7 - Serving the Volk, Saving the Nation

Summary

In Weimar Germany the participation by both women and young people in the processes of mass politics was seen as problematic. Where the participation of women was concerned, perceptions of the problem were bound up with the general debate over women's emancipation in Weimar Germany. Feminists saw women's low level of participation in formal politics as the problem, and accordingly sought to make the emancipation of women proclaimed in the Weimar Constitution into a reality by educating the mass of women to take up and use their new political rights. In the eyes of antifeminists, who rejected the whole notion of women playing a role in the public sphere equal to that of men, the problem was women's political activity in any form. Meanwhile, the troubled relationship between successive generations of young people and the Weimar political system gave rise to concern about young people's political participation. The political parties of the republican camp sought to mobilize youthful support, whereas the republican authorities sought to combat youthful political activism where it threatened political stability and to channel it in the right direction.