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Frau im Haus und Girl im Spiegel: Discourse on Women in the Interregnum Period of 1945–1949 and the Question of German Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Maria Höhn
Maria Höhn
Affiliation:
University of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia
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Extract

Defeat after the Second World War was complete for Germany, and life for the civilian population was grim. In one of Erich Kästner's poems, read at a 1947 theater production, a war widow laments that “ganz Deutschland ist ein Wartesaal mit Millionen von Frauen.” Indeed, in 1945 there were approximately seven million more women in Germany than men. More than three million German soldiers were killed in the war. Seven million German soldiers were still prisoners of war, leaving their wives and families to fend for themselves in the rubble heaps of the German cities. Adding to the hardship of the rural areas were the twelve million refugees who had been expelled from the territories conquered by the Soviet army and then had streamed into the American and British zones of occupation to resettle. Defeated Germany was split into four zones of occupation ruled by military governments. German men who had been promised the conquest of the world returned from the war and found their treasured patriarchy undermined in the home and in the state.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 57 - 90
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1993

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References

I am grateful to my adviser, Thomas Childers, as well as to Jane Caplan and Michael Katz for their many suggestions and enthusiastic support. I also thank my friends Rebecca Boehling, Julie Sneeringer, and Russ Kazal for reading early versions of this essay and helping me clarify many of my ideas. I could never have written this essay without the encouragement and loving support of my husband Charles Geiger and our sons Christian and Gian. This essay is dedicated to my teacher and friend Solomon Wank.Google Scholar

1. Der Spiegel (hereafter Spiegel), 1 November 1947. “All of Germany is a waiting room with millions of women.”Google Scholar

2. Meyer, Sybille and Schulze, Eva, Von Liebe sprach damals keiner (Munich, 1985), 223. For every 100 men there were 171 women in the 20–25 age group, and 153 in the 35–40 age group.Google Scholar

3. ibid., 253. By the end of the war about 9.2 million soldiers were prisoners of war. By the end of 1945 about 4.4 million POWs had returned to Germany; 1.8 million more were released by the end of 1946 and 1.6 million in 1947; about 811,000 were released in 1948, about 443,000 in 1949, and about 23,000 in 1950.

4. For the experience of women in the postwar period see Meyer, Sybille and Schulze, Eva, Wie wir this das alles geschafft haben—Alleinstehende Frauen berichten über ihr Leben nach 1945 (Munich, 1988);Google ScholarMeyer, and Schuize, , Von Liebe sprach damals keiner, and idem, “Als wir zusammen waren, ging der Krieg im Kleinen welter,” in Niethammer, Lutz, ed., Jetzt kriegen wir andere Zeiten (Berlin, 1985).Google Scholar Also Unruh, Trude, Trümmerfrauen (Fulda, 1987).Google ScholarPolm, Rita, “…neben dem Mann die andere Hälfte eines Ganzen zu sein?!” (Münster, 1990).Google ScholarRuhl, Klaus-Jörg, Unsere verlorenen Jahre (Darmstadt, 1985),Google Scholar and Frauen in der Nachkriegszeit (Munich, 1983).Google Scholar Also see memoirs such as Stolten, Inge, Der Hunger nach Erfahrung (Frankfurt a.M., 1983),Google Scholar and Anonymous, Eine Frau in Berlin (Frankfurt a.M., 1959).Google Scholar For an analysis of women's contributions see Kuhn, Anette, ed., Frauen in der deutschen Nachkriegszeit, vol. 1: Schubert, Doris, Frauenarbeit 1945–1949 (Düsseldorf, 1986).Google Scholar Schubert argues that women's labor was crucial not only for the immediate recovery but for long-term economic stability as well. In Germany's postwar economy, investment in heavy industry was emphasized to stimulate exports, while the production of consumer goods was given only scant attention. Women's unpaid labor in the home substituted for the absence of washers, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners, and women's participation in the secondary, low-paying labor market made possible the German Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) of the 1950s. Kuhn's, Frauen in der deutschen Nachkriegszeit, vol. 2: Freier, Anna Elisabeth, Frauenpolitik 1945–1949 (Düsseldorf, 1986) shows that much of the bourgeois women's discourse remained centered around the traditional notions of Mütterlichkeit (motherliness), emphasizing women's special qualities and contributions but also demanding their “sphere” in the state.Google Scholar See also Seeler, Angela, “Ehe, Familie, und andere Lebensformen in der Nachkriegszeit im Spiegel der Frauenzeitschriften,” in Anna-Elisabeth, Freier and Anette, Kuhn, eds., Frauen in der Geschichte, vol. 5, (Düsseldorf, 1984) for her examination of publications specifically aimed at women. She also pointed out the continuity of the language of Mütterlichkeit, while women also called for alternatives to the patriarchal family.Google Scholar

5. Robert Moeller's work on the “political reconstruction” of the family is an outstanding contribution to this question; however, his focus is on the Federal Republic, not the immediate postwar years. By analyzing social policy after 1949, he concluded that the pro-family legislation enacted in the 1950s ultimately preserved and protected patriarchal authority, women's economic dependence on men, and the myth of the “traditional family.” See his “Reconstructing the Family in Reconstruction Germany: Women and Social Policy in the Federal Republic, 1949–1955,” Feminist Studies 15 (1989): 137–69, and his Protecting Motherhood: Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany (Berkeley, 1993), which was published after this essay was written.Google Scholar

6. I am using the term “Trümmerfrauen” metaphorically here. Women were of course involved in many more jobs than cleaning up the rubble of the cities. While women's work in this capacity was most visible, they had also replaced men in what were previously considered male jobs in public transportation, factories, and government bureaucracies.Google Scholar

7. A discourse on women took place on the street, where often crude posters denounced German women for “sleeping with the enemy.” A favorite slogan was that it took the Allies six years to defeat the German man, but the German woman fought for less than five minutes. Another level of discourse on women was produced by social theorists. See Thurnwald, Hilde, Gegenwartsprobleme Berliner Familien (Berlin, 1948).Google Scholar Her book is a desperate plea for the return to normalcy as she describes numerous women carrying the main burden while their husbands withdraw to bed or the black market. For a later work on the family see Schelsky, Helmut, Wandlungen der deutschen Familie in der Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 1954). Schelsky agreed that the impact of war had led to an emancipation of women “out of necessity,” but argued that the family survived strengthened through the hardship of the war experience.Google Scholar

8. Although this right was never questioned by the lawmakers, the public discourse of the press contained a number of references that challenged women's right to vote. See especially the Readers' Forum of Die Neue Zeitung (hereafter NZ), where this question was posed by the editors, and readers responded. NZ, 30 November 1945.Google Scholar

9. I focused my examination on the American and British zones of occupation. The French zone was ignored because French publications, much more than the U.S. and British ones, had a strong cultural agenda. Until May 1949, all newspapers were licensed and the American military government did not allow the establishment of party-affiliated papers in their zone. The publications also were not to contain any commentaries critical of the Allies. The Americans and British lifted precensorship in September 1945, but postcensorship remained intact until licensing ceased in May 1949.Google Scholar

10. Ironically, the Neue Zeitung was published on the presses of the Völkischer Beobachter.Google Scholar

11. Glaser, Herman, Rubble Years (New York, 1986), 180.Google Scholar

12. I only covered all of 1946, and June 1948–May 1949.Google Scholar

13. Eschenburg, Theodor, Jahre der Besatzung (Stuttgart, 1983), 152–53.Google Scholar

14. The portrayal of women in Spiegel is a harbinger of the colorful Illustrierten such as Stern, Die Bunte, and Quick, which did not emerge until 1948.Google Scholar

15. Much of German historical research is done on urban Centers and particular regions of the country. All of the secondary sources consulted for this essay are based on research done in large cities. There was not one work on the impact of the war on rural women, whose hardships were very different and whose “emancipation” due to the war probably also had a different quality. For a future, more extensive study of the discourse on women in the postwar period, rural publications also need to be examined.Google Scholar

16. Langer, Ingrid, “In letzter Konsequenz…Uranbergwerk!” in deLille, Angela, ed., Perlonzeit (Berlin, 1985), 72.Google Scholar

17. Klessmann, Christoph, “Untergänge-Übergänge: Gesellschaftsgeschichtliche Brüche und Kontinuitätslinien vor und nach 1945,” in idem, ed., Nicht nur Hitlers Krieg: Der Zweite Weltkrieg und die Deutschen (Düsseldorf, 1989), 96.Google Scholar

18. Stolten, , Der Hunger, 85. “Women served as substitutes as long as there was a lack of men.”Google Scholar

19. See especially Süddeutsche Zeitung (hereafter SZ), 30 May 1946, and 22 march 1947; Die Zeit (hereafter Zeit), 8 August 1946; Spiegel, 20 December 1947 shows a two-page photo essay; NZ, 18 September 1948. Also Welt, 3 September 1946. The best source for pictorial images of women working in the ruins, cutting down trees in the city parks, or stealing coal from trains is Heute.Google Scholar

20. According to Oppens, Edith et al. , Die Frau in unserer Zeit (Oldenburg, 1954), 39, the biggest part of the black market was in the hands of women and youth. Women also were very active in the grey market. For example, they went to the countryside and worked for farmers in exchange for food for themselves and their children. Others sewed clothing out of military blankets or knitted sweaters. These goods were always bartered for food, not sold. Another option was to knit or make crafts for the occupation forces. Payment from soldiers consisted of Camel cigarettes, coffee, or chocolate. Many women prostituted themselves as the only means for survival. But even outside the destroyed cities, women worked in the grey market. My grandmother, for example, lived in a small village and sewed clothing for local farmers in exchange for food, and milk for her infant.Google Scholar

21. Industrial output in 1946/47 was about 39 percent of its 1936 level. See Stolper, Gustav, The German Economy (London, 1967), 184.Google Scholar

22. NZ, 19 May 1947. Rations of about 850 calories per person were reported for this particular period. Rations varied between 900–1,200 calories until the beginning of the summer of 1947 when they rose to 1,300. After 1948 they stabilized around 1,800 calories. See Polm, “…neben dem Mann,” 53.Google Scholar

23. SZ, 22 February 1946.Google Scholar

24. NZ, 5 May 1947. Also see Welt, 23 July 1946: “‘White mice’ of Bremen get rid of five million cubic metres of rubble.” And 19 October 1946: “2.5 million bricks cleaned by women in Oberhausen.”Google Scholar

25. NZ, 23 December 1946.Google Scholar

26. Zeit, 4 March 1948: “Normalverbraucher wurden Maximalverzichter” by Hans Bayer. This essay surveys “deutsche Schicksale” and criticizes the low level of food rations given out by the Allies. The author worries that “the mass of the poor and starving is apathetic and politically indifferent. They are too miserable to be good democrats… They constitute the fifth estate [Stand], which is poorer than the ‘proletariat.’”Google Scholar

27. SZ, 6 January 1948 (original emphasis): “Aus Ruinen werden Wohnungen.” Another essay describes a widow who on her own rebuilt three bombed-out apartments in her rental property. See NZ, 4 August 1948. A NZ photo essay of 30 May 1947 showed the garden of a sixty-two year old woman in the ruins of Frankfurt. She had managed to harvest five hundred pounds of tomatoes and many other vegetables in her garden.Google Scholar

28. The toll of this double burden is reflected in the statistics of the Ortskrankenkassen from 1949. They indicate that in 1947, 12 percent of mothers suffered from exhaustion and 14 percent suffered from insomnia and stress due to overwork. By 1949 these numbers had risen to 59 percent suffering from exhaustion and 43 percent suffering from insomnia and stress. Quoted in Meyer and Schulze, Von Liebe sprach damals keiner, 237.Google Scholar

29. SZ, 8 March 1946. For a similar categorization see Mehnert, Klaus, Deutschland Jahrbuch 1949 (Essen, 1949), 239. He reports that “a full regrouping of fully employable men into hard work was achieved, so that handicapped war veterans and women could take over easier work” (my emphasis).Google Scholar

30. SZ, 24 April 1946. See especially Doris Schubert and Klaus-Jörg Ruhl from note 4 for an extensive analysis of how protective legislation was used to channel women into gender-appropriate occupations.Google Scholar

31. This campaign aimed at laying off married women in the professions, so they would not deprive men of their right to support their families. This campaign, however, was never extended to industrial labor; married women there were more than welcome for their cheap labor. Because women were not considered heads of household, their wages were set at only about 75–87.5 percent of men's. In 1955 the “women's wage group” was declared unconstitutional, but it was replaced with the equally discriminating “easy-labor wage” (Leichtlohngruppen). In Meyer and Schulze, Von Liebe sprach damals keiner, 238.Google Scholar

32. These women teachers were hired to replace male teachers who had been members of the NSDAP. In Munich 52 percent of male but only 18 percent of female teachers had been members of the NSDAP. In the countryside those numbers were 90 percent for men and 50 percent for women. See SZ, 6 June 1947.Google Scholar

33. SZ, 12 December 1948.Google Scholar

34. Zeit, 5 June 1947.Google Scholar

35. NZ, 26 February 1949.Google Scholar

36. Welt, 20 January 1949.Google Scholar

37. NZ, 4 february 1946. A study of German families in 1951 reported that only 24 percent of all students on the Gymnasium level were girls. Only 1 percent of all these children were sons and daughters of the working class. See Baumert, Gerhard, Deutsche Familien nach dem Krieg (Darmstadt, 1954), 250.Google Scholar

38. Zeit, 21 October 1948.Google Scholar

39. NZ, 23 August 1946.Google Scholar

40. In 1949, 33 percent of the labor force was women and 35.4 percent of these women were married. In Meyer, and Schulze, , Von Liebe sprach damals keiner, 233.Google Scholar

41. The author of the article is clearly comparing Nazi policies on women with those of the Soviet zone. NZ, 12 February 1949.Google Scholar

42. Heute, 11 October 1950.Google Scholar

43. See Hausen's, Karin “Die Polarisierung der ‘Gescblechtercharaktere’—Eine Spiegelung der Dissoziation von Erwerbs- und Familienleben,” in Conze, Werner, ed., Familie in der Neuzeit Europas (Stuttgart, 1976): 363–93. for her argument on how the late-eighteenth-century separation of productive work from the home led to the creation of the ideology of the separate spheres. With the creation of that ideology, women's work in the home became “non-work” because it became associated with women's “nature.”Google Scholar

44. The one exception was an essay of 24 October 1946 in Welt. The economist there argued that women have to be trained as artisans as well. Traditionally the male-dominated artisan trade was very resistant to integrating women into its profession, and it has remained so.Google Scholar

45. Vogel, Angela, “Familie,” in Benz, Wolfgang, ed., Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, vol. 2 (Munich, 1983), 99. Vogel reported 0. 6 apartments per household.Google Scholar

46. Moeller, “Reconstructing the Family,” 140.Google Scholar

47. See Polm, , “…neben dem Mann,” 132.Google Scholar

48. The three-phase model of labor for women emerged as the standard in the 1950s social policies. In this model women worked in wage labor before their child-rearing years, and after the children left the home. Needless to say, in this model, every woman was considered a potential mother and few employers bothered to train them and advance their careers.Google Scholar

49. SZ, 25 May 1947: “We women cannot stand on the sidelines.”Google Scholar

50. There also were a number of suggestions in the press that hinted at another dimension of the postwar battle between the sexes, namely who was to blame for Hitler's rise to power. Especially in the debates in the press whether women should have the right to vote, their past voting record was cited as a counter-argument. Women, on the other hand, demanded greater political power, since the Männerstaat had failed so miserably in the past twelve years.Google Scholar

51. NZ, 16 November 1945: Else Reventlov, “Die Frau tritt vor.”Google Scholar

52. Die Stimme der Frau, vol. 1 (1948): 25.Google Scholar Quoted in Freier and Kuhn, eds., Frauen in der Geschichte, vol. 5, 226.Google Scholar

53. SZ, 18 December 1945.Google Scholar

54. For similar arguments of other groups see Stuttgarter, 2 February 1946 and 3 August 1946. NZ, 21 March 1947.Google Scholar

55. SZ, 21 May 1946.Google Scholar

56. SZ, 14 December 1945. The reference to the “wild Nazi women” is perhaps suggestive of the “emancipatory” elements that National Socialism held for organized women.Google Scholar

57. Nazi policies in regard to women were not consistent. Initially women were pushed out of the labor market and a numerus clausus was established at the universities. As more and more men were needed in the war economy and later on in the war, women were again integrated into the work force and higher education. Employment of women on the whole rose during the Nazi regime, but those jobs were in the low-paying agricultural sector and in white-collar employment. Opportunities for self-employed and academic women dropped significantly. Women's foremost duty was to bear children for her Volk, and the Nazis introduced the death penalty for those Aryan mothers who chose abortion. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler made clear his vision of women's emancipation: “The German girl belongs to the state and with her marriage becomes a citizen.” Quoted in Bridenthal, Renate, ed., When Biology Became Destiny (New York, 1984), 210.Google Scholar

58. SZ, 27 September 1946.Google Scholar

59. SZ, 17 February 1948. See also Stuttgarter, which already voiced these concerns on 12 December 1946. See also NZ, 25 April 1948, Stuttgarter, 19 January 1946, and Welt, 16 December 1948 for appeals to consult women.Google Scholar

60. SZ, 11 January 1946: “Frauen helfen mit”.Google Scholar

61. SZ, 6 Februry 1946 (original emphasis).Google Scholar

62. NZ, 17 January 1947.Google Scholar

63. SZ, 4 December 1948. See also Spiegel, 17 May 1947 describing Schröder as a woman who has no time to worry about her clothing or her looks.Google Scholar

64. Spiegel, 28 June 1947. This reader is baffled about how women are closer to the vitamins of life. I chose to translate “dänilicher Beruf” with “silly existence.” Beruf in this instance seems to indicate much more than mere occupation.Google Scholar

65. SZ, 28 December 1945 (original emphasis).Google Scholar

66. Welt, 11 December 1948. This was one of the very rare contributions by Welt on the woman question. See also the essay by the Catholic novelist Gertrud von Le Fort in Zeit, 21 October 1948, and Dorothy Thompson's essay in Welt, 30 July 1946, which share the same binary woridview in regard to the relationship between the sexes.Google Scholar

67. Beauvoir, Simone de, The Second Sex (New York, 1952). A Neue Zeitung author, who mocked his contemporaries' views on the relationship between the sexes in a rather cynical essay on the tremendous increase in divorce in the postwar period, made an argument similar to Beauvoir's. The writer argued that many marriages failed because many a man married not for love but took as his wife any woman “who would await him on her island when he returned exhausted from the sea of manliness. A woman to travel with, a companion, the warrior did not need.” See NZ, 21 January 1946.Google Scholar

68. For examples of this depiction see Heute, 12 December 1948, 26 October 1949, and 11 October 1950.Google Scholar

69. “Home, Sweet Home.”Google Scholar

70. Niethammer, , Jetzt, 314.Google Scholar

71. On this war between the sexes see especially oral histories and Thurnwald, Gegenwartsprobleme, from note 7.Google Scholar

72. Anonymous, Eine Frau, 53.Google Scholar

73. SZ, 30 September 1947.Google Scholar

74. Zeit, 5 May 1949.Google Scholar

75. In particular see Thurnwald, , Gegenwartsprobleme, 186–202, for Comments on the breakdown of the patriarchal order. Thurnwald bemoans that “with few exceptions the mothers are the boss in the home,” “husbands flee to mother and father,” “the role of the father is a joke,” “the husband thinks only of himself, and steals the food of his children,” or “retreats to bed.” Thurnwald was also concerned with the “overly expressed independence of younger women,” and argues that their “hardened [gefühlserhärtet] and accentuated rationality exposes the extreme weakness of men.” Very telling of what happened to the patriarchal family was a photo in the NZ of 7 April 1947 showing a first grader looking at his report card. The caption read “What is mother going to say?”Google Scholar

76. Divorce rates in 1939 were 8.9 per 10,000 inhabitants; by 1946 they had risen to 11.2, 16.8 by 1947, 18.8 by 1948. By 1949 the number stabilized at 16.9 and dropped to 15.7 percent by 1950. In Seeler, “Ehe, Familie, und andere Lebensformen,” 101. See also Unruh, Trümmerfrauen and Meyer and Schulze, Von Liebe sprach damals keiner, for women's comments on returning husbands who could not adjust to their wives' new self-confidence.Google Scholar

77. NZ, 21 October 1945.Google Scholar

78. Stuttgarter, 4 April 1946. A 16 June 1946 essay in Welt suggests that women have become hard and careless and do not conform to men's expectations anymore.Google Scholar

79. Zeit, 21 Novemebr 1946.Google Scholar

80. SZ, 29 January 1949 (original emphasis).Google Scholar

81. Welt, 24 March 1949.Google Scholar

82. SZ, 13 September 1946. See also Stuttgarter, 11 September 1946.Google Scholar

83. SZ, 16 December 1948. Willenbacher's, Barbara “Zerrüttung und Bewährung der Nachkriegsfamilie,” in Broszat, Martin, ed., Von Stalingrad zur Währngsreform (Munich, 1988), 608, points out that until 1954 the Evangelical church of Germany was committed to restoring the authority of the father because “the family is the birthing place of authority, and thereby of freedom.” While the Church's view on the relationship between husbands and wives was changed to one of cooperation in 1954, the father was still to have the last word in times of conflict.Google Scholar

84. The BGB dates back to 1899 and was based on mid-nineteenth-century bourgeois perceptions of marriage. Even though Nazi additions to the BGB were eliminated by the Allies, women remained subject to their husbands' authority in all matters. Husbands had complete control over the finances of the household, place of residence, the children's upbringing and education, and whether a woman could work outside the home.Google Scholar

85. In the first reading the Council only passed “grundsätzliche” equality, which would have given civic equality, but would not have entailed a reform of the BGB.Google Scholar

86. NZ, 18 December 1948. A more extensive listing of responses to the debate can be found in Späth, Antje, “Vielfältige Forderungen nach Gleichberechtigung und ‘nor’ ein Ergebnis: Artikel Absatz 2 GG,” in Freier and Kuhn, eds., Frauen in der Geschichte, vol. 5, 140–50. Späth published as part of her sources twelve extensive press editorials commenting on the debate.Google Scholar

87. NZ, 13 January 1949.Google Scholar For a list of organizations that appealed to the council see Reich-Hilweg, Ines, Männer und Frauen sind gleichberechtigt (Frankfurt a.M., 1979), 21.Google Scholar

88. NZ, 13 January 1948.Google Scholar

89. SZ, 20 January 1949. NZ, 20 January 1949.Google Scholar

90. NZ, 3 May 1949.Google Scholar

91. Heute, 1 August 1948 (my emphasis).Google Scholar

92. Franz-Joseph Wuermeling quotations in deLille, Angela, Buck zurück ins Glück (Berlin, 1985), 116.Google Scholar

93. Wuermeling cited in ibid., 66.

94. Quoted in deLille, , Perlonzeit, 110.Google Scholar

95. For an extensive and brilliant discussion of the “politics of the family” against the backdrop of the Cold War in the Federal Republic see Moeller's Protecting Motherhood. Moeller points Out how crucial the process of identifying the “natural” and “prepolitical” family of the democratic West versus the legislated and collectivized family of the East was in the political rhetoric of the government alliance during the 1950s.Google Scholar

96. For an extensive discussion on the “free” Western family see Hellwig, Gisela, Zwischen Familie und Beruf (Cologne, 1974), where the author contrasts the “ideological” family of East Germany with the “ideologically free” family of the West.Google Scholar

97. For an extensive treatment of Weimar family policies see Usburne, Cornelie, The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany (Ann Arbor, 1992), esp. 31–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

98. Until the founding of the ministry of the family in 1953, the official policy in regard to the family was the Subsidaritätsprinzip. This meant that the state was not to provide structural support for the family. Emphasis was on families to help themselves. Part of this effort was the 1950 founding of the Müttergenesungswerk, whose purpose was to restore women's strength after giving birth. There was no counseling, no mention of birth control, and women were admonished to be understanding of their husbands' demands at all times and to keep their marriages going at all Cost. See Birgit Troeckl, “Mütter zur Sonne, zur Freiheit,” in deLille, , Perlonzeit, 121.Google Scholar

99. For a lighter contribution on Wuermeling's concern with the family, see the 1 April 1954 issue of Stem magazine, which reported in a tongue-in-cheek manner on “Wuermelingsborn” because of the minister's great concern to increase the birth rate. In deLille, Perlonzeit, 111.Google Scholar

100. The Nazis declared the family to be the most important foundation of society. The family would protect the Volk community from all kinds of social ills and communism. But the Nazi goal to integrate each individual into state-sponsored organizations actually pulled family members out of the family.Google Scholar

101. For speculations on this phenomenon see Oppens, et al. , Die Frau, 45. Oppens questions whether many women's insistence on continuing to work is related to the breakdown of the social order, or whether this phenomenon is a trend of the future. Robert Moeller points out in his essay that studies during the 1950s showed that most mothers would prefer to stay home with their children. In light of the traditional double burden for mothers and the continuing wage disparity, this is hardly surprising.Google Scholar

102. In 1957, 13.1 percent of all households were still headed by women. See deLille, Blick zurück, 117. Gender parity was not achieved until the mid-1980s. See Rebecca Boehling, “Trümmerfrauen oder Hausfrauen: The Changing Roles of West German Women in the Transition from Post-World War II Chaos to 1950s Economic Prosperity,” presented at the Seventh International Conference of Europeanists, Washington, DC, March 1990.Google Scholar

103. DeLille, , Blick zurück, 33.Google Scholar

104. Jurczyk, Karin, Frauenarbeit und Frauenrolle (Munich, 1976), 12.Google Scholar

105. Stolper, , The German Economy, 236.Google Scholar

106. Jaesnich, Helmut quoted in Glaser, Rubble Years, 182.Google Scholar

107. Der Spiegel actually uses the English word “girl” instead of the German “Mädchen.” The term “girl” is not always used, but often enough to indicate Spiegel's agenda. The 1950s in Germany saw an explosion of the use of the English language (that is, its American version), especially among the young. I would argue that the Americanization of language also affected German life-styles. The 6 March 1957 issue of Spiegel addresses the magazine's role in the Americanization of the German language.Google Scholar

108. According to an article in Die Welt, the currency reform meant the end for most of the literary and sophisticated magazines that had thrived in the postwar period. They were replaced with publications (Illustrierten) that featured “women's heads and their more or less covered bodies.” See Welt, 20 Novemebr 1948. The same phenomenon occurred in the recent unification of Germany. As soon as capitalism was introduced into the East, the market was flooded with publications featuring nudity and sex in stones as well as advertisements.Google Scholar

109. See Schäfer's, Hans DieterDas gespaltene Bewusstsein (Munich, 1981) for a different depiction of German women during the Third Reich. He points Out the modernizing effect of the Nazi regime, mainly in the prewar period. Especially for the upper strata of society Nazism did not necessarily entail the uniformity generally associated with it. See also the exhibition catalogue of Frauenalltag und Frauenbewegung sponsored by the Historisches Museum Frankfurt. The editors point out that there was a two-tier fashion world during the Nazi period, one for women from the elite strata of society and one for the “Volksgenossinen.”Google Scholar

110. See Grossman, Atina, “Girlkultur or Thoroughly Rationalized Female. A New Woman in Weimar Germany?” In Friedlander, Judith, ed., Women in Culture and Politics (Bloomington, 1986), 62–80. Grossman argued that efforts by sex reformers during Weimar asmed at rationalizing the newly self-confident Girl of the 1920s into also being willing to give up her newly found freedom to be mother and wife.Google Scholar

111. See May, Elaine, Homeward Bound (New York, 1988), 112, for a similar phenomenon in the United States. May suggests that the depiction of the boyish freedom of the 1920s flapper and the shoulder-padded styles of the 1930s evoking strength were replaced by an aura of untouchable eroticism in the late 1940s. May argues that female sexuality had to be contained because during World War II American women had for the first time broken down the gender barrier in employment and were publicly celebrated for their work.Google Scholar

112. Spiegel, 2 August 1947.Google Scholar

113. Zeit, l3 January 1949.Google Scholar

114. A study of advertising during the reconstruction period could yield valuable insights into the question of continuity. Many companies announced their products or soon to be marketed goods as “wohlbekannte Friedensqualität.” See also Schäfer's Das gespaltene Bewusstsein.Google Scholar

115. Spiegel, 7 June 1947. Also see 27 Novemebr 1948, “German Women Favorite War Brides.”Google Scholar

116. Spiegel, 15 February 1947. See SZ, 12 June 1946, for a description of the screening procedure. The woman had to be politically correct; that is, neither she nor her parents could have a Nazi past. “The examination for venereal diseases was the second most important issue.”Google Scholar

117. Spiegel, 3 May 1947. A letter to the editor two weeks after this issue expressed the hope that “God may grant these Jitterbug girls a different citizenship.” This male reader was appalled that a German woman would so expose herself. See ibid., 17 May 1947.

118. ibid., 5 June 1948.

119. ibid., 30 October 1948.

120. ibid., 11 October 1947.

121. ibid., 23 December 1948.

122. ibid., 5 June 1948.

123. ibid., 12 March 1949.

124. ibid., 3 March 1949.

125. NZ, 10 February 1949.Google Scholar

126. One could perhaps argue that men may have been intimidated by male images of perfect beauty as well. However, the fact remains that it was women who throughout the 1950s and 1960s faced the dilemma of the extreme gender disparity. Sybille Meyer's Wie wir das alles geschaft haben is a good source on the competition for a husband, and on the difficulties and social stigma single women faced in the 1950s and 1960s because of the so-called excess of women.Google Scholar

127. “It is established that woman is woman.” Landrat Ernst quoted in Polm, “…neben dem Mann,” 139.Google Scholar

128. British feminists also finally achieved the passing of the family wage bill, a legislation they had agitated for since the 1920s in the hope that it would give married women greater financial independence. See Riley, Denise, “Some Peculiarities of Social Policy Concerning Women in Wartime and Post-War Britain,” in Higgonet, Margaret et al. , eds., Behind the Lines. Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven, 1987), 260–71.Google Scholar

129. See May, Homeward Bound.Google Scholar