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 140, 162–3 Stalin, Joseph, 90 Stoecker, Adolf, 25 Storost, Martha, 88 Strasser, Gregor, 161 Stresemann, Gustav, 12, 171 as foreign minister , 8, 123, 125, 126, 127, 129 as party leader, 9, 38 responding to anti-feminism, 50–1, 52, 53, 57–8, 60 venerated by DVP women, 13, 161, 167 Stropp, Emma, 2, 59, 91 critique of anti-feminism, 51–2, 58 on foreign policy, 119–20, 121, 122, 124, 125 Süchting-Hänger, Andrea, ix, xii, 12 Szagunn, Ilse, 148–9, 171, 184 on abortion, 87, 88 on anti-feminism in the DVP, 50 teachers, 37, 92, 98, 161, 167 teaching as women’s profession, 5, 10, 68, 91, 94–5, 143, 149 Tiling, Magdalene von, x, 65, 92, 124–5, 166, 168, 169, 172 as chair of the VEFD, 37, 172

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Index on girls’ schools, 94–5 on National School Bill, 92–3 warning against a decline of the German population, 90 trash and dirt, 97–8, 183 Traub, Gottfried, 57

small rentiers issue and, 113 women’s party as representation of, 58 Voß, Hanny, 75 Voß-Zietz, Martha, 75–6 VRPT, see postal workers

Ulbrich, Else, 145, 175n4 United States, 96, 97, 122 Unsere Partei, 169 Upper Silesia, 123, 141 Usborne, Cornelie, 5, 97 USPD, see Independent Socialists

war criminals, suspected, 117, 121 war guilt charge, 94, 117, 118, 123, 127, 129 Dawes Plan and, 125 women’s efforts to refute, 37, 120, 126, 127, 130, 141 Young Plan and, 128 Watter, Helene von, 89–90, 97 Weimar Constitution, 8, 68, 69, 92 clause on equality of women, 39, 51, 58, 66, 183 Weltbühne, 170 Westarp, Emma von, 25 Westarp, Kuno von, 25, 54, 55 Westphalia, 53, 137, 142, 148, 150–1 Wilhelm II, German emperor and king of Prussia, 4, 11, 13, 117, 138, 140 Wolf, Gertraud, 67, 94, 95–6, 129 Wolff, Margarethe, 25, 175n4 women’s committees, 9, 37, 51 in DNVP, 56, 138–45, 150–1 build-up, 23, 25–6, 28–30, 32 function, 29–31, 38–9 in DVP, 146–51 build-up, 33–6 function, 33–4, 38–9 Women’s League of the German Colonial Society, 37, 170 women’s party, 57–9, 159 women’s suffrage, 49, 54, 65 introduction of, 1, 24, 60, 163 World War I demographic impact, 3, 97

Vaterländischer Frauenverein, 23 VEFD, 26, 36–7, 172 Verdun, 126 Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland, 37 Versailles, Treaty of disarmament clauses, 126, 129 fight of right-wing women against, 117–30, 183 see also war guilt charge Vietinghoff-Scheel, Leopold von, 168 Voigt, Jane, 111–12, 118, 145–6 Voigtländer, Emmy, 118, 120 völkisch women’s activists (or völkisch feminists), 90–1, 165, 172, 173, 183 Völkischer Reichsausschuss, see National Völkisch Committee of the DNVP Volksgemeinschaft, ix, 2–7, 9, 141, 148, 161–2, 164, 183, 184–5 and women’s rights, 65 family as cornerstone of, 85 racial and non-racial definition of, 17n31, 17n32, 90, 99, 162, 167, 185

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Index impact on women, 1, 73, 117, 151, 185 see also Verdun and war guilt Wrede, Irmgard, 167, 171–2, 184 Württemberg, 55, 91, 95, 145

Young Plan, 127–8, 163 Zahn-von Harnack, Agnes, 38 Zentrumspartei, see Center Party Zietz, Luise, 122

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