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19th-CENTURY ARGUMENTS THAT WOMEN’S PROPER SPHERE INVOLVED Kinder, Küche,
Kirche
SOCIOLOGICAL: That all progress of civilization depends on a strict division of labor between the sexes and devotion by women to child-rearingNEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL: That only the male brain is suited for quantitative and abstract reasoningMEDICAL: That adolescent girls would become barren if asked to study as hard at school as boysPSYCHOLOGICAL: That women are especially prone to mental illness (“hysteria”)
Experts began to challenge all these arguments in the 1890s….
German parents did give daughters some freedom to choose a suitor (courting in a Berlin park, around
1907)
THE SPREAD OF FAMILY PLANNING IN GERMANYTotal number of children born by women married in the
years--
Pre-1905
1905-09 1910-14 1915-19
In cities with over 100,000 people
Self-employed
3.30 2.40 1.98 1.61
White-collar 3.01 2.40 2.04 1.74
Blue-collar 4.03 3.16 2.64 2.18
Among the peasantry (villages with under 2,000)
Self-employed
5.42 4.64 4.10 3.52
Farmworker 6.18 5.38 4.87 4.26
THE REALITY OF WOMEN’S LABOR:Women
assemble adding
machines at the German General Electric Factory,
Berlin, c. 1908
“Homeworkers” sew garments at
home for extremely low
piece-rate wages
“Give Us Women’s Suffrage,” SPD poster for the International Women’s Congress of March 1914,
organized by Clara Zetkin:“Until now, prejudice and reactionary attitudes have denied full civic rights to women, who as workers,
mothers, and citizens wholly fulfill their duty, who must pay their taxes to the state as well as the municipality.
Fighting for this natural human right must be the
firm, unwavering intention of every woman, every female
worker.”
August Bebel, Woman and Socialism (50th edn., 1910;
first published 1877)
“Thank you, dear wife. What’s the news?” (SPD
cartoon from 1892, in a house where the wife can afford to
stay at home)
PUZZLES FOR WOMEN’S HISTORIANS
What did the phrase “the New Woman” imply?Did women make real progress toward economic equality in the 1920s?Did media images of women reflect their actual behavior or male fantasies? Why did the Center Party and DNVP succeed best at attracting women voters? Why did women’s voter participation and share of elected delegates decline after 1919?Did the leftist parties live up to their egalitarian rhetoric in their actual treatment of women?Why was the KPD the only party to campaign for the legalization of abortion?
The conventional image of the war widow:“Let me shed my tears quietly;I must strive for honor,Must serve the Fatherland”(postcard from 1915)
The “New Woman”
(with Bubbikopf) according to the
glossy magazines:
Der Junggeselle [The Bachelor],
1922
Poster advertising “The Red Mill”in Berlin, 1924.
Germany did not have women
bartenders before the War.
In these postcards from the German General Electric Co., famous actresses use the newest household appliances
“Women, Remember! Rent hikes, joblessness,
tariffs, hunger, tax hikes, inflation. No more rightist governments.
Vote DDP!”(campaign poster
from 1928)
“National Comrades, Vote Social Democratic”
(SPD, 1928, the only poster featuring the “New Woman” that Julia Sneeringer could discover)
WRY OBSERVERS OF WOMEN’S POSITION IN BERLIN:
Hannah Höch(1889-1978):
Designer for the Ullstein Press
Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976), a fashion
illustrator who grew up in Paris
Hannah Höch,“Cut with the Dada
Kitchen Knife through the Last
Epoch of the Weimar Beer Belly
Culture of Germany” (1919-20)
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