Mothers of the Nation Right-Wing Women in Weimar Germany

by Scheck, Raffael

• ISBN13: 9781859737071
• ISBN10: 1859737072
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-24
• Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd

Summary

What role did right-wing women play in the Nazi rise to power?Mothers of the Nation analyzes the work of women in the German Peoples Party and the German National Peoples Party - parties that covered the range from the moderate to the radical right. Looking at politics on both the local and national level, the author discusses issues ranging from social welfare to foreign policy. He shows that right-wing women, in keeping with the tradition of the German bourgeois womens movement, refused to stand up primarily for womens interests and instead invoked the Volksgemeinschaft (community of the people), a vision of harmony and cooperation of the groups involved in production.These right-wing campaigners believed that German women should use their newly won political rights to strengthen the Volksgemeinschaft by reconciling the divided nation and by infusing it with a higher morality. This stance proved to be both a liability and an asset. The emphasis on the Volksgemeinschaft made it difficult for female conservatives to fight for specific womens rights. Yet it also allowed them to paste over the conflicts between interest groups that tore apart Germanys bourgeois parties prior to 1933 and that divided politically active women as well. The ways in which women sought to contain the fragmentation that ultimately rendered their parties defenceless against the Nazis sheds new light on Weimar politics.Bringing the controversial story of right-wing women to life, this book offers a compelling account of gender and politics during a crucial period in German history.

Author Biography

Raffael Scheck is Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department, Colby College. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed Alfred von Tirpitz and German Right-Wing Politics 1914-1930.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
List of Abbreviations	xv
1. Introduction	1	(22)
2. Women's Entry into Party Politics	23	(26)
3. Hostility to Women in Politics	49	(16)
4. Women's Rights and Housewives' Power	65	(20)
5. Family, Youth, and Morality	85	(22)
6. Small Rentiers	107	(10)
7. Foreign Policy	117	(20)
8. Women's Local Politics	137	(20)
9. The Nazi Challenge	157	(26)
Conclusion	183	(4)
Reference Sources	187	(4)
Bibliography	191	(34)
Index	225