Women of the Weimar Republic

 

Introduction

Since WWI, historians have been trying to determine what it is about Germany that led the nation headlong into war. Many suggestions have been offered, and the notion of a German Sonderweg, or “peculiar path” has been argued back and forth with mixed results. One element of the German Sonderweg argument is the subject of women in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany. Some scholars posit that German women were unique in their actions and contributed to the peculiar path Germany took; others feel German women had much in common with their neighbours in other countries.

Furthermore, while many websites available today cover the roles of women in Germany as dictated by men, few, if any, discuss life in Weimar Germany from a contemporary women’s perspective. Examining the social and gender constructs of Weimar Germany on the web would be a unique and instructive project that would ultimately offer a critical examination of another viewpoint currently left unexplored.

There are quite a few scholarly books written on the topic of women in Weimar Germany using primary source documents such as journals and memoirs that would make an interesting and original project when expanded into digital media. My website would ultimately utilise the strength of the web by hosting links to archival material, essays, photos, statistics, articles, journal transcripts, etc.

Women’s history is of particular interest to an increasingly large number of students who, as many are women themselves, might be interested to learn the thoughts and actions of women in Weimar Germany. The plan, or question, within the site will be to examine if German women were peculiar in their views and actions or if they mirrored the actions and viewpoints of their neighbours in other countries such as England and the United States. Perhaps this information will allow for a larger, more catholic understanding of how Germany came became the antagonist of both WWI and WWII.

 

Scope and Genre

The objective of this subject resource site is to examine social and gender constructs in Weimar Germany within a larger effort to explain Germany’s involvement in WWI and WWII. A secondary role will be to teach students how to critically analyse secondary and primary source documents regarding this subject. It will be largely an archival site surrounded by an essay.

*Gender and role expectations of the period will be examined using all mediums possible from text to art and images. Attitudes towards women in Weimar Germany will be established and a discussion of how those attitudes fit into the larger discussion of period German history will be developed.

*As the period progresses chronologically, changes in attitude, if any, will be noted.

*Comparing and contrasting German women and women’s movements of other countries during the period will be offered.

*Biases in primary and secondary sources will be identified and evaluated.

 

 

 

Site construction

Stemming from the works of Anne Allan, David Blackbourn, Geoff Ely, Fritz Stern, Marion Kaplan, Ian Kershaw and others, an overview, or background of German feminist history during the Weimar Republic will be constructed in essay format using HTML text and simple hyperlinks. The foundational essay will be found on the homepage where the objective of the site will be explained. Within this foundational essay, more detailed discussion and analysis of chosen points of interest will be embedded as links to articles and book citations. Periods of time and subjects will link to specific essays, data, or parts of articles particular to that time period will be available whenever possible. For example, when a visitor clicks on 1850-1914, they will find a link to Ann Allen’s Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800-1914 as well as other books and scholarly articles regarding German feminism during that period available on the web. When they click o Friedrich Fröbel they will be taken to Fröbel Web. If possible, links to photos and any other visually stimulating documentation possible (such as art) at the time of posting will be offered. The site will use primary and secondary documentation from scholarly books, archives, and whatever additional records and citations are available.

 

Rationale for Digital History

Web based instruction allows for a broader audience for this topic and provides instant access to sources in a condensed site that is not available in published hard copy text.

Visitors will be able to quickly click through the essay and immediately gain information on a particular (hyperlinked) element of the essay they find interesting. This cannot be done with hard copy publications. Footnotes, when used, will be hyperlinked for ease of use. Bibliographies and articles embedded in the essay via hyperlinks will allow readers to access those documents immediately rather than having to scroll, flip pages to end notes, or search a database independently of reading the foundational essay. Wherever photos or images are possible, those will be available; a source element currently not available in many history based books and articles. With so many sources available in one location, visitors will be able to critically compare, contrast, and evaluate the material quickly and competently. The site can guide upper level high school and undergraduate students to draw conclusions from what they read in the essay and relevant links or to search for more information on their own.

 

Genre Site Reviews

 

Louis Otto Peters

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2003/otto2.html

This is a simple, straightforward essay page regarding the life and context of Louise Otto-Peters, a German feminist of the Weimar period and founded the first women’s organisation in Germany, the General German Women's Organization. The page is hosted by Sunshine for Women; no further information can be located on the page regarding the origin of the site. The main host page of Sunshine for Women offers women’s rights links and essays among other feminist subjects but does not reveal who the author(s) are or any information about its development. I have emailed them for further information. There are no visual bells and whistles on the above cited page such as photos or moving logos. The text is well sized, nicely formatted and easy to read. The essay was written from a collection of encyclopaedia entries and a few articles on feminism. It contains only one footnote which is not clearly marked within the text. No links to Otto-Peters writing is offered, although a translated poem of hers appears within the text, no precise documentation or further discussion of that poem is linked. Endnotes require scrolling of the entire page with three general links. This site could be much improved upon with the addition of embedded footnotes, hyperlinks to other readings and additional viewpoints from other writers.

 

Literary Resources — Feminism and Women's Literature http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/women.html

This site offers a good deal of information by way of links for the visitor to sift through without the benefit (or predisposition) of a foundational essay. It hosts a plethora of scholarly essay and book links regarding women’s literature, as the site title accurately conveys. Many of the links are academic and hosted by universities. Some are period specific, such as women’s writing in the British Isles, while others are period specific, such as women in Paris, 1900-1940. Stylistically, it is straightforward HTML highlighted links and text without visual gimmicks. This site should be quite useful in my quest for information and will surely be cited and linked on my site. The main site is clearly hosted and created by Jack Lynch, Associate Professor in the English department of the Newark campus of Rutgers University, specializing in the English literature of the eighteenth century. His literary source home site hosts a wealth of literary links and could be very useful to anyone studying women’s writing in general.

 

Worker’s Liberty

http://www.workersliberty.org/taxonomy/page/or/456

This is a politically driven (socialist) site hosted by the Alliance for Worker’s Liberty (UK) with advertisements and many links to various subjects regarding socialism; the centred options are the snippets relevant to my site on the The German socialist women's movement, 1890-1914. Each of these links takes the visitor to a portion of an article written on the subject by Janine Booth, an AWL and RMT who has also written on German socialism and the “woman question”. What is different about this site is the ability to comment on the articles, and the site keeps tabs on how many people have read the article. It is most likely biased, but offers interesting viewpoints to consider. It suffers from a bit of a ditracting, left side aligned layout, but is relatively easy to use and does not breach limits of good taste and sensibility with regard to design. It would be helpful to know who the aurhors of the articles are at the onset; to include their credentials and footnote the articles would only benefit the reader and assist in an assessment of reliability. The site is well updated and current, and an intersting read.

 

European Women Bibliography

http://www.holycross.edu/departments/history/tmcbride/EurWombibl.htm

This is the bibliography page from a syllabus taught by Theresa McBride at Holy Cross College. I included it because it serves a purpose for those interested in locating additional texts regarding European feminist writings and context. When you click on the link at the bottom of the page which takes you to her syllabus for “Women's History from Emma Bovary to Mrs. Dalloway”, an undergraduate history course, you get a better understanding of how the material can be used in a pedagogical atmosphere. The bibliography page is arranged in subject groups with a nice copy of an impressionist painting as a focal point. It offers no links to archives, articles or books, but they are there to copy none the less. These readings serve as a good source for comparison of German women and their neighbours in Europe.

 

Kindergarten

http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/~Chastain/ip/kinderga.htm

Stemming from the “Encyclopaedia of 1848 Revolutions” website homepage, http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/~Chastain/index.htm,   the “Kindergarten” link offers an in depth essay of the origin of the German Kindergarten. It is written by Ann Allen, a primary scholar in the subject of motherhood and feminism in Germany, and maintained by James Chastain. The essay does not include footnotes as the section in her book does, but offers a bibliography at the bottom of the page which the visitor must scroll down to see. The bibliography is not hyperlinked. This page is germane to my own because involvement in the Kindergarten was one of the ways German women were able to privately and socially demonstrate the value of motherhood, independence, and worth to society in general as women. The kindergarten figures very strongly in the origins of Weimar Germany feminism. Furthermore, the page supplies a further link to the main site page for study of the 1848 revolution in Germany that would assist the visitor to my site gain enlightenment to the origins of Sonderweg, among other various subjects regarding the era. The contributing editors to the main site are all scholars in the field of Eastern European history.

 

How Feminism Led To Two World Wars

http://www.heretical.com/sheppard/hflttww.html

This is an interesting link from the homepage of The Heretical Press and is useful for anyone who wishes to read radical, opposing text. It is formatted in simplistic HTML text with one small photo at the top. The site’s main focus is the content of the essay and not eye catching gimmicks. Some will conclude that the essay itself is a gimmick when they read its contents. Simon Sheppard, the author of the essay and BSc of the Heretical Press, Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England was sentenced to 9 months imprisonment at Hull Crown Court on Wednesday 14th June 2000 for the "crime" of "Publishing or Distributing racially inflammatory material.” When posing an argument, however, it is always best to offer as many options and resources as possible for the reader to survey; then they can decide for themselves what the truth is. This approach lends reliability and context to the argument as well as informs the reader of what controversy is out there in cyberspace. While the essay on this site and those available on the homesite of Heretical.com may be radical, they make some interesting points, although they must be read with some caution for those who are easily offended be sexist and racist remarks.  Makes for an interesting contrast.

 

Baroness von Marenholtz Bülow recalls her first meeting with Friedrich Fröbel http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7905/fblremin.html#index

This is an archival page that can be used as a good example of a primary source. It can be used to teach about primary source documents and how to use them. It can be transcribed and used in research. It comes to us from a link found on a main site for Friedrich Fröbel:  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7905/webindex.html#remin, another valuable site that hosts many links regarding the kindergarten and German women activists. The text is left side aligned, and some advertising appears on the right hand border, but despite these distractions, at least they are consistent throughout the sites. The links are easy to navigate and the links are well worth examining. Unfortunately, a few of the links don’t work, but this is the nature of the modern “moveable feast” of information.

 

Technical Plan

The site will be constructed using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX software and Adobe Photoshop as required in the class syllabus. The text will be straightforward HTML with simple hyperlinks and photos will be used according to copyright law. It is too soon to tell how many web pages the essay will comprise, but a five to ten page estimate is probably reasonable. It will not be open source but I do wish to include a discussion forum. It will take a good solid sixteen week semester to research and author the final essay, connect all the embedded links, and create all the bibliographies I would like to include.

 

Conclusion

The purpose of this proposal is to outline the structure, need, and importance of scholarly history on the web, and in particular, to demonstrate the usefulness of an academically sound essay and archival site regarding women and feminism in Weimar Germany. New media such as this can serve as a teaching tool, reach wider audiences than print publications and serve the academic community as a research source. Women of the Weimar Republic will combine the objective of further scholarly knowledge with an interest in feminist Weimar Germany and the argument of their uniqueness in the argument regarding German Sonderweg.

 

 

 

 

Bibliography section

 

Allen, Ann Taylor 1944- "Feminist Modernism and National Tradition: Britain, the United States, Hungary, India"
Journal of Women's History - Volume 14, Number 2, Summer 2002, pp. 172-181

Allen, Ann Taylor.  "Spiritual Motherhood: German Feminists and the Kindergarten Movement, 1848-1911," History of Education Quarterly (1982)

Prelinger, Catherine M. Charity, Challenge, and Change.  Religious Dimensions of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Women's Movement in Germany (1987)

 Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, 1884-1945.  Durham:  Duke University Press, 2001.

“Human Rights Advocacy and National Identity in West Germany,” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 4 (November 2000), pp. 1051-1059.

“‘When Men Are Weak’:  The Imperial Feminism of Frieda von Bülow,” Gender and History vol. 10, no. 1 (April 1998), pp. 53-77.

Franzoi, Barbara.  At the Very Least She Pays the Rent: Women and German Industrialization (1985)

Central European History, Volume 34, Number 2, 2001, pp. 191-230(40)

Kocka, Jürgen. "German History Before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg." JCH 23 (1988): 3-16.

Mason, Tim.  "Women in Germany, 1925-1940," History Workshop (1976)

Riemer, Eleanor and John Fout.  European Women: A Documentary History (1980)

Higgonet, Margaret Randolph, Jean Jenson, Sonya Michel, and Margaret Collins Weitz, eds.  Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (1987)

Moeller, R G 'The Kaiserreich Recast? Continuity and Change in Modern German Historiography.' JSH 17 (1984), pp. 655-83.

Allen, Ann Taylor. Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800-1914. 1991.
Frevert, Ute. Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation. 1988.
Grossmann, A. Reforming Sex: the German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform .1995.
Reagin, N. R. A German Woman's Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880-1933 1995.
Daniel Ute, The war from within: German working-class women in the First World War (1997).
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Kaplan, Marion A. The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany. 1991.
Quataert, Jean H. Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885-1917. 1979.
Mothers of a new world: maternalist politics and the origins of welfare states, edited by Seth Koven and Sonya Michel. 1993.
Bock G. and Pat Thane. eds. Maternity and gender policies: women and the rise of the European welfare states, 1880s-1950s. 1991.
Thonnessen W. The emancipation of women: the rise and decline of the women's movement in German social democracy, 1863-1933. 1973.
Chickering, R. '"Casting their Gaze more Broadly": Women's Patriotic Activism in imperial Germany', P&P 118 (1988), pp. 156-85.
Reagin, Nancy,'The Imagined Hausfrau: National Identity, Domesticity, and Colonialism in Imperial Germany.' JMH 73, 1 (2001), 54-86.
Dickinson, E. R., 'Reflections on Feminism and Monism in the Kaiserreich, 1900-1913',
Central European History 34,2 (2001), 191-230.

Miller, Cristanne "Reading the Politics of Else Lasker-Schuler's 1914 Hebrew Ballads"
Modernism/modernity - Volume 6, Number 2, April 1999, pp. 135-159

Waldethal, “Race, Gender and Citizenship in the German Colonial Empire,” in: Tensions of Empire:  Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, pp. 263-283.  Ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler.  Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1999

 

Dora Apel Heros andWhores; The politics of Gender in Anti WarWeimar Germany; Wemar antiwar artists drawings and paintings of prostitutes and war veterans Art Bulletin, September 1997 found at:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0422/is_n3_v79/ai_20824242

 

Kilpatrick, W. H. (1916) Froebel's Kindergarden Principles Critically Examined, New York : Macmillan.

 

Eberle, World War I and the Weimar Artists.  Beckmann, Grosz, Dix

Fer, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art Between the Wars

Franciscono, Paul Klee:  His Work and Thought

Gay, Weimar Culture.  The Outsider as Insider

Goldberg, Performance Art

Goldwater, Symbolism

Haxthausen & Suhr, Berlin:  Culture and Metropolis

Huyssen, After the Great Divide

_______, Twilight Memories:  Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia

Joachimides, German Art in the 20th Century

Miesel, Voices of German Expressionism

 

Theweleit, Male Fantasies

 

John Willett, The New Sobriety 1917-1933. Art and Politics in the Weimar Period (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978)

Stibbe M1  German History, Volume 20, Number 2, 1 May 2002, pp. 185-210(26)

 

The three, Marianne Brandt, Hannah Höch and Alice Lex, all worked in the medium of photomontage and were "pretty much the only German women of the time period doing that," Epp Buller says. Both photography and montage or collage were relatively new media at that time.