Search

The Weimar Republic has an important place in the history of Germany democracy, but a recognition of the strength of German women's political cultures and their role in shaping the post-war political landscape has been elusive. Women's experiences in the First World War and Weimar Republic have been extensively discussed, but often in ways that threaten to erase women's political agency. Moreover, the seismic shift signalled by women's suffrage has not been foregrounded in accounts of democratic history, and women's roles in the revolution of 1918 have been largely overlooked. Taking a gender historical approach, this article makes women's political cultures visible in two arenas important for an understanding of the post-war era: women's suffrage and women's revolutionary activism. While the focus is on the German national context, it is important to note that German women's organisations were embedded in international and transnational network organisations campaigning for women's social, professional and civic rights, and that their political cultures developed in dialogue with and awareness of what was happening elsewhere in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attempts to illuminate the connections between professional work, masculinity, and health in the 20th century, by asking the question whether a work-centered lifestyle made men ill in the 20th century. As a source, the author used 155 unpublished autobiographies of men and women from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, which deal with their years in school, career training, the course of their careers, and periods of unemployment. By comparing typical health risks on the job, the author is able to elaborate on inequities relating to the male employee's health.

The article reviews recent books on the cultural, social and political history of the Weimar Republic. Specific fields of enquiry have included gender history, where work on the history of abortion has challenged established narratives of emancipation. Another strand of research is interested in the idea that the crisis of Weimar was not simply an objective condition, but rather a cultural form which could be used to imagine and reflect upon possible scenarios for a renewal of society. Historians have thus begun to study the semantics of ‘crisis’ in Weimar Germany. A third strand of research is focused on performative politics: the ways in which political violence on the streets or the parliamentary debates in the Reichstag functioned as a stage for the theatrical presentation of competing political ideas. The article suggests that the modernity of metropolitan culture in Berlin, and its significance for Weimar Germany more generally, have been overestimated, and hence concludes that—in cultural terms—Weimar was Weimar: it is best represented by the small town in Thuringia. Some remarks on alternative modes of emplotment for the history of the Weimar Republic conclude the piece. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The text is less a review of the new literature than a reflection on significant and innovative current trends in the historiography on women and gender in the National Socialist era. The first part deals with various women's activities within milieus and professions, including their room for manoeuvre: midwives, social workers, female Nazi functionaries, and female auxiliary workers of the Nazi Wehrmacht. The second part of the article addresses specific features of biopolitics, targeted not only against Jews but also against asocial women, homosexuals and prostitutes. It also looks at visual images of bodies. Although the Nazis tried to create strongly determined binaries to categorize 'we' and 'the others' in the arts and other propaganda material, there existed, in fact, a broad spectrum of body images, especially among media stars. A third trend in the history of the Third Reich deals not only with the politics of exclusion but also of inclusion, as found in the concept of Volksgemeinschaft (national community), a concept that had many facets, such as the Volksfamilie, comradeship and home front. And it was the media that had the task of 'translating' this concept to the people in many appealing ways. The fourth part considers the gendering of memories after 1945 and the dominance of male narratives and points of view. The four parts of the article are intended to contribute to intersectional history and the history of social engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]