4 - Family and Politics in Communist Didactic Fiction

Summary

Literary Depictions of family life and domestic themes were used to promote socialist principles to a female readership in Weimar-era leftwing didactic fiction. By presenting relatable characters, recognizable situations, and an unambiguous political message, authors hoped to encourage criticism of class and gender inequality and offered membership in the Communist Party (KPD) as the means to overcome the hardship depicted in their texts. Four examples of such political fiction are considered in this chapter. Since Elfriede Brüning's portrayal of politics and family life in Kleine Leute (Ordinary People, written 1932–33) is of interest to the present chapter, I resume the discussion of Brüning's novel that I began in the previous chapter on abortion. Here, I bring Brüning's text into conversation with three novellas aimed at a young female audience: Hermynia Zur Mühlen's Lina: Erzählung aus dem Leben eines Dienstmädchens (Lina: Story from the Life of a Housemaid, 1924) and “Kleine Leute” (Ordinary People, 1925), which shares its title with Brüning's novel, and Maria Leitner's Mädchen mit drei Namen (Girl with Three Names, 1932). These texts share a didacticism and an intention to appeal to a broad workingclass readership. The authors suggest that participation in left-wing activism will lead to material improvements in the lives of their working-class protagonists, who are designed to be relatable to the target readership. The authors rely, however, on normative ideas of gender roles and invoke domestic and familial themes to encourage women's political participation. I argue that this approach represents a pragmatic strategy that mirrors that found in the left-wing print media discussed in chapter 2 and the texts dealing with themes of abortion analyzed in chapter 3 of this book. Furthermore, despite the frequent sidelining of women in the communist movement during the Weimar era, these texts all include subtle challenges to the prevailing gender hierarchy by presenting positive examples of independent female activism, thereby providing their readership with a model for their own contribution to the socialist cause.

During the Weimar period, women represented a minority within the KPD; by 1928, just 17 percent of KPD members were women, and the party leadership was dominated by men. Nevertheless, the KPD recog nized the need to win women's votes and, as Karen Hagemann elaborates, began to host rallies specifically aimed at women in the later years of the Weimar Republic.