Introduction

Summary

“Jedes Erwachsene Mädchen, jede Frau mit fühlendem Herzen spürt wohl ein heißes Verlangen, eine unstillbare Sehnsucht in sich nach der Mutterschaft, nach dem Kinde” (Every grown-up girl, every woman with a feeling heart senses a strong desire, an insatiable yearning within herself for motherhood, for a child). This assertion appeared in the Social Democratic women's newspaper Die Gleichheit (Equality) in a 1921 article entitled “Mutterpflichten” (Maternal Duties) and is typical of the uncritical acceptance of women's desire and duty to mother that went largely unchallenged throughout the years of the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was established as a modern parliamentary democracy in the wake of the First World War, and Article 109 of the Weimar constitution guaranteed women and men “grundsätzlich dieselben staatsbürgerlichen Rechte und Pflichten” (fundamentally the same rights and duties as citizens). Yet as indicated by the controversial inclusion of the word “grundsätzlich” (fundamentally), assumptions of gender difference, and by extension women's mothering, remained deep-rooted. The women's movement and parties across the political spectrum accepted the notion of women's particularity and even appealed to such ideas in policies presented as progressive advances in women's rights. Ultimately, this widespread adherence to notions of inherent gender difference limited women's opportunities to forge new social roles and left the disunified branches of the women's movement ill equipped to effectively challenge the erosion of women's rights following the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933.

These widely held expectations of women's maternal and domestic contributions to society were, however, at odds with the figure of the independent, unmarried, and childless “new woman” that dominated contemporary media and popular culture, as well as later images of Weimar womanhood in both cultural depictions and scholarly studies. Through analysis of a wide-ranging body of material spanning print media, nonfiction, and fiction publications, this book bridges literary studies and cultural and feminist intellectual history to uncover how socialist, left-leaning, and socially liberal women writers publishing in a variety of genres and subject areas, including politics and psychology, engaged with and sought to shape discourses of motherhood in the Weimar Republic. My discussion focuses on the tensions between political discourses that stressed women's domestic duties and cultural discourses of women's increasing opportunities in the public sphere.