The Jewish Feminist Movement In Germany

Research Paper from the year 2011 in the subject Women Studies / Gender Studies, erg International School - Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism), course: Religious Studies, language: English, abstract: Beiträge zu Feminismus, Antisemitismus und Nationalsozialismus im 19./20. Jahrhundert: Vol 4. Antisemitism in the German Women's Movement 1865-1933 fills a gap in the research on antisemitism, women's movement and gender studies. The German women's movement of today must confront the accusation that even in its own ranks anti-Jewish modes of thinking and behavior were present from the very beginning. They occurred not only in nationalist, conservative associations but also in progressive ones, and even among social democratic feminists. This antisemitism was distinguished not by open racism alone. Exclusion, enforced silence, marginalization – subtle forms of anti-Jewishness were found in virtually all associations belonging to the organized women's movement of Imperial Germany and after. The author traces this phenomenon in her documentation of extensive archival materials in Germany, Israel, and the United States. This English edition is a translated, revised and extended version of the author's dissertation "Vaterland statt Menschenrecht," first published in Germany in 1999.

Describes the life of Jewish middle-class women in Wilhelmine Germany. Pp. 148-152, "Anti-Semitism in the University, " state that until about 1905 women students, discriminated against because of their sex, tended to show solidarity by forming organizations open to all, in contrast to the segregated male students' organizations. Russian Jewish women were especially despised, even by German Jewish male students. Pp. 182-185 describe discrimination against Jewish teachers, noting that their chances of employment were highly limited. See also the index under "Anti-Semitism."

Between Dignity and Despair draws on the extraordinary memoirs, diaries, interviews, and letters of Jewish women and men to give us the first intimate portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany. Kaplan tells the story of Jews in Germany not from the hindsight of the Holocaust, nor by focusing on the persecutors, but from the bewildered and ambiguous perspective of Jews trying to navigate their daily lives in a world that was becoming more and more insane. Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, Kaplan shows that far from seeming inevitable, the Holocaust was impossible to foresee precisely because Nazi repression occurred in irregular and unpredictable steps until the massive violence of Novemer 1938. Then the flow of emigration turned into a torrent, only to be stopped by the war. By that time Jews had been evicted from their homes, robbed of their possessions and their livelihoods, shunned by their former friends, persecuted by their neighbors, and driven into forced labor. For those trapped in Germany, mere survival became a nightmare of increasingly desperate options. Many took their own lives to retain at least some dignity in death; others went underground and endured the fears of nightly bombings and the even greater terror of being discovered by the Nazis. Most were murdered. All were pressed to the limit of human endurance and human loneliness. Focusing on the fate of families and particularly women's experience, Between Dignity and Despair takes us into the neighborhoods, into the kitchens, shops, and schools, to give us the shape and texture, the very feel of what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Demonstates through different essays Jewish Womens movement rides the fine line between tradition and transformation.

Essays discuss Weimar politics, feminism, and Nazi racism.

This fascinating book examines the position of women under the Nazis. The National Socialist movement was essentially male-dominated, with a fixed conception of the role women should play in society; while man was the warrior and breadwinner, woman was to be the homemaker and childbearer. The Nazi obsession with questions of race led to their insisting that women should be encouraged by every means to bear children for Germany, since Germany’s declining birth rate in the 1920s was in stark contrast with the prolific rates among the 'inferior' peoples of eastern Europe, who were seen by the Nazis as Germany’s foes. Thus, women were to be relieved of the need to enter paid employment after marriage, while higher education, which could lead to ambitions for a professional career, was to be closed to girls, or, at best, available to an exceptional few. All Nazi policies concerning women ultimately stemmed from the Party’s view that the German birth rate must be dramatically raised.