Feminism in Germany

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Feminism in Germany as a modern movement began during the

The status of women varied, depending on regions and eras. Ottonian sources rate the value of women just as highly as men, except when it comes to physical power. The Saxon tradition assigned women an equal role in the family, which contributed to the powerful roles empresses and abbesses held in the Ottonian era.^[1][2]

Feminism in Germany has its earliest roots in the lives of women who challenged conventional gender roles as early as the

Some women of means asserted their influence during the Middle Ages, typically in royal court or convent settings. Hildegard of Bingen, Gertrude the Great, Elisabeth of Bavaria (1478–1504), and Argula von Grumbach are among the women who pursued independent accomplishments in fields as diverse as medicine, music composition, religious writing, and government and military politics.

The historian and playwright

Feminist ideas still began to spread, and some radical women became outspoken in promoting the cause of women's rights. Sophie Mereau launched the Almanach für Frauen (Women's Almanac) in 1784.^[3]: 407 Feminism as a movement began to gain ground toward the end of the 19th century, although it did not yet include a strong push to extend suffrage to German women. Some women who worked for women's rights were in fact opposed to extending the vote to women, a stance that became more widespread at the turn of the 20th century, when many Germans were concerned that granting women the vote would result in more votes for socialists.^[3]: 407

• 
  Hildegard of Bingen, Medieval religious and medical writer and polymath
• 
  Protestant Reformation

  movement figure
• 
  Sophie Mereau, Age of Enlightenment writer

Wilhelmine Germany

Germany's unification process after 1871 was heavily dominated by men and gave priority to the "Fatherland" theme and related male issues, such as military prowess.

The BDF gave national direction to the proliferating women's organizations that had sprung up since the 1860s. From the beginning the BDF was a bourgeois organization, its members working toward equality with men in such areas as education, financial opportunities, and political life. Working-class women were not welcome; they were organized by the Socialists.^[7]

Formal organizations for promoting women's rights grew in numbers during the Wilhelmine period. German feminists began to network with feminists from other countries, and participated in the growth of international organizations;

• 
  Die Frau magazine, January 1906, published by the feminist umbrella organization Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF)
• 
  Poster for International Women's Day, March 8, 1914. Claiming voting rights for women.
• 
  An 1883 illustration of several prominent feminists, including

  Luise Otto-Peters, Jenny Hirsch, Lina Morgenstern, Henriette Goldschmidt, Auguste Schmidt, and Anna Schepeler-Lette
• 
  A bust of

  Dresden, Germany. Zetkin was a member of the Reichstag, and co-founded International Women's Day

  .

Socialist feminists were active in promoting the rights of working-class women. Socialist, communist, and social democratic organizations had feminist members, who promoted women's rights with mixed success. During the rise of nationalism in this era, one Fascist organization that was vocally anti-feminist was the German National Association of Commercial Employees (Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfenverband, or DHV), which promoted the interests of the merchant class.^[9] There was little opportunity for feminists of the working class and feminists of the middle or upper classes to work together. The expansion of Germany's industrial economy during the 1890s and up to World War I had brought more women into the labour force. However, cooperation between the social classes was "unfeasible" at the time.^[10]

Women's emancipation was attained despite pressure from The German League for the Prevention of Women's Emancipation, which numbered several hundred supporters and was active beginning in 1912, disbanding in 1920. The antifeminist sentiment among some Germans reflected a variety of arguments against women's emancipation:

The arguments against women's emancipation varied but often included sentiments regarding the inferiority of women and women's subjugation to men as determined by God or by nature. More frequently and sometimes additionally, they included charges that a change in women's position in society would be morally wrong, against tradition, and would trigger a decline of the importance of the family. Such arguments sometimes surfaced as protective and paternalistic justifications, e.g., the desire to "shield" women from the public sphere.^[11]

Writer Hedwig Dohm gave some impetus to the feminist movement in Germany with her writings during the late 19th century, with her argument that women's roles were created by society rather than being a biological imperative. During this period, a wider range of feminist writings from other languages were being translated into German, deepening the feminist discourse further for German women.

Access to education

In Sex in Education, Or, A Fair Chance for Girls (1873), educator Edward H. Clarke researched educational standards in Germany. He found that by the 1870s, formal education for middle and upper-class girls was the norm in Germany's cities, although it ended at the onset of menarche, which typically happened when a girl was 15 or 16. After this, her education might continue at home with tutors or occasional lectures. Clarke concluded that "Evidently the notion that a boy's education and a girl's education should be the same, and that the same means the boy's, has not yet penetrated the German mind. This has not yet evolved the idea of the identical education of the sexes."^[12] Education for peasant girls was not formal, and they learned farming and housekeeping tasks from their parents. This prepared them for a life of harsh labour on the farm. On a visit to Germany, Clarke observed that:

"German peasant girls and women work in the field and shop with and like men. None who have seen their stout and brawny arms can doubt the force with which they wield the hoe and axe. I once saw, in the streets of Coblentz, a woman and a donkey yoked to the same cart, while a man, with a whip in his hand, drove the team. The bystanders did not seem to look upon the moving group as if it were an unusual spectacle.^[13]

Young middle class and upper-class women began to pressure their families and the universities to allow them access to higher education. Anita Augspurg, the first woman university graduate in Germany, graduated with a law degree from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Several other German women, unable to gain admittance to German universities, also went to the University of Zurich to continue their education. In 1909, German universities finally allowed women to gain admittance—but women graduates were unable to practice their profession, as they were "barred from private practice and public administrative posts for lawyers".^[14] The first women's legal aid agency was established by Marie Stritt in 1894; by 1914, there were 97 such legal aid agencies, some employing women law graduates.^[14]

Weimar Germany

Following women's enfranchisement, women's rights made significant gains in Germany during the

The umbrella group of feminist organizations, the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF; Federation of German Women's Associations), remained the dominant force in German feminism during the inter-war period. It had around 300,000 members at the start of World War I, growing to over 900,000 members during the 1920s; it has been noted, however, that the middle-class membership was far from radical, and promoted maternal "clichés" and "bourgeois responsibilities".^[17] Other feminist groups were organized around religious faiths, and there were many Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish feminist groups.

Prominent feminists of this era included

• 
  Mother and Twins (1927/37) by

  Expressionist sculptor Käthe Kollwitz
• 
  An issue of the lesbian periodical, Die Freundin, 1928
• 
  League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel or BDM) gymnastics performance, 1941
• 
  Women doing their wash at a cold water hydrant in a Berlin street, July 1945

The Weimar Republic was an era of political fragmentation in Germany. Along with the economic chaos of the inter-war years, Weimar culture in general had a degree of social chaos, which was experienced in the city of Berlin in particular. War widows and their children struggled to earn a living in a city where hunger, unemployment, and crime were rampant. At the same time, a liberation of social mores meant that women had a social freedom they had not experienced until then. Socialists and communists in particular became open in demanding free access to contraception and abortion, asserting, "Your body belongs to you".^[19]

Nazi era

Historians have paid special attention to Nazi Germany's efforts to reverse the gains that women made before 1933, especially during the liberal Weimar Republic.^[20] It appears the role of women in Nazi Germany changed according to circumstances. Theoretically, the Nazis believed that women must be subservient to men, avoid careers, devote themselves to childbearing and child-rearing, and be a helpmate of the traditional dominant father in the traditional family.^[21] However, before 1933, women played important roles in the Nazi organization and were allowed some autonomy to mobilize other women. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the activist women were replaced by bureaucratic women who emphasized feminine virtues, marriage, and childbirth. As Germany prepared for war, large numbers were incorporated into the public sector and with the need for full mobilization of factories by 1943, all women were required to register with the employment office. Women's wages remained unequal and women were denied positions of leadership or control.^[22]

In 1934, Hitler proclaimed, "[A woman's] world is her husband, her family, her children, her house."

In 1944–45, more than 500,000 women volunteers were uniformed auxiliaries in the German armed forces (Wehrmacht). About the same number served in civil aerial defense, 400,000 volunteered as nurses, and many more replaced drafted men in the wartime economy.^[25] In the Luftwaffe, they served in combat roles helping to operate the anti—aircraft systems that shot down Allied bombers.^[26]

West Germany, East Germany

During the post-War period political life in the

By the early 21st century, issues of intersectionality between diverse social groups gained the attention of a larger number of feminists and other social reformers in Germany and beyond. After decades of pushing for greater legal recognition as full citizens, Gastarbeiter (guest workers) and their children (often born and raised in Germany) won some reforms at the national level in the late 1990s. During this time, women's rights groups had not, in general, made the guest worker issue a feminist cause. There were sporadic instances of women's rights groups voicing support for women guest workers' right to vote, and to have other women's rights included in the government's 1998 draft law for guest workers.^[38]

Before 1997, the definition of rape in Germany was: "Whoever compels a woman to have extramarital intercourse with him, or with a third person, by force or the threat of present danger to life or limb, shall be punished by not less than two years’ imprisonment".^[39] In 1997 there were changes to the rape law, broadening the definition, making it gender-neutral, and removing the marital exemption.^[40] Before, marital rape could only be prosecuted as "Causing bodily harm" (Section 223 of the German Criminal Code), "Insult" (Section 185 of the German Criminal Code) and "Using threats or force to cause a person to do, suffer or omit an act" (Nötigung, Section 240 of the German Criminal Code) which carried lower sentences^[41] and were rarely prosecuted.^[42]

Feminist

• Second-wave feminism in Germany
• Binnen-I – an orthographic convention for equality in written German
• Bonn Women's Museum
• EMMA (magazine)
• Feminale
• History of German women
• Liberal Women
• Weimar culture
• Women in Germany
• Women in Nazi Germany

References