Contested Femininities

Representations of Modern Women in the German Illustrated Press, 1920-1960

Jennifer Lynn

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781805394167
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781805394174
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

In this comprehensive, long-view study on the concept of the Neue or Moderne Frau (New or Modern Woman) that spans the Weimar Republic, Third Reich, post-war period, and a divided Germany, Contested Femininities explores how different political and social groups constructed images of women to present competing visions of the future. It takes the highly contested representations of women presented in the illustrated press and examines how they emerged as crucial markers of modernity. In doing so it reveals the surprising continuity of these images across political periods and reflects on how debates over paid work, the gender division of labor in the household, the politics of the body, and consumption, played a central role in how different German regimes defined the Modern Woman.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Modern Women in the German Illustrated Press
• Chapter 1. Weimar Illustrierten and the Neue Frau: Working Women and Rationalized Housewives
• Chapter 2. The Body of the Weimar Modern Woman
• Chapter 3. Paid Labor and Motherhood for the Modern Woman in the Third Reich
• Chapter 4. Fashionable, Feminine, and Modern: Women’s Bodies in the Third Reich
• Chapter 5. Women in Trousers and Girls on the Stage: The Modern German Woman during World War II
• Chapter 6. Occupier and Occupied: The Domestic Ideal and Women’s Labor in Rebuilding Germany
• Chapter 7. Fashion Models and Beauty Queens: The Body of the Modern Woman as a Site of Recovery
• Chapter 8. The Postwar Modern Woman: Labor, the Home, and Female Bodies
• Chapter 9. The “Other” Germany: The Modern Woman across the Border
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index