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For the longest time, women wanted the right to work and do the same things men were able to do such as voting, deciding when to have a baby, having a political say, etc. This image shows women hard working to prove that they can both work and look after their families and children.

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The changing of many political laws have been changed for more equality in women, but so were church and other social voting rights. The law had to separate the church from the country's rules since they collided.

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Women's right to vote and their representation in Lutheran synods

(LWI) - The year 2019 marks 100 years since women obtained the right to vote in Germany. While celebrating this significant anniversary, a new study has shown that the country's Protestant churches still have a way to go to achieve the standards set out in The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) gender justice policy.

In January the EKD Study Centre on Gender Issues published a new report entitled " Frauenwahlrecht in der Kirche" (Women's right to vote in the church). It gives an overview of developments in the 20 churches that currently belong to the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), 10 of which are also LWF member churches.

The foreword to the publication states that: "Although the question of voting rights brought forth debates and statements even before the German imperial period (1871-1918), and was discussed in some regional churches even into the 1950s and 60s," this chapter of church history regarding equal rights has not yet been fully explored.

As well as "giving an initial review of the process of introducing voting rights for women," the volume therefore seeks to "highlight the internal church debate about women's right to vote at the beginning of the 20th century and its connections with political developments," before going on to explore women's "representation in the regional synods."

Women in society: they first voted in 1919

Running throughout the 20th century there are political developments that have significant impact both on women and on the churches. The election for the constituent national assembly of the Weimar Republic on 19 January 1919 was the first in Germany to include women both as voters and as candidates for election. This event followed the First World War (1914-1918), which brought the end of the German monarchy and the start of the Weimar Republic in 1918, ushering in parliamentary democracy in Germany. "Furthermore, it was a milestone for gender equality," says Dr Antje Buche, one of the women responsible for the publication.
Dr. Antje Buche is head of studies at the EKD Study Centre on Gender Issues and was leading the project "Women's Voting Rights in the Church". Photo: SFG/EKD
For the churches, the new political system also meant the end of sovereignty over churches by their respective secular rulers - the the law separated the church from the state. Church leadership therefore became a matter for synods, and administration was left entirely to church authorities.

Political change calls for new church constitutions

In the following years churches adopted their own constitutions which they modeled on state legislation. Theological thinking only played a role where there was disagreement about adopting secular solutions, such as the central question of women's voting rights. By 1925, all but one Lutheran church had adopted their own constitutions, most of which were gender inclusive, allowing women the right to vote and stand for election at the regional synod level.

There were exceptions however. In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, women could vote in synod but not stand for election until 1958. Similarly in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Schaumburg-Lippe, it was only in 1953 that women were granted the right to vote and stand for election. The Church of Lippe (with its Lutheran minority) did not approve the right for women to be elected at all levels in the church until 1967.

Women in the church: a thorny path

The new publication notes that even before 1919 there had been heated debates about allowing women voting rights in church and society. The first demands for women's suffrage arose in Germany in connection with the 1848 revolution. While the proletarian women's movement opposed the terrible social conditions of working-class women in workshops, factories and households, the middle-class women's movement wanted access to education and economic independence by being allowed to earn their own living.

The church was almost the only space open to women beyond their own homes. They constituted more than half the congregation and performed most of the church's social work.
- Dr Antje Buche, head of studies at the EKD Study Centre on Gender Issues

The right for women to vote in churches became an important additional arena for these debates half a century later around the turn of the 20th century. "The church was almost the only space open to women beyond their own homes," explains Buche. "They already constituted more than half the participants of church services and performed most of the church's social work."

It proved too optimistic, however, to expect that women would get the right to vote in the church earlier than in the political sphere. "The Protestant elites were too strongly bound to the hierarchical Prussian state and many were skeptical about - and even rejected - democratic renewal," Buche observes.

Theological arguments for and against voting rights for women

Theologically, this attitude was justified by the Pauline exhortation that "women should be silent in the churches" (1 Corinthians 14:34), as well as respecting an "order of creation" that rigidly prescribed diametrically opposed sexual characteristics and thereby different tasks for men and women.

Supporters of women's rights argued that both sexes were made in the image of God according to Galatians 3:28 and cited the diaconal work that was mainly done by women, highlighting and its central importance for the church," Buche explains.

The situation today: much remains to be done

But what is the situation in church synods today? "Since the 1920s," Buche says, "the proportion of women in the regional church synods has clearly risen" and this includes women from different backgrounds. "However, none of the synods has achieved an equal representation of women and men," she adds.

While the LWF's Gender Justice Policy, for example, requires that the communion's member churches achieve a quota of 40 percent female representation in their governing bodies, only four out of the 10 German LWF member churches have fulfilled this requirement.

The regional synods are made up of both ordained and lay members, with the latter comprising the majority. In eight of the LWF member churches women make up 40 percent or more of the non-ordained members. At 50.8 percent, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg has the highest representation of lay women.

An example of the ongoing commitment to gender equality is a law on governing bodies adopted in November 2018 by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony. It stipulates that gender justice is fundamental in the composition of church governing bodies and refers to the message of the Twelfth LWF Assembly, which calls for "full participation for all."

In the spirit of the "priesthood of all believers" the office of synod president in almost all German regional churches is reserved for non-ordained persons elected from the synod members. At present there are four women who hold this leading position.

LWF Gender Justice Policy

EKD Study Centre on Gender Issues

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Germany: The long road to equal rights for women in leadership

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The year 2019 marks 100 years since women obtained the right to vote in Germany. While celebrating this significant anniversary, a new study has shown that the country's Protestant churches still have a way to go to achieve the standards set out in the LWF gender justice policy.

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The Berlin Riots in 1953 was unstoppable, yet the Soviet Union tried fighting back with guns, tanks, and bombs which ended up killing many more people than the actual riot.

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Women's protests started in the 1970s and wanted to break out of the housewives era. They wanted to work and have children when they wanted them instead of leaving it up to the male. Women would get killed or imprisoned if they aborted a child. "Emma" was a magazine article for women and feminist in Germany.

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Hear about the women's movement in West Germany protesting for equal rights Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz

Transcript

NARRATOR: The youth rebels. The revolts of 1968 bring a lasting change to West German society.

ALICE SCHWARZER: "The women's movement reacted to 1968, because they suddenly realized that there were men who wanted to free the whole world and the last Bolivian farmer, but we could continue to make coffee and do the typing."

NARRATOR: At the beginning of the 1970s, there are the first women's protests. They want to make their own decisions, including when to have children. Especially the young no longer want to conform to the traditional role model of the housewife. According to the law, women are only allowed to work, if they don't neglect their duties as wives and mothers. There is fierce debate about Paragraph 218, making abortion a criminal offense. The protest becomes a scandal when some of the women admit publicly to having had an abortion.

SCHWARZER: "It took a lot of courage. Doing it meant you didn't know if you would be arrested the following day, if the neighbors would still talk to you, or if you might lose your job. It was an unparalleled provocation at a time when women still died as a result of illegal abortions."

NARRATOR: The protests get results. Abortion becomes legal under certain conditions. And women are now allowed to work without the consent of their husbands. It's fanning the flames of the new feminist movement. Women's conferences demand equal rights on all levels. There are book shops just for women, no men allowed. One magazine becomes the symbol of female resistance. It's called 'Emma'. It creates a stir. The editor and publisher is Alice Schwarzer, known as a confrontational leading figure of the new women's movement.

SCHWARZER: "Of course the women's movement upset the balance of the traditional hierarchy between men and women, which was widespread and unchallenged. It upset the balance of the whole society."

NARRATOR: From then on, the topic of women's emancipation and equal rights are ingrained in public debate.

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Hear about the women's movement in West Germany protesting for equal rights

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NARRATOR: The youth rebels. The revolts of 1968 bring a lasting change to West German society. ALICE SCHWARZER: "The women's movement reacted to 1968, because they suddenly realized that there were men who wanted to free the whole world and the last Bolivian farmer, but we could continue to make coffee and do the typing."

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Yet another feminist protest with women from all throughout Europe hoping to have equal rights to men. The symbol on the right hand side represents feminism and equality for all genders and sexualities.

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How these amazing women (Emma Ihrer, Rosa Luxemburg, Elisabeth Selbert, and Clara Zetkin) contributed to the women's suffrage in Germany. The turnout for the first election in 1919 was that female voters had a 1.7 higher percentage than of male voters.

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People threw tomatoes at women protesting for basic human rights in Germany, but that didn't weaken their spirits. Many women throughout the country participated as well as their children who some weren't able to stay at home alone and others who volunteered since it is an ongoing issue that they want to resolve.

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This picture gives a visual representation of how women should be viewed in Germany. They are shown as strong, athletic, winning trophies, drinking, etc. All with a happy smile and emotions strong. Equality is a crucial part in every country that needs to be more normalized.

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Not only are women being targeted, but other factors including religion, sexual identification, and racism make it even worse for certain groups of people to succeed in Germany still. This article mentions three strategies that aim to prevent and hopefully discontinue sexual inequality.

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Kübra Gümüşay (2016).Wikicommons/re:publica/Gregor Fischer. Some rights reserved.
The populist radical right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been working to get to the top of the party polls since its foundation in 2013. Currently, it is the second strongest party in Germany, with polls which estimate that if elections were held today, the AfD would receive 18 % of the vote (ARD, 21 September 2018). In its climb in the popularity stakes, AfD is forming a curious range alliances with political leaders. In the traditional political spectrum, feminists are often placed at the left end of the continuum. However, contradicting this, feminists and women's organizations in Germany have of late been entering into implicit or unintended alliances with the AfD as they make common cause against the so-called "Islamization of Germany". We have identified three strategies of feminist and far-right political actors that result in the articulation of overlapping goals.

Strategy one: public defamation as a strategy of both the far right and German Muslim women

Seyran Ateş is a self-defined female imam, the founder of a liberal mosque, and as a lawyer a long-standing fighter for women's rights in Germany. She appears frequently in the media, and in public debates, and is well-known for her statements which aim to undermine what she sees as the regressive, anti-women, anti-gay stance of German Muslims.

Based on the well-known proverb: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend", the German far right is showing its solidarity with women like Ms. Ateş in the fight against so-called radicalization and political Islam in Germany - or, against the 'Islamization of Germany'. Ironically, in supporting Ms. Ateş's political stance in an open letter on its party website, the AfD aims to attract "native" Germans who fear Islam, using a strategy earlier adopted by public intellectuals as well as the Pegida movement (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident/West).

As the far right shows solidarity with certain women's rights supporters to counter the so-called 'Islamization of Germany', one common strategy is to work to prevent the public engagement of specific Muslim women who are wearing headscarves by publicly defaming them. One of their targets has been young journalist and self-defined "intersectional feminist" Kübra Gümüşay, a German Muslim who wears a headscarf while being politically active.

In a recent digital petition platform, Necla Kelek, from the women's organization terre des femmes and Seyran Ateş announced that they wrote a petition together in order to remove Kübra Gümüşay from a public panel on The New Mainstream - Far Right Ideologies and Movements in Europe (17-19 September 2018) that was part of the German Hygiene Museum's exhibition on racism in Dresden. They claimed that Gümüşay allegedly supported political Islam (in their words, "orthodox-conservative Islam") (Note that the organizers announced that the accusations were unsupported in a public statement. They rejected this claim, and included Gümüşay in the panel.)

Strategy two: "Saving Muslim women from Muslim men"

Gender equality stands as a litmus test for immigrant inclusion in Germany. It has become an almost universally-held liberal value, central to current human rights concerns and dominant in policy-making language. However, gender equality is actually difficult to define, often deriving its meaning from the context within which it is used. Gender equality is actually difficult to define, often deriving its meaning from the context within which it is used.

It is exactly this open-endedness of the concept that makes it seem so useful in political contestations: it signals a desire for liberation and freedom while it can be used in exclusionary ways. Terre des femmes (women's earth), a non-governmental women's organization in Germany, is deploying exactly this ambivalence between liberation and exclusion, in order to support an old-fashioned, homogeneous feminist agenda. Terre des femmes is the major women's organization campaigning against violence against women in Germany, as well as sex-work and human trafficking. They represent a feminist voice that is attracting increasing representation from immigrant women or men who promote anti-Muslim politics, such as Seyran Ateş who we discussed above and sociologist Necla Kelek, who is on the executive committee of terre des femmes. Author of several books condemning the religious practices of Turkish immigrants in Germany, Kelek openly supported politician Thilo Sarrazin, who wrote two books on how Germany is 'abolishing itself' via the (alleged) threat of Muslim immigration and Islamization. (Both books became best sellers).

On 6 March 2018, terre des femmes organized a film-viewing for Women's Day whose main theme was to teach refugees about gender equality. Around five hundred people were in the audience, filling a cinema in central Berlin. During the panel discussion, the vice director, Inge Bell, was moderating four speakers, one of whom was an elderly Iraqi man who spoke only in Arabic. The Iraqi man said that the biggest problem in his country was that women are treated as slaves and that he did not want his daughter to be a slave. He concluded his speech with the declaration, "We need to be liberated."

The discussion finished with applause from the audience. Inge Bell the moderator, turned to the Iraqi man with a question on whether the film they had just viewed helped to transfer "our values" to immigrants - our values standing in for gender equality. Christa Stolle, the federal leader of terre des femmes, then presented each of the participants with a copy of Brochmann and Dahl's book on women's anatomy Viva la Vagina (2018), including the Iraqi man who smiled shyly at the audience.

Feminists engaged with terre des femmes in previous years have made tremendous inroads into formal politics, positioning themselves as the guardians of gender equality. But they are also coopted into a colonial language of "saving Muslim women from Muslim men", which aligns them with the far right and denies agency to women who do not agree with their kind of feminism. Thanks to this current political stance, some of their members and supporters have left terre des femmes in protest. We see a further iteration of this "saviour" discourse, in the last decade, which is accusing Muslim women as being "perpetrators" of 'Islamization in Germany', as shown in the first strategy, above.

Strategy three: evoking German nativism by creating moral panic

This strategy is the most explicit alliance between feminism and far-right politics, as it appeals directly to a large voter base of both the radical and extremist right. In January 2018, a group of self-defined feminists founded the120 Dezibel (120 Decibels) campaign, which they introduced as a "genuine outcry" (wahre Aufschrei). In the summer of 2017, its leading actor, Paula Winterfeldt, stated at a rally held by the extremist right Identitäre Bewegung (Identity Movement) in Berlin that she yearned for a return to the "good old days" when German women carried "deodorant spray instead of pepper spray in their bags". The group's founding members now invoke this increase in everyday sexism against German women by calling themselves 120 Dezibel, the volume level of pocket alarms. For them, both pepper spray and 120-decibel pocket alarms symbolize the alarming risks of everyday sexism to German women since Northern African and Muslim refugees crossed the German border. German chancellor Angela Merkel's inauguration of a German 'welcome culture' in late summer 2015 triggered the rumour that white German women are at an increased risk of violence. For instance, the far-right monthly Compact magazine headed its February 2016 issue, "Fair game woman: The bad ending of welcome culture".

The radical right AfD and other extremist right actors have subsequently spread the 120 Dezibel campaign via their online channels. The AfD politician Leyla Bilge, a convert from Islam to Christianity, claims to have emigrated from Idil (Turkey) in 1974 because Muslims were violently chasing Christians (in the pre-election period of the 1974 local elections the Aramean mayor of Idil was killed, allegedly by supporters of the Muslim contender).

Reflecting the alliance strategy of coopting women who can claim first-hand experience as Muslims (even when converted or atheist), Bilge organized a Women's March on February 17, 2018 in Berlin. She states that 'the German' has to be shaken into a rage against "the deluded elites" (media and politics) if the German nation (read: women) is to be protected from Muslim men. In this way, the 120 Dezibel campaign speaks to and very much reflects an overlapping populist discourse from the German far right, about the need to counter morally inferior elites in the name of the general national will. For them: German borders need to be sealed against any further entry of Muslim or North African immigrants and the internal 'invasion by Islam' halted immediately, if German women are to be safeguarded from Muslim men who pose a serious pollution threat to the pure German Volkskörper (the pure German body).

Calling themselves, "The daughters of Europe", the 120 Dezibel campaigns speak to an anti-Muslim discourse by creating public fear of Muslim men as criminals, while simultaneously promoting a victimized Muslim women stereotype. Their supporters tweet #No Hijab Day in German social media: "(there)...are still imprisoned in Iran women who defend themselves against forced veiling. Real solidarity would mean taking off the headscarf for a day."

While 120 Dezibel is appealing to German young women who connect to the world through social media, Ring Nationaler Frauen (the National Women's Circle), the extremist right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD)'s women organization, try to bring back German nativism by referring to Trümmerfrauen, women who worked in the rebuilding of Germany after WWII. A number of the AfD's 2017 federal election posters reduce women's task to the topoi of reproduction, sexuality (as channeled via the liberal freedom of nudity as opposed to illiberal Islam), and nativist diversity (German regional folklore and history). Indeed, a look at the AfD party programme finds women's issues associated with opposition to the headscarf, gender ideology and quotas, and reproduction framed as activism against 'misled feminists' who value working women, yet devalue the traditional family, i.e. women who deliberately chose to care for their family as housewives.

On the extremist right end of the spectrum, we find accounts that essentialize women even further, by referencing their Germanic roots. This includes a romantic remembrance of Germanic times before Christianization, entering from 'the Orient', invaded the Occident (middle and northern Europe). Allegedly, Christianization infiltrated an Oriental women's silencing culture into Germania. Such a view postulates that native women are images of the Germanic (female) god Frauja, powerful though loving wives and mothers who defend Germania "with shields and swords". As such, it is unsurprising that the far right's recent invocations of German women's past largely circle around the myth of the Valkyrie - Germanic (Nordic) women generally portrayed as powerful, white, blonde and tall.

Interestingly, radical and extremist streams of the German far right unite in an exclusionary oscillating between civic (liberal values-based) and nativist (ethnically-based) nationalism when addressing feminist politics, while the extremist right tends to revert to nativism more frequently. The third strategy focuses on the perceived victimization of white German women but then returns to anti-feminist tropes of women as carers of the nation, while asking them to recall their actual power as ethnic descendants of Frauja. If they accepted their Germanic roots, white German women would care for their 'traditional family' as loving mothers and wives, while defending the nation's survival as their husbands' comrades.

Together, the sense of Muslim 'pollution' as a social threat combined with a female power exclusive to 'us natives', facilitates intense feelings of the need to act now, based on a 'German' value system or ethnic culture that celebrates Germany's (and German children's) festive rebirth.

German Muslim women reclaim feminism

German Muslim women have initiated a number of ways of countering these strategies. Journalist Kübra Gümüşay, the subject of the petition that aimed to prevent her from speaking out against the far-right, is an example of a new generation of young German Muslim women who disrupt the connections made throughout anti-headscarf arguments, in which feminism provides both a clear-cut analysis of the headscarf as oppressing women and a clear-cut solution, namely that it should be banned. She is not the only German Muslim woman who combines her religiosity with a new understanding of Germanness, a feeling of being at home in Germany, that is not based on blood or ancestry but based on civic participation to German society.

Young German Muslim women like Gümüşay publicly confront feminists who claim a homogeneous understanding of feminism for themselves, without paying attention to other forms of feminism. For example, the high-brow German weekly newspaper, Die Zeit reported in 2011 that Saliha Kubilay, a young Muslim woman, asked veteran German feminist Alice Schwarzer during a public discussion at a university: "Where in the feminist movement did you stop progressing so as to fail to grasp to this day that Islamic feminism has been long present in Germany?". Kubilay argued that Schwarzer's brand of feminism ignored the diversity of feminist perspectives in Germany. In doing so, Kubilay showed how postcoloniality inflects Germany's feminist debates. By claiming the feminist frame as her own, Kubilay suggests that feminism is not in the gift of white western women, but that there is a synergy between immigration, postcolonialism and feminism in Germany. People of color, Muslim women and others are claiming feminism for themselves. But they are often confronted with public defaming, as well as active protectionist and exclusionist strategies to prevent Muslim women from public participation in democratic events. People of color, Muslim women and others are claiming feminism for themselves.

In her public struggle as the first woman to bring the headscarf debate before the German Constitutional Court in 2004, a history teacher Fereshta Ludin, offers yet another take on feminism, arguing that she did not fight to wear her headscarf, but for self-determination over her own body. She claimed her own liberation, refusing to be emancipated through a governance feminism that equates uncovering with freedom. Such varied articulations of feminism, postcoloniality and wearing headscarves do not resonate with an anti-Muslim or anti-Islamization feminism. See the veteran feminist Alice Schwarzer's magazine Emma, which publishes articles associating headscarf-wearing women with radicalization and political Islam and ridiculing their feminism. In fact, Übermedien, a media-watch magazine, reported that this magazine's readership had become increasingly far-right.

Headscarves

The headscarf continues to be the piece of cloth over which 'whose feminism is right?' battles are fought. Betül Ulusoy, a legal scholar who was denied an internship at the reception desk of a Berlin municipality because of her headscarf, is frequently asked why she still wears it. She denies doing so because she is a true-believer, or because her family is pressuring her to wear it. She frames her argument instead in the classic terms of feminist liberation: "This means that a woman must decide for herself, whether she wears a mini skirt or a scarf. This decision is then neither negotiable nor evaluated by outsiders. It is her freedom alone." (Ulusoy's Blog). Contrary to the common media hype in Germany that Muslim women are wearing headscarves because they are pressured by their families to do so, Betül shows us that wearing the headscarf means her self-determination over her body as a woman. This controversy, denying employment to Betül Ulusoy in a municipality in Berlin state because of her headscarf, does not only appear from the outset as a controversy between religion and secularity, but also reverberates with the fundamental question of whether women have self-determination over their bodies in Europe.

Betül Ulusoy und Riem Spielhaus diskutieren, 2015. Wikicommons/re:publica/Gregor Fischer. Some rights reserved.
This controversy reverberates with the fundamental question of whether women have self-determination over their bodies in Europe.

The colonial gaze

Women's embodiment continues to be hotly contested in these struggles over feminism, liberation, and who get to stand for being German. Long-standing colonial tropes of unveiling women as liberation are clearly powerful in German debates. Many have argued that the nudity of colonialized women served as a spectacle for the European public during the colonial era; currently, in the German media, uncovering women is celebrated as a sign of Muslim women's integration into a gender-equal European society. Women's embodiment continues to be hotly contested in these struggles over feminism, liberation, and who get to stand for being German.

As Michigan anthropologist Damani Partridge argues, in the German context, wearing headscarves is placed in sharp contrast with female nudity and sexual accessibility in public. Such a contrast is displayed in advertisements (the nude model ads in the subway stations that Partridge analyzes) and election campaigns in 2017, where the AfD posted gigantic posters of young slender women with tiny bikinis walking on the beach throughout the country with the slogan: "Burkas? We stand for Bikinis!"

In May 2011, Sıla Şahin became the first Turkish-German film actress to pose nude in Playboy. Deutsche Welle (2011), Germany's international broadcaster, asked whether this was the ultimate act of integration, and Şahin responded that she was, indeed, liberated by posing nude ("Breasts with Migration Background" Die Zeit, April 19, 2011). Playing on this desire to witness women's unveiling, Fereshta Ludin's autobiography was entitled "Enthüllung der Fereshta Ludin" (The Unveiling of Fereshta Ludin, 2015). On the cover, she pretends to take off her headscarf. Şahin's appearance in Playboy and Ludin's cynical book cover bring home to us how the colonial gaze on Muslim women remains a dominant trope that resonates well with the general public.

Women's organizations in Germany play a very important intermediary role in strengthening the far right's strategies in the unveiling regime. In some ways, they play the role of mediating between two worlds; those who argue for strengthening a nativist German public understanding of women's rights, such as the radical right politics of the AfD and those who are arguing for a diverse German feminism, which includes Muslim women with and without headscarves.

Breaking down the cooptation - Inclusion and #No Excuses

The perverse alliance of feminism and the far right clearly fails to address major ongoing relevant issues: 1) the historical colonial and exploitative relations between the global North and the global South - the destruction, appropriation in colonial and neocolonial contexts, the political support by the global north of corrupt political regimes in the global south, as well as the export of weapons that sustain highly destructive, never-ending wars; and 2) the ongoing, unaddressed, racialized sexism and sexual violence perpetrated by immigrant and nonimmigrant alike across European societies - violence against women, children, members of LGBTQI communities, heteronormativity, sexism, and gender inequalities.

Following Deniz Kandiyoti's (2016) plea in openDemocracy for understanding violence against women in its larger political context, feminism's cooptation by the far right must be situated within the critical historical moment that finds us caught up in the debates on immigrant and refugee integration in Europe. A further question to ask is how anti-Muslim racism must be linked historically to other forms of racism and colonialism if we are to make sense of the alliance between feminism and the far right. Only through such a political framework will we be able to fully grasp the relations between contemporary racism and sexism and then to challenge them.

Alternative feminisms

Alternative forms of feminism should be strengthened, and encouraged to create spaces of equity and inclusion in Germany. A good example of this is the Internet campaign #aufschrei (outcry) started by a young feminist, Anne Wizorek and her friends in 2013. Similar to #metoo, the campaign started as a response to the everyday sexism they experienced in German society, calling on women to break their silence against sexist comments in Germany.

Anne Wizorek, 2014. Wikicommons/re:publica/Sandra Schink. Some rights reserved.
But their public statements were downplayed by German men, including the previous German president, Joachim Gauck, who labeled their campaign against sexism "Tugendfuror" (literally, "virtue furore"), an obscure word which may be interpreted as hysteria, thus downplaying sexism and violence against women in German society, and playing up women's over-emotionality.

Building on Wizorek's 2013 #aufschrei campaign, journalist Kübra Gümüşay, along with several other prominent intersectional feminists from various fields, started a new internet campaign, #ausnahmslos (without exception). Gümüşay pointed out that while there is violence against women in Muslim communities, German society should be able to discuss this violence against women without resorting to the racializing discourse of the far right.

Such a racializing discourse commonly stereotypes Muslim men as violent criminals and Muslim women as submissive victims, and more recently, portrays Muslim women as the agents of Islamization of Germany. What Gümüşay suggests is that everyone should be treated as though they are already full members of German society, including being punished for sexual violence and including having the right to protection from such violence, regardless of ethnic or immigrant background.

The #ausnahmslos campaign thus called for full participation, with the rights and obligations of native citizens being extended to immigrants and refugees. The question is whether these campaigns and strategies will outweigh the increasing power of the implicit and explicit alliances by far-right actors and certain anti-Muslim German feminists.
Note: This paper was previously presented at the Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Conference on "Populism and Democracy" at Tuft University's European Center in Talloires, France, 15-17 June 2018. We thank the conference organizers and participants for their feedback.

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Feminism gone bad? Women's organisations and the hard right in Germany

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Kübra Gümüşay (2016).Wikicommons/re:publica/Gregor Fischer. Some rights reserved. The populist radical right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been working to get to the top of the party polls since its foundation in 2013. Currently, it is the second strongest party in Germany, with polls which estimate that if elections were held today, the AfD would receive 18 % of the vote (ARD, 21 September 2018).

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Women have always been targeted for sexual violence and rape. These types of violence are often used to separate families in times of war and other political distress. This leaves physical and emotional trauma that women usually have to cope with alone.

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Considering the crimes of the National Socialists, the Second World War which they provoked, and that war's massive long-term consequences, Germany should adopt a self-critical attitude. Today is around 74 years after the end of that war, the National Socialist dictatorship and the holocaust, yet still there has been not one single speech by a German head of state concerning the millions of women raped. Nobody has erected a memorial to them and nobody has ever made any serious efforts to compensate them or deal with this part of the country's history.

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Considering the crimes of the National Socialists, the Second World War which they provoked, and that war's massive long-term consequences, Germany should adopt a self-critical attitude. Today is around 74 years after the end of that war, the National Socialist dictatorship and the holocaust, yet still there has been not one single speech by a German head of state concerning the millions of women raped.

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In Hitler's time, watchwords for even little girls were: "loyalty, duty, and sacrifice". Dictator Hitler called himself a "father figure to the nation" which was not correct in the slightest, but they didn't know any better at the time, but to praise him.

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Know about the role of women in Hitler's Reich, that of a child-bearers changed to workers in anti-aircraft service and emergency workers for the German army Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz; Thumbnail Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1994-040-15A (CC BY-SA 3.0)

NARRATOR: Beautiful and useful - in Hitler's Reich of men, the role of women is firmly established. Even for girls, watchwords are loyalty, duty, sacrifice. For millions, membership in the Federation of German Girls, the female Hitler Youth, is compulsory. At Hitler's Berghof, groups of female visitors make a display for the newsreels of the popularity of their leader. Surrounded by young admirers, the dictator presents himself as a father figure to the nation. When the Czech Sudetenland is annexed by the Reich in 1938, the supposed liberator basks in the celebrations of the female population.

LORE SCHAAF: "Hitler looked me in the eye and stroked my cheek. For me, this was an indescribable event. It was fantastic. I didn't want to wash. My mother said I was crazy. And I was, too."

NARRATOR: Women served not only as cheerful backdrop. In line with Nazi ideology, a woman's purpose is to bear children.

ADOLPH HITLER: "There is no greater honor for a woman than to be mother to the sons and daughters of a people. This is the highest nobility that she can attain."

NARRATOR: She is the model wife par excellence: Magda Goebbels, wife of the Minister for Propaganda, and mother of seven.

GÜNTER JACOB: "She was exactly what a German woman was supposed to represent. A beautiful, clear face, and then this blonde hair, that was quintessential. I can imagine that the girls back then set out to emulate her. She was the paragon of a Germanic woman, as it was propagated."

NARRATOR: Self-reliance is not encouraged.

MARGARETE MITSCHERLICH: "The woman has to submit herself and bring children into the world, be devoted to her husband. So, a concept of women that was no longer found in modern states."

NARRATOR: After four births, a Mother's Cross is awarded in gratitude. Begetting children for the fuhrer is the watchword. The objective: future soldiers for Hitler's army. But the war brings its own laws. From the summer of 1943, ever more women must stand by their men, this time as armaments workers, in anti-aircraft service, and as emergency workers for the German Army. They wear their uniforms on the home front. The war turns brides into widows, mothers into mourners, girls into soldiers. After the catastrophic war, it is also the women who must clear away the rubble.

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NARRATOR: Beautiful and useful - in Hitler's Reich of men, the role of women is firmly established. Even for girls, watchwords are loyalty, duty, sacrifice. For millions, membership in the Federation of German Girls, the female Hitler Youth, is compulsory. At Hitler's Berghof, groups of female visitors make a display for the newsreels of the popularity of their leader.

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Women started standing up for feminism before the suffrage act was released, but since they had no legal representation (only by a man to who they were married to), got beheaded and punished for these beliefs.

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While Germany's law of 1918 was a milestone in the struggle of women for equality, the wording of Article 109, paragraph 2 of the Weimar Constitution still left room for interpretation. Since it stated that men and women basically have the same civic rights and duties, "on a legal level, you can always argue that 'basically' refers to potential exceptions, and many exceptions would be applied," says the historian. Female suffrage was for instance restricted under the Nazis.

It was only in 1949 that the law was changed through the new German constitution, known as the Basic Law, with Article 3 stating that men and women have equal rights.

In the early 1990s, a second sentence was added to that article, declaring, "The state shall promote the actual implementation of equal rights for women and men and take steps to eliminate disadvantages that now exist."

"This second sentence clearly shows that it is not enough to grant formally equal rights; they actually have to be implemented, as the Basic Law states. That is the phase in which we currently are," says Mangold.

As demonstrated by victims of sexual harassment speaking out through the #MeToo movement, or through Germany's current law banning abortion "advertising", it is clear that women still do not have the same status as men.

"You only need to take a look at how rape trials are conducted," says Mangold. "Law is a conservative science that is still predominantly occupied and practiced by men who fear losing something. That's why absolutely basic rights that are to be protected by the state, such as physical integrity, are being called into question."

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How German women obtained the right to vote 100 years ago

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While Germany's law of 1918 was a milestone in the struggle of women for equality, the wording of Article 109, paragraph 2 of the Weimar Constitution still left room for interpretation. Since it stated that men and women basically have the same civic rights and duties, "on a legal level, you can always argue that 'basically' refers to potential exceptions, and many exceptions would be applied," says the historian.

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Although women outnumber men in Germany, women don't get the treatment needed at work for having a child. Women were said to have terrible treatment when they return to work after bearing a child for nine months. The declining birth rate in Germany may be a result of this.

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With Angela Merkel settling in as the first woman to run Germany, Expatica asks female expatriates about their experiences.

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Germany may have gotten a heads start to feminism, but the process has been slow to make laws regarding gender equality and anti-racism. 2005 was the year that they finally outlawed discrimination based on gender, skin color, ethnicity, disability, age, and religion.

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The global feminist movement began in the late nineteenth century and has continued to the present with the goal of obtaining equal rights for women in social, economic, and political sectors. In contemporary, international mainstream rhetoric, the term "feminism" may conjure negative connotations due to a misconception that the goal of the movement is to disadvantage or berate masculinity. Rather, the movement seeks to dismantle a highly patriarchal society in order to promote gender equality.

While the global feminist movement has certain unified overarching goals, it differs depending on the specific cultural climate and political history of a nation. The issue of gender relations in Germany has a complicated history partly attributed to the post-World War II separate regimes of East Germany and West Germany and their subsequent re-unification in 1990. The opportunities available to women and to women's relationships to work, education, and family differed greatly. It took the German Parliament until 2005 to outlaw discrimination based on gender, skin color, ethnicity, disability, age, and religion. Despite the seemingly slow progression of equality, the representation of women in positions of government leadership has steadily risen since in 1970s, vastly surpassing the United States.

Modern feminist issues in Germany include fighting gender-based violence, subverting traditional female gender roles, lobbying for healthcare and reproductive autonomy, and battling structural institutions that fail to provide support. The stickers combine a feminine punk aesthetic to subvert the traditional roles placed upon women's bodies and livelihoods. Many of these stickers advocate anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, pro-socialist, and feminist narratives through organizations like Antifaschistische Aktion, Linksjugend 'solid, and Rosa Antifa Wien. Using an intersectional approach to feminist advocacy, the stickers defend the rights of women from different racial groups, economic classes, and sexual orientations.

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German Feminist Movement (1970s to present day)

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The global feminist movement began in the late nineteenth century and has continued to the present with the goal of obtaining equal rights for women in social, economic, and political sectors.

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This video shows clips of how women along the years have stood up for their beliefs against the government and to which great extents they are willing to take in order to change the government for the better.

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How Equality Happens: The Power of Women’s Movements

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In 1848, women publicly advocated for the Civil, social, and political rights. In 1911 Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Switzerland women started advocating for gender equality. In 1950, women started taking rolls of working as well as looking after their children. In 1979, the international women's bill of rights were introduced.

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A global history of women’s rights, in 3 minutes

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In 1976, one in every five women who were married admitted to being raped in their marriage. This shows how untalked about this issue was before this time and how controlling men felt. The less it is talked about, the more helpless those women feel.

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Jane Freeland is an historian of women and gender in modern Germany. She is currently a research fellow at the German Historical Institute London, where she coordinates the International Standing Working Group on Medialization and Empowerment. She holds a PhD from Carleton University (Canada) and is completing a monograph on domestic violence activism in divided Berlin.

On April 14, 1976, the illustrated news magazine Stern ran a special report on rape in marriage in the Federal Republic of Germany. "Rape," it began, "It was until today a matter of sexual offenders, perverts, criminals. ...for the first time it is now revealed that nowhere is rape committed more than in the marital bed." Surveying women throughout the Federal Republic on sex and intimacy in marriage, including their experiences of marital rape, for the first time the report revealed that in one in five marriages in West Germany women were raped by their husbands. It further showed that in a majority of cases marital rape was violent, and closely connected with physical and emotional abuse. "The bed," it seemed to reporter Ulrich Schippke "has become a battleground."

Alongside these ground-breaking statistics, the survey also showed that attitudes towards the so-called "marital duty" ( eheliche Pflicht) were changing. Women across all surveyed categories (age, profession and religion) disagreed with the statement that as a part of marriage, women must be sexually available, whenever their husbands want.

For feminist activists campaigning against gender-based violence, this must have been heartening news. After protesting against women's oppression and discrimination since the late 1960s and with the first domestic violence shelters only months away from opening in November 1976, attitudes towards violence against women were changing. Across a broad spectrum of West German society, women were taking a stand against patriarchal familial norms and in support of their right to self-determination.

And yet, the law protecting men's sexual access to their wives would not change until 1997. Even more shockingly, members of the West German Bundestag burst out laughing when Green Party politician Petra Kelly asked whether rape in marriage should be criminalized in 1983.

Why is this? Why did it take so long for rape in marriage to be criminalized? And what does this tell us about women's rights in the Federal Republic?
A Brief History of Rape Law in Germany
Building on legal traditions dating back to the early modern period, the Imperial Criminal Code of 1871 was the first codified law governing rape in a unified German state. Included under the section on "Crimes and Offences against Public Decency" ( Verbrechen und Vergehen wider die Sittlichkeit) Paragraph 177 stated that

"Any man who forces a woman into extra-marital sexual intercourse through violence or through the threat of violence or death, or who engages in extra-marital sexual intercourse with a woman whom he has incapacitated or rendered unconscious for this purpose, will be punished with imprisonment in a Zuchthaus."

"In the event of extenuating circumstances, a term of regular imprisonment of no less than one year will be applied instead."

As the section title reveals, Paragraph 177 was built on a moral framework that privileged and affirmed normative ideas about marriage, women and men's sexuality, and about deviance. Nestled between provisions criminalizing polygamy, incest, sex between men, and sexual assault, rape was defined as a problem not because it violated a woman's rights or her physical autonomy, but because it offended the values and principles of German society. Paragraph 177 underscored patriarchal ideals of the sexually active/assertive man and the passive/shy/frigid woman, with only violence and marital status demarcating the line between legal and criminal. It propped up myths of the unknown violent sexual offender, while protecting married men's sexual desires and their control over the private sphere.

Although feminist legal scholars and historians have systematically critiqued the patriarchal roots of rape law in various national contexts, in Germany, Paragraph 177 speaks to a long-standing sexual-moral order that enshrined patriarchy in law from the nineteenth century. But it was after 1945 that this order took on renewed importance. In the context of defeat and occupation, the home and family became a space through which the rehabilitation of West German men, if not also the German nation, was realized. Despite legislating equality between men and women in the 1949 Basic Law, shoring up the patriarchal, nuclear family unit as a site of stability and consistency became a key social and political goal under Konrad Adenauer.

For rape law, the intimate connection between German legal and liberal tradition, morality and patriarchy meant that Paragraph 177 changed very little over the first half of the twentieth century. Even after 1945, it remained embedded in conservative, Christian notions of public decency, morality, gender and sexuality - precisely those values that Adenauer and the Christian Democrats sought to maintain.

Indeed, this not only resulted in Paragraph 177 being upheld, but the court even doubled-down on women's 'marital duty' in the postwar era. In 1966, the Federal Court of Justice determined that

"A wife does not fulfil her marital obligations simply by passively allowing intercourse to happen. If, due to her disposition or for other reasons that may include the inexperience of the married partners, she is unable to derive satisfaction from marital sexual relations, the institution of marriage still requires her to show marital affection and self-sacrifice and forbids her from any outward show of indifference or aversion."

So not only were women still expected to be sexually available to their husbands, but they also had to act as if they enjoyed it.

But how would this change into the 1970s, the era most commonly associated with liberal social change in the Federal Republic of Germany?
Feminist Challenges
Certainly, the new women's movement of the late 1960s and 1970s indelibly shaped the conversation about gender-based and sexual violence in West Germany. In the 1970s, a global movement against male violence towards women emerged. Issues such as rape, domestic violence, alongside medical abuses and sexual harassment were all a key part of this activism that understood violence against women as a part of women's oppression and evidence of the patriarchal structure of society.

In West Germany, feminists drew attention to various forms of violence against women and organized grassroots projects aimed at supporting women experiencing abuse throughout the 1970s. This was a pivotal moment for women's activism, as a mass movement against the criminalization of abortion fought for women's reproductive rights, and there was growing interest and activity on women's rights and gender equality more broadly.

But this was also a key time for legal reform. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, a series of reforms were introduced to update the West German criminal code. It was at this time that sex between men and adultery was decriminalized (in 1969) and unrestricted, first trimester abortion was briefly introduced (in 1975). Rape law, however, remained largely unchanged. Although the title of the section changed in 1973 from "Crimes and Offences against Public Decency" to "Offences against Sexual Self-Determination" ( Straftaten gegen die sexuelle Selbstbestimmung) the actual content of the law remained the same. Rape was still permitted in marriage.

This lack of reform was even more marked given that throughout the 1970s and 1980s public and political support for gender violence initiatives grew. West Germany took an active part in the events of International Women's Year and the subsequent conferences, and signed on to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1980. And yet, the amendments to criminalize rape in marriage, perpetually proposed by both the Social Democrats and the Greens throughout the 1980s, found little success.

Although the legal status of marital rape was investigated throughout the 1980s, the fact remains that it was not until 1997 - twenty-five years since the great criminal code reform - that rape in marriage was criminalized. This was down to an independent, cross-party (SPD-Green) proposal, supported by women from the CDU and FDP, that brought the amendment to the Bundestag. Even then, it was not an issue that found an overwhelming consensus: although there were 470 votes in favour of the amendment, there were 138 against and 35 abstentions.

The fraught path of criminalizing rape in marriage suggests there is a line in the sand when it comes to protecting women's rights. At the same time as rape in marriage was being laughed at in the Bundestag, the federal government were financing pilot projects aimed at supporting women experiencing male violence and even ratifying international conventions on gender discrimination. So while they were happy to support initiatives that responded to the consequences of violence, making legislative changes that would actually protect women was another matter altogether. Instead, women's claims for sexual self-determination came up against deep-seated patriarchal ideals that, by upholding rape in marriage, served to deny them of their personhood and perpetuate norms of women as sexually passive and inherently maternal.

In this way, rape law reform also reveals the long shadow cast by the reconstruction and privileging of the patriarchal familial order after 1945 in West Germany, and inasmuch highlights the lingering effects of the politicization of the family under Hitler. That the family as a sacred, constitutionally-protected institution, should be a shelter from the state, where men should have the final say echoed throughout the postwar decades and had a tangible impact on women's rights and gender equality.

Cite this article: Jane Freeland "Marital Rape and Women's Rights in the Federal Republic of Germany", in: History | Sexuality | Law, 06/05/2021, https://hsl.hypotheses.org/1685, (accessed on: ).

Ulrich Schippke, "Mein Mann hat mich vergewaltigt," Stern 17/1976, pp. 68-73; p. 68.
Ibid.
See for example Paragraph 119 of the 1532 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina which made the rape of "married, widowed or virgin woman" punishable by death in the Holy Roman Empire. See discussion in Anke Meyer-Knees, Verführung und sexuelle Gewalt: Untersuchung zum medizinischen und juristischen Diskurs im 18. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Stauffenberg Verlag, 1992).
On the sexual-moral order see: Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey (eds), Gender Relations in German History: Power, Agency and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Routledge, 1996); Ute Gerhard, Verhältnisse und Verhinderungen: Frauenarbeit, Familie und Rechte der Frauen im 19. Jahrhundert mit Dokumenten (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1978). For an overview of feminist critiques of rape law see: "Feminist Perspectives on Rape," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-rape/#Bib.
On the tension between the constitutional guarantee of equality between men and women, and policies designed to protect men's authority in the family, see Robert G. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood: Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
BGH, 02. 11. 1966-IV ZR 239/65.
Isabel Kratzer, "Die Geschichte der Vergewaltigungstatbestandes - Aufbruch contra Konsivierung," Kritische Vierteljahresschrift für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft, Vol. 93, No. 1 (2010): pp. 83-103.
On other legislative attempts at criminalizing rape in marriage, see: Gerhard Schröder, "SPD strebt besseren Schutz für Opfer von Sexualdelikten an," SPD informiert, February 17, 1984; Gesetzesantrag Fraktion der Grünen zum §177 StGB, A Rep 400 BRD 22.5 (2) 1980-2005, FFBIZ; Gesetzentwurf, der Fraktion Die Grünen. Entwurf eines Strafrechtsänderungsgesetzes (StrÄndG), Deutscher Bundestag, 10. Wahlperiode, November 2, 1983.
The Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law was commissioned by the federal government in 1984 to research the criminalization of rape in marriage internationally.
Led by the SPD's Ulla Schmidt, the proposal called for the words 'extra-marital' to be removed from Paragraph 177. They also struck the " Widerspruchklausel," a much-criticized provision that would have allowed women to revoke charges of rape against their husbands.

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Marital Rape and Women's Rights in the Federal Republic of Germany

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Jane Freeland is an historian of women and gender in modern Germany. She is currently a research fellow at the German Historical Institute London, where she coordinates the International Standing Working Group on Medialization and Empowerment. She holds a PhD from Carleton University (Canada) and is completing a monograph on domestic violence activism in divided Berlin.

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Certain European countries have a lot of violence over government and ethic issues including Germany. The women's peace activism movement was started around 1899 to bring more peace to the country rather than violence.

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Purchase/rental options available:

Journal of Women's History 13.3 (2001) 34-45

[Access article in PDF]

Pacifist Thought and Gender Ideology in the Political Biographies of Women Peace Activists in Germany, 1899-1970
Introduction

Jennifer Anne Davy

Overview of Women's Peace Activism

The German peace movement, which gained organizational status with the founding of the first German peace organization in 1892--the Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (German Peace Society, DFG)--could not overcome its marginalized position in society. The widespread militarization of society and support of nationalism in late-nineteenth-century Germany led to this minority status of the peace movement. The introduction of compulsory military service in Prussia in 1814 resulted in the radicalization of the ways in which the military became a primary institution for the construction of masculinity in the nineteenth century. This occurred to such an extent that Berlin pedagogical and philosophy professor Friedrick Paulsen referred to the military as a "school of masculinity" in 1902. ¹ Indeed, compulsory military service led to an extensive recruitment of men, and the military increasingly affected men's lives. Furthermore, participation in the military was determined solely on the basis of sex--only men were recruited. Beyond excluding women from the military, the connection between compulsory military service and citizenship had immense, long-term ramifications for gender constructions in Germany. "The argumentative tandem compulsory military service/voting rights," as historian Ute Frevert underscores, "revealed its exclusive side here: Because women were not conscribed by the military, they also lacked the possibility of gaining citizenship." ² In this way, compulsory military service contributed to male domination in the political sphere. However, it is important to note that even if the realm of state politics was officially considered to be a male domain and women did not share citizens' rights with men, "the middle-class concept of female spheres of activity such as education, charity, and welfare" became highly "politicized" by referring to "the general good, country, and fatherland." ³

The boom in a gendered analysis of military history and nationalism in recent years has generated numerous studies illuminating women's involvement in war, the military sphere, and nationalism. ⁴ Although women were excluded from active participation in the military, the recognition [End Page 34] that wars could most successfully be won through the mass mobilization of both the civil and military sectors led to the indispensable mobilization of women during times of war. During the wars of liberation against the Napoleonic army from 1813 to 1815, at least 414 patriotic women's organizations were established in Prussia and 573 in German-speaking areas. ⁵ These organizations raised considerable financial donations for the war efforts and provided services for the care of ill and wounded soldiers. Women's wartime services became increasingly professionalized throughout the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. ⁶ During the German monarchy (1871-1918), these services culminated in the establishment of the Nationaler Frauendienst (National Women's Service, NFD). The NFD was founded in August 1914 by leading members of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (Federation of German Women's Organizations, BDF), the largest umbrella organization of women's organizations. ⁷ Whereas the Red Cross provided services for ill and wounded soldiers, the NFD worked in close cooperation with government and welfare agencies to coordinate educational services and employment opportunities for women. It also mobilized women for the production of food and war supplies. Through their ideological support of war and nationalism, German middle-class women contributed to the "inherently exclusive and aggressive elements of nationalism, and its not necessarily visible, but intrinsic closeness to anti-Semitism, national chauvinism, racism, and imperialism." ⁸

Only a small minority of women activists in the middle-class women's movement challenged the politics of war and militarization during the German monarchy. Most of these women belonged to the radical wing of the middle-class women's movement, including Margarethe Lenore Selenka, Helene Stöcker, Anita Augspurg, Lida Gustava Heymann, Gertrude Baer, Constanze Hallgarten, Frida Perlen, and Auguste Kirchhoff. Studies of the political legacy of...

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Project MUSE - Pacifist Thought and Gender Ideology in the Political Biographies of Women Peace Activists in Germany, 1899-1970: Introduction

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Purchase/rental options available: Journal of Women's History 13.3 (2001) 34-45 [Access article in PDF] The German peace movement, which gained organizational status with the founding of the first German peace organization in 1892--the Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (German Peace Society, DFG)--could not overcome its marginalized position in society.

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News article that mentions a shooting/attack over racism and gender inequality that killed nine people. Shortly after, a German festival took a minute in silence for everyone who experienced violence due to racism and discrimination.

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Berlin, Germany - More than a thousand people took to the streets in the German capital, expressing their sadness, anger and solidarity following a far-right attack at two shisha bars in Hanau, in which nine people were killed.

Less than 24 hours after Wednesday's attacks, on Thursday evening, Berliners chanted anti-fascist slogans, as they rallied in Neukolln, an area southeast of the capital and home to large Turkish, Arab and other German minority communities.

Hanau, a commuter town close to Frankfurt nearly 600 kilometres (373 miles) southwest of Berlin, was thrown into a state of shock and mourning as authorities identified the perpetrator as Tobias Rathjen, 43, a man with a "deeply racist mindset". He killed his mother before shooting himself.

Condemning the violence, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Racism is a poison; hate is a poison. This poison exists in our society, and it's to blame for too many tragic events."

A sombre mood could be felt across the capital a day after the attack.

The big news from Germany on Thursday was expected to be the opening of the 70th Berlinale International Film Festival, one of the city's biggest annual cultural events.

Berlinale festival organisers expressed their sympathy on Twitter: "With great dismay, the Berlinale learned of the fatal attack in Hanau. Our deepest sympathy goes to the victims & their families. We stand for tolerance and hospitality. We oppose violence and racism. At today's opening, we will commemorate the victims with a minute of silence."

There is still a big Nazi presence here. As a person affected by right-wing terror, I can't sleep at night. Many of us are afraid.

Ferat Ali Kocak, anti-racist activist

Tina Glantz, a feminist activist, rallied in Berlin. She told Al Jazeera it was important to stand with victims of racial crimes.

"I came in solidarity with all the people experiencing racism and violence every day through and within our system," she said.

"It's not just the far right - the government, police, secret service and civil society are also based on a racist system. Many people are losing trust in government structures and using people they consider not German as their scapegoats. I came today in resistance and solidarity because times will get harder and we need to stand together."

The nine victims all had minority backgrounds, including people with Kurdish origins and Turkish citizens.

Gokay Sofuoglu, the federal chairman of Die Turkische Gemeinde in Deutschland (or The Turkish Community in Germany), a prominent organisation in Berlin that works to promote the interests of the country's large Turkish community, called on authorities to do more to tackle the growing threat of far-right violence.

"The declared goal of right-wing extremist terrorists and their parliamentary arm, the AfD, is to destabilise our democracy and create civil war-like conditions," he said, referring to the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

"Security authorities need to concentrate fully and permanently on right-wing extremism. People affected by racism, discrimination and racist violence have to feel protected by this country and this constitution. As a first step, we are calling for a parliamentary committee of inquiry to deal with right-wing terrorism and racism."

For many Berliners, the fact that the attacks took place in shisha bars - popular hangout spots for many young German minorities - was particularly troubling.

In recent years, authorities in the capital have increasingly raided shisha bars in areas like Neukolln in attempts, they say, to crack down on organised criminal gangs. Opposition voices, including some local politicians, have the frequency of the police raids, and say they stigmatise entire communities.

M E, who did not want to give his full name, owns a shisha bar in Neukolln.

He told Al Jazeera that authorities raided his establishment at least twice last year, which made him feel very unsafe. The Hanau attack has underscored his fears.

He said: "During the police raids, armed officers rush in and order all guests to the ground. Everybody is searched and the only thing the officers take are legal tobacco products. The raids do not lead to anything positive, on the contrary, the guests are left feeling angered and insecure.

"I was surprised and disappointed about what happened in Hanau, but I think with many recent negative stories about minorities and Muslims, the local media have normalised such hatred towards shisha bar owners and guests."

Vykinta Cybaite, a Lithuanian who works at Masaya shisha bar, in the same area, said: "The shisha bar is presented as a threat by the media, places that are run and visited by foreigners. The raids are a reflection of extreme right-wing opinions, and I worry that soon shisha bars in Berlin will become targets for racist attacks."

Across the country, concerns are mounting over the rising number of far-right crimes.

Ferat Ali Kocak is an anti-racist activist and vice speaker with the Die Linke political party. Two years ago, Kocak woke up in the middle of the night to find his car set alight, in a suspected far-right attack. The intelligence agency that neo-Nazi groups were spying on him prior to the arson.

"We were lucky that we survived and only did so because I woke up at three in the morning," he said. "The perpetrators set the car on fire because they knew the fire would spread. It wasn't an attempt on my car, it was an attempt on mine and my family's life."

He says events in Hanau have deepened an atmosphere of fear and grief.

"I'm also angry that something like this has happened because attacks like this have occurred before. There is still a big Nazi presence here.

"As a person affected by right-wing terror, I can't sleep at night. And I think many affected people feel the same way. Many of us are afraid."

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'We're afraid': Far-right attack in Germany reignites fears

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Berlin, Germany - More than a thousand people took to the streets in the German capital, expressing their sadness, anger and solidarity following a far-right attack at two shisha bars in Hanau, in which nine people were killed.

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In the time of Hitler, women were rewarded financially by the government for the amount of children they had, yet weren't allowed to work which opened the eyes to many women that something was going on (start of the genocide).

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Reflecting on major instances of genocide, we often develop archetypes of what the perpetrators of such dehumanizing crimes look like. In the Holocaust, white German men bearing the ominous Swastika characterized the perpetrators. In the Rwandan genocide, barbaric Hutu men wielding machetes defined the enemy. A defining characteristic of each of these perpetrator archetypes is masculinity.

Whether due to lack of evidence or lack of prosecution, there is a surprising paucity of concrete information surrounding women's roles in major acts of genocide. Unsurprisingly, media accounts of these monstrosities characterize women as the eternal victims and left-behind widows, incapable of taking part in such hateful activities. Yet, new testimonies from previously unrecorded witnesses coming from a variety of backgrounds has caused modern historians to call into question women's involvement in furthering genocidal acts.

In many of the regions in which genocide and its surrounding political turmoil have been prevalent, there is, or was, a significant gender gap, particularly in the social structure. In the era of the Holocaust, women of Central and Eastern European backgrounds were typically the upholders of the family and household, naturally subservient to men. Under Hitler, German women were financially rewarded by the government for having higher numbers of children under the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage , yet were discouraged, even blocked, from joining the workforce during the war. Contrary to this value placed on Aryan maternity, in times of the genocide, Jewish and Roma women became systematically targeted simply because of their fertility.

As a result, most of the accounts of women in the Holocaust characterize them as the innocent, blameless victims of assault, rape, and murder. While this is unfortunately true for the majority of Jewish and Roma women during this time , this categorization ignores women who elected to be perpetrators of the genocide, wrongfully portraying them too as victims.

The has been made in court that many of the women and men who partook in egregious acts of cruelty during the Holocaust were doing so against their will, merely following orders from their superiors out of fear. From more of a gendered perspective, Nazi women were assumed to be acting on behalf of their husbands, following their lead. However, has surfaced suggesting that this is only the case for a few select female perpetrators; the majority did so of their own convictions , namely for financial purposes or to pursue their personal ideologies.

One infamous female "villain" of the Holocaust is . One way of understanding her mental disposition and motivations for joining the regime is to analyze the events in critical to her cognitive development. Her mother committed suicide by drinking hydrochloric acid when Grese was barely a teenager, and she dropped out of high school at the age of fourteen, with her absentee father off supporting the Nazi Party. Stemming from a place of vulnerability, her interest in the League of German Girls , a Nazi youth group, continued to grow until she became so entrapped in the Nazi's ideology, she left home to partake in female SS guard training. She felt a psychologically-driven need for social belonging amidst societal pressures, which she found in the Nazi regime.

While the widespread conclusion on what drives a person to join the Nazi regime points to psychopathic tendencies, this was not usually the case. Rather, male and female perpetrators of the Holocaust were merely actors shaped by the murderous agendas and social norms of their time, acting on their own convictions yet nevertheless puppets in the larger scheme. Still, female perpetrators are painted in the media aftermath of the Holocaust as particularly cruel and barbarous.

Grese serves as a paramount example of this trend. In various witness accounts from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Grese brutally beat and tortured female prisoners from both a mental and physical standpoint, inflicting pain to the point of dehumanization of her victims, grouping them together and randomly selecting who should be gassed. Several prisoners broke down and attempted to hide, but she would hunt them down and beat them mercilessly. Going beyond carrying out ordered punishments, she relished the opportunity to crush the hopes of escape held by captive women, using an entourage of starving dogs to psychologically terrorize the prisoners.

What has made the case of Grese such a fascinating fixture in the media is the stark contrast her actions create with the behaviors of female prisoners at the time. Captive women forged protective bonds with each other in a response to the rules against maternity mandated by the Reich, initiating a strong sense of survival and familial connection. Despite the fact that Grese acted the same way a male guard would have in similar situations, a common misconception views her actions as a betrayal to fellow women, not as an act of a Nazi guard in genocide. She is often viewed as a woman void of empathy, not as a Nazi war criminal.

Still, Irma Grese was an exception, but not for the reason one might expect. She is one of many voluntary female perpetrators during the Holocaust, yet she is one of only a who was actually tried and executed for her crimes. Male perpetrators, on the other hand, were tried much more frequently.

While women received fewer trials in most regions due to lack of concrete and visual evidence, their trials had a higher rate of convictions. In the War Crimes Tribunals between 1945 and 1949, only sixty accused women, out of roughly 3,600 female concentration camp workers, were put on trial, with twenty-one of them executed. Conversely, a total of 5,025 men and women were convicted by American, British, and French forces, but only 500 were sentenced to death.

It is not representative of the judicial process taking place to analyze purely the quantitative data surrounding trials for war crimes, though. Using leading expert Andrea Pető 's research on people's tribunals in Hungary as a case study, it is evident the effect of gender roles in carrying out justice. Women on trial who testified, whether truthfully or wrongfully, that they were merely acting on the accord of their husbands or superiors received significantly lesser sentences and oftentimes sympathy from the judge. On the other hand, women who acknowledged their role as political leaders or orchestrators in acts of genocide received disproportionately higher sentences, as the witnesses and judges perceived their actions as going against the status quo of gender norms. Because of the lack of photographic evidence of female involvement in genocide, female witnesses and victims were oftentimes called upon as the main source of information about the crimes committed, leading to a clear bias in the perspectives presented. From a male perspective, the testimony that a male guard was simply acting upon orders was less effective. Men only received lesser sentences if they had the means to hire a lawyer, but they were still convicted less harshly than the women in the same people's tribunals.

The pursuit of justice for the victims of the Holocaust was unfortunately colored by the widespread stereotypes of who the "villains" were: Nazi men. It is undeniable that men comprised the majority of perpetrators of the Holocaust genocide, but to deny the role of many women carrying out such cruel crimes as well is to deny the suffering of their victims.

In remembering the trials and tribulations faced by the targeted groups during the Holocaust, we must clear our preconceived notions of who can be a victim and who can be a villain, eliminating bias from the judicial process.

* Miranda Wolford is a high school youth advocate working in international relations and development, currently interning at the Tom Lantos Institute. The Tom Lantos Institute (TLI) is an independent human and minority rights organisation based in Budapest, Hungary, www.tomlantosinstitute.hu. This essay is a response to some of the topics presented in lectures at the Tom Lantos Institute's Prejudice, Genocide, Remembrance Summer School 2016.

About the author

Posted In: Activism | Conflict | Gender | Memorial | Torture

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Beyond Victimization: Female Perpetrators of Genocide

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Reflecting on major instances of genocide, we often develop archetypes of what the perpetrators of such dehumanizing crimes look like. In the Holocaust, white German men bearing the ominous Swastika characterized the perpetrators. In the Rwandan genocide, barbaric Hutu men wielding machetes defined the enemy.

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This journal article goes through the very beginning of gender equality, the laws passed, certain journals and books that helped the process, and German women who played a major role.

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The New German Women's Movement on JSTOR

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Edith Hoshino Altbach, The New German Women's Movement, Signs, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Spring, 1984), pp. 454-469

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Examples of women in present day who support feminism in Germany are mentioned as well as their Instagram accounts and a short description of what they specifically advocate for such as body positivity, gender equality, anti-racism, LGBTQ+, and so much more.

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This week on the Collabary blog, we're doing a very special influencer recap. As March 8th is International Women's Day, we thought we'd shine a spotlight on some of the German female creators that have really caught our eye. Like always but especially today, we're taking a moment to commemorate feminism and women's rights and the fight for equality that continues every day.

More than just social media accounts, the women in this post are bringing up important social topics, starting their own businesses, managing their families, and generally being fantastic females. Of course, these are only eight out of thousands, so make sure to take a moment to discover and appreciate even more female content creators!

1. Louisa Dellert

Louisa's page is full of really well-researched and detailed information about a host of different issues, from body positivity to female empowerment, sexuality, and gender equality. In addition to educating her 451K followers on Instagram, she also hosts the podcast Louklärt, where she discusses culture, politics, health, veganism, and other issues relevant to today's women.

2. Vanessa Blumenthal

Vanessa is doing it all-not only does she own her own fashion brand, Vanezia, she also is a staunch animal rights activist, already working with Save The Dogs in Kallikratia for a few years now and actually building a private shelter in Kallikratia, Greece, at the moment. Additionally, she and Lena Hader support many different dog rescues, sharing dogs ready for adoption on Pawsitive Future (warning: extremely cute puppy pics). On top of all that, she is about to become a first-time mom-all at the age of 26. If that's not inspiring, we don't know what is.

3. Anna Schmidt

Another dog lover, plus-size model Anna promotes body positivity and mental health awareness on her page, as well as sharing her life with her boyfriend Axel and their rescue puppy, Ace, from Portugal. Ace's addition to their family got Anna interested in animal rights and the #adoptdontshop movement, so she's also creating awareness for this topic.

4. Aminata Belli

Amanita is a feminist and anti-racism activist who has dedicated her social media presence to educate her 122k followers about battling racism. On her page, you'll find Aminata hosting several outlets, such as "Sitzplatzreservierung" together with Hadnet Tesfai and "Deep & Deutlich", where she tackles sensitive and social relevant topics. She's also one of the hosts of Tinder's "Match oder Maybe" podcast, where she brings singles together for fun date nights.

5. Almut Perlwitz

Almut's page focuses on sustainability, healthy food, veganism, and how individuals can make a difference for the environment with their choices.She creates super easy tutorials and educational posts on how to grow your own food, eat healthy, and have a positive impact on the planet. A must-follow for any and all eco-activists.

6. Couple on Tour

Vanessa and Ina are two super heartwarming brides-to-be who run the couple account "Couple on Tour". Through their page, they paint a real and relatable picture of an LGBTQ+ relationship and seek to inspire with their style and creativity. And having recently crossed 1M followers, it doesn't look like they're stopping any time soon!

7. Farina Opoku

Farina is a perfect example of a body-positive model-not only is she one of the most well-known influencers in Germany, but she is candid and open about her struggles with her image, something a lot of women can probably relate to. Her personality and willingness to discuss difficult topics are some of her page's greatest assets and definitely make her a role model for many young women.

8. Wana Limar

Wana is absolutely killing it! With her sister Hilar, she owns the jewelry brand SEVAR, and she's a member of Visions for Children, a non-profit organization that promotes literacy for underprivileged children worldwide. She is also an activist for gender equality and anti-racism-in fact, she recently produced a program for MTV Germany, "Meine Rolle im deutschen Film - #KeinenRassismusProduzieren", that brought to light the struggle of representation in German media.

What's Next?

So, did you learn something new about female influencers? As we celebrate International Women's Day, don't stop here! Feel free to contact us at hello@collabary.com if you have any questions. Subscribe to our email newsletter here, if you'd like to stay on top of everything Collabary has to offer.

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8 German Fantastic Females For March 8 - Women's Day 2021 - Collabary

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Photo credit: aminatabelli This week on the Collabary blog, we're doing a very special influencer recap. As March 8th is International Women's Day, we thought we'd shine a spotlight on some of the German female creators that have really caught our eye. Like always but especially today, we're taking a moment to commemorate feminism and [...]

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Female German Noble Peace Prize winners, top mathematicians, and the first female chancellor of German are discussed and explain what impact they had on Germany at the time.

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The importance of placing much needed value on the notion that women are equal is not something that is unique to any one culture or country - it's a movement that transcends borders and oceans, because what is at stake is ubiquitous. Here, we pay homage to some incredible women in a variety of careers and fields who have made a name for themselves as actresses, politicians, artists and more. They are human beings who hail from the Mutterland and who have contributed something special - not just because they are women, but because they've added value to society as individuals with a voice that is worth listening to.

Frauen-Power is an antiquated term associated with women who have struggled, sweated, and paved their own way to be able to play an integral role in this world. The feminist movement in Germany, especially West Germany, echo those of America. Both countries' feminists battled in post-war worlds that were trying to rebuild their economies and countries after being consumed by national devastations, leading to a sizable increase of women in the workforce. Both fought for women's suffrage and both succeeded in 1919 and both saw a resurgence of a feminist movement in the 1960s.

This Nobel Peace Prize winner fought hard to live an unconventional life for her time. As a means of departing from the widely accepted (and only) route of her time, she tried to train as an opera singer to avoid having to marry for money. Her crippling stage fright impeded this, but she ended up marrying for love, to the chagrin of many. This deicison, coupled with her poor financial status, forced her to take many different jobs, and she even worked as a housekeeper and secretary for Alfred Nobel in Paris. As an already avid writer, Bertha became a prominent figure in the peace movement with her publication Die Waffen nieder! (or Lay Down Your Arms!)in 1889 and later became the founder of the German Peace Society. She also took part in organizing the first Hague Convention in 1899. Her journalistic efforts, mixed with her fervent support of and interest in promoting peace, led her to eventually win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905, and it is rumored that the prize exists in the first place because of her.

This impressive woman made powerful contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics and is still considered one of the top mathematicians of the 20th century. In physics, her theories articulated the connection between conservation laws and symmetry. In math, she instigated theories about rings, algebras, and fields. It's safe to say Amalie was a bit of a brainiac, and she was partially conditioned by her father, who was also a mathematician. Abandoning her original plan to study English and French, mathematics became her vice, and later, her weapon of mastery; demonstrated by her gifts to academia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Angela Merkel is the first female chancellor of Germany and took office in 2005, but this is only one of her feats - with a doctorate in physical chemistry, she's not a one-trick pony. This former research scientist hails from Hamburg circa 1954. Merkel's Germany was not our Germany, and her involvement in politics started at an early age with her participation with the Free German Youth, and she later got involved with the growing Democratic movement after the fall of the wall. This passion for government and participation snowballed, eventually landing her the spot as the Chancellor of Germany. Known for her tenacity, ability to make tough decisions, and for being a beacon of fortitude in a male-dominated branch, Merkel was voted Time Magazine's 'Person of the Year' in 2015. With an arsenal of awards under her belt and a penchant for blooming in tough times, Angela Merkel is a force to recognize.

Lise Meitner was one of eight children born in Vienna in 1878. Her love of physics bloomed at an early age, which led her to obtain her doctorate in the subject, but a woman working in this specific and male dominated field of academia was rare at that time. She was welcomed into a group of scientists with whom she worked closely in Berlin, including chemist Otto Hahn, and the two discovered protactinium in 1918. Though a brilliant contributor in her field, she was often overshadowed by the men - like when she discovered the radiationless transition in 1923 that ended up being named the 'Auger effect' after Pierre Victor Auger, who 'discovered' it two years after Meitner. In an even bigger oversight, the acknowledgement of nuclear fission was credited largely to Otto Hahn (though the two had come up with it together), and Hahn went on to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944. Meitner later received many awards in an attempt to somehow reconcile her many exclusions and acknowledge her unbelievable contributions.

Hannah Arendt was a prominent political theorist who was German born but eventually escaped to America during the Holocaust. Her works largely dissected and evaluated power, paying specific attention to totalitarianism, authority, and democracy. She rejected the idea of being a philosopher and despised this nomenclature, because philosophy tends to fixate on the individual and she erred on the side that assumed parts are the sum of a whole. In other words, she was a part of human kind, and through this context she discussed the trials and concepts of life. She was a prolific writer and thinker whose works are still read today, and some of her theories trace the roots of Stalinism and rally for the concept of inalienable human rights. Hannah Arendt was truly a woman with an inexorable voice and astute perspective.

After abandoning her initial dream of becoming a lawyer after she was discovered at a nightclub by a modeling agency, the humble and svelte Claudia Schiffer would take on a new career path. Claudia had always been beautiful, but her looks weren't her first priority - ultimately, Karl Lagerfeld made this small-town girl a star by making her the face of Chanel. Later, Claudia would become the face of many campaigns, as well as an actress and a household name. She didn't necessarily come from humble beginnings, but this modern muse has used her stardom for good. She's a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF and helped support L ive 8, and this unpretentious supermodel is also the creative director of her own successful clothing label. Claudia Schiffer is a timeless woman who 'slayed' the modeling world while never allowing it to skew her essential self.

This German expressionist painter doesn't come directly to mind when talking about the feminist movement, but she was an integral part of the process. Her affinity for color manifested in her famous landscapes, and her earlier works borrowed from the big wigs of Fauvism - specifically, Matisse and Van Gogh. Münter and her then partner, Kadinsky, were prominent leaders in the Munich Avant-garde movement. Along with Kadinsky and Franz Marc, she started the expressionist group called Der Blaue Reiter, or the 'blue rider,' that hoped painting would take on a symbolic and spontaneous relationship of color that, in turn, was a metaphor for the bleeding out of life towards the point of abstraction.Gabriele was a prolific painter who embodied the spirit of the expressionist and avant-garde movement. Her contributions, though not as widely known as some of her contemporaries, remain relevant and inspiring.

Alice Shwarzer is a contemporary feminist who still waves in the movement. As the founder and publisher of the German feminist magazine, Alice works to spread her ideas of equality throughout Germany and beyond. She prioritizes economic self-sufficiency in women and constantly speaks out against antiquated and misogynistic laws from the seventies that still persist today. Alice was also of one of the founders of the feminist movement in Paris, and was arguably one of the catalysts for the 'second wave' movement of feminism. Alice is never shy about voicing her ideas or acting as a champion for what she believes is fair, equal, and right.

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Frauen-Power: Important Women From Germany

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The importance of placing much needed value on the notion that women are equal is not something that is unique to any one culture or country - it's a movement that transcends borders and oceans, because what is at stake is ubiquitous.

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Two young activists started a hunger strike in Germany saying they wouldn't stop until the three main chancellor candidates sowed up. They unfortunately didn't and they had to end the strike after a week when people were put in "dangerous situations" from not eating or drinking. Shows how serious the activists are in Germany.

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German climate activists end hunger strike in Berlin | DW | 25.09.2021

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A pair of climate activists had stopped drinking fluids after their hunger strike failed to achieve its initial goal. But now, chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz has promised to meet them to discuss the climate emergency.

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List of female German musicians, artists, poets, etc. and years they were alive

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This is a list of women artists who were born in Germany or whose artworks are closely associated with that country.

Grete Waldau (born 1868), architectural painter, mural artist

Emmi Walther (1860-1936), painter

Maria Dorothea Wagner (1719-1792), painter

Corinne Wasmuht (born 1964), painter

Bertha Wehnert-Beckmann (1815-1901), Germany's first professional female photographer with a studio in Leipzig from 1843

Hanna Weil (1921-2011), painter

Gisela Weimann (born 1943), visual artist, feminist

Kaethe Katrin Wenzel (born 1972), contemporary artist

Anna Maria Werner (1688-1753), painter

Anna Werner (born 1941), photographer

Clara Westhoff (1878-1954), sculptor

Brigitta Westphal (born 1944), painter

Marianne Wex (born 1937), feminist photographer

Eva Janina Wieczorek (born 1951), painter

Anne Winterer (1894-1938), photographer

Lilli Wislicenus (1872-1939), sculptor

Herma Auguste Wittstock (born 1977), performance artist

Karla Woisnitza (born 1952), fresco painter

Ursula Wolff Schneider (1906-1977), photographer and photojournalist

Julie Wolfthorn (1864-1944), painter

Emmy Worringer (1878-1961), avant-garde artist

Yva (1900-1944), Jewish photographer

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List of German women artists - Wikipedia

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This is a list of women artists who were born in Germany or whose artworks are closely associated with that country.

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This song (translated to Latchkey kid)written by Cora E. explains what was silenced upon in the beginning of the Feminism movement. Coming home to no parents since they are both at work and not smelling alcohol on your child because both parents are alcoholics.

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Music has been a great way for feminism to be shown and get out to the world. Germany has many female musicians and singers that express their anger, personal situations, and growth in feminism. Female rap is a big genre in Germany that shows such high resemblance to feminism.

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There are at least two sides to Berlin rapper Nora Hantzsch, alias Sookee. On the one hand, her tough persona suggests she's not one to be pushed around. But there's a self-deprecating element to her lyrics, too - a nod to her role as one of only a handful of women rapping in German. In one song, her lyrics translate to, "Yeah, I know - you think I'm weird / A tick on the mic who won't get your respect / But you all have no idea what I'm about / Crazy - I'll help clear that up like a kick in the ass."

Sookee started writing rap lyrics in 2003. Then, in 2006, she launched a solo career in a German genre in which misogynist and homophobic lyrics are common among local chart-toppers such as Bushido and Sido - or the so-called "porno rapper" King Orgasmus One. The words to his song "Du nichts, ich Mann" (You're Nothing, I'm a Man) read like a bad caricature of rap chauvinism. They translate to, "Shut your mouth, woman, you're annoying the hell out of me / Make me something to eat, and then you'll go clean / Just like you're supposed to."

Sookee has struck back against lines like these. The popularity of her 2010 anthem "Pro Homo," for example, landed her in German talk shows to discuss homophobia and sexism. She's also shared the stage with Alice Schwarzer, arguably Germany's most prominent feminist writer and critic.

Trailblazers

Sookee isn't alone in staking a claim to the male-dominated genre. Cora E. from Heidelberg first took the stage in 1988 before her 1993 debut album, "Könnt Ihr mich hör'n" (Can You Hear Me). Four years later, people beyond the hip-hop scene took notice.

Sabrina Setlur started her career as Schwester S.

Her song "Schlüsselkind" (Latchkey Kid) takes up an often silenced problem. The lyrics, in translation, go: "Just 12 when I tried my first beer / And even the best mom won't notice her kid smelling like booze / When she's drinking herself."

Cora E. has since pulled back from performing on stage. These days, she gives rap workshops for children and young people.

Another groundbreaking female artist is Sabrina Setlur. She started out with male counterparts Thomas Haas and Moses Pelham, both of whom have had careers in hip-hop, before going solo. As the daughter of a middle-class Indian immigrant family, she's further proof that a ghetto background isn't required for rap success.

Formerly known by her stage name Schwester S., Setlur's songs about love, anger and loyalty struck a nerve with fans, as did her knack for dissing other rappers. That kind of self-confident bravado coming from a female hip-hop artist stood out and helped her sell more than two million albums as well as earn two Echo Awards - Germany's answer to the Grammy's.

Around the same time Schwester S. made it big, a fellow female hip-hopper with Turkish roots emerged from Berlin, mixing heavy beats with sounds from her family's home country. Aziza rapped occasionally in Turkish, switching between it and German.

"Aziza-A does what she thinks is right / Even if she gets kicked out of the family / And nobody counts her as an obedient wife," reads one set of lyrics in translation.

Her sarcastic wordplay took up the situation of young Turks in Germany and skewered clichés about Turkish women. It's little wonder that a Turkish club once called off her gig after reading the lyrics more closely. In response, she called the incident an affirmation of her skills.

Tic Tac Toe - a race up the charts before the group crashed and burned

Up and comers

In the mid-90s, hip-hop trio Tic Tac Toe topped the charts with a song about just how dumb they found macho guys - going platinum with the track. But infighting in the band led to their breakup before more success could follow.

The next generation of female acts was ready to take their places, though. It includes Fiva from Munich, who has taken audiences by storm at the massive Rock am Ring festival, as well as Pyranja from Rostock, who tried to rap her way on to the Eurovision Song Contest. Still new on the scene is Denitza Todorowa, alias DENA, who already took the stage in 2013 at the South by Southwest festival - one of the world's premiere events for discovering new artists.

DENA started getting attention with her YouTube video "Cash, Diamond Rings, Swimming Pools," before releasing her debut album "Flash" that features R&B, hip-hop beats and an unmistakable accent behind the English lyrics. She's less about political provocation, zeroing in on everyday problems instead.

Thanks to contributions from DENA and many others, Germany's hip-hop landscape now includes more events for, and by, women.

Looking westward

Next door in France - particularly in the run-down suburbs of Paris - hip-hop has stayed close to the way it developed in the US: a generation's outcry against social problems and disadvantages. That's true of rebellious star Diam's, whose clever lyrics and striking voice regularly send her up the charts.

Nicki Minaj knows how to steal the show

Across the Atlantic, female rappers like Angel Haze and Azealia Banks have become household names. 22-year-old New Yorker Angel Haze raps about being an outsider and takes on tough issues like child abuse. Banks doesn't shy away from Twitter battles with the likes of Lady Gaga or Miley Cyrus, and is open about her bisexuality. Then there's Nicki Minaj, whose alter egos and ghetto chic style have catapulted her into the charts around the world.

Minaj has sold millions of albums since her breakthrough five years ago, and is among the richest entertainers in the US with her estimated $15 million (11 million euros) in annual intake. Like many of her fellow female hip-hoppers, she likes to mix the style with pop.

It remains to be seen whether Germany's rap scene can produce a female rapper with the international chart-topping power of her counterparts in the Anglo world.

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Outsider rhymes - women in German rap | DW | 18.07.2014

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There are at least two sides to Berlin rapper Nora Hantzsch, alias Sookee. On the one hand, her tough persona suggests she's not one to be pushed around. But there's a self-deprecating element to her lyrics, too - a nod to her role as one of only a handful of women rapping in German.

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Picture which shows women in the streets for the Germany's women's movement. Wearing dresses and nice clothing and not a man in sight.

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This is a design someone created for the Google homepage on German activist's 148th birthday and shows Helene Stocker who was a pioneer in feminism. She was born in Germany and was known for her essays and braveness in trying to make Germany more equal in sexes.

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Google Doodle Celebrates German Feminist Helene Stocker

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Today would be the 148th birthday of the prominent 20th century feminist

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This drawing shows testing of the cervical mucus and is said to represent self empowerment for women to regain women's knowledge on health specifically gynecology. It was also in a magazine and book published in the '70s for women to learn about their own bodies as much as men know about their own bodies.

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Explains how much Alice Schwarzer started the publicity of Feminism in Germany and what specific books relate the movement over the past 250 years with texts from German-speaking societies that deal with these types of issues.

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How the HipHop and Afro- German movement started in 1984 (after the white women movement started for feminism). Started with Audre Lorde who was a black, lesbian, feminist, socialist mother who wrote poetry!

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A Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist mother - that's how American poet and activist Audre Lorde, in the spring of 1984, introduced herself to her Berlin students. As a guest professor at the Freie Universität, her first seminar series covered Black women poetry. In Lorde's audience sat a young history student, Katharina Oguntoye.

"When she came to the FU, we thought 'Wow!'," Oguntoye remembers. "We wanted to see her and learn from her." In a West Germany that scarcely recognised the Black German experience - and where the Black emancipation movement was in its infancy - Lorde's arrival was a massive event for young women of colour such as Oguntoye. The sense of empowerment it signified gave birth to the "Afro-German" movement.

It was a white woman from West Berlin that first got Lorde to come to the city. Dagmar Schultz, then a professor at FU, made the crucial invitation. "I felt I really needed to change my situation in the white women's movement, to try and change it in my own work," explains Schultz, now 79, in a Kleistpark café. The Charlottenburg-born feminist activist remembers being "spellbound" by Lorde, having first met her at 1980's World Women's Conference in Copenhagen.

"It was primarily white women, and Audre was very direct with us," Schultz recalls. "It was the kind of experience where you want to capture every sentence the person says, let it sink into you and stay with you." Schultz had been an activist in the 1960s US Civil Rights Movement, worked on anti-poverty programmes in Puerto Rico and taught at Black colleges in Mississippi. When she returned to Germany after a decade abroad, she found that people weren't particularly interested in those experiences. "The women's movement was faltering," she recounts. "I thought it would be great to have Audre come to Berlin and have some new input."
A new voice in West Berlin
Lorde's first months in Berlin were spent around the university's campus in Dahlem, where she lived with her partner, the Carribbean author and activist Gloria Joseph, in a bright red semi-detached house. While teaching Black American literature and creative writing, Lorde wanted to bring an understanding of Black-German women's experience to the predominantly white university. She proposed to Schultz: "How about we find Black Germans here?" At that time, Schultz remembers, Berlin's Black population was smaller, and people often lived isolated from other POC who might have shared experiences of racism in Germany.

The first problem the pair faced was how to contact Black women - considerably harder, in a pre-internet world. "There were some situations which are unimaginable today," Schultz says. "Once we went to a restaurant and there was a Caribbean woman working in the kitchen." The pair invited her to Lorde's lectures. Schultz explains that when she and Lorde first approached strangers in public, people were shy and often hesitant - but then, as Lorde's lectures attracted more Black women, the network began to grow.

Since Lorde's arrival in Berlin, Schultz had been publishing her work at her self-run publishing house Orlanda Verlag. After one year, Schultz recounts, Lorde came to Orlanda with a historic suggestion: "Before you publish something else by me, you should publish something by Afro-German women - talk to them and encourage them to make themselves audible."

Lorde and Schultz identified two promising young women to work on the first publication telling Afro-German women's stories - Oguntoye, and Hamburg-born poet May Ayim, a regular at Lorde's lectures and a future poetic protégée. It was a significant coming-together. "For me," Lorde later reflected, "'Afro-German' means the shining faces of Katharina and May, in animated conversation about their fathers' homelands, the comparisons, joy, disappointments."
Building the Afro-German community
Oguntoye, 61, laughs when she remembers Lorde approaching the pair with her idea. "It was dreadful." For Oguntoye and Ayim, both in their early twenties, this was an opportunity to share their experiences - and a gift from an extremely accomplished author and activist. Yet to follow in Lorde's footsteps at that young age was daunting. "We took some days, and I decided, I have to take this opportunity and do my best." Oguntoye, who runs the Kreuzberg intercultural association Joliba, recalls Lorde's encouragement at the project's beginning: "She said, 'Introduce yourself to me and May; introduce yourself to each other, and to the world.'"

Farbe Bekennen (Showing Our Colours) was published in 1986. The book includes personal stories from 13 Afro-German women aged 14 to 70. It addresses Germany's colonial history, experiences in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich and postwar "occupation babies". Much of its academic content drew from Ayim's university thesis, the first scholarly project covering Afro-German history.

After two years of close collaboration with Lorde, Oguntoye and Ayim set out to publicise Farbe Bekennen, a vital step for a book seeking to unite often-isolated Afro-Germans. "We wanted people who needed the book to be able to access it," Oguntoye says. As Lorde stepped back from the limelight, Oguntoye and Ayim became prominent cultural figures - and the book became a classic. "I still meet young people who say, 'Oh, my mother was part of the women's movement, and she gave the book to me,'" Oguntoye says. In her foreword to its 2020 re-release, she wrote that "it was the first book of its kind, that showed the Afro-German experience and inspired the beginnings of the movement."

Another important member of the Afro-German movement - and lifelong friend of Lorde - is author and translator Dr. Marion Kraft. Born in the Ruhrgebiet in 1946, Kraft's childhood was tormented by the racism of postwar Germany. She discovered Lorde's work while teaching African-American literature at Ohio State University. "I was familiar with Black American literature but it was all male," she explains. One of the new texts Kraft discovered was Lorde's From a Land Where Other People Live. "She was on my mind, from that point."

Back in Germany, Kraft joined the academic feminist movement. She met Ayim and Schultz at a 1986 conference in Hamburg. "I think I was the only person at the conference who was discussing Black women writers," she remembers. "Dagmar asked me, 'Do you happen to know Audre Lorde? Would you like to come to Berlin and interview Audre?'" The pair became friends. Soon enough, Lorde proposed that Kraft translate some poems for her German-language collection, Die Quelle unserer Macht, which was published after Lorde died in 1994 (and re-released in 2020).

"My first reaction was, 'Oh no, this is impossible, I want to do it but I can't,'" Kraft laughs. "But if you knew Audre, you knew that if she wanted something, then she got it."
White women listening
As Farbe Bekennen became a powerful tool for discussing feminism in Germany, those close to Lorde valued her personal qualities. "She set things in motion just by having an interested approach," Oguntoye explains. "She was a very good listener." Kraft recalls being impressed by Lorde's humility, warm-heartedness, and, above all, her honesty. Lorde's forthright openness supported people in challenging themselves.

"She's had a tremendous influence on the white feminist movement internationally," Kraft says. "I think this is due to her honesty in showing white feminists the way forward, and recognising that you can't deal with feminist issues without dealing with racism." In one of her lectures, Lorde declares: "We all have some power. Even if it doesn't seem that way." One particular group that Lorde encouraged to acknowledge their power was white feminist women. "Racism in Germany," Lorde says at a reading, "must become an issue for white feminists because it is part of your lives - it affects your lives in every way, and the fact that you are not people of colour doesn't make you safe from the effects of it."

"She really made the ignorance around the taboo issue of racism visible," Oguntoye explains. Farbe Bekennen created community amongst Afro-German women - but it also sought to raise consciousness within the women's movement about what Lorde called "the intersection of oppressions." At readings of Farbe Bekennen, white guilt occasionally overwhelmed some audience members as they heard the realities of racism and sexism for Afro-Germans.

"I remember one situation where a white woman was crying and everyone was congregating around her to console her," Schultz laughs. "Audre was very direct, asking something of people and challenging them." Lorde demanded white women recognise their role in Germany's racist society. This demand was strongly felt by Canadian author and poet Carolyn Gammon, Oguntoye's partner of 30 years. Gammon met Lorde at the 1988 International Feminist Book Fair in Montreal. "Black men were regularly being killed in the streets of Montreal, just like we see today with George Floyd," Gammon explains. "Through Audre's work, I had learnt that it was important for me as a white dyke to protest against the shooting of these Black men."

Gammon remembers how encouraging Lorde was. "I wrote her a poem about how I had learnt from her work," she says. "When I saw her at the book fair she was skipping down a set of stairs, she was full of energy and guts, she had a real charisma. Katharina introduced us and later she signed my copy of A Burst of Light - in it, she wrote 'Thank you'."
Lasting networks
Lorde's time in Berlin made a lasting impact on anti-racist organisations in Germany. The ISD (Initiative for Black Germans), formed in 1986, was kickstarted by Farbe Bekennen. Oguntoye and Ayim were contacted by Nii Addy, now an international political economics consultant. "Addy was a student and his brother was in school," Oguntoye says. "They knew lots of people who were isolated and didn't have contact with other young Black people, but when they heard about the book, it was a catalyst to begin the ISD." Most recently, ISD has been involved in decolonisation campaigns, including the effort to rename Berlin streets.

In August 1991, the Cross-Cultural Black Women's Studies Summer Institute took place in Germany, with events in Frankfurt am Main, Bielefeld and Berlin. This was the first international conference about "Black people in German communities", and was organised mostly by Black women. Lorde, who had previously attended similar events by the Institute's branches in London and NYC, suggested Kraft establish a German chapter and work as its director. "I thought, 'Oh now come on, give me a break,'" Kraft laughs. "Long story short, she convinced me." The institute raised political consciousness of the Afro-German experience. By then, Lorde was too ill to attend - but her persistent, supportive character prevailed. "She wanted a full report!" Kraft says.

It is difficult to overstate Lorde's influence on the Afro-German movement. The city of Berlin will soon recognise her lasting impact by renaming a Kreuzberg street in her name. With Lorde's commitment to honesty, and her ability to energise individuals and groups, she has left a legacy - not least among the Berlinerinnen she inspired. Oguntoye believes that, without Lorde, "we wouldn't have had a community to write in - maybe individually, someone would have tried something, but we wouldn't have other things to bounce off of."

Regular screenings of Schultz's Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984-1992 at Lichtblick Kino insist on the continuation of a dialogue that Lorde began - and her work seems as relevant as ever. Kraft has just finished translating Lorde's Sister Outsider, a collection of essays on topics including sexism, racism, classism, homophobia and police brutality, "When I was translating," Kraft says, "I was stunned by how up to date and important Audre's work is today."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The American poet who started the Afro-German movement

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A Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist mother - that's how American poet and activist Audre Lorde, in the spring of 1984, introduced herself to her Berlin students. As a guest professor at the Freie Universität, her first seminar series covered Black women poetry. In Lorde's audience sat a young history student, Katharina Oguntoye.

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How feminism started- after Jews were head to head with Christians (similar to Protestants and Catholics), German women started standing up for the inequalities they have seen.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction
1. Antisemitism, an Explanation of the Concept
2. Research on Antisemitism in the German Women's Movement
3. Research Method: Reading between the Lines - and Chronology of Antisemitic Incidents -
4. A Classification Scheme

I. The Moderate Liberal Women's Movement
1. The General German Women's Association
a) From the Women's Education Organization to the General
German Women's Association
b) Jewish Women in the General German Women's Association
c) Ignoring, a Form of an Antisemitic Attitude
d) Silence in the Face of Anti-Jewish Attacks
e) The Humanistic Ideal as a Christian Value?
2. German Teachers' Organizations
a) The Founding of Residences and Organizations for Women Teachers
b) The Israelite Women Teachers' Home Association
c) Institutional and Religious Exclusion of Jewish Women Teachers?
d) Reactions to Legal Discrimination against Jewish Teaching Staff
3. Nurses' Associations
a) A Short Overview of the History and Development of the Nursing Profession
b) The German Union of Jewish Nurses' Associations
c) The Red Cross: Friendly or Hostile to Jews?
d) Sister Agnes Karll: Ignorant or Antisemitic?

II. The Patriotic-Nationalist Women's Movement
1) The Patriotic Women's Associations
a) Historical Background, Foundation and Organization
b) Christian, Patriotic and Not at All Antisemitic?
c) Antisemitic "Tactlessness"
2) The National Women's Service
a) Development of the National Women's Service (NFD)
b) Jewish Women in the NFD
c) "Patriotism is not enough"
d) Self-Confident Jewish Women not wanted

III. The Nationalist-Imperialistic Women's Movement
1) The Women's League of the German Colonial Society
a) Beginning and Development
b) Nationalism and Racism as Eligibility Criteria
c) Antisemites among Colonialist Women?
2) The Naval League of German Women
a) Foundation and Political Objectives
b) Free of Antisemitic Attitudes?

IV. The Religious Women's Movement
1. The German Protestant Women's League
a) From the Protestant Social Women's Group to the Establishment of the German Protestant Women's League (DEF)
b) Antisemitic Sponsors of the DEF
c) Christian Chauvinism
d) Antisemitism within the German Protestant Women's League
2. The Catholic Women's League
a) The Development of the Catholic Women's League
b) Catholic Worldview as Demarcation Line
c) "Christian Superiority"
d) Relations with the Jewish Women's Movement
3. The Jewish Women's League
a) Founding and Development of the Jewish Women's League
b) The Fight against Antisemitism as Goal and Objective of the JFB
c) How did Jewish Feminists Experience Antisemitism in the German Women's Movement?

V. The Radical Liberal Women's Movement 119 1. The German Association for Women's Suffrage
a) Development and Tasks
b) Jewish Women and the Women's Suffrage
c) The Case of Käthe Schirmacher
d) A Resolution against Ritual Slaughter: Antisemitism or Animal Protection?
e) Reaction of the German Federation for Women's Suffrage
2. The Federation for the Protection of Motherhood
a) Eugenics and its Reception by the German Women's Movement
b) Founding and Goals of the Federation for the Protection
of Motherhood
c) New Ethics for the Improvement of the "Race"
d) Did the BfM Members Help Pave the Way to National Socialism?

VI. The Socialist Women's Movement
1. Working Women's Associations in Berlin
a) History and Development
b) Collaboration between Socialist Women and Adolf Stoecker?
2. SPD Women's Organizations
a) Integration of the Socialist Women's Movement into the SPD
b) Antisemitism in the SPD
c) Anti-Jewish Trends in the Socialist Theory of Emancipation?
d) Anti-Jewish Symbols Maintain their Power

VII. An Umbrella Organization: The Federation of German Women's Organizations
a) An Umbrella Organization for All Women's Associations?
b) A Shift to the Political Right
c) The Eighth General Assembly in Breslau 1908
d) "Jewified Liberalism"
e) Further Antisemitic Incidents

VIII. Brief Overview: Women's Associations in the Weimar Republic
a) From Kaiserreich to Weimar Republic
b) New Women's Associations of the Weimar Republic

Conclusion

List of Abbreviations

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

First of all, I would like to thank the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism in Jerusalem, which made this study and translation possible by providing me with a research grant.

Furthermore, I want to express my appreciation to the employees and assistants of the various archives and libraries in Israel, Germany and the United States. They supported my research through their knowledge, information, and assistance.

Last but not least, my particular thanks to Yossi Bezark who contributed to the present study his advice, listening and editing skills.

Jerusalem, August 2011

Heidemarie Wawrzyn

Preface

In the 19th century, the role of women had been transformed as a consequence of the economic and social changes brought about by Industrial Revolution. This led to social challenges and upheavals among women of the bourgeoisie and the working class.[1] From about the middle of the 19th century, the economic situation of middle-class women began to receive increasing public attention. Liberal politicians, and also women themselves, were looking for ways to give their unmarried daughters the means to earn a living. They wanted to solve the social problem, the Woman Question, by means of an improved education for women. Consequently, they began to found organizations for the advancement of education and employment opportunities for women. One of the early emancipation groups was the General German Women's Association ( Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein, ADF), established in 1865. Among its founders and participants were Jews and non-Jews as well.[2]

Jewish women in the Kaiserreich were affected both by the comprehensive social structural changes and by increasing antisemitism. Toward the end of the 19th century antisemitism became "respectable." After German unification in 1871 and almost complete Jewish emancipation, antisemitism manifested itself in large sections of the bourgeoisie, and in particular among the ruling class. Berlin academics openly discussed the assimilability of the Jews. In 1879, the historian Heinrich von Treitschke published the slogan: "The Jews are our misfortune!" The Berlin Court Chaplain Adolf Stoecker made a name for himself as an antisemitic agitator before working-class and petty bourgeois audiences using an anti-Jewish smear campaign.[3]

Progressive members of Jewish charitable women's organizations united in 1904 to establish the Jewish Women's League (Jüdischer Frauenbund, JFB).[4] In doing this, they created a place where they could cultivate their Jewish identity and pursue their social and feminist objectives within the Jewish community. From 1907 to 1933, this league was associated with the umbrella organization of the general German bourgeois women's movement, the Federation of German Women's Organizations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, BDF), which had been founded in 1894. The JFB was one of the largest affiliated organizations of the BDF. The members of the JFB saw themselves as an important factor in the German women's movement and believed that they had found, in the BDF, a reliable partner in the struggle against antisemitism.[5] But this women's alliance was shaky, and in May 1933 finally collapsed altogether.[6]

The present book offers a broad view of the German women's movement from 1865 to 1918, combined with an outlook on the events after World War I. It focuses on antisemitic incidents and anti-Jewish attitudes within the feminist movement before 1933.

The study at hand is based on the German edition Vaterland statt Menschenrecht. Formen der Judenfeindschaft in den Frauenbewegungen des Deutschen Kaiserreiches (1999).[7] It was revised, extended and updated with the latest research results on antisemitism and feminism in Germany before 1933 and then translated into English. Two women's organizations of nationalist and imperialistic orientation have been added. The new English edition also provides an overview on the development of women's associations and new parent organizations from the beginning of the Weimar Republic until the rise of the Nazi regime.

Until today this work is the only one that offers an overview of the entire early German women's movement. However, it does not claim to be complete. Additional research on organizations such as the Silesian Women's League and the German Women's Association for the Eastern Marches ( Deutscher Frauenverein für die Ostmarken), has still to be done. It should be taken into account that the comprehensive overview at hand can only provide a general insight into the German women's movement. More detailed single studies on particular women's groups and biographies of certain feminists are necessary to bring more details on the question of antisemitism within the German emancipation movement to light.

The main goal of this book is the documentation of antisemitic incidents, attitudes and stereotypes in the German feminist movement before 1933. The core focus of this project lies on the various forms, expressions and manifestations of anti-Jewish attitudes within an emancipatory movement and less on their functions, causes and intensity. A comparison with clearly antisemitic organizations in pre-Nazi Germany, for example with the Pan-Germanic League ( Alldeutscher Verband), was therefore not conducted. However, comparing the German women's movement to other European feminist movements could be helpful and enlightening to the question why Germany's feminist organizations took a different course.

The study at hand offers English-speaking readers a broad and critical view of the entire women's movement in Germany from 1865 to 1918, combined with an outlook on the events around 1933. It introduces the reader to fifteen different women's organizations, including bourgeois and socialist emancipation associations, religious and non-religious women's leagues, as well as international and nationalistic oriented pressure groups. Each chapter describes the founding and development of two or three associations, which shared the same political or religious orientation, followed by an analysis of the members' attitudes toward antisemitism in general and Jewish feminists in particular. The ideology, values and political views as well as the activity of each presented women's association have been analyzed with special respect to the members' anti-Jewish prejudices and attitudes. Archival sources, published and unpublished documents, found in more than twenty archives and libraries in Germany, the United States and Israel, provided the relevant data and information details for this research project.

Introduction

1. Antisemitism, an Explanation of the Concept

Based on the political developments, social changes, and economic crises in the 19th and early 20th century in Germany, historians describe antisemitism as a rejection of emancipation and modernity. Some portray antisemitism as a response to economic crises or as the search for a "scapegoat." Some explain it either as a world outlook ( Weltanschauung) or as the expression of a national identity crisis.[8] In the 1980/90s a euphemistic definition of antisemitism became popular, especially among German historians who adopted Shulamit Volkov's explanation of antisemitism as a cultural code.[9] In reference to Weimar Germany, antisemitism was often characterized as a political stream, a social mindset or an intellectual trend.[10]

The non-Jewish members of the women's movement came from Christian Protestant or Catholic milieus.[12] Their values and ideas were shaped by Christianity. A few of them grew up in families of Protestant ministers.[13] Others indicated in their biographies that they had participated in Christian religious education and Protestant confirmation classes.[14] In conclusion, even feminists who were members of non-confessional women's associations had undergone a Christian socialization. Growing up in a Christian environment and being part of German culture made them intentionally or unintentionally accustomed to the centuries-old tradition of Christian anti-Judaism which pictured the "Jew" as a negative archetype and emphasized the antagonism Christian vs. Jewish.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, many scientific disciplines, such as philology, ethnology (especially that of India) and history had this antagonism as the basis of their ideas and theories.[15] The theology of the Catholic and Protestant churches played a particularly strong part in the dissemination of the contrast between Jewish vs. Christian. From its beginnings, Christianity defined itself in dissociation from Judaism and used the denigration of Judaism to validate the Christian religion. This religiously-based antisemitism of the Middle Ages (ant-Judaism) became a supporting pillar of antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[16] Robert Wistrich[17] clearly demonstrates the Jewish vs. Christian antagonism in his works on antisemitism. From the Hellenistic period, through the Reformation and Enlightenment, and up to the Third Reich, he traced the line of anti-Jewish hostility. Whether it was religiously, politically or racially motivated, antisemites perceived and described Jews negatively, in order to accentuate their own development and superiority. With the spread of the Christian faith in Europe, this negative image of the Jews became an integral component of western culture. The presentation of the Jew as an outsider or non-conformist survived the rise and fall of all secular ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries.[18] The image of antisemitism has changed; it has been secularized and modernized. But Jews are still viewed as the prototypical "Other."[19] Based on these explanations, the term antisemitism refers here (in this study) to every form of hostility towards Jews. It applies to the various expressions and manifestations of anti-Jewish attitudes within the German women's movement regardless of their religious, political or racial motivation.

2. Research on Antisemitism in the German Women's Movement

The question of antisemitism within the German women's movement was not raised by women researchers before the 1980s. The British historian Richard Evans[20] was the first one to point out fascist and nationalist ideas and practices within the bourgeois feminist movement in Germany. In so doing, he compiled the thesis of "Protofascism" in the German women's movement.[21] In contrast to Evans' thesis, there appeared in 1983/84 publications by Hiltraut Schmidt-Waldherr, Irene Stoehr, Margarethe Mitscherlich and others, who saw women as the victims of male, patriarchal National Socialism.[22] A heated, controversial debate over the role of German women as victims or perpetrators in the Third Reich, and about a possible contribution of the first German women's movement to National Socialism, ensued.[23]

About a year later, Marion Kaplan and Marlis Dürkop published essays in which they discussed antisemitic incidents within the Federation of German Women's Organizations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, BDF).[24] Even though they did not directly refer to the theses mentioned earlier, they certainly created a bold contrast to them, by using detailed investigation of events in the BDF between 1904 and 1933/38. Thus they demonstrated the various forms of antisemitism within the bourgeois women's movement by means of concrete examples.

In the middle of the 1990s, the subject received even more attention: Irmgard Fassmann (1996) in her work Jewish Women in the German Women's Movement 1865-1919, investigated the position, activities and difficulties experienced by Jewish feminists in the bourgeois women's movement. In doing so, she pointed out antisemitic behaviors. In 1998, Mechthild Bereswill and Leonie Wagner published an anthology on the subject of the Bourgeois Women's Movement and Antisemitism. In it, the relationship of the bourgeois women's movement to antisemitism during the 19th and early 20th centuries was analyzed by the authors[25] from various points of view. In their essays they clearly demonstrated that feminists definitely made use of anti-Jewish theories and thoughts, as well as having antisemitic attitudes.[26] Heidemarie Wawrzyn's dissertation[27], which was published in 1999 under the title Vaterland statt Menschenrecht ( Fatherland versus Human Rights) is, until today, the only work which traces antisemitism within the entire German women's movement. Wawrzyn investigated both the various branches of the bourgeois women's movement (moderate, radical, religious, nationalistic, etc.) and the socialist women's movement at the time of the German Empire. In her study, she elaborated the various and often subtle forms of antisemitism in practically all organized women's organizations.

Since 2000 an increasing number of scientific works have appeared which are concerned primarily with nationalistic and imperialistic women's organizations before 1933, see details below.[28] Susanne Omran and Stephanie Braukmann chose as their subject the perception of the "Jewish Question" in the women's movement. Susanne Omran (2000) concentrated on the bourgeois women's movement and analyzed antisemitic stereotypes and arguments in the writings of feminist protagonists on the subjects of race and gender. In 2007, Stephanie Braukmann applied her research interests to the anti-Jewish mindset within the socialist women's movement (1890-1914), thus greatly advancing Wawrzyn's relatively brief research on antisemitism in the socialist women's movement, and giving it a stable basis in original sources.[29]

3. Research Method: Reading between the Lines

Anti-Jewish attitudes within the women's movement led to ignoring, neglect and discrimination against Jewish feminists. These various and often subtle forms of antisemitism are difficult to detect and bring to light. Marlis Dürkop (1984) and Irmgard M. Fassmann (1996) stated that archival material provides only a small amount of evidence of antisemitic comments by non-Jewish feminists.[30] In 2000, Susanne Omran hastily jumped to the conclusion that even further research on this subject would prove that bourgeois feminists hardly excelled at antisemitic hostilities.[31] In my own research as well I realized that I could not, at first glance, find any additional proof of anti-Jewish attitudes, comments or incidents in the organizational documents and published literature of the women's movement. I decided to include in the research the perceptions and experiences of Jewish feminist members. They recorded their considerations, feelings, reactions to anti-Jewish expressions and antisemitic incidents in the German women's movement in writing, particularly in their memoirs and autobiographies, as well as in the publication of certain Jewish newspapers.[32] Tying together the perspectives of those who discriminated with the experiences of those discriminated against, made it possible to render visible the various expressions of antisemitism. With the help of these sources and perspectives, I was able to find additional proof of anti-Jewish mindsets and behaviors. Here are the antisemitic events in chronological order:[33]

1890s When the acting chairwoman, Mrs. Sombart, organized the election to the new board of the Stettin local group of the Patriotic Women's Association (VFV) , she read aloud the names of the former board members, but omitted the name of a Jewish board member.

1892-1914 Writers of the Social Democratic women's journal Die Gleichheit often employed antisemitic stereotypes, such as "Jewish profiteer," "haggler," and "hypercritic Pharisee."

1895 Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne from the Protestant Social Women's Group wrote to Gertrud Dyrenfurth that her organization would not invite Jewish women to give speeches.

1896 Clara Zetkin reported on the International Socialist Workers' and Union's Congress in London and depicted Eastern European Jewish laborers in England in a very negative way ("fanatic," "brainless," "talmudicist lunatics").

June 1904 At the International Women's Congress in Berlin, Ika Freudenberg did not mention the Jewish religion in her speech on the relationship of the women's movement to the political and religious parties.

July 1904 Elsbeth Krukenberg, a member of the General German Women's Association ( Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein, ADF) and the German Protestant Women's League ( Deutscher Evangelischer Frauenverein, DEF), called the founding of the Jewish Women's League ( Jüdischer Frauenbund, JFB) a "curiosity."

Sep. 1904 At a charity party, organized by the VFV branch Bad Ems, poems were recited, which mocked Jews.

Nov. 1904 At a charity bazaar, organized by the VFV group in Czersk, a poem was performed which exaggeratedly caricatured the Jewish retailing class.

Dec. 1904 The VFV branch in Osche performed an antisemitic stage play, whereupon all Jewish members resigned from the association.

1908 At the Eighth General Meeting of the ADF in Breslau, the Christian women's associations were clearly favored over the JFB.

1909 The Association of Studying Women in Berlin accepted an invitation from which its Jewish members were explicitly excluded.

1912 The Congress for Women's Suffrage in Munich approved a resolution

against ritual slaughter.

1913 The Staatsbürger Zeitung defamed Henriette Goldschmidt in an antisemitic article. Gertrud Bäumer refused to take a position on the matter in the name of the Federation of German Women's Organizations (BDF).

1913 Marie Wegner, the president of the Silesian Women's League, expressed the opinion that in Cottbus a Jewish woman should not speak for the German women's movement.

1913/14 The members of the BDF and DEF boards of directors discussed whether

Alice Salomon should be appointed the successor to Gertrud Bäumer, "in spite of her Jewish origin".

1914 In the Evangelische Frauenzeitung an article was published about the "Jewifying" of Liberalism.

1915/16 In the 28th General Meeting of the ADF in Leipzig, Helene Lange gave a lecture in which she discussed the long-term relationship between the BDF and the religious women's leagues. While doing so, she did not mention the Jewish Women's League. A heated discussion erupted which lasted several months and reached a peak when Helene Lange accused the JFB members of being paranoid.

approx. 1916 Guida Diehl, member of the DEF and founder of the New Land Movement, criticized the National Women's Service for having too many Jewish and socialist members.[34]

1917 The Hamburg local group of the DEF expressed concern over the "radical and Jewish elements" in the City Federation of Hamburg Women's Organizations.

1918 Marie Wegner complained of Jewish dominance at the meetings of the

women's movement.

1919 The journal of the Naval League of German Women published an antisemitic article, whereupon a Jewish member left the organization.

illustration not visible in this excerpt

The leading members of the German women's movement strove for the political and religious neutrality of their umbrella organization. However, in reality the German women's movement was very diverse. Over the years, especially between 1890 and 1908, clear separations (the bourgeois and socialist women's movement) and secessions (the radical liberal representatives from the moderate liberals) occurred, and even a religious women's movement came into existence,[35][36][37] so that after the turn of the 20th century, several diverse feminist movements existed.
The Moderate Liberal Women's Movement
Women of the moderate-liberal women's movement identified themselves above all with bourgeois values and norms, and associated themselves with liberalism. Their goal was to influence bourgeois culture as a whole by means of their capabilities as wives and mothers. They tried to attain this goal primarily through the improvement of educational and employment opportunities for women.
The Radical Liberal Women's Movement
Radical-liberal women's organizations demanded women's political and sexual equality before the law as a natural right. They strove to change sexual morality and fought for woman suffrage. They considered women's access to political power the most important prerequisite in order to change the social and legal position of women. To achieve their goals, they advocated public political agitation, propaganda, and the political instruction of women.
The Religious Women's Movement
Protestant, Catholic and Jewish feminists joined their own respective religious women's leagues because they felt themselves obligated to their religious denomination and wanted to bring about a solution to the Woman Question on this basis. At the heart of their commitment were charity and social work.
The Patriotic-Nationalist Women's Movement
The unifying factor for the patriotic-nationalist women's organization was the conviction that women, like men, should express their love and loyalty to the fatherland, which they tried to prove by carrying out social and nursing tasks during war and emergency situations. During World War I, patriotic women - and many other active, religious and secular feminists as well - hoped that they would be granted more rights by men as a result of the patriotic duties they were performing between 1914 and 1918.
The Nationalist-Imperialistic Women's Movement
Nationalist-imperialistic women's groups can actually be seen as a sub-section of the patriotic-nationalist women's movement. However, these groups were corporate with male dominated imperialistic organizations whose political goals they shared, i.e. strengthening and expanding the German nation. Besides charity work, these women members decisively demanded participation in political affairs.
The Socialist Women's Movement
Members of this movement were convinced of the socialist ideal. They directed their energies toward the interests of working women. They strove for the establishment of a socialist society, which would of itself bring about equal rights for women. Class struggle always prevailed over gender struggle.

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Leading women of the German women's movement, 1894

( Die Gartenlaube, 1894: 257)

I. The Moderate Liberal Women's Movement

1. The General German Women's Association

a) From the Women's Education Organization to the General German Women's Association

In the connection with the liberal-democratic movement at the time of the Revolution of 1848,[38] the first organized women's movement came into existence. It edited a nationwide publication The Frauen-Zeitung ( Women's Newspaper), which was published by Louise Otto-Peters (1819-1895), a member of the democratic movement.[39] This first German women's movement consisted of local organizations which sought improvements for social, educational and political status of women. Democratic women's organizations , working women's associations and women's educational associations were founded. But they suffered the fate of all political organizations in this period: they were subject to increasing repression through house searches, confiscations, and arrests of the most prominent members and in 1850 were finally banned by the Prussian Associations Law (Preußisches Vereinsgesetz).[41]

Fifteen years later (1865) Louise Otto-Peters, the teacher Auguste Schmidt (1833-1902) and other citizens of Leipzig, both men and women, met in the house of Henriette Goldschmidt (1825-1920), wife of the Reform rabbi Abraham Meyer Goldschmidt, in order to found a Women's Educational Association ( Frauenbildungsverein, FBV). The main purpose of this Leipzig women's organization was the training and education of working and middle-class women. At the instigation of the Hungarian Jewish army captain Philipp Korn[42], who had become familiar with the feminist movement in America, the new women's association sponsored a conference of German women in Leipzig in October 1865. This first German women's conference, at which leading men from the workers' movement, such as August Bebel, were also present, gave birth to the General German Women's Association ( Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein, ADF). With its establishment, the women's movement, which had been crushed in the aftermath of the failed Revolution of 1848, began to revive.[43]

The general assemblies of the ADF always took place in a different city. They were always combined with a public Women's Day.[44] In addition to the Women's Days, a new women's organization was usually founded in the city hosting the event and subsequently, affiliated to the ADF. By 1908 the ADF consisted of more than 47 branches and local groups with approximately 19,000 members.[45] From 1866 on, the association published its own magazine, Neue Bahnen (New Pathways), which allowed for information exchange and relations among the member organizations.[46]

The main task of the ADF was the improvement of education and employment possibilities for women. In the first years of its existence, courses in manufacturing, job centers, typing pools and entertainment evenings for women were created.[47] These practical tasks were assumed by ADF local branches, while the main association concentrated its efforts on political activities.[48] By means of numerous petitions to the regime and to municipal authorities, it sought to improve the situation of working women, to achieve economic freedom for women, the entrance of women into all educational institutions as well as the admission of women to the study of medicine and philosophy. In addition, it petitioned for the improved education and working conditions of women teachers and in 1876/77 asked the Reichstag to assure the rights of women through civil legislation.[49] Other areas of endeavor were the care of women prisoners, the fight against prostitution and the care of children born out of wedlock.[50]

The leading members of the ADF tried to preserve something of the spirit of the Revolution of 1848, especially in their close relationship to the existing labor movement in Saxony. However, in subsequent decades, the organization made more and more compromises with the existing social order.[51] A change of trend took place, a new conceptual orientation, which had as its goal in the years after 1871 to abolish the confrontation between feminism and patriarchal society. The women's movement was supposed to be integrated into the existing, increasingly conservative society, and justify itself through the attempts of its representatives to struggle against social hardships and injustices. In the same spirit, the "natural" vocation of women as mothers and educators of future generations came increasingly to the fore.[52]

After World War I, the organization changed its name to German League of Women Citizens (Deutscher Staatsbürgerinnenverband, DStV). At that time, it had only 3,000 members. At its highest point, between 1890 and 1908, membership had risen to a total of 19,000.[53] In May 1933, several local groups of the DStV dissolved themselves; a few affiliated with the Deutsche Frauenfront, the National Socialist parent organization of the "coordination" of all German women's associations.[54]

b) Jewish Women in the General German Women's Association

The founding of the Women's Educational Association ( Frauenbildungsverein, FBV) , from which the ADF evolved, took place in the home of Rabbi Goldschmidt. From 1866 or 1867[55] Henriette Goldschmidt belonged to the board of directors of the ADF. She occupied the position of vice-president for many years. After almost 40 years, she resigned her posts whereupon she was appointed an honorary member of the board of directors. At general assemblies, women's conventions and other activities of the ADF she often gave lectures, and was considered a popular and talented speaker.[56]

Jenny Hirsch (1829-1902), the daughter of a Jewish merchant, was for a short time in 1866 along with Louise Otto-Peters a co-publisher of Neue Bahnen. However, she gave up this position after getting a job as a reporter in the newly founded Lette Society[57] (Lette-Verein).[58] When the ADF held its 18th General Assembly in Frankfurt am Main in 1895, in connection with a public Women's Day, Henriette Goldschmidt and Jeanette Schwerin (1852-1899), a liberal Jew and co-founder of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für ethische Kultur (German Society for Ethical Culture), gave speeches.[59] At the Women's Day in Königsberg, in 1899, lectures were also given by Jewish women such as Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), founder of the JFB, and Alice Solomon, who in 1914 converted from Judaism to Protestantism.[60] Lina Morgenstern (1830-1909), known above all for her founding of the Berlin People's Soup Kitchen (Berliner Volksküchen), belonged for several years to the board of the ADF.[61] Jenny Apolant (1874-1925), sister of the Jewish finance minister Walter Rathenau, was a member of the board between 1910 and 1925. After World War I, she assumed the publication of Neue Bahnen in January 1920. Furthermore, Jenny Apolant was the first chairperson of the ADF local group in Frankfurt am Main, founded in 1895.[62]

More Jewish women are recorded as having been directors or co-workers in the local groups and affiliated associations of the ADF: Jeanette Schwerin was the second chairperson of the Berlin Women's Association ( Berliner Frauenverein) that had been established as a local branch of the ADF by Helene Lange in 1894.[63] Rosa Vogelstein, wife of Rabbi Heinemann Vogelstein, founded a local ADF group in Stettin in 1892, and became its first chairwoman. After the founding of this local group, Auguste Schmidt and Helene Lange were often visitors at Rosa Vogelstein's house.[64] Elsa Meyring, who came from a liberal Jewish home, participated in this Stettin women's group from about 1904.[65]

These examples bear witness to a very friendly relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish members of the ADF . Furthermore, contacts were not limited to the organizational level, but were also of private and social nature. For example, it is known that Auguste Schmidt was not only friendly with Jewish families, but she also invited Jenny Hirsch to her home in the 1880s.[66] The friendly, private relationship between Auguste Schmidt and Jenny Hirsch is worth mentioning and emphasizing, since in general - as Marion Kaplan has demonstrated in an essay - the social interaction between Jewish and non-Jewish women at this time was almost completely restricted to visits made out of duty or politeness. Invitations extended in a friendly framework seem to have been the exception.[67] These facts could lead to the conclusion that the members of the ADF were imbued with some of the liberal, emancipatory spirit of the 1848 Revolution.

But in the journal Neue Bahnen, there are indications of a different sort. At certain events like birthdays, anniversaries or deaths, the leading Jewish members of the ADF were mentioned and praised in the journal. Their importance to the German women's movement was always emphasized; their social commitment, their literary activities and their family ties were openly recognized. But never in these texts was their relationship to Judaism referred to.[68] An explanation for this behavior can be found in the work of Thomas Nipperdey, who wrote Religion im Umbruch (1870-1918) (Religion in Upheaval). He demonstrates that in the bourgeoisie during a period of secularization, work and family became important basic values:[69] "One doesn't work in order to live, but rather lives in order to work ... The practical religion of the middle class is first and foremost that of work and family, and it is spreading among the peasantry and the 'respectable' working class."[70] Based on this perception, it can be assumed that Jewish women in the ADF were judged by this value system. Other values however - such as Jewishness as a religious or ethnic affiliation - were ignored, as we will see in the following passages.

c) Ignoring, a Form of an Antisemitic Attitude

From June 12th to 18th 1904, the Congress of the International Council of Women[71] took place in Berlin. During the days of the convention - on June 15th - Jewish feminists gathered in order to found the Jewish Women's League ( Jüdischer Frauenbund, JFB).[72] Shortly before or after the establishment of the JFB, Ika Freudenberg, one of the leaders of the Munich women's movement, gave a lecture for all congress participants on the relationship of the women's movement to the political and religious parties. Jewish women present there complained that the Jewish religion had not been mentioned with even one word.[73] Elsbeth Krukenberg, who at this time was responsible for editing Neue Bahnen, commented on the protest of the Jewish feminists as follows:

Further protests and declarations followed. The speaker Ika Freudenberg regretted the incident, and explained that the lack of mention did not signify any exclusion of Jewish women, but rather their inclusion:
"Henriette Goldschmidt, Jeanette Schwerin, Hedwig Dohm, Alice Solomon and many others belong to the interconfessional[75] women's movement. My report was by no means intended to exclude the Jewish element, but on the contrary, took for granted its inclusion."[76]
She ended her explanation with a reference that those hearing the subject of the lecture had perhaps misunderstood it. Her intention, she said, had not been to speak about religions, but rather about the religious parties.[77] Bertha Pappenheim, who had initiated the founding of the JFB at the International Women's Congress, expressed her dissatisfaction at the lack of mention of the Jewish religion as follows:

Bertha Pappenheim also took offense that it was called a "curiosity" ( Kuriosum) that

Apparently, some members of the women's movement were left with the impression that the JFB had come into existence as a reaction to Ida Freudenberg's lecture.[80] At this point, Henriette Goldschmidt, the vice chairwoman of the ADF, entered the dispute. She tried to eliminate discord by quoting a phrase of Louise Otto-Peters from 1883:

She then continued:

Convinced that the women's movement was about humanity, rather than race or religion, Henriette Goldschmidt then also explained the foundation of the JFB:

Henriette Goldschmidt's reasoning derives from her efforts to emphasize what unites and connects women in the women's movement, namely bringing about the human ideal. To this end, she obviously bases her ideas on those of the French Revolution and the Revolution of 1848.[84] Moreover, she alludes to antisemitism, which in her opinion had poisoned the pure and clear atmosphere of the humanist thinkers and poets, and "like a foreign bumpkin" had even forced its way into the women's movement.[85] The controversy was finally ended by the editors of Neue Bahnen, as they declared Henriette Goldschmidt's contribution to the final point of the dispute:

Until June 1916, a tense and excited correspondence took place, in which various board members of different organizations participated.[89] Its peak occurred in the statement of Helene Lange to Eva von Roy of the National Women's Service (Nationaler Frauendienst, NFD) and to Alice Bensheimer, the secretary of the BDF. She wrote to Eva Von Roy on February 11th, 1916 that the "inappropriate behavior" of the JFB did not please her and that she would not answer the JFB's letter, because it included "the suspicion of antisemitic opinions."[90] To Alice Bensheimer, she once again repeated that she categorically refused to be reprimanded by the JFB. Her letter to Alice Bensheimer ended with a reproach to the members of the JFB that "a kind of persecution complex" had spread among them.[91]

In the sharp words of the first chairperson, all right to criticism was denied to Jewish women. Their request to be mentioned equally with the two other large religious unions in the German women's movement was pathologized. Jewish women were defined as mentally ill.

d) Silence in the Face of Anti-Jewish Attacks

Henriette Goldschmidt had been - as already mentioned - a member of the ADF board for almost 40 years and had held the office of vice-president for many years. In Leipzig, she brought into existence many social institutions, such as kindergartens and a women's university.[92] In light of the position she held in the ADF, and of her very active and fruitful cooperation in the women's movement, it is simply astonishing that the ADF board members remained silent when she was publicly attacked in the press.

On November 5th 1913, the Staatsbürger Zeitung, a Berlin daily, published the following item:

"The education of children and women in Leipzig in the hands of a rabbi's wife. The L.N.N. [ Leipziger Neue Nachrichten ] announced: 'The Organization for Families and People's Education, founded in Leipzig in 1871 (chairwoman is the Jewess Henriette Goldschmidt) gives us in its report at hand, of 1910-12, a delightful picture of the development and growth of the facilities'."[93]

In the news item, the institutions belonging to this education organization are then named, as well as the number of children, schoolgirls, students, etc. who had attended them. To which the brief commentary concludes:

The JFB, of which Henriette Goldschmidt was an honorary member, addressed the board of the BDF shortly afterward, and asked its members to publish a rebuttal:
The board meeting of the Jewish Women's League, on the 23rd of this month, discussed the enclosed item from the 'Staatsbürger Zeitung'. We are of the opinion, along with many persons associated with the history of the German women's movement, that the 'Jewess and rabbi's wife', Henriette Goldschmidt, has so advanced the lives of women and German culture, and has so enriched them even into her old age, that an unqualified statement as the aforementioned should not remain uncontradicted.
We are also bringing this item to your attention because we have learned that this token of the ingratitude of the German nation, whose true servant 'the Jewess' Mrs. Goldschmidt has always been, has come to the attention of this elderly lady and has caused her understandable pain. Trusting in your sense of fairness, we leave it to your discretion to take some official stance on the matter."[95]

Gertrud Bäumer tried, in her letter of December 4th, 1913, to play down the meaning of this news item. In her letter, she wrote:

"She [Henriette Goldschmidt, H. W.] must not confuse the Staatsbürger Zeitung with the 'nation' and speak, in cases of attack from this quarter, of the ingratitude of the 'nation'."[96]

On December 12th of the same year, another short notice was published in the Frankfurt Israelitisches Familienblatt:

Whether and how this incident was resolved cannot be found in the sources, nor can it be determined if the members of the ADF did perhaps take a stand. What Irmgard Maya Fassmann has already shown in her research on Jewish women in the German women's movement is clearly confirmed in here: there were polite to friendly relations between Jewish and non-Jewish feminists. But in times of crisis there was no effective partisan support or official solidarity.[98]

However, there was one case of official support in 1901. Else Hasse, who wrote many articles in Neue Bahnen in the years 1900-1902, called for readers, under the headline "Women Against Antisemitism," not to take part in the anti-Jewish harassment campaigns and spitefulness.[99] This article deserves particular attention because of its rarity. In looking through several women's magazines, I was able to find only one other stance against antisemitism by Clara Zetkin, in Die Gleichheit ( The Equality).[100] Elsewhere, as mentioned before, official support was absent. The silence prevailed.

But although the appeal "Women Against Antisemitism" was notable because of its public support , it also contained anti-Jewish stereotypes and thinking. The writer praised the Jewish philosophers, thinkers and poets, as well as the "Jewish Intellects" and the Jewish feminists in the German women's movement. But with all her positive emphasis, Else Hasse apparently made use of anti-Jewish metaphors as well. She spoke of the "international banking", of the "Jewish mercantile spirit" and of the good fortune of Jewish entrepreneurs in business, which "stirs up antisemitism."[101] According to Else Hasse's statements, antisemitism is an injustice, "which for millennia has made an entire people responsible and punishable for the crimes of a few".[102] By crime she referred to the crucifixion of Jesus. This can clearly be concluded by a short story, which she had added to her article. Although it was her intention to fight antisemitism, she passed on anti-Jewish thinking in its clearest form, connected with the well-known anti-Jewish, anti-Judaistic stereotypes prevalent at the time.

e) The Humanistic Ideal as a Christian Value?

The "humanization of women", humanistic thinking, independence from any political and religious partisanship - these were the ideals and goals of the founders of the ADF.[103] But in practice, things were often quite different.

At the time of the founding of the Catholic Women's League ( Katholischer Frauenbund, KFB) in 1903, Elsbeth Krukenberg wrote in Neue Bahnen:
"It is hardly possible to put an additional women's world organization at the side of the International Council of Women, which reaches across all countries . But the ideas which drive this International Council of Women are rooted in what we have learned to recognize as fundamental Christian views: the struggle against what is base, tolerance and righteous appreciation of that which strives toward light. We women have joined together, in order to make the following words come true: 'Love your neighbor as yourself' and 'Peace on Earth.' - Our sisters who are members of the Catholic Women's League can have no other aspirations ... But that is not the goal of women, to constantly stir up struggle and strife, but rather to bring about true love of one's neighbor, to introduce an internalization and recovery of the life of our people - for that reason they come together. For that purpose, all, who think seriously and truthfully, are welcome to join us."[106]
The members of the KFB were accepted as "sisters" and thereby as belonging to the German women's movement, although their faith was an important, perhaps the most important, factor in their identity. For religious and secular feminists, a Christian outlook generally provided the common foundation. But when the JFB was established, Elsbeth Krukenberg spoke of a "special club" ( Sonderbund) and feared religious factionalism.[107] Her Jewish collaborators could not be considered benevolent like the Catholic women, who founded their work on a Christian mind-set. If Christianity formed the link between members of the bourgeois women's movement, where did Jewish feminists find their place and recognition within the movement?

Henriette Goldschmidt, who had tried to mediate in the conflict which arose at the convention of the ICW, spoke of a realization of the human ideal as the foundation and aim of the women's movement. She emphasized that the JFB would not introduce any religious opposition into the movement, but rather would strive to introduce Jewish fringe groups into German culture.[108] Henriette Goldschmidt worked on the assumption that all political and religious questions were subordinate to the realization of the human ideal. But her position was probably not shared by her Christian co-activists.

As early as 1849, Louise Otto-Peters defined, in a lecture, the principle of general equality as a Christian value.[109] It is quite apparent in her speech that she gave before the democratic women's association in Oederan how rooted Louise Otto-Peters was in Protestant tradition and thinking. She addressed her listeners as "my Christian sisters,"[110] deprecated the Roman Catholic Church,[111] praised Martin Luther and the Reformation,[112] and professed the conviction that the "heathenish republics" of Greece and Rome required the Christian mind-set in order to be perfected.[113]

Helene Lange too, despite aspiring to religious neutrality, used Christian values as a standard. This is clear in a memorial she wrote on the death of Jeanette Schwerin. Jeanette Schwerin had hoped -- like many Jewish women who worked in interconfessional feminist organizations - to build a basis for achieving "the brotherhood of people" through ethical principles and social endeavors.[114] Helene Lange wrote of her:
"There was in all her human relationships something of Nathan's[115] mature world outlook, of his mildness, which stemmed from moral grandeur. And many, many people have learned to apply the friar's words to her: There never was a better Christian!"[116]
These expressions clearly demonstrate that the non-Jewish leaders of the ADF saw equality, freedom, democracy and philanthropy as Christian values, and claimed them as values which Christianity had brought to mankind. In light of this arrogant claim, Jewish women had only two options if they wanted their collaboration to be recognized: they had either to convert or to agree not to live their Jewish identity in public. But whenever they were active in the pursuit of equality, freedom and philanthropy, and at the same time emphasized their Jewishness, they brought the image of the superiority of Christian Protestant culture into question.

In summary, Jewish women were active in leading positions (chairpersons, vice-presidents, editors) of the association or in its affiliated local groups during the total length of the German Empire. In the 1880s and 1890s - that is during a time which was notorious for the public defamation of Jewish citizens (e.g. the Berlin Movement of 1879-1885), for the establishment of antisemitic interest groups and for the accession to the German parliament of antisemitic members (1893-1904)[117] - friendly relations and reciprocal private visits between Jewish and non-Jewish members are attested to. In 1901, Else Hasse sent a clear signal against the anti-Jewish instigation of her time with her article "Women Against Antisemitism". However, the tradition of anti-Jewish metaphors in her article already shows to how great an extent the thought of German feminists were minted by centuries-old anti-Judaism.

Just after the turn of the 20th century, an increase in anti-Jewish attitudes can be observed in the available sources. In 1904, Elsbeth Krukenberg described the desire of Jewish feminists for visibility as a "curiosity", a strange aspiration, and thus called the recently founded JFB a Jewish Sonderbund, a "Jewish special club."[118] These words made clear her lack of understanding and sensitivity to her Jewish co-activists' problems and circumstances. In 1913, the members of the ADF remained silent when the social activities of a long-standing member of the board, Henriette Goldschmidt, were attacked in the press. The controversies of 1915/1916 show a clear sharpening of the rejection of those Jewish women who wanted their Jewish religion and background to be mentioned within the women's movement. Silence turned into exclusion and denunciation during World War I.

2. German Teachers' Organizations

The ADF had - as described in the previous chapter - already committed itself to the increase of employment possibilities for middle-class women from 1865. One of their goals was to achieve better education for women school teachers. In order to concentrate on the promotion of those interests specific to their profession, teachers grouped together in subsequent years and decades in independent organizations. After the founding of the BDF, the umbrella organization of the German women's movement, some of these women teachers' groups became corporate members of it.

a) The Founding of Residences and Organizations for Women Teachers

Around the middle of the 19th century, the Woman Question began to play an important role among teachers. Due to social and economic changes, many daughters of the middle class were forced to seek employment. The acute shortage of teachers at this time, and the growing demand for education, had as a consequence that many unmarried women took on the profession of teacher or governess. For example, the number of women public primary school teachers ( Volksschullehrerinnen) in Prussia in the second half of the 19th century rose dramatically. In 1886, 6,848 women teachers were employed at public primary schools; by 1891, their number had increased to 8,494 and by 1896 there were 10,000 women teaching at public primary schools.[119]

Their entrance into the public schools was not without tensions and difficulties for the women teachers. There male colleagues viewed the schools as their domain, and feared the new, female competition.[120] Very early on, women teachers recognized the need for an independent professional organization to represent their interests. And so by the beginning 1870s, the first women teachers associations had sprung up in various locations, with the goal of improving the legal, economic and educational position of this profession.[121] The oldest organization of this kind was the Association of German Women Teachers and Governesses (Verein Deutscher Lehrerinnen und Erzieherinnen), which was founded in Berlin in 1869. Its main concern was to set up and endow a home for retired women teachers.[122] Female teachers were not only at a substantial disadvantage to their male colleagues with respect to education, salary and professional position, but also state pensions were "pitiful."[123] For these reasons, many women teachers' associations considered it an important task to provide retired colleagues with a place where they could find accommodation, care and companionship corresponding to their social position and financial means.[124] Several more female teachers' associations were founded at regional level, which united to form the General German Women Teachers' Association ( Allgemeiner Deutscher Lehrerinnenverein, ADLV) under the guidance of Auguste Schmidt in 1890.[125]

At the fifth general assembly of the ADLV in Danzig in 1899, the opening of a home of the Women Teachers' Association of Hesse in Darmstadt, was announced, which had taken place in August 1898. It was pointed out that the establishment of such a home contributed to the material improvement of the teaching profession.[126] In 1900, the Bavarian Women Teachers' Association convened in Munich. At its first annual general meeting, the establishment of a rest and retirement home was discussed. A great part of the discussion was about the questions of sponsorship and finance.[127] In 1903, the Protestant Women's League (Deutscher Evangelischer Frauenbund, DEF ) advised the readers of its periodical Mitteilungen des DEF (Communications of the DEF), that they should concern themselves with their material necessities in old age, given the growing number of single, working women.[128] In the same year, the ADLV, on the occasion of its eighth general meeting in Dresden, published a list of residences for women teachers in Germany and abroad, in order to inform its members of the names and addresses of rest and retirement facilities.[129]

b) The Israelite Women Teachers' Home Association

Until World War I, Jewish women teachers remained disadvantaged with respect to their Christian colleagues. A detectable change first began when, due to numerous military call-ups, there was a shortage of teachers, and Prussian school authorities were forced to make use of Jewish women teachers.[130] In 1910, the Israelitisches Familienblatt declared: " No one could be more without rights than the Jewish woman teacher in Prussia."[131]

Hence, Jewish teachers and governesses joined together to represent their interests. They also strove to set up residences for women teachers.[132] In 1891, Pauline Münchhausen suggested in the magazine Die Lehrerin ( The Woman Teacher), the establishment of a Jewish retirement home. Inspired by her own experiences as a Jewish private tutor and governess, she sought out interested parties and benefactors for her plan. Eight years later, on February 27th, 1899, the Israelite Women Teachers' Home Association (Verein Israelitisches Lehrerinnenheim) was established, and on November 5th, 1899, the dedication of a temporary residence in a rented apartment in Berlin's Steglitz district took place. In March 1903, a new building for the Israelite Women Teachers' Home in the Lichterfelde neighborhood was completed and occupied.[133]

The lifestyle in this residence corresponded to that of a "respectable middle-class family pension", with regular meals, heat, bathing facilities and lighting".[134] The residence offered religious Jewish women the opportunity to live in accordance with Jewish tradition, and to observe ceremonial and ritual laws.[135] In case of illness, the Protestant welfare organization provided free nurses, and the Jewish community hospital took on the treatment of patients from the Teacher's Home. Lectures and celebrations brought excitement and variety to the residents, and strengthened their Jewish consciousness.[136]

More than fifteen local groups from all over Germany belonged to the Israelite Women Teachers' Home Association. They supported its goals both ideologically and professionally.[137] The local group in Hanover, for example, gave two thirds of its donations for the maintenance of the home in Berlin-Lichterfelde. From 1899 to 1929, the home was occupied by a total of 53 women teachers. In addition, teachers needing rest and still active in the profession found temporary accommodation there.[138]

When Pauline Münchhausen designed and promoted the plan for an old age home for Jewish women teachers, she was thinking not only about the economic disadvantages they suffered because of their gender, but also about the discrimination against them because they were Jewish. This is apparent from a lecture she gave in March 1900 at the general assembly of the local group in Stettin:

Aside from the fact that the speaker puts the material situation of the non-Jewish women teachers in rather too positive light, these lines clearly express that there were tensions and exclusions among teachers because of religious differences and affiliations. Also in Der Gemeindebote (Community Herald),[140] it is repeatedly mentioned that Jewish women teachers were banned from specifically Christian retirement homes and that interconfessional homes accepted Jewish candidates only rarely.[141] Various reasons were provided to explain this discrimination - from the strong demand for places by non-Jewish teachers on the one hand, to the bad financial situation of Jewish women teachers on the other, which made it impossible for them to pay the fees at such a home. Again and again, "religious quarrels and disputes" were mentioned in the reports in Der Gemeindebote.[142] The words of Rabbi Weiße at the dedication of the Israelite Women Teachers' Home also confirm this:

What appearance did this religious conflict take? Do statutes and reports of non-Jewish women teachers' associations provide information about it? How was the socio-political context for Jewish women teachers in the Kaiserreich comprised, and how far can it answer the question of religious discrimination among German teachers?

c) Institutional and Religious Exclusion of Jewish Women Teachers?

As a result of the Prussian Emancipation Edict of 1812, which was supposed to give male and female Jewish citizens equality regardless of their religious creed, Judaism was no longer regarded as a religion, but rather as a Konfession (denomination), like the Protestant and Catholic creeds.[144] This term was also adopted by the women's movement, whose representatives often called the Jewish religion a Konfession and sometimes spoke about "drei Konfessionen" (three denominations: Protestant, Catholic and Jewish).[145] A women's organization, defined as independent of the Jewish and Christian institutionalized religions and open to women of all faiths, was often called and described as "interkonfessionell" (interconfessional).[146] If one researches the articles of various women teachers' organizations and investigates associations which called themselves interconfessional, the German concept of Konfession at that time must be taken into account.

The statutes of the Frankfurt Women Teachers' Home, Inc. state in paragraphs 1 and 4 that teachers in Frankfurt in need of recuperation can be accepted, and that "anyone" can become a member.[147] The Leipzig Association of Women Teachers, founded in 1888, had established a teachers' home for the benefit of its members, and paragraph 4 of its statutes declared that any qualified woman teacher or governess could become a regular member.[148] The statutes of the Pension Association for Unmarried Women Teachers (Pensionsverein unverheirateter Lehrerinnen), founded in 1863 in Hamburg, state in the first paragraph that:

In a special issue of the Lehrerinnenhort (Women Teacher's Shelter), an advertisement was published on June 22, 1905 which announced the creation of a new kind of annuity insurance for women teachers who did not already have a pension, especially private teachers. This pension plan was open to all teachers without regard to denomination.[150] Further investigation into the articles of women teachers' organizations also reveals that there was no statutory exclusion or discrimination against persons by reason of their religious affiliation.[151] Yet some associations established certain regulations in regard to the acceptance of members which gave the board of directors, or some other responsible committee, broad freedom of action to choose applicants. This is confirmed, for example, in the membership of the aforementioned Leipzig Association of Women Teachers: "In cases of doubt, the board of directors decides concerning admission."[152] And in the regulations of the Frankfurt Women Teachers' Home, Inc., it is stated:

Whether the statutory limitations were used in order to exclude Jewish women because of their religion cannot be determined in the available documents from non-Jewish associations. However, an article in Der Gemeindebote provides a closer idea of the reality to which Jewish women were subjected. In the section for Correspondence and News, it was announced that a sanatorium had opened in Ems for women teachers without regard to "denomination and nationality." Furthermore, it was clearly pointed out to the readers that:

This citation makes it clear that in reality, there were boards of associations and homes which applied differential admissions criteria for Jewish and non-Jewish applicants, even when their official stated goal was to support teachers without regard to religion.

Moreover, it can be determined that the interconfessional associations and homes had a strongly Christian atmosphere. Pauline Münchhausen criticized in here lecture in Stettin the fact that the institutions, retirement homes and women teachers' homes, may have been called interconfessional, but had a thoroughly Christian character.[155] The dominant Christian (i.e. Protestant) character was also felt and complained about by Catholic women teachers. In a letter from the board of the Association of Catholic German Women Teachers (Verein katholischer deutscher Lehrerinnen), founded in 1885, the urgency to establish their own teachers' home was based on the fact that although Catholic women teachers could be admitted to existing Protestant and secular associations, they ran the risk of "having their religious and church sensibilities hurt", because of the preponderantly Protestant orientation of these institutions.[156]

As sources from the research context (e.g. financial and annual reports) show, the Christian nature of an association was expressed in the cycle of holidays (St. Nicholas Day, Christmas, New Year's Eve etc.), which ignored the Jewish holidays. And it was visible in the far higher number of Protestant residents compared to the number of Jewish ones.[157] It is easy to understand how this state of affairs led to a situation in which Jewish women admitted to such a home found themselves a visible and palpable minority.
d) Reactions to Legal Discrimination Against Jewish Teaching Staff
The constitutional charter for Prussia of December 5th, 1848 declared the rights of state and civil rights of citizens to be independent of religious affiliation. As a result, Jews gained the right to work as teachers in public schools. But in the constitutional charter of 1850, it was added that at public primary schools, "the religious conditions should be factored in as much as possible."[158] The preservation of the religious orientation in public schools provided, from that point on, the administrative guidelines in the Prussian regime when hiring Jewish public primary school teachers. This demand was reflected in various official regulations in the 1890s, which made the employment of Jewish teachers at public elementary schools dependent on the Jewish students attending the school in question.[159] The consequences of such a decree were that Jewish teachers lost their eligibility for positions or were transferred to a different school.[160] The boards of the Jewish community in Berlin and of the JFB as well as various Jewish newspapers protested and complained about this legal discrimination for many years to come.[161] But from the non-Jewish side, and in particular from the women teachers' associations, whose declared goal was to further the material and legal betterment of women teachers, official position statements were rare.

The Association of Berlin Public Primary School Teachers (Verein Berliner Volksschullehrerinnen) published a resolution in November 1895 expressing its deep regret concerning:

From the 1898/99 annual report of the New Public Primary School Women Teachers' Association (Neuer Volksschullehrerinnen-Verein) in Berlin, one learns that in November 1898, the association drafted two petitions to the municipality and the Royal Provincial School Council in which they advocated the equal treatment of Jewish women teachers.[163] These proposals met with some success, since the following was published in the annual report:

These protests are remarkable, since antisemitism in party politics had reached a high water mark in the 1890s. Various organizations such as the Agrarian League (Bund der Landwirte) and the German National Association of Commercial Employees ( Deutschnationale Handlungshilfenverband) were founded the same year, and were demonstrably antisemitic and increasingly racist. The Association of German Students ( Verein Deutscher Studenten, VDSt) excluded Jews from membership. All the important student associations gradually followed this example. The change to an antisemitic association policy, i.e. the denial of membership to Jewish students, took place approximately between 1890 and 1895.[165] In June 1909, the VDSt invited the Berlin Association of Studying Women to a meeting, from which it explicitly excluded the Jewish members of that women's organization. Nevertheless, the invitation was accepted by the board of directors. Members of the Association of Studying Women protested so strongly that the board members resigned from their posts and founded an antisemitic organization, the German Academic Women's League with Christian national principles (Deutsch-akademischer Frauenbund auf christlich-nationaler Grundlage).[166]

In the antisemitic atmosphere towards Jewish teachers and students, described above, the Berlin women public primary school teachers' associations took a bold position. In light of the behavior of the organized teaching profession in general, however, they must be evaluated as exceptional. Biographical excerpts from Jewish and non-Jewish women teachers in Berlin and Hamburg indicate that antisemitism was strongly represented in the teaching profession as early as the 1880s and 1890s.[167] In other cities of the Kaiserreich too, many men and women teachers had openly antisemitic leanings, which became also evident in the following incident: In 1913, Marie Wegner, the first chairperson of the Silesian Women's League (Schlesischer Frauenverband), was looking for a speaker for a women's assembly in Cottbus. She asked Gertrud Bäumer from the BDF for help and expressed the following to her:

In summary, the secular women teachers' associations were, according to their statutes, open to both Jewish and non-Jewish teachers. Nowhere can one find the explicit exclusion of Jewish women. But expressions and complaints by Jews show that such discrimination did occur now and then. The various women teacher's organizations may have made reference to liberty and secularism, but their residences and organizations often had a pronounced Christian character, so that Jewish teachers did not feel comfortable there. In other words, on the theoretical, legal level the non-religious women teachers' organizations were open to those of all faiths, but in practice they had a Christian orientation which led to the marginalization of Jewish women.

Worthy of note are the protests of non-Jews against the legally sanctioned limitations of the ability of Jewish women teachers to practice their profession. But - as far as the sources show - only the Association of Berlin Public Primary School Women Teachers and the New Public Primary School Women Teachers' Association were active in these protests. Other larger and smaller teachers' organizations took no position, but rather were silent in the face of this discrimination - a stance which we will often encounter also in the nursing sisterhoods, which will be explored in the next chapter.

3. Nurses' Associations

a) A Short Overview of the History and Development of the Nursing Profession

Until the 1870s, nursing was carried out mostly by Catholic nuns and Protestant deaconesses. Becoming a nurse was, for educated girls and women at this time, synonymous with entry into a Catholic religious order or a Protestant deaconess motherhouse. But the shortage of nurses during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 led to the transformation of this profession and to the establishment of new religious and non-religious nurses' organizations. These offered women the possibility to learn and practice the nursing profession outside of church institutions. The first associations of this kind were the sisterhoods of the Red Cross.[169]

The structure of these new nurses' associations was always, however, reminiscent of the forms adopted from the religious orders and deaconess motherhouses. For example, the Red Cross demanded that its nurses be unconditionally obedient, that they give up an individual life-style, and that they live separately from their families.[170] This discouraged many women and girls from becoming active in nursing, with the result that the need for nursing personnel, in spite of the reorganization, could not be fully met.

The development of more new and independent organizational structures in the profession was necessary: At the turn of the 20th century, women who wanted to keep their independence, and to whom a private life was important, joined either state or municipal nursing sisterhoods, or associations for nurses.[171] One of these new groups was the Professional Organization of German Nurses (Berufsorganisation der Krankenpflegerinnen Deutschlands, BOKD). It was founded by Agnes Karll on January 11th, 1903 with an initial membership of thirty persons.

Agnes Karll (1868-1927), a former nurse of the Red Cross in Hanover, had worked as a freelance nurse in private homes from 1891-1901. In 1894, when she accompanied a patient to the United States, she got an insight into the American nursing situation. This inspired her to establish an independent professional organization for professional nurses in Germany to improve their financial, material situation. Despite strong opposition by German physicians and politicians, she pursued the founding of a nation-wide organization for nurses. Her efforts were supported by representatives of the women's movement. At the inaugural meeting of the BOKD, Agnes Karll was assigned its chairperson.[172]

In November 1905, 840 members belonged to the new organization. Its chairperson Agnes Karll advanced the transformation and improvement of the profession with a great deal of passion and talent.[173] It was the goal and task of the new professional organization to give its members social support and to further their interests in the areas of education, working conditions and care in their old age.[174] The organization had at its disposal an office which helped them find both training opportunities and positions in domestic, clinical and hospital nursing. As early as 1903, the BOKD was a corporate member of the BDF, which at its meetings addressed the educational and employment issues of this profession.[175]

In 1904, the BOKD joined the International Council of Nurses (ICN). Agnes Karll was one of its co-founders. In 1909, she was elected president of the ICN, and in 1912, she even organized a congress of the ICN in Cologne. Agnes Karll was convinced that international contacts would help the BODK gain more support and acknowledgement by German officials. Furthermore, she thought that nursing for the sick could serve the goal of world peace. Nevertheless, when World War I broke out, Agnes Karll welcomed the war enthusiastically as many other Germans did. International relationships came to a halt. When the German ministry of war rejected the BODK nurses for military service, her enthusiasm gradually ceased. BODK nurses were sent to Austria instead. In 1925, Agnes Karll described the war as a destroyer of the German nursing practice. In 1926, relations with the ICN were renewed and remained active until the rise of the Nazi regime. Towards the end of the 1920s, the BODK numbered approximately 4,000 members.[176]

b) The German Union of Jewish Nurses' Associations

Although a transformation of the nursing profession took place from the second half of the 19th century onward, and the professional had developed into a recognized, secular occupation for women, the religious principles and ties were still overwhelmingly binding for the new nursing sisterhoods. The state and municipal nurses, who were willing to commit themselves for a specified period of time to nursing in a provincial or city hospital, had to prove membership in the Protestant or Catholic Church in order to be hired. Interconfessional institutions for the ill were rare. Even institutions associated with the Red Cross, such as the Sisterhood of the St. John Order (Johanniter-Schwesternschaft)[177], accepted only unmarried women and widows of the Christian faith. Religious support was important to Catholic nurses as well; they joined the Association for Catholic Lay Nurses (Verein für katholische weltliche Krankenpflegerinnen), which was founded in 1905 in Breslau.[178] For Jewish women, only very few possibilities were available at this time to find a training position as a nurse. They therefore had recourse to their own positions and nurses' associations.

There were associations for Jewish nurses from 1893 onward. The first of its kind was founded in Frankfurt am Main. Further facilities followed, among others those in Berlin (1894), Cologne (1898) and Breslau (1899). At the beginning of the 20th century, there were already eleven Jewish nurses' associations, which in 1905 joined together to form the German Union of Jewish Nurses' Associations (Deutscher Verband Jüdischer Krankenpflegerinnenvereine). Its aim was to advance the education of Jewish nurses, and to raise their social and financial standing, as well as providing them with care in their old age. Statutes and guidelines from 1906 confirm that the organization expected nursing without regard to religion, which corresponded to the principles of Judaism.[179]

With the founding of the Jewish nurses' associations, the main goal was not the fulfilling a need for religious solidarity, but rather the necessity of finding or creating training opportunities for Jewish women. In the Women's Movement Handbook (Handbuch der Frauenbewegung), one can read concerning the history and development of the nursing profession that Jewish girls were not accepted into Christian organizations and that the interconfessional ones often did not grant them admission.[180] At the third convention of delegates of the JFB in Munich in 1911, Mrs. Frankl spoke about the situation of Jewish nurses and expressed the opinion that the creation of Jewish nurses' associations was necessary, because Jewish women would not be accepted in the existing church-based groups.[181] Professor Breuer, who has researched on Orthodox Judaism in the German Empire, comes to the conclusion that Jewish girls only seldom chose the nursing profession because there were not enough doctors and hospitals which were prepared to take into consideration the requirements of religiously observant trainee nurses.[182]

Testimonies show that Jewish women at the time of the Kaiserreich did not find acceptance and support. Faith-based Christian facilities refused to admit them as trainee nurses by reason of their religious affiliation. Secular institutions and associations were often unwilling to accept Jewish girls and women for training. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were as the Handbook of the Women's Movement (1906) shows, only two large interconfessional organizations for nurses: the Red Cross, with about 3,200 members (as of 1906) and the BOKD, with 840 members (as of November 1905).[183] Both these organizations will therefore serve as subjects of the following investigation.

c) The Red Cross: Friendly or Hostile to Jews?

An inspection of the sources presents the attitude of members of the Red Cross toward Jewish men and women in a somewhat ambiguous light. Publications from the general German women's movement and the German Protestant Women's League ( DEF) show that Jewish women could join the Red Cross.[184] The memoirs of Ida Jauffron-Frank and Frieda Düwell also confirm this. Both women put themselves at the service of the Red Cross during World War I, and received training as nurses there.[185] Further texts attest to the fact that Jewish women participated in the women's associations of the Red Cross, and that there was - particularly between 1914 and 1918 - an active cooperation between the Red Cross and the associations for Jewish nurses.[186]

In the Frankfurt Union for the Care of Infants (Verband für Säuglingsfürsorge), Jewish nurses and nurses from the Red Cross worked side by side. In February 1915, the Union of Jewish Nurses (Verein für jüdische Krankenpflegerinnen) and several other Frankfurt Jewish women's associations, collected together with the Red Cross donations for soldiers at the front.[187] At the assembly of delegates of the Union of Jewish Nurses, it was announced that:

These words present a very friendly picture. Jewish women in the sisterhoods and associations of the Red Cross won acceptance, membership, influence in decision-making, and recognition for their services. But there are also other sources and research results: the historian Claudia Prestel points out in her study on the education of Jewish nurses that the JFB was able to achieve admission into the headquarters of Red Cross only during World War I.[189] Indeed, the majority of Germans initially saw the war as a unifying factor. The words of the Kaiser "I only know Germans"[190] seemed also to be corroborated in the women's movement. It made women of all religious and political outlooks join their forces to support the fatherland on the home front.[191] However, in the case of the Red Cross, further events from this time period (1914-1918) clearly indicate antisemitic attitudes within this organization: The Association for the Abolition of Antisemitism ( Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus) received a letter in October 1914 from the acting military inspector of volunteer nursing with a request for access into material sent to the Association about antisemitic tendencies within the Red Cross. His letter ends with the words: "I would greatly regret ... if antisemitic attitude were present in the Red Cross"[192]
[...]
[1] Bussemer 1985, 40-42, 48-50.; Baumann 1992, 16; Greven-Aschoff 1981, 45-46; Weiland 1983, 86-87.

[2] Weiland 1983, 55-56; Obschernitzki 1987, 1-3, 19-20.

[3] Geiss 1988, 271-273.; Fassmann 1996, 30-34.

[4] Fassmann 1996, 52; see also Segall 1914, 17-23.

[5] Kaplan 1981, 103-105, 122-125; Kaplan 1984, 181-183, 185-187.

[6] Kaplan 1984, 186-189; Fassmann 1996, 297.

[7] Heidemarie Wawrzyn, Fatherland versus Human Rights. Forms of Antisemitism in the German Women's Movement in Imperial Germany. PhD diss., University of Bremen, published by Diagonal Verlag, Marburg, 1999.

[8] For example: Rürup/Nipperdey 1975, 107, 111; Rürup 1975, 89-90; Rürup 1984, 95-96; Jochmann 1984, 134; Poliakov 1988, 42. See also Heinsohn 2006, 17-18.

[9] Greive 1982, 165-166; Bereswill/Wagner 1998, 8-9; Volkov 1990, 23; Volkov 2006, 100-118. See also Kulka vs. Volkov in Kulka 2005, 70-72.

[10] Kulka 2005, 71, note 12 which includes references to Ulrich Herbert 1996 and Saul Friedländer 1997.

[12] The adjective "Christian" is not understood exclusively as "religiously Christian," but rather in the sense of those values, norms and outlooks which were originally inherited from Christianity. These values and norms became part of German culture, even if their bearers do not consider themselves associated with the institution of the Church.

[13] E.g. Gertrud Bäumer and Minna Cauer.

[14] E. g. Anita Augspurg, Lida Gustava Heymann, Gertrud Bäumer, Helene Stöcker, Lily Braun.

[15] Mosse 2006, 64-74; Poliakov 1987, 106-116.

[16] Hillerbrand 2002, 455-472; Schoeps 2006, 18-32; Johann 2008, 9; Mosse 2006, 64-70; Poliakov 1987, 106-116.

[17] Wistrich 1992: The Longest Hatred; Wistrich 1994: Antisemitism in the New Europe.

[18] Wistrich 1992, XVIII-XIX, XX ff, 12

[19] Wistrich 1994, 5.

[20] Evans 1976: The Feminist Movement in Germany 1894-1933.

[21] Evans' thesis has been discussed controversially for years. Nevertheless, his early indication of nationalist theories and practice within the feminist movement set the course for further researches in the 1980s and 1990s. Evans 1976, 273-274; Streubel 2006, 57-58; Reagin 1995, 253-254; Gehmacher 1994, 138.

[22] Mitscherlich 1983; Stoehr 1983; Schmidt-Waldherr 1984.

[23] For more details on the debate over the victim or perpetrator role of women in the Third Reich, see Gehmacher 1994, 138-140; Reagin 1995, 253-254 and Evans 1987, 171-174.

[24] Kaplan 1984: Sisterhood under Siege: Feminism and Anti-Semitism in Germany, 1904-1938; Dürkop 1984: Erscheinungsformen des Antisemitismus im Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine. See also Kaplan 1981: Die jüdische Frauenbewegung in Deutschland. Organisation und Ziele des Jüdischen Frauenbundes 1904-1938.

[25] Mechthild Bereswill, Leonie Wagner, Helga Krohn, Susanne Omran, Dagmar Herze and Johanna Gehmacher.

[26] Bereswill/Wagner 1998: Bürgerliche Frauenbewegung und Antisemitismus..

[27] Wawrzyn 1999: Vaterland statt Menschenrecht. Formen der Judenfeindschaft in den Frauenbewegungen des Kaiserreiches

[28] Examples: An anthology, published in 2000 by Ute Planert, about women's movements and nationalism in the modern age; Andrea Süchting-Hänger's study on women's organizations in the conservative Protestant milieu (2002); Raffael Scheck's work about women in German people's political parties (2004); and Christiane Streubel's research about the National Women's Ring (Ring Nationaler Frauen) (2006). Lora Wildenthal in 2001 and Anette Dietrich in 2007 devoted themselves to the subject of women and 'race' in German colonialism.

[29] Ute Planert 2000; Süchting-Hänger 2002; Scheck 2004; Omran 2000; Braukmann 2007.

[30] Dürkop 1984, 140; Fassmann 1996, 16.

[31] Omran 2000, 15.

[32] Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums ( General Newspaper of Jewry ), Israelitisches Familienblatt ( Israelite Family Newsletter ), and Blätter des Jüdischen Frauenbundes ( Newsletter of the Jewish Women's League, 1924-1936).

[33] The work at hand does not present the events of anti-Jewish behavior in a chronological order, since each chapter focuses on certain women's organizations including their goals, works and concepts. Some antisemitic incidents are mentioned a few times in different chapters of this work. This is due to the fact that every analysis of a certain women's group raises again the question of anti-Jewish attitudes of its members, and that often several women's groups participated in the same antisemitic incident. However, in order to simplify for the readers the overview of events, I presented the chronological compilation.

[34] Silvia Lange 1998.

[35] Out of linguistic convention, in the text itself I mainly use the singular form "women's movement," but in the title and the classification scheme, I think that the diversity and variety should be highlighted through the use of the plural "women's movements."

[37] German Protestant Women's League 1899, Catholic Women's League 1903, and Jewish Women's League 1904.

[38] Schaser 2006, 9-10. - The Revolution of 1848 was a series of loosely coordinated protests and revolts, which emphasized discontent with the largely autocratic political structure of the German Confederation and demonstrated the desire for political and social freedom, democracy, and national unity.

[39] Otto-Peters 1890, p1; Gerhard et al. 1980, 7, 12-13, 14-15, 20; Gerhard 1991, 63-66; Weiland 1983, 190-191; Evans 1977, 103-104.

[40] These were educational associations which adopted the pedagogical concept of Friedrich Fröbel, the founder of the idea of kindergarten. In 1851, Fröbel's kindergartens were banned by the Prussian Ministry of Culture because of their "destructive" tendencies with regard to religion and politics (Gerhard 1991, 69).

[41] Gerhard 1991, 65-69; Gerhard 2004, 106-108; Fredriksen 1981, 485-488; Frevert 1986, 72 -75; Weiland 1983, 65-68; 228-230.

[42] Cf. Archiv des ungarischen Ministeriums und Landesvertheidigungsausschusses, Altenburg 1851, Vol. 1, 219-221.

[43] Bäumer/Lange 1901, Handbuch I, 49; Otto-Peters 1890, 5; Twellmann 1972, 34-35. 38-39; Fassmann 1996, 163; Evans 1976, 24; Obschernitzki 1987, 18; Weiland 1983, 14-19; Schaser 2006, 41; StA Leipzig, PP-V 2658, "Gründung und Entwicklung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins" [1896].

[44] StA Leipzig, PP-V 2658, "Gründung und Entwicklung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins" [1896]; Otto 1876, 155, 244.

[45] Greven-Aschoff 1981, 84; StA Leipzig, PP-V 2658, "Gründung und Entwicklung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins" [1896]; Evans works on the assumption of approximately 14,000 members in 1914 (Evans 1976, 30).

[46] Bäumer/Lange 1901, Handbuch I, 53.

[47] Otto-Peters 1890, 4; Bäumer/Lange 1901, Handbuch I, 52.

[48] StA Leipzig, PP-V 2658, "Gründung und Entwicklung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins" [1896].

[49] StA Leipzig, PP-V 2658, "Gründung und Entwicklung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins" [1896}, 1-8; Otto-Peters 1890, 10,35; Bäumer/Lange 1901, Handbuch I, 54-56. Evans 1976, 25-26; Fassmann 1996, 163; Frandsen 1974, 26; cf. Twellmann 1972, 41.

[50] Weiland 1983, 17-18.

[51] Evans 1976, 24

[52] Bussemer 1985, 124-128; 170-171, 185-189, 241-245; Bussemer 1988, 199-202; cf. Gerhard 1991, 123-125 and Hervé 1983, 28.

[53] Weiland 1983, 16.

[54] Schaser 2006, 119.

[55] Die Frau, November 1904, 98; StA Leipzig, PP-V 2658, "Gründung und Entwicklung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins" [1896], 2.

[56] Otto-Peters 1890, 15, 98-99; Siebe and Prüfer 1922, 75-80; Neue Bahnen, Nov. 15, 1904, 184; Fassmann 1996, 177¸ StA Leipzig, PP-V 2658, "Gründung und Entwicklung des ADF" [1896]; Leipziger Tagesblatt, Jan. 8, 1900; Hallesche Allgemeine Zeitung, Oct. 1, 1905.

[57] The Lette-Verein was founded in 1866 in Berlin by Wilhelm Adolf Lette. The goal of the association was to advance the employment capacities and activity of the unmarried daughters of the middle class. For more information about this institution, see Obschernitzki 1987, 1, 20-31, 250-251.

[59] Fassmann 1996, 236-238; StdA Frankfurt a. M:, S3/T 6.720, "Programm der 18. Generalversammlung des ADF in Frankfurt a. M., 30.9.-3.10. 1895".

[61] Neue Bahnen, Nov. 15, 1900, 258; Jan. 1, 1910, 6-7; Fassmann 1996, 191-194; Kaplan 1991, 206-207.

[62] Dick and Sassenberg 1993, 21; Fassmann 1996, 303; Neue Bahnen, March 15, 1911, 46.

[63] Weiland 1983, 248.

[64] ALBI/NY, ME 889, Braun-Vogelstein [1965], 98-99; Kaplan 1991, 204-206.

[65] ALBI/NY, ME 441, Meyring [1933], 8-9.

[66] ALBI/NY, ME 889, Braun-Vogelstein [1965], 26-27, 98; Neue Bahnen, April 1, 1902, 83.

[67] Kaplan 1988, 169-170; Fassmann 1996, 221-222.

[69] Nipperdey 1988, 155.

[70] Nipperdey 1988, 137-138.

[71] The International Council of Women was founded in Washington in 1888. In 1904 it comprised representatives from more than 19 countries. The goal of this organization was to gather together women of all nations, races, religions and classes under a politically and religiously neutral umbrella organization. At the International Women's Congress the exchange of thoughts and experiences among women was to be encouraged, and questions important to the "well-being of families and peoples" were to be addressed. (Groeben 1904, 74; Gerhard 1991, 210); Lexikon der Frau [1953], vol. 1, 1123-1124.

[73] AZJ, June 24, 1904, 302; Groeben 1904, 77; Feitelberg 1904, 4-5; See also Dürkop 1984, 141; Bereswill and Wagner 1997, 16; Schröder 2001, 162-163.

[74] Neue Bahnen,, July 1, 1904, 108.

[75] According to the historical context, the term "interconfessional" refers to Christian (Protestant, Catholic) and Jewish religions and can therefore be understood as secular and interreligious, i.e. open to members of different religious creeds.

[76] CBDF, July 15, 1904.

[77] CBDF, July 1904.

[78] Neue Bahnen, July 15, 1904, 122.

[79] Neue Bahnen, July 15, 1904, 122.

[81] Neue Bahnen, Aug. 15. 1904, 137; see also StA Leipzig, PP-V 2658, "Gründung und Entwicklung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins" [1896], 5.

[82] Neue Bahnen, Aug. 15, 1904, 137-138.

[83] Neue Bahnen, Aug. 15. 1904, 138.

[84] Cf. Bereswill and Wagner 1997, 19-20.

[85] Neue Bahnen, Aug. 15, 1904, 138.

[86] Neue Bahnen, Aug. 15, 1904, 137.

[87] Frandsen 1974, 53; Greven-Aschoff 1981, 85-86; Weiland 1983, 150.

[88] HLA-BDF, Abt. 3, MF 12-402, Henriette May (JFB) to Helene Lange, Oct. 12, 1915.

[89] Bereswill and Wagner 1997, 10-11; Bereswill and Wagner 1998, 47-49.

[90] HLA-BDF, Abt. 3, MF 12-402, Helene Lange to Eva von Roy, Feb. 11, 1916.

[91] HLA-BDF, Abt. 3, MF12-402, Helene Lange to Alice Bensheimer, Feb. 11, 1916.

[92] For more details on Henriette Goldschmidt's founding activities, see Gosche 1904, 100-101 and Fassmann 1996, 170-175.

[93] Staatsbürger-Zeitung, Nov. 5, 1913.

[94] Staatsbürger-Zeitung, Nov. 5, 1913.

[95] HLA-BDF, Abt. 3, MF 12-401: Pappenheim and May (JFB) to Gertrud Bäumer (BDF), Nov. 25, 1913.

[96] HLA-BDF, Abt. 3, MF 12-401: Gertrud Bäumer to the JFB board, Dec. 4, 1913.

[97] Frankfurter Israelitisches Familienblatt, Dec. 12, 1913, 4.

[98] Fassmann 1996, 222, 296-297.

[99] Neue Bahnen, May 1, 901, 112.

[100] Die Gleichheit, Nov. 16, 1892, 185-186.

[101] Neue Bahnen, May 1, 1901, 111.

[102] Neue Bahnen, May 1, 1901, 110.

[103] StA Leipzig, PP-V 2658, "Gründung und Entwicklung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins" [1896], 1; PP-V 2659, "Programm des ADL" [1895-1901], 5; Bäumer/Lange 1901, Handbuch I, 38; Lion 1926, 16.

[104] Neue Bahnen, Dec. 15, 1903, 298.

[105] See footnote 75.

[106] Neue Bahnen, Dec. 15, 1903, 298.

[107] Neue Bahnen, July 1, 1904, 108; July 15, 1904, footnote on 122.

[108] Neue Bahnen, Aug. 15, 1904, 138.

[109] Frauen-Zeitung, June 30, 1849, 99; July 7, 1849, 106; July 21, 1849, 114.

[110] Frauen-Zeitung), June 30, 1849, 100.

[111] Frauen-Zeitung, July 7, 1849, 107.

[112] Frauen-Zeitung, July 21, 1849, 114-115.

[113] Frauen-Zeitung, June 30,1849, 99-100.

[114] Fassmann 1996, 237, 291.

[116] Quoted in Fassmann 1996, 249.

[117] Geiss 1988, 272-274.

[118] Neue Bahnen, July 15, 1904, 122.

[119] Bäumer/Lange 1902, Handbuch IV, 318-320; Kall 1983, 173-175. For more details on the history and development of Volksschulen (public primary schools), see Kraus 2008, 41-47.

[120] Evans 1978, 197; Kall 1983, 174-175, 177; Weiland 1983, 168-169; Enzelberger 2001, 123.

[121] Bäumer/Lange 1902, Handbuch IV, 319.

[122] Kall 1983, 175-176.

[123] Calm 1870, 3-4, 31; Lange 1906, 6-7; Braun 1901, 329.

[124] Kaiser 1985, 267; Kall 1983, 176-177, 188.

[125] Schaser 2006, 29-32; Enzelberger 2001, 82-83; Weiland 1983; 168, 244.

[126] Centralblatt des Bundes Deutscher Frauenvereine (CBDF), July 1, 1899, 51.

[127] ADStV, Mb 68, "Bericht über die erste Hauptversammlung des Bayerischen Lehrerinnenvereins in München, 1.-4. Aug. 1900", 25-29, 84-86.

[128] Mitteilungen des DEF, July 1903, 78.

[129] ADStV, Mb 53/8, "Verhandlungen der 8. Generalversammlung des ADLV in Dresden, 31. Mai bis 2.Juni 1903".

[130] Der Gemeindebote, June 19, 1914, 2; June 25, 1915, 2.

[131] Israelitisches Familienblatt Hamburg, April 28, 1910, 13.

[133] CAHJP, TD/112, "Dreißig Jahre Verein Israelitisches Lehrerinnenheim 1899-1929", 4-6.

[135] Der Gemeindebote, June 30, 1899, 1; Nov. 1, 1899, 2.

[136] CAHJP, TD/112, "Dreißig Jahre Verein Israelitisches Lehrerinnenheim 1899-1929", 2, 7.

[138] Der Gemeindebote, June 22, 1917, 3; CAHJP, TD/112, "Dreißig Jahre Verein Israelitisches Lehrerinnenheim 1899-1929", 7.

[139] Quotation in: "Dreißig Jahre Verein Israelitisches Lehrerinnenheim 1899-1929", 4-6 (CAHJP, TD/112).

[140] A supplement of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums (General Newspaper of Jewry).

[141] Der Gemeindebote, March 3, 1899, 1; June 30, 1899, 1; Nov. 10, 1899, 2.

[143] Quotation in: "Dreißig Jahre Verein Israelitisches Lehrerinnenheim 1899-1929", 7 (CAHJP, TD/112).

[144] Katz 1982, 166-168; Rürup 1985, 85-87, 112-115; Hubatsch 1977, 174-175; Debus 1974, 232-234. See also http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jüdische_Emanzipation.

In 1869, Otto von Bismarck issued a law in the North German Federation which made Judaism equal with all other faiths. It eventually became national law upon German unification in 1871.

[145] Wolff 1928, VIII; Mitteilungen des DEF, Feb. 1903, 35.

[147] StdA Frankfurt a. M, S3/P 345.

[148] Saxon StA Leipzig, AG Leipzig, GnR 280.

[149] StA Hamburg, Senat Cl. VII Lit. Qd Nr. 39.

[150] HLA, L 000 327, Lehrerinnenhorst. Stellen-Anzeiger für Lehrerinnen und Erzieherinnen, June 22, 1905, 1-2.

[151] Cf. HLA, L 000 306, L 000 094 , L 000 095, articles of different women teachers' associations.

[152] Saxon StA Leipzig, AG Leipzig, GnR 280, § 4, Satzung des Leipziger Lehrerinnenvereins.

[153] StdA Frankfurt a. M., S3/P 345: § 6, Satzung des Frankfurter Lehrerinnenheims e. V., 1903.

[154] Der Gemeindebote, April 26, 1901, 3.

[155] CAHJP, TD/112, "Dreißig Jahre Verein Israelitisches Lehrerinnenheim 1899-1929".

[156] Kall 1983, 184, 188.

[157] See financial and annual reports of various women teachers' and women's charity associations, 1900-1915, in StdA Frankfurt a. M., V 426, V532; CAHJP, TD/112.

[158] Segall 1912, 57; Lamberti 1978, 124-128.

[159] Segall 1912, 57.

[160] Der Gemeindebote, Se 29, 1899, 1; HLA, L 000 094: "Jahresbericht des Neuen Volksschullehrerinnen-Vereins 4/1898-4/1899", 2.

[161] Der Gemeindebote, Sep. 29, 1899, 1; Israelitisches Familienblatt. Die Laubhütte, March 16, 1899, 162; Israelitisches Familienblatt, Sep. 25, 1902, 13; Oct. 13, 1904, 3; April 28, 1910, 13; Frankfurter Israelitisches Familienblatt, April 1, 1910, 2; Jüdische Rundschau, March 28, 1913, 129.

[162] Der Gemeindebote, Nov. 8, 1895, 2.

[163] HLA, L 000 094: "Jahresbericht des Neuen Volksschullehrerinnen-Vereins 4/1898-4/1899," 2.

[165] Geiss 1988, 273-274; Kampe 1988, 13, 209-210; Rürup 1984, 95-96.

[166] Im deutschen Reich, July 1909, 447-448.

[167] Lüders 1925, 50, Schwab 1956, 8; ALBI/Jer., LBI/8, "Erinnerungen einer deutschen Jüdin" (Doris Davidsohn), 9; ALBI/Jer, LBI 14: "Lebenserinnerungen von Marianne Joseph", 3.

[168] HLA-BDF, MF 12-414, Marie Wegner (Breslau) to Gertrud Bäumer (BDF), Dec. 20, 1913; Bereswill and Wagner 1997, 22.

[170] Mitteilungen des DEF, Sep. 1904, 92.; Süchting-Hänger 2002, 43-43.

Red Cross: The International Red Cross was founded in 1864, with 16 nations participating. Each member nation established national associations to nurse sick and injured soldiers. The Central Committee of German Associations of the Red Cross was formed in April 1869 (Süchting-Hänger 2002, 28).

[171] Bäumer/Lange 1906, Handbuch V, 116, 126-128; Mitteilungen des DEF, Se 1904, 94; Stewart and Austin 1962, 305.

[172] http://www.pflegewiki.de/wiki/Agnes_Karll; Förster 2007, 18-20.

[173] Karll 1903, 57-60; Stewart and Austin 1962, 305; Nutting and Dock 1974, 10; Förster 2007, 9, 20.

[174] Neue Bahnen, March 1, 1903, 57-60.

[175] Leipziger Tageblatt, Oct. 4, 1902; CBDF, Nov. 1, 1912; Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine 1912, 147-166; HLA-BDF, Abt. 5, V, MF 18-742: Gertrud Bäumer to BDF board, Aug. 3, 1915; Stewart and Austin 1962, 306.

[176] http://www.dbfk.de/presse/DBFK_Historie.pdf; Förster 2007, 12-14.

[177] The Chivalric Order of St. John founded the Johanniter-Schwesternschaft in 1885-1886 ( Johanniterorden, Sep. 2006, 20). Cf. Staehle 1998, 224-290.

[178] Bäumer/Lange 1902, Handbuch IV, 308-309; Bäumer/Lange 1906, Handbuch V, 127; Dammer 1988, 55-56; Guttmann 1989, 85-8; Der Katholische Frauenbund, Feb. 16, 1907, 73.

[179] Breuer 1986, 251; Bäumer/Lange 1906, Handbuch V, 128; Prestel 1992, 44-45, 58; Israelitisches Familienblatt, April 24, 1913, 14; Beilage zum Frankfurter Israelitischen Familienblatt, Jan. 10, 1913, 9; Der Gemeindebote, Oct. 6, 1905, 1, Nov. 10, 1905, 1; CAHJP, TD/157, "Delegiertenversammlung der Vereinigungen zur Ausbildung jüdischer Krankenpflegerinnen in Deutschland 1904"; CAHJP, TD/77, "Jahresbericht des Vereins für jüdische Krankenpflege in Westfalen e. V., 1909/1910."

[180] Bäumer/Lange 1906, Handbuch V, 128.

[181] Frankfurter Israelitisches Familienblatt, Jan. 20, 1911, 3.

[182] Breuer 1986, 251.

[183] Bäumer/Lange 1906, Handbuch V, 117, 121-123.

[184] Mitteilungen des DEF, Feb. 1903, 35; Bäumer/Lange 1906, Handbuch V, 122.

[185] ALBI/Jer, LBI/50, "Lebenserinnerungen von Ida Jauffron-Frank," 17; ALBI/NY, ME 859, II, "Erinnerungen von Frieda Düwell", 12.

[186] Der Gemeindebote, May 18, 1917, 3.

[187] StdA Frankfurt a. M., StVV 1-751, "Erster Jahresbericht des Frankfurter Verbandes für Säuglingsfürsorge, 1911"; StdA Frankfurt a. M., S2/153, "Spendenaufruf der Frauenvereinigung der Frankfurt-Loge und der Weiblichen Fürsorge, Februar 1915".

[188] Der Gemeindebote, Dec. 10, 1915, 1; ALBI/NY, AR 7167, Julius and Margarete Goldstein Collection.

[189] Prestel 1992, 44, footnote 15; see also Wildenthal 1994, 28.

[190] Speech from the throne by Kaiser Wilhelm II on Aug. 4, 1914.

[191] Bäumer 1914, 26-27; Lüders, Marie-Elisabetz 1936, 12; Süchting-Hänger 2002, 93-96; Ev. Frauenzeitung, Jan. 1, 1915, 52.

[192] Mitteilungen aus dem Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus, Oct. 24, 1914, 131.

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GRIN - Antisemitism in the German Women's Movement 1865-1933

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Acknowledgments Preface Introduction 1. Antisemitism, an Explanation of the Concept 2. Research on Antisemitism in the German Women's Movement 3. Research Method: Reading between the Lines - and Chronology of Antisemitic Incidents - 4. A Classification Scheme I. The Moderate Liberal Women's Movement 1.

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How the women's movement has gotten to the point it is now from 1918-2018. Germany also legalized the right for women to vote before America did!

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Just an added touch of pink? Or a powerful boost for feminism in Germany? Opinion-making magazines, fashion with a message and a demonstration in Berlin indicate where things are heading.

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Just an added touch of pink? Or a powerful boost for feminism in Germany? Opinion-making magazines, fashion with a message and a demonstration in Berlin indicate where things are heading.

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This news article goes in depth on Germany's progress in the equality movement and how eight specific people contributed and helped further the process.

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Women's movements in Germany - a long history | DW | 08.03.2018

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Women have been fighting for equal rights in Germany for over 170 years. Despite their extraordinary achievements, the #MeToo movement also shows that much still has to be done.

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Clara Zetkin was part of the German social Democratic Party and went to Paris to further study women's rights.

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Louise Otto published journals, novels, newspaper line, and short stories in 1843 in Germany.

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Louise Otto-Peters (26 March 1819, Meissen - 13 March 1895, Leipzig) was a German suffragist and women's rights movement activist who wrote novels, poetry, essays, and libretti. She wrote for Der Wandelstern [The Wandering Star] and Sächsische Vaterlandsblätter [Saxon Fatherland Pages], and founded Frauen-Zeitung and Neue Bahnen specifically for women. She is best known as the founder in 1865 of the General German Women's Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein) .

Louise Otto was born in Meissen, the daughter of Charlotte and Wilhelm Otto, a successful lawyer. She was educated by private tutors. In 1835, when she was 16, both her parents and an older sister died. Otto-Peters thereafter lived with her two older sisters. At this point, she began writing novels, short stories, poetry, and political articles to make a living. She additionally worked as a journalist from 1843 "with articles about her concept of femininity, as well as women and politics".

Otto-Peters became friends with Robert Blum and other democrats, and this connection permitted her to contribute to their newspapers, specifically, Der Wandelstern [The Wandering Star] and Sächsische Vaterlandsblätter [Saxon Fatherland Pages]. By the autumn of 1843 Otto-Peters had become a regular staff member for these two publications, occasionally writing under the pseudonym of Otto Stern. After the democratic revolution of 1848, Otto-Peters founded Frauen-Zeitung, the first political women's newspaper in Germany. Her newspaper brought forth a new law to be implemented which explicitly forbade women to be editors of newspapers in Saxony. Her newspaper moved from Leipzig to Gera (beyond the borders of Saxony) and under this condition was able to continue publishing until 1853.

Louise Otto became engaged to August Peters in 1849, but he was soon thereafter imprisoned for his rebellious stance against the government. They eventually married in 1858, but in 1864 August Peters died from heart disease.

Louise founded the women's journal Neue Bahnen in 1855. In 1865, Louise Otto-Peters, Minna Cauer, and other women suffragists founded the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein [General German Women's Association] and participated in the first women's conference in Leipzig. She was the primary editor of Neue Bahnen until her death in 1895.

She is buried in the Neuen Johannisfriedhof in Leipzig.

She was called by peers the "songbird of the German women's movement". Her first socio-political novel was Ludwig the Waiter (1843), followed by Castle and Factory (1846-1847), initially confiscated but brought attention to her works. Otto-Peters called on the public for better working conditions for poor women.

According to Ann T. Allen:

Otto-Peters understood emancipation as the validation of qualities that she considered distinctly female, including compassion and human concern, rather than as imitation of men. She stressed the importance of these qualities to the public as well as the private sphere, arguing that well-paying jobs for women would advance the welfare of individual women in society as a whole.

The 1958 East German film Nur eine Frau ( Only one Woman) is based on her life.

Louise Otto-Peters' published works as cited by An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers.

Novels:

Ludwig der Kellner, 2 volumes, 1843.

Kathinka, 2 volumes, 1844.

Die Freunde, 3 volumes, 1845.

Schloß und Fabrik, 4 volumes, 1846-1847.

Römisch und deutsch, 4 volumes, 1847.

Buchenheim, 3 volumes, 1851.

Jesuiten und Pietisten oder Cäcilie Telville, 3 volumes, 1852.

Zwei Generationen, 3 volumes, 1852.

Nürnberg, 3 volumes, 1858.

Die Schultheientochter von Nürnberg, 3 volumes, 1861.

Neue Bahnen, 2 volumes, 1864.

Die Idealisten, 4 volumes, 1867.

Die Stiftsherren von Straburg, 2 volumes, 1872.

Die Nachtigall von Werawag, 4 volumes, 1887.

Novellas and short stories:

Aus der neuen Zeit, 1845.

Aus der alten Zeit, 2 volumes, 1860.

Kunst und Künstlerleben, 1863.

Mädchenbilder aus der Gegenwart, 1864.

Musikerleiden und- freuden, 1871.

Zwischen den Bergen, 2 volumes, 1873.

Aus vier Jahrhunderten, 2 volumes, 1883.

Poems:

Other:

Adresse eines deutschen Mädchens, 1848.

Die Kunst und unsere Zeit, 1852.

Das Recht der Frauen auf Erwerb, 1866.

Privatgeschichten der Weltgeschichte, 6 volumes, 1868-1872.

Frauenleben im Deutschen Reich, 1876.

Das erste Vierteljahrhundert des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins, 1890.

Opera libretti:

Editor or co-editor of journals:

Deutsche Frauenzeitung

Mitteldeutsche Volkszeitung

Neue Bahnen

Vaterlandsblätter (contributor under the pseudonym Otto Stern)

Adler, Hans. "On a Feminist Controversy: Louise Otto vs. Louise Aston," in Joeres, Ruth-Ellen B. and M.J. Maynes, eds., German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Social and Literary History. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986: 193-214.

Joeres, Ruth-Ellen Boetcher. Die Anfänge der deutschen Frauenbewegung: Louise Otto-Peters. Frankfurt a/M: Fischer, 1983.

Joeres, Ruth-Ellen Boetcher. "Louise Otto and Her Journals: A Chapter in Nineteenth-Century German Feminism," in Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, IV (1979): 100-29.

Koepcke, Cordula. Louise Otto-Peters. Die rote Demokratin. Freiburg: Herder, 1981.

Diethe, Carol. The life and work of Germany's founding feminist Louise Otto-Peters (1819 -1895). Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002 (in English)

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Louise Otto-Peters (26 March 1819, Meissen - 13 March 1895, Leipzig) was a German suffragist and women's rights movement activist who wrote novels, poetry, essays, and libretti. She wrote for Der Wandelstern [The Wandering Star] and Sächsische Vaterlandsblätter [Saxon Fatherland Pages], and founded Frauen-Zeitung and Neue Bahnen specifically for women.

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Germany cannot fall into gender standards especially during the pandemic.

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What Merkel, the belated feminist, did for women - France 24

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What Merkel, the belated feminist, did for women

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Germany protests for more feminism.

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Men are more respectful and less aggressive to women, there seems to be better feminist views.

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Preparing for the walk home from work in Minneapolis was a process of armoring.

After dark, before locking up the café where I spent my evenings pouring latte art for greying Mac users, I would get ready for the ten-minute walk across my residential neighborhood. Leather jacket, knife clipped to my boot, keys placed as my mother had taught me: jutting out between my knuckles and held tightly in my jacket pocket, "just to be safe."

I walked a walk full of faux-confident swagger past the shadowy city park where my mother used to go jogging with a pistol shoved in her waistband, back when the city had been dubbed "Murderapolis" for its high gun crime rates.

The "better-safe-than-sorry" approach to urban navigation was the norm amongst my female-identified peers in the United States. Hoodies and sweat pants to obscure curves and combat cat-calls, cycling in the middle of the street to avoid being pushed off your bike and mugged - or worse.

In my early twenties, there was a blossoming trend in cat-shaped keychains that could be worn on the knuckles, whose pointed ears were meant to deliver a blow to the eyes of assailants.

Another soaring, disconcerting trend emerged with crowdfunding as a way to cover the medical bills of friends who had been assaulted.

These precautions and fears, though still in the back of my mind, are not nearly as urgent living here in Germany as they were for me in the United States.

I don't have a routine to protect my body when I leave my workplace or home in Leipzig because, although of course crime happens everywhere, I generally feel much safer here.

What the statistics say

I stepped into womanhood wary and alert, practiced in the art of walking with confidence and emitting a certain hardness, having been warned against "looking like a victim." And of course, in spite of all precautions, the armor had already failed the countless millions of us who, as girls, knew violation under the hands of men or boys before we had a name for it (#MeToo).

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 1 in 3 women (35%) worldwide have experienced sexual or other physical violence in their lifetime. Violence against women has always been and continues to be a widespread problem, one which takes on a different face in every corner of the globe.

Earlier this year, I stumbled across a few reports that attempt to put gender inequality into facts and figures: namely, the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report and the United Nations' Gender Inequality Index.

Each report examines various criteria in order to rank countries on the relative position of women in society compared to men. The Gender Gap Report focuses less on health and education indicators and more on economic or political power, while the Gender Inequality Index also takes maternal healthcare into account.

So, how do you measure something like feminism or inequality? How do you measure power, or for that matter, fear? How can you tally up the cat-calls or all the molestation kept secret?

As it turns out, neither report pretends to measure how safe a woman is in her home and on her streets, or the restrictions placed on her body or activities by cultural or religious norms. Rather, they measure access to resources such as labor market participation, education, parliamentary seats, and basic rights compared to men, as well as maternal healthcare.

The rankings for each of the countries I have lived and worked in do fit my experiences, for the most part, although these reports seem to be missing some key parts of the puzzle.

After all, isn't the measurement of gender gaps essentially incomplete, fundamentally skewed, without taking into account women's bodily safety or ability to choose her own paths in life? What about complex, culturally influenced issues such as child marriage or forced marriage? What about rape or sex trafficking?

How can one claim that the gender gap is comparatively small because there are women working in legislation, if those same women go home from their workday to abusive husbands?

While these reports are not all-encompassing, they do give some idea of where women stand globally, and which countries seem to be narrowing the gender gap.

Throughout my twenties, I lived and worked in the United States, India and France, before settling in Germany. Each new country has revealed a new dimension of womanhood and has given me some small, subjective insight into what it means to be female across different societies.

Seeing my impressions echoed in the cold statistics of these reports has helped me to put my experiences into perspective.

It has also reinforced the impression that, although it is far from perfect, Germany is the most feminist country I have ever lived in.

Germany is in 12th place on the Gender Gap Report and 4th on the Gender Inequality Index, preceded only by Switzerland, Australia and Norway.

So, what makes it so special? How do the other countries I've lived in measure up to Germany, both statistically and anecdotally? And do the rankings seem representative of my experiences there?

The United States, my home country, sits at 49th place for gender gaps: ranking behind both Uganda and Bangladesh, sandwiched between Peru and Zimbabwe. On the inequality index, it comes in at 10th place, between Canada and China; a rank that I find surprisingly high, considering the level of gender-related problems and fears I have had there.

Women's personal experiences

Of course, my experiences aren't representative of everyone. I have a position of privilege as a white, US-American woman from a middle-class family. Without a doubt, my experiences across the board would have been very different if I belonged to a different demographic.

Kim, an American teacher and blogger of mixed Mexican and Chinese background living in Berlin, shares some of her impressions of sexism in Germany:
"Compared to the US and Latin America, sexism and gender equality is much better in Germany. That does not mean it's perfect and I definitely have experienced sexism here, but it seems to be softer than in the other places. [...] In the US and Latin America, it seems like men will persist long after you've told them no (at least in my experience). [...] There is also the idea of 'if I do X for her, then I will have fulfilled all the requirements and she will owe me sex.' This way of thinking is definitely present in Germany as well, but overall men in Germany seem more comfortable with being told no. "[...] Another difference I noticed is that I feel more comfortable with my body here. In the US and Latin America, any time I wanted to wear a cute dress or anything that showed skin I felt like I had to brace myself for the catcalls, slut-shaming, slow up-and-down looks, and general you're-obviously-begging-for-attention kind of treatment. At least in Germany, people aren't as aggressive about it."
Because of this, Kim was "not surprised" that the US ranked so low on the Gender Gap Report compared to her new home in Germany.

"That being said," she adds, "I am also a woman of color in a predominantly white country. I feel like I've gotten more attention, both good and bad, than a person who looks like they belong here would get."

Looking like I "don't belong" is something I could relate to through my experience living in Madurai, India.

However, my obvious foreignness did not make me as much an oddity in this traditional, religious, south Indian city as the fact that I was a young, single woman living alone - something my Indian peers could not begin to imagine. I was regularly asked if my father had already chosen a husband for me, or whether I would be married immediately upon my return to the States. The complaints of my female Indian coworkers painted a picture of their status: not being able to marry their sweetheart because of parental disapproval, waking up at 4 a.m. to complete their household duties and prepare and pack lunches for their family before heading off to their full-time teaching job, the wages from which their husbands took.

Stripped of the bluntness of my American armor in all its sharp edges, my tactics for self-preservation in Madurai became a kind of resignation. The struggles of womankind were omnipresent. I was more restricted than I had been in my hometown, and yet remained far freer and more privileged than the women all around me.

Women, including myself, wore traditional, modest clothes. They were not to drink or purchase alcohol, and were rarely seen socializing outside their homes without their husbands. In the end, it was men who drove me away from Madurai: the final straw had been repeated incidences of peeping toms climbing up to the ledge of my bedroom window to spy on me at night.

In India, it was not so much fear of violence as the constant feelings of isolation, objectification and restriction that made womanhood so difficult. India's rankings on the Gender Gap and Gender Inequality reports? 131st place for inequality and 108th for gender gaps, the lowest-ranking country I've experienced as a resident.

Objectification took on yet another face for me in France.

I was definitely as conscious of my gender role there as I was in India, and much less so than I am here in Germany. In French society, my armor was not hardness, not resignation, but an over-saturated breed of softness: was femininity itself. Again, I tried to do as the locals did. And the locals were chic.

France ranks 21st on the inequality index, behind both Germany and the United States; and one place above Germany, at 11th, for gender gaps: a far cry above India in both reports.

Where in the United States I had thought nothing of going out wearing sweatpants or without makeup, this seemed frowned upon in both Montpellier and Paris. So I powdered my nose, shined my shoes, wore scarves and lipstick. Tried very hard to be pretty, to measure up against the societal beauty standards perpetuated by my fellow women and plastered on every advert in France.

The adoption of this jolie fille uniform was just another form of the traditional garb I had to wear in India. It seemed to me that in order to respect local culture, I had to accept the gender role prescribed to me.

I was very often complimented on my appearance, and rarely on my thoughts or accomplishments. This felt like its own kind of constriction, the insidious and constantly reinforced idea that I was expected to look and behave in a certain way that others found pleasurable.

Such slippery, intangible forms of disempowerment or subtle deference to male supremacy (like having to dress a certain way to avoid male harassment or to receive respect) are, I think, impossible to measure.
Street harassment was a regular nuisance in France, worse than I had experienced in the States.
One hot afternoon in Montpellier, I wore an average, thigh-covering pair of non-scandalizing summer shorts. I never wore them again because of how many times I was harassed and cat-called on the streets that day.

In Paris, street harassment was more serious: I was regularly touched, grabbed, pulled, yelled at, followed, and once even restrained, then struck and shoved to the ground in broad daylight.

The problem is so widespread in the country that a new law is in the works, championed by French Junior Minister for Gender Equality Marlène Schiappa. It would hit cat-callers with an on-the-spot fine between €90 and €750.

Arbel Ifhar, the Israeli left-activist who runs Kulthum (a non-commercial vegan feminist safe space bar in Leipzig's Alt-Lindenau), chimes in on the issue:
"In Germany, it's clear that there is less street harassment. On the beach in Israel, of course it's clear that you couldn't be naked and be free from comments or looks the way you can in Germany. In Israel, there's no chance in the world that a woman could sit topless or naked and no one will look at her, no one will spit on her, nothing will happen."
Arbel attributes this partly to the strong "macho culture" in Israel and partly to a difference regarding personal space and boundaries in German vs. Israeli culture.
"In Israel, I get attention for being a woman, but that becomes much more when I'm a queer woman holding hands or kissing another woman. [...] You feel you are something different in the public space, you are something noticeable. There's more openness here in a way, especially to queer people. But I don't know if it's openness or politeness. So I can't know if someone isn't bothering me because they're respectful of women, or if it's just the personal space boundary or lack of willingness to get involved with other people's business."
There seem to be many parallels between Israel and the United States when it comes to street harassment. Arbel notes: "Harassment is a symptom. The problem is there regardless of the cultural group. There are just different symptoms."

Of course, because of the military tension in Israel, there is a whole set of additional concerns. When walking alone at night, Arbel explains, "it's frightening. I did a BA in Media Journalism and Geography. I did an interview-based research project on how lesbian women in Jerusalem change their walk paths. And 100 percent of the women will think about [threat levels]. As an Israeli, and of course much more as a Palestinian, we are used to walking in fear in the public space. Of course, for women there is a whole other level of fears that we think of. As a woman, if I walk in the street at night, I have fears of being raped, stabbed... I wouldn't walk a lot alone at night. I remember there was a point where I accepted this danger, this burden, 'Well I'm a woman, there is a chance I will be raped, I need to live with it. I can't control it.'"

Arbel, with her background in political activism, says that although she knows that the police in Germany can be brutal, she is much less afraid of them and has been treated with more respect by German police than their Israeli counterparts, who are quick to resort to violence and aggression. She also notes that "[in Germany,] it was the first time I felt in demos, that I was on the strong side, that I was the majority. So I wasn't afraid of being attacked because I wasn't the weak one."

I think that one of the biggest reasons why Germany is such a relatively empowered and empowering place for women is that people are vocal about problems, people are critical of the status quo, and also protests and political demonstrations are commonplace. In other words, there is a space for people to voice their concerns and for women to be heard when they say that the status quo just isn't good enough.

In the three years I have lived in Germany, I have never carried my keys between my knuckles.

I have never been afraid of being stabbed or shot, although I do not live under the illusion that these are impossibilities. I have rarely felt unsafe in the streets at night, although I lived at Kottbusser Tor, which is reputed to be the roughest part of central Berlin. I have been cat-called once, I repeat, once, in the last three years (by an Italian.) I have not had to tell any men to stop following me, or to leave me alone, or to let go of me, or to get off my windowsill.

I have not felt that I need to dress or act in a certain way because I am a woman, nor have I been criticized or harassed for my appearance or my choice of outfit. (Of course being shouted at for general rule-bending is another issue altogether. Raise your hand if you've been shouted at for crossing streets before the Ampelmann turns green!)

This feeling of freedom in my clothes and in my body was especially strong on the subcultural, multi-kulti island that is Berlin, where it doesn't seem to matter to anyone who you choose to be or how you choose to express it. For its many faults, I certainly felt that Berlin was a liberating place to live. (As for Leipzig, well, the jury's still out.)

My experience here, however subjective and privileged, has been one of greater freedom and an increased sense of safety.

When I meet someone for the first time, they often ask why I live in Germany and if I plan to stay. There are many ways in which Germany has been challenging, but the sharp contrast between my life as a woman in Germany compared to my experiences in the United States, France and India is one of the biggest reasons why I'm still here.

Of course, women in Germany, especially those in marginalized communities, still face the same challenges and struggles as women all around the world. At the same time, discontent with the status quo seems to be widespread enough to inspire countless feminist spaces, organizations and demonstrations: signs of slow but positive change.

I have felt safer on the streets, more secure in my body and appearance, experienced less harassment, and have generally been treated with more respect here than anywhere else I have lived. In spite of the general over-enthusiasm for sausage and sauerkraut, the somewhat inhospitable or reserved nature of German society, and the sometimes infuriating insistence on Ordnung; all stereotypes aside, this is a place where I would feel good about raising daughters.
By Sarah Rosemary Anagnostou Sarah Rosemary is a native of Minneapolis, USA, and recently relocated to Leipzig from Berlin. She has a degree in Global Studies, French Studies and Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and works as an English language teacher and yoga instructor. She has always had a passion for the written word and has recently started archiving scraps of writing as @rosemarywrit on Twitter and rosemarywrit.wordpress.com.

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Germany: "the most feminist country I've ever lived in" - The Leipzig Glocal

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Preparing for the walk home from work in Minneapolis was a process of armoring. After dark, before locking up the café where I spent my evenings pouring latte art for greying Mac users, I would get ready for the ten-minute walk across my residential neighborhood.