What Difference Does a Husband Make

by Heineman, Elizabeth D.

• ISBN13: 9780520239074
• ISBN10: 0520239075
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

In October 1946, seven million more women than men lived in occupied Germany. In this study of unwed, divorced, widowed, and married women at work and at home across three political regimes, Elizabeth Heineman traces the transitions from early National Socialism through the war and on to the consolidation of democracy in the West and communism in the East. Based on thorough and extensive research in German national and regional archives as well as the archives of the U.S. occupying forces, this pathbreaking book argues that marital status can define women's position and experience as surely as race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Heineman finds that, while the war made the experience of single women a dramatic one, state activity was equally important. As a result, West German women continued to be defined in large part by their marital status. In contrast, by the time of reunification marital status had become far less significant in the lives of East German women. In one broad, comprehensive sweep, Elizabeth Heineman compares prewar and postwar, East and West, lived experience and public policy. Her sharp analytical insights will enrich our understanding of the history of women in modern Germany and the role of marital status in twentieth-century life worldwide.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Preface	xi
List of Abbreviations	xvii
Introduction: War, Politics, and Marital Status	1	(16)
Housewives, Activists, and ``Asocials'': Controlling Marital Status under Nazism	17	(27)
War Wives, Workers, and Race Traitors: Losing Control During War	44	(31)
The Hour of the Women: Survival During Defeat and Occupation	75	(33)
Marriage Rubble: The Crisis in the Family, Public and Private	108	(29)
Restoring the Difference: The State and Marital Status in West Germany	137	(39)
Narrowing the Difference: The State and Marital Status in East Germany	176	(33)
What's the Difference? Marital Status and Everyday Life in the Reconstruction Germanys	209	(30)
Epilogue: Who's More Emancipated? Feminism, Marital Status, and the Legacy of War and Political Change	239	(8)
Appendix A: Statistics from Published Reports	247	(5)
Appendix B: The Darmstadt Study	252	(7)
Notes	259	(64)
Bibliography	323	(42)
Index	365