A German Women's Movement by Nancy R. Reagin

Author:Nancy R. Reagin [Reagin, Nancy R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Germany, Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780807864012
Google: bwg1DgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2000-11-09T03:13:32+00:00

CHAPTER 8 Feminists and Nationalists

The Kasernierung campaign gave Hanover feminists a taste for activism, and between 1906 and 1910 they founded local chapters of other feminist organizations. They created a feminist wing within the Hanover women’s movement and allied themselves with progressive liberal men. During the same period nationalist women created their own local associations, antithetical to feminist organizations. At first glance, feminists and nationalist women would seem to have little in common: their demographic profiles and their goals were almost mutually exclusive. Nationalist women and feminists, however, developed similar political styles. Both groups chose to work publicly, and both allied themselves with men’s organizations. In so doing, they broadened the political spectrum of the local women’s movement, and constituted its right and left wings.

The movement’s left wing emerged first. By mid-1907, local feminists had begun to consider other projects besides abolitionism. Once it became clear that the police were indeed going to retain the old system of vice regulation, the local abolitionists lost momentum, met less frequently, and ultimately dissolved the Hanover abolitionist chapter; the same women moved on to other causes. Local feminists shifted to work within the Hanover League for the Protection of Motherhood (Bund für Mutterschutz), and in 1910 created a chapter of the German Union for Women’s Suffrage (Deutscher Verband für Frauenstimmrecht). The feminist wing of the local movement now included three organizations: the Women’s Welfare Association, the League for the Protection of Motherhood, and the suffrage group.

Hanover feminists continued to rely on publicity, public education, and debate in order to achieve their goals. Local feminists were unable to attract the publicity and audiences that they had drawn during the Kasernierung debate, however, because they were unable to find another local issue that related to feminist concerns and goals. In addition, they were unable to attract recruits from the rest of the local women’s movement, because feminists had broken with other women’s organizations over the issue of public debate during the Kasernierung campaign. Feminists’ estrangement from the mainstream of the local movement was reflected in the 1907 report of the Women’s Welfare Association to its national leadership; it claimed defiantly that “our association, in spite of many difficulties that arise from its isolated position [in Hanover], has continued to work to spread progressive ideas.”1

It was in fact difficult for Hanover feminists to translate these ideas into any praxis locally, which might have attracted new members. The Suffrage Union, for example, aimed at a goal—votes for women—that could only be realized through success at the national level, within the Reichstag. Within Hanover, local feminists concluded that all that could be done was educational work. Hanover Suffrage Union meetings, therefore, hosted speakers who laid out basic arguments in favor of women’s suffrage and gave encouraging reports on other nations where women had already won the right to vote.2

The Hanover chapter of the League for the Protection of Motherhood, which was founded as an auxiliary of the local Women’s Welfare Association, was also limited in its scope; its

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