Body, Femininity and Nationalism

Girls in the German Youth Movement 1900–1934

Marion E.P. de Ras

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781134673223
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia tedesca

This social and cultural history of girls in the German youth movements in the pre-Nazi era brings fascinating new light to bear on the history of the German youth movements. It contributes to our wider understanding of girlhood in the period, and investigates how mentalities, collective identities and German nationalism developed in the three decades before the Nazi period.

1 Mobility, Emancipation, and Ideology

The history of the Wandervogel before 1918 and, as it became known after 1918, as the Bündische Jugend, comprises about 35 years. From 1905 onwards girls began joining this movement and mixed groups of boys and girls, and girls-only groups came into existence alongside the already existing boys- only leagues. On the whole, the members of the movement had a middle-class background and opposed socio-cultural and political Wilhelminian philosophies, morals, and norms.

The numbers of girls joining the Wandervogel increased during the First World War, coinciding with a mass exodus of Wandervogel males to the Front. After the war the returning Wandervogel soldiers found, much to their horror, a ‘feminized’ movement and immediate attempts were made to expel the girls from the mixed groups and alliances. These attempts succeeded in 1920 at a mass meeting of Wandervogel leagues at Bad Sachsa. However, by that time most girls’ groups had already decided to organize themselves in an autonomous girls’ movement.

From 1920 till 1926 the girls’ movement existed as a girls and young women only movement, though some groups remained gender mixed, and some leagues continued to have strong connections with boys’ leagues. Between 1926 and 1928 the autonomous girls’ movement began to decline. The movement lacked younger members. New, conservative, right-wing, and extreme right-wing gender-mixed leagues came into existence, and they succeeded in attracting young female members in increasing numbers. These groups were much more politicized and much more German society-oriented than their somewhat romantic Wandervogel forerunners, and they attracted members from all social classes. In these new alliances girls were organized in semi-autonomous girls’ groups with female leaders, but, under the ultimate leadership of adult men.

From 1928 till 1933, militarization and politicization of the youth movement was on the increase and conflicts (of interest) between the right-wing conservatives and Hitler Youth were growing worse. Frantic attempts were made by the youth movement to reunite former splinter groups and leagues in order to build a substantial counterforce to the growing influence of the Hitler Youth. That they would lose this battle became painfully clear after January 1933 when Hitler came to power. In March 1933, a last attempt to preserve what was left from the original youth movement, Von Trotha—at this point 64 years old, a pensioner, and a former Admiral—united most leagues and named this new monster-alliance Großdeutscher Bund (Great-German League). In its wake the female leadership of the remaining girls’ alliances called for unification, which came about in May 1933, with the exception of the Girl Guides, who wished to preserve their autonomy as an all-girl community.

The final communication of the Grossdeutscher Bund resonates with the reality of Germany having become a Nazi state, in that their intention is to support the Nazi ‘movement’, yet to preserve the Bündische character:

We have united as Großdeutscher Bund, because we wish to put our collective power of a Bündische way of life into the National-Socialist movement. We believe that our way of life and community belongs to the German existence and being and will fight for its Lebensraum (space of life) in the new state. We will serve this state with all our abilities and power, wherever necessary. We will await Chancellor Adolf Hitler's decision, to which we will bow, whatever the outcome.¹

The girls’ movement claimed to be a free thus non-political movement. Yet the idealistic influence of the leaders of the more conservative bourgeois women's movement, such as Gertrud Bäumer, is undeniable. In its existence of about three decades, the girls’ movement displayed an overall tendency towards ‘difference’, ‘femininity’, and freely used Bäumer's expression of ‘weibliche Kultur’, female culture. In effect, it made ‘female culture’ its major pawn in a plea for liberation, emancipation, and culture of German female youth.

This emphasis on the feminine character, thus on difference and distinction from the other sex rather than equality, became an intrinsic part of the girls’ discourse. Apart from being an ideological notion, it both highlighted and channelled the girls’ problematic interaction with the youth movement, the women's movement, the social environment, and German society in general.

From the beginning antagonism on the part of the male members of the youth movement towards girls and the feminine element influenced girls’ and boys’ discourses, their organizational forms, and their rituals. Becker's call for a girls only alliance for example, arose not so much out of conviction, but simply because at first the male leaders refused the girls access to their male only Wandervogel movement. In addition, notions such as femininity and female culture were by no means clear concepts. Both major women's movements, the proletarian women's movement and the bourgeois women's movement, stressed different aspects of femininity and being female, and presented different solutions to the ‘women's issue’, with the complicating factor that the bourgeois women were internally divided into a conservative and a radical wing.²

The bourgeois women's movement, however, had taken on the cause of the younger generation. At the time several social and legal issues concerning girls and young women were at stake, of which access to better levels of education overall and to universities in particular, was probably the most important, next to aspects of vocational training, equal pay, equal rights, health, and sex education.³ It was only in 1908 that all German states allowed women to enrol at universities.⁴

How substantial the gap between the girls’ political agenda and that of the bourgeois women's movement was, became painfully clear after 1918, when finally women were given the vote. In the main debates within and between girls’ groups, a tendency to reject this newly gained ‘right’ became apparent. The girls stated that suffrage was a responsibility which they, as members of a youth movement, claimed not to be able or, from their anti-democratic perspective, not willing to handle.⁵ The reasons for their not wanting to be linked to the women's movement, (and vice versa) therefore must have had other reasons. I am inclined to think that, from the point of political and social involvement in politics and the state, the bourgeois women's movement, even in its most conservative political form, was at times still too revolutionary for the girls.

ORIGINS

It was 1905, seven years since the Wandervogel⁶, a movement of male gymnasium youth based on ‘Wanderschaft’ or hiking the countryside, had entered Berlin's historical scene, when Luise Becker, a member of the bourgeois women's movement and widow of Wolfgang Kirchbach, writer and Wandervogel-devotee, circulated a pamphlet in which she appealed for a female Wandervogel:

Simplicity, cheerful and amicable contact, gaiety in the fresh country air, these will be our walking companions. For much too long the limited focus on school, class and parenthood hindered the development of our girls…. For the good of the German people we want to bring up mothers, who are at home in the forests, meadows and pastures, who have learnt to listen to nature, have strengthened their health with amiable walking and have developed an eye for all things mighty and beautiful.⁷

A group of middle-class women from the bourgeois women's movement also put their names to the pamphlet, and soon they had formed the first girls’ association: the Bund der Wanderschwestern (the league of wandering sisters).

With this daring foundation a fire was kindled that could no longer be extinguished, certainly among girls from the bourgeoisie: the boys and young men may have considered these wandering sisters invaders of their territory; the young women's parents and conservative teachers at first, from within a framework of bourgeois respectability, thought such wanderlust inappropriate and indecent for girls and young women. But the movement had too much momentum to be stopped.

The development of youth movements and girls’ movements in Germany had socio-economic, cultural, and ideological reasons behind it, all of which were specific to Germany's history and situation. This specificity was due to an extremely rapid process of modernization, which featured a relatively ‘late’ industrialization, dramatic demographic changes, and internal migration patterns, which led to urbanization. In terms of class structures, the specific nature of Germany's political and cultural history had led, on the one hand, to close ties between white collar bureaucrats (Beambtentum), the lower middle classes, and the military, which during the Kaiserreich was still a ruling class. On the other hand there was the great bourgeoisie, which cherished classical ideals, intellectualism, and Bildung.⁸ The specific nature of these macro- and microstructures influenced the habits of the different classes in their etiquette, modes of behaviour, and lifestyles, which ultimately gave way to the rise of a bourgeois discourse of protest.

TRANSFORMATIONS, MODERNITY, AND MOBILITY

Since its unification in 1871, Germany had been in the process of transforming from a multitude of counties, provinces, and small kingdoms, into a nation. Germany was on its way to establishing a welfare state and to gradually becoming a major industrial and political power in Europe.

The development from an agrarian society into an industrial state not only led to the emergence of a youth movement, but also to an unprecedented private and public focus on youth in general and on girls and girlhood in particular. A discourse emerged in which ‘youth’ appeared as a metaphor for the nation's renewal and rejuvenation, as well as becoming a separate category deserving of specific moral, social, and political concern.

Youth became a separate group with its own culture. The premise for this was both social and economic. Relative stability, economic prosperity, increasing social security, and improved well-being for all classes resulted in improving the health status of the general population. This in turn had visible consequences: there were major demographic shifts between the older and younger generations and between men and women. In general the numbers of youth grew substantially.⁹ In the modernization process labour patterns and forms changed and with them the life-styles of the upper-lower, middle, and higher classes. A new and luxury phenomenon, Freizeit, leisure time, came into being, ultimately influencing the life-styles of a growing number of bourgeois youngsters, and thus, bourgeois girls.

The process of modernization held even more dramatic consequences for women, not only in their life-styles, but also in their habits, education, and vocations. A change in the structure of labour took place between 1882 and 1907, particularly in regard to female labour. This resulted in an overall increase of female employment in the craft, industrial, and tertiary sectors, which created a rise in the numbers of women of all ages entering the public world and thus becoming visible. At the same time the composition of the population of women and girls in rural and urban areas was also changing.¹⁰ Cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Hanover, Dresden, and Cologne were growing dramatically, attracting men and women to new jobs, while the rate of women working in agriculture dropped substantially.¹¹

These processes induced changes that affected the constitution of and relationship between the classes, generations, and genders, and also produced new perceptions and perspectives. The relatively fast pace with which these transformations occurred in Germany, compared to other European states, created a Zeitgeist: a mood, a mobility in all aspects of private and public life. Uneasiness with this new rhythm of living resulted in expressions such as ‘Haste nie und raste nie, dann haste nie neurasthenie’ (Don't rush, don't race, then you will never suffer neurasthenia), a motto that fitted the changing perceptions of life-styles and of living.

Urbanization and industrialization stimulated a faster pace of life. New technological possibilities such as electricity lit up the evenings and nights of the metropolis, allowing for an expanding urban life-style. New media such as radio, photography, and the soon-to-follow cinema also changed the perceptions of the middle classes. Exclusive, stylish magazines were fashionable, such as Die Schönheit, which promised its readers it would be a ‘modern magazine serving classic ideals of beauty’. These new media encouraged their readers to enjoy life and to embrace a new attitude: aesthetics combined with the ethics of ‘classic’ modernity, the rejuvenation and ennoblement of ‘healthy’ sensual thought, the abolition of false shame and modesty.

This abolition of ‘false shame’ opened up a whole new enjoyment for the turn-of-the-century bourgeoisie: enjoyment of the visual. The new magazines enticed the reader to look, to enjoy the many photographs, prints, and paintings of beautiful bodies, stylish clothes, and new, exciting dance and gymnastic poses. Von Gloeden's ‘classic’ photographs of young, naked Italian boys featured prominently in Die Schönheit, as did the highly stylised poses of naked women, which followed the doctrines of reform movement artists and body cultural theorists such as Fidus, Paul Schultze-Naumburg, C.H. Stratz, and H. Pudor (see chapter 3).

The dawn of the twentieth century saw the birth of a visually and sensually focussed perspective, with the discovery of the body, and with it, bodily pleasures. Isadora Duncan danced barefoot and lightly clad on stage, giving her audience a new perspective on bodily movement and aesthetics.¹²

Bess Mensendieck's gymnastic exercises were published with a multitude of photographs of naked women (and some men) in various poses, illustrating the newly adopted motto of a healthy mind in a healthy body, of aesthetics being at the same time ethics.¹³

This discovery of the body was not limited to Germany. The first waves of a changing tide towards a new way of looking at the body also occurred in other countries such as Sweden, France, and the United States. However, these waves hit a specific cultural predisposition in Wilhelmine Germany, where they received cultural, social, and national significations in the youth movement amongst others.

Natural and medical sciences, as well as new sciences such as psychology and pedagogy, allowed for a new focus and analysis of the mind-set, the ‘personality’ of people; their mentalities, bodily and psychological dispositions, and, by no means least, their ‘character’. An interest in heredity and genetics created a more scientific, rational focus on the body, on its health and disposition.

The welfare state, with its emphasis on improving the health status of the population and the invention of ‘social hygiene’, also to a certain extent improved the lifestyle of the lower classes. The welfare state targeted the eradication of serious diseases such as tuberculosis and rickets, and addressed housing issues, such as the unhealthy conditions of barracks built near factories and of poor districts in general. For some classes upward social mobility became possible due to industrialization, the migration from rural areas to cities, and the creation of new kinds of jobs along with more jobs overall.

A multitude of new reform movements emerged, seeking original concepts and fresh connections between mind, body, and soul. Body culture, nudism, vegetarianism, Christian-Germanic, and Indian religions became popular, each with its own cults, rituals, forms, prophets, and ideologies.¹⁴ Colonies of artists, writers, and intellectuals constructed their own circles and settlements: the Friedenshagener Kreis, the George Kreis, Worpswede, and Monte Verita. New theories on pedagogy and youth psychology created new philosophies, such as the theory ‘Vom Kinde aus’.¹⁵ New educational practices also developed, such as Landschulheime (country boarding schools), which advocated that schools should be set in a natural environment.

The turn of the century brought modernization into various cultural and social fields of society, but the Kaiserreich era was still one of conservative, antiquated customs and a stiff, suffocating moral confinement, of ‘Spießbürger’ and of a small-town provincial mentality. The stuffy minds of bureaucrats, the drab dullness of school teachers, and the monotony of a mind-destroying education, widespread conventions, and acceptance of authoritarian relationships: these were the el...

Table of contents

• Fornt Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviatons and Translations
• Introduction: Wanderlust, Femininity, and Germanness
• 1 Mobility, Emancipation, and Ideology
• 2 Gender and Sexuality: Engendering the German Nation
• 3 Gender and the Body: Embodying the German Nation
• 4 Girls in the Alt Wandervogel (AVW), the EV Leagues and the Deutsche Freischar
• 5 The Deutscher Mädchen Wanderbund (DMWB)
• 6 The Jung Wandervogel (JWV) and the Female Settlements Schwarzerden and Loheland
• 7 Girls in the Jungnationaler Bund (Junabu)
• 8 Conclusion: Wanderlust, Feminity, and Germanness
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index