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The Meanings of Labor: East German Women's Work in the Transition from Nazism to Communism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Elizabeth H. Tobin  and
Jennifer Gibson
Elizabeth H. Tobin
Affiliation:
Bates College
Jennifer Gibson
Affiliation:
Bates College
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Extract

In Christoph Wetzel's 1988 painting, An Everyday Story, the divided canvas proudly depicts women's accomplishments in the German Democratic Republic (Figure 1). On one side, a woman operates a large piece of heavy machinery in a rolling mill, cool and competent behind the enormous mass of metal and gears. On the other side, the same woman helps her two children prepare for school in the morning. In the act of combing her daughter's hair, she looks out directly at the viewer, her expression asking: “And what are you surprised at?” This painting, displayed as part of a 1995 exposition on art commissioned by government agencies in the GDR, graphically displays that government's ideological commitment to women's paid labor, especially in jobs that, in capitalist societies, are often thought to be inappropriate for women.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 301 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1995

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References

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14. Audio-cassette tapes of all the interviews are available at the Bates College Library in Lewiston, Maine.

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61. The rest of the narrators pursued the following fields: Suzanne Bartsch studied German and French; Ruth Bäumler studied geography; Elinor Symmangk received two Diplome for art and ceramics from a Hochschule; Annegret Räubner, Elfried Tamme, and Margarite Thomas studied pedagogy.

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74. Ibid., 347.

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78. Reese, “Emanzipation,” 207.

79. Scott, Gender, 56–57.