Ambraser Heldenbuch, Fol. 149. Kudrun. The early sixteenth century epic collection Ambraser Heldenbuch, one of the most important works of medieval German literature, focuses largely on female characters (with notable texts being its versions of the Nibelungenlied, the Kudrun and the poem Nibelungenklage) and defends the concept of Frauenehre (female honour) against the increasing misogyny of the time. The work was written by the tax collector Hans Ried in Bolzano for emperor Maximilian I.
The Ottonian queens and empresses (including Matilda of Ringelheim, Adelaide of Italy, Theophanu, Cunigunde of Luxembourg) were among the most powerful women of the entire Middle Age.[4][5] The Salian empresses, although not as visible (due to certain circumstances), were also powerful. The most notable and talented was perhaps Gisela of Swabia.[4][6][7] Abbesses, especially those of Imperial abbeys wielded tremendous power, with influence encompassing spiritual, economic, political and intellectual realms.[8][9]Matilda of Quedlinburg and Matilda of Quedlinburg were notable examples. Matilda of Quedlinburg formed a triad of regents with Adelaide of Italy and Theophanu in Otto III's reign when Matilda of Essen wielded great political power while being one of the most prominent patrons of arts of the time as well. The following centuries witnessed women who were not only patrons but artists and writers themselves.[4][10]
Salic (Frankish) law, which was applied in many regions, placed women at a disadvantage with regard to property and inheritance rights. Germanic widows required a male guardian to represent them in court. Unlike Anglo-Saxon law or the Visigothic Code, Salic law barred women and descendants from (only) female lines from royal succession.
The imperial dignity was elective. In the beginning, imperial succession was not strictly regulated. In the case of Empress Theophanu, it was expected that she would have become emperor had Otto II had no sons.[21] In many cases, the imperial throne came to descendants from a female line, such as the Salians who were descendants of Otto the Great through the female line;[22]Frederick Barbarossa who descended from the Salian through his grandmother Agnes of Waiblingen and had connection with the Hohenstaufen's powerful rival family, the Welfs, through his mother Judith of Welf;[23]Albert II, who was the son-in-law and heir of Emperor Sigismund, the last male Luxembourg through his marriage with Elizabeth of Luxembourg.[24] When the imperial throne became practically hereditary under the Habsburgs in the Early Modern period, the effort to make the princess Maria Theresa his heir by Emperor Charles VI met with many difficulties. While most European governments recognized his Pragmatic Sanction (that would allow female right of succession), in practice, Maria Theresa's inheritance was still contested. In the end, she gained the Hungarian, Bohemia and Austrian thrones while the elective imperial office went to her husband Francis.[25][26][27]
The status of women in general varied, depending on the period. Jestice and Görich write that Ottonian sources reveal no misogyny and basically the society recognized the roles and abilities (except physical strength) of women, thus the commonly deemed special status of empresses and queens actually did not stand out in this context.[28] According to Sagarra, social status was based on military and biological roles, a reality demonstrated in rituals associated with newborns, when female infants were given a lesser value than male infants. The use of physical force against wives was condoned until the 18th century in Bavarian law.[29][30]
The early sixteenth century epic collection Ambraser Heldenbuch, one of the most important works of medieval German literature, focuses largely on female characters (with notable texts being its versions of the Nibelungenlied, the Kudrun and the poem Nibelungenklage) and defends the concept of Frauenehre (female honour) against the increasing misogyny of the time. The work was written by the tax collector Hans Ried in Bolzano for emperor Maximilian I.[31][32][3]
Before the 19th century, young women lived under the economic and disciplinary authority of their fathers until they married and passed under the control of their husbands. In order to secure a satisfactory marriage, a woman needed to bring a substantial dowry. In the wealthier families, daughters received their dowry from their families, whereas the poorer women needed to work in order to save their wages so as to improve their chances to wed. Under German laws, women had property rights over their dowries and inheritances, a valuable benefit as high mortality rates resulted in successive marriages. Before 1789, the majority of women lived confined to society's private sphere, the home.[33] Sagarra notes that The Age of Reason did not bring much more for women: men, including Enlightenment aficionados, believed that women were naturally destined to be principally wives and mothers. Within the educated classes, there was the belief that women needed to be sufficiently educated to be intelligent and agreeable interlocutors to their husbands. However, the lower-class women were expected to be economically productive in order to help their husbands make ends meet.[34] The closure of monasteries by the Protestant Reformation, as well as the closure of other hospitals and charitable institutions, forced numerous women into marriage. While priests' concubines had previously received some degree of social acceptance, marriage did not necessarily remove the stigma of concubinage, nor could a wife claim the wage to which a female servant might be entitled. Marriages to Protestant clerics became a means for urban bourgeois families to establish their commitment to the Reformation.[35]
According to Kay Goodman, feminist scholars trace the beginning of German female literature (which paved the way for nineteenth-century feminism) to the era of Romanticism (eighteenth century). Dorothea Erxleben, the first German woman doctor, challenged the social restrictions on the role of women, that defined them only as wives, mothers and caretakers.[36]
There was a large number of female territorial regents between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries.[37] By the eighteenth century, generally elite women could only attain political power (such as Maria Theresa or Maria Antonia of Saxony; Catherine the Great was ethnically German but attained political power in Russia) in the name of their husbands and sons.[38][39] Empress Eleonore Magdalene of Neuburg was one of the most powerful Habsburg imperial consorts.[22]
Katharina Henot, possibly the first German postmistress, was executed as an alleged witch in the midst of a legal battle between her family and the House of Thurn und Taxis.[44][45] The position of Imperial Postmaster became hereditary through the female line in 1621 under Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor (it became hereditary through the male line in 1615). In 1628, Alexandrine von Taxis, née de Rye, became Imperial Postmaster.[46]
Katharina Henot (right), probably the first German postmistress, prominent witch-hunting victim. The man depicted is Friedrich Speevon Langenfel. The deaths of Henot and other innocent victims inspired him to write his work Cautio Criminalis.[49]
Aletta Haniel, prominent trade and transport magnate
Karoline Kaulla, one of the most prominent Court Jews of her time
19th century to early 20th century
Elite women
The most notable women associated with the Romantic movement was the composer, illustrator and writer Bettina von Arnim and the poet Karoline von Günderrode, who formed a homosocial network between female intellectuals.[50][51]
In the nineteenth century, the literary salons (generally presided over by women) played a great role in civilizing society.[52] Right under the shadow of Bismarck, the salonists Marie von Schleinitz and Anna von Helmholtz operated successful and influential scholarly circles predominated by liberal ideas.[53][54]
Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann were the two notable female composers of the nineteenth century, although they only began to receive recognition long after their deaths.[55]
Emmy Noether, often considered the greatest female mathematician of all eras, developed new branches of algebra.[56]
Marie von Schleinitz, the most powerful salonist in Berlin in Bismarck's time. "Anyone who was admitted to Frau von Schleinitz's exclusive salon had passed the admission exam for Prussia's higher society".[61]
"My nest is the best" by Adrian Ludwig Richter, 1869, a Romantic image of the emerging inner-directed nuclear family
A major social change 1750-1850 Depending on the region, was the end of the traditional whole house" ("ganzes Haus") system, in which the owner's family lived together in one large building with the servants and craftsmen he employed.[63] They reorganized into separate living arrangements. No longer did the owner's wife take charge of all the females in the different families in the whole house. In the new system, farm owners became more professionalized and profit-oriented. They managed the fields and the household exterior according to the dictates of technology, science, and economics. Farm wives supervised family care and the household interior, to which strict standards of cleanliness, order, and thrift were applied. The result was the spread of formerly urban bourgeois values into rural Germany.[64] The lesser families were now living separately on wages. They had to provide for their own supervision, health, schooling, and old age. At the same time, because of the demographic transition, there were far fewer children, allowing for much greater attention to each child. Increasingly the middle-class family valued its privacy and its inward direction, shedding too-close links with the world of work.[65] Furthermore, the working classes, the middle classes, and the upper classes became much more separate physically, psychologically and politically. This allowed for the emergence of working-class organizations. It also allowed for declining religiosity among the working class who were no longer monitored on a daily basis.[66]
Demographic transition
The era saw the Demographic Transition take place in Germany. It was a transition from high birth rates and high death rates to low birth and death rates as the country developed from a pre-industrial to a modernized agriculture and supported a fast-growing industrialized urban economic system. In previous centuries, the shortage of land meant that not everyone could marry, and marriages took place after age 25. After 1815, increased agricultural productivity meant a larger food supply, and a decline in famines, epidemics, and malnutrition. This allowed couples to marry earlier, and have more children. Arranged marriages became uncommon as young people were now allowed to choose their own marriage partners, subject to a veto by the parents. The high birthrate was offset by a very high rate of infant mortality and emigration, especially after about 1840, mostly to the German settlements in the United States, plus periodic epidemics and harvest failures. The upper and middle classes began to practice birth control, and a little later so too did the peasants.[67]
Germany's unification process after 1871 was heavily dominated by men and gave priority to the "Fatherland" theme and related male issues, such as military prowess.[68] Nevertheless, middle-class women enrolled in the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, the Union of German Feminist Organizations (BDF). Founded in 1894, it grew to include 137 separate women's rights groups from 1907 until 1933, when the Nazi regime disbanded the organization.[69] The BDF gave national direction to the proliferating women's organizations that had sprung up since the 1860s. From the beginning the BDF was a bourgeois organization, its members working toward equality with men in such areas as education, financial opportunities, and political life. Working-class women were not welcome; they were organized by the Socialists.[70]
Formal organizations for promoting women's rights grew in numbers during the Wilhelmine period. German feminists began to network with feminists from other countries, and participated in the growth of international organizations.
Schooling
In Sex in Education, Or, A Fair Chance for Girls (1873), American educator Edward H. Clarke researched educational standards in Germany. He found that by the 1870s, formal education for middle and upper-class girls was the norm in Germany's cities, although it ended at the onset of menarche, which typically happened when a girl was 15 or 16. After this, her education might continue at home with tutors or occasional lectures. Clarke concluded that "Evidently the notion that a boy's education and a girl's education should be the same, and that the same means the boy's, has not yet penetrated the German mind. This has not yet evolved the idea of the identical education of the sexes."[71] Education for peasant girls was not formal, and they learned farming and housekeeping tasks from their parents. This prepared them for a life of harsh labor on the farm. On a visit to Germany, Clarke observed that:
"German peasant girls and women work in the field and shop with and like men. None who have seen their stout and brawny arms can doubt the force with which they wield the hoe and axe. I once saw, in the streets of Coblentz, a woman and a donkey yoked to the same cart, while a man, with a whip in his hand, drove the team. The bystanders did not seem to look upon the moving group as if it were an unusual spectacle.[72]
Young middle-class and upper-class women began to pressure their families and the universities to allow them access to higher education. Anita Augspurg, the first woman university graduate in Germany, graduated with a law degree from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Several other German women, unable to gain admittance to German universities, also went to the University of Zurich to continue their education. In 1909, German universities finally allowed women to gain admittance—but women graduates were unable to practice their profession, as they were "barred from private practice and public administrative posts for lawyers". The first women's legal aid agency was established by Marie Stritt in 1894; by 1914, there were 97 such legal aid agencies, some employing women law graduates.[73]
Lower-middle-class women often found career roles as dietitians and dietary assistants. The new jobs were enabled by the rapid development of nutritional science and food chemistry. Physicians, furthermore, paid much more attention to diet, emphasizing that the combination of scientific selection of ingredients and high quality preparation was therapeutic for patients with metabolic disturbances. Their social origins in the lower middle class meant dietitians never received professional status.[74]
Weimar era 1919-1933
The Weimar era (1919-1933) was in general a favorable time for German women, although there were severe economic hardships during the early inflation years, and the depression years at the end. When the Republican governments suddenly and unexpectedly gave all women the right to vote in 1919, conservative women's groups that had opposed suffrage now reversed positions and threw themselves into their new civic duties, with an emphasis on educational programs on how to vote. The largest of all women's groups, the Evangelische Frauenhilfe (Protestant Women's Auxiliary) hurriedly and successfully mobilized its membership. Turnout of women was 82 percent in January 1919.[75]
Educational opportunities that began to open up in the 1880s and 1890s now came to fruition, and women began graduating universities and technical schools in significant numbers.[76] They began professional careers, but typically they were cut short by the reactionary policies of the Nazi regime after 1933.[77]
Opening of exposition Die Frau, Frauenleben und -wirken in Familie, Haus und Beruf (Women: the life of women, their role in the family, at home and at work) at the Kaiserdamm, March 18, 1933, with Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels
Historians have begun turning their attention to the role of women in the Nazi years.[78][79]
Women in Nazi Germany were subject to doctrines of the Nazi Party promoting exclusion of women from the political world.[80][81] While the Nazi party decreed that "women could be admitted to neither the Party executive nor to the Administrative Committee",[81] this did not prevent numerous women from becoming party members. The Nazi doctrine elevated the role of German men, emphasizing their combat skills and the brotherhood among male compatriots.[82]
Women lived within a regime characterized by a policy of confining them to the roles of mother and spouse and excluding them from all positions of responsibility, notably in the political and academic spheres. The policy of Nazism contrasted starkly with the evolution of emancipation under the Weimar Republic, and is equally distinguishable from the patriarchal and conservative attitude under the German Empire, 1871–1919. The regimentation of women at the heart of satellite organizations of the Nazi Party, as the Bund Deutscher Mädel or the NS-Frauenschaft, had the ultimate goal of encouraging the cohesion of the "people's community" Volksgemeinschaft.
First and foremost in the implied Nazi doctrine concerning women was the notion of motherhood and procreation for those of child-bearing ages.[83] The Nazi model woman did not have a career, but was responsible for the education of her children and for housekeeping. Women only had a limited right to training revolving around domestic tasks, and were, over time, restricted from teaching in universities, from medical professions and from serving in political positions within the NSDAP.[84] Many restrictions were lifted once wartime necessity dictated changes to policy later in the regime's existence.
Historians have paid special attention to the efforts by Nazi Germany to reverse the gains women made before 1933, especially in the relatively liberal Weimar Republic.[85] It appears the role of women in Nazi Germany changed according to circumstances. Theoretically the Nazis believed that women must be subservient to men, avoid careers, devote themselves to childbearing and child-rearing, and be a helpmate of the traditional dominant father in the traditional family.[86]
However, before 1933, women played important roles in the Nazi organization and were allowed some autonomy to mobilize other women. After Hitler came to power in 1933, the activist women were replaced by bureaucratic women who emphasized feminine virtues, marriage, and childbirth. As Germany prepared for war, large numbers were incorporated into the public sector and with the need for full mobilization of factories by 1943, all women were required to register with the employment office. Women's wages remained unequal and women were denied positions of leadership or control.[87] Large numbers of German women played subordinate roles, such as secretaries and file clerks, in wartime agencies, including guards in the system of concentration camps, extermination camps, and the Holocaust.[88]
Glamour pilots
With the exception of ReichsführerinGertrud Scholtz-Klink, no women were allowed to carry out official functions; however, some exceptions stood out in the regime, either through their proximity to Adolf Hitler, such as Magda Goebbels, or by excelling in particular fields, such as filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl or aviator Hanna Reitsch.
A few women were exempt from the constraints for propaganda purposes. The Nazi regime emphasized technological advances, especially in aviation, and made female aviators the centerpiece of their publicity. These "flying ambassadors" were sent abroad as citizen pilots promoting Berlin's economic and political agenda. The proliferation of German women sports pilots in the 1920s and early 1930s camouflaged the much larger scale quiet training of male sports pilots as future Luftwaffe officers. The overwhelmingly male aviation environment was hostile to the presence of women but reluctantly went along with the propaganda efforts. Berlin capitalized on the enormous attention these women received, citing them as evidence of the greatness of German aviation. But by 1935 Germany had built up its Luftwaffe and was interested only in displaying power through its aviation and had less use for the women. However, in 1944, with the declaration of "total war," women were recruited to fly for the Luftwaffe's ferrying unit and to work as gliding instructors.[89]Hanna Reitsch (1912–79) was Germany's famous female aviator. During the Nazi era, she served as a loyal representative internationally. She was not especially political. After the war, she was sponsored by the West German foreign office as a technical adviser in Ghana and elsewhere in the 1960s.[90]
In 1944-45 more than 500,000 women were volunteer uniformed auxiliaries in the German armed forces (Wehrmacht). About the same number served in civil aerial defense, 400,000 volunteered as nurses, and many more replaced drafted men in the wartime economy.[93] In the Luftwaffe they served in combat roles helping to operate the anti—aircraft systems that shot down Allied bombers.[94]
1970s-present
Until 1977, married women in West Germany could not work without permission from their husbands.[95][96]
From 1919 through the 1980s, women comprised about 10 percent of the Bundestag. The Green Party had a 50 percent quota, so that increased the numbers. Since the late 1990s, women have reached a critical mass in German politics.
Women's increased presence in government since 2000 is due to generational change. They have completed a long march from the basic to more advanced institutions. While the left took the lead, the conservative CDU/CSU worked hard to catch up in the representation of women.[97] By winning more than 30% of the Bundestag seats in 1998, women reached a critical mass in leadership roles in the coalition of the Social Democratic and Green parties. At the state level, the proportion of women ranged from 20 to 40 percent. Women in high office have pushed through important reforms in areas of gender and justice; research and technology; family and career; health, welfare, and consumer protection; sustainable development; foreign aid; migration; and human rights.[98][99]
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was Germany's chancellor from 2005 to 2021, is widely popular among the public and admired as well by commentators who note her success in building coalitions, in focusing on the issues of the day, and changing her position as needed.[100]
↑ Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres and Mary Jo Maynes, German women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: a social and literary history (1986).
↑ Eda Sagarra, A Social History of Germany: 1648 – 1914 (1977).
↑ Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, "'Partner in his Calamities’: Pastors' Wives, Married Nuns and the Experience of Clerical Marriage in the Early German Reformation." Gender & History 20#2 (2008): 207-227.
↑ Percy Ernst Schramm, Neun Generationen: Dreihundert Jahre deutscher "Kulturgeschichte" im Lichte der Schicksale einer Hamburger Bürgerfamilie (1648–1948). Vol. I and II, Göttingen 1963/64.
↑ "Johann Hinrich Gossler," in Hamburgische Biografie-Personenlexikon, Vol. 2, ed. by Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke, pp. 153–154
↑ Marion W. Gray, Productive men, reproductive women: the agrarian household and the emergence of separate spheres during the German Enlightenment (2000).
↑ Marion W. Gray and June K. Burton, "Bourgeois Values in the Rural Household, 1810–1840: The New Domesticity in Germany," The Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, 1750-1850 23 (1994): 449–56.
↑ Clark, Linda L. (2008). Women and Achievement in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge University Press. p.231. ISBN9780521650984.
↑ Ulrike Thoms, "Zwischen Kochtopf und Krankenbett. Diätassistentinnen in Deutschland 1890-1980," [Between the cooking pot and the sick bed: dietetics in Germany, 1890-1980] Medizin, Gesellschaft und Geschichte. (2004), Vol. 23, pp 133-163.
↑ Woodfin, Carol (2004). "Reluctant Democrats: The Protestant Women's Auxiliary and the German National Assembly Elections of 1919". Journal of the Historical Society. 4 (1): 71–112. doi:10.1111/j.1529-921x.2004.00087.x.
↑ Despina Stratigakos, "'I Myself Want to Build': Women, Architectural Education and the Integration of Germany’s Technical Colleges." Paedagogica Historica 43#6 (2007): 727-756.
↑ Marynel Ryan Van Zee, "Shifting Foundations: women economists in the Weimar Republic." Women's History Review 18#1 (2009): 97-119.
↑ Adelheid Von Saldern, "Innovative Trends in Women's and Gender Studies of the National Socialist Era." German History 27#1 (2009): 84-112.
↑ Atina Grossmann, "Feminist debates about women and National Socialism." Gender & History 3#3 (1991): 350-358.
↑ Rachel Century, Dictating the Holocaust: Female administrators of the Third Reich (PhD Dissertation, University of London, 2012) online[permanent dead link]. Bibliography pp 277-309
↑ Evelyn Zegenhagen, "'The Holy Desire to Serve the Poor and Tortured Fatherland': German Women Motor Pilots of the Inter-War Era and Their Political Mission." German Studies Review (2007): 579-596. in JSTOR
↑ Rieger, Bernhard (2008). "Hanna Reitsch (1912–1979) The Global Career of a Nazi Celebrity". German History. 26 (3): 383–405. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghn026.
↑ Wendy Lower, Hitler's furies: German women in the Nazi killing fields pp 97-144.
↑ Nathan Stoltzfus, Resistance of the heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse protest in Nazi Germany (2001).
↑ Hagemann, Karen (2011). "Mobilizing Women for War: The History, Historiography, and Memory of German Women's War Service in the Two World Wars". Journal of Military History. 75 (4): 1055–1094.
↑ Sarah Elise Wiliarty, The CDU and the politics of gender in Germany: Bringing women to the party (2010).
↑ Joyce Mushaben, "Girl Power, Mainstreaming and Critical Mass: Women's Leadership and Policy Paradigm Shift in Germany's Red-Green Coalition, 1998–20021." Journal of Women, Politics & Policy 27#1-2 (2005): 135-161.
↑ Meyer, Birgit (2003). "Much ado about nothing? Political representation policies and the influence of women parliamentarians in Germany". Review of Policy Research. 20 (3): 401–422. doi:10.1111/1541-1338.00028.
↑ Myra Marx Ferree, "Angela Merkel: What does it mean to run as a woman?." German Politics & Society 24#1 (2006): 93-107.
Further reading
Abrams, Lynn and Elizabeth Harvey, eds. Gender Relations in German History: Power, Agency, and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (1997).
Evans, Richard J. The feminist movement in Germany, 1894-1933 (1976).
Evans, Richard J (1976). "Feminism and Female Emancipation in Germany 1870–1945: Sources, Methods, and Problems of Research". Central European History. 9 (4): 323–351. doi:10.1017/S0008938900018288. S2CID145356083.
Frevert, Ute. Women in German History from Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation (1989).
Goldberg, Ann. "Women And Men: 1760–1960." in Helmut Walser Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (2011): 71– 90.
Harvey, Elizabeth. Gender Relations in German History: Power, Agency, and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (1997).
Zwicker, Lisa and Jason Rose. “Marriage or Profession? Marriage and Profession? Marriage Patterns Among Highly Successful Women of Jewish Descent and Other Women in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century German-Speaking Central Europe.” Central European History 53, no. 4 (2020): 703–40. doi:10.1017/S0008938920000539.
Pre 1914
Anthony, Katharine Susan. Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia (New York: 1915). online
Fout, John C. German Women in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History (1984) online
Heal, Bridget. The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648 (2007)
Joeres, Ruth-Ellen B., and Mary Jo Maynes. German Women in the 18th and 19th Centuries (1985).
Kaplan, Marion A. The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (1991).
Nipperdey, Thomas. Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck: 1800–1866 (1996). excerpt
Ogilvie, Sheilagh. Germany: A New Social and Economic History, Vol. 1: 1450–1630 (1995) 416pp; Germany: A New Social and Economic History, Vol. 2: 1630–1800 (1996), 448pp
Ogilvie, Sheilagh. A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany (2003) DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205548.001.0001 online
Ogilvie, Sheilagh, and Richard Overy. Germany: A New Social and Economic History Volume 3: Since 1800 (2004)
Ozment, Steven. Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany (2001).
Prelinger, Catherine M. Charity, Challenge, and Change Religious Dimensions of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Women's Movement in Germany (1987).
Rowold, Katharina. The educated woman: minds, bodies, and women's higher education in Britain, Germany, and Spain, 1865-1914 (2011).
Sagarra, Eda. A Social History of Germany 1648–1914 (1977, 2002 edition).
Sagarra, Eda. An Introduction to 19th century Germany (1980) pp 231–72
Harsch, Donna. Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic (2008)
Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, Family Life, and Nazi Ideology, 1919–1945. (1986). 640 pp. The major study
Mason, Tim (1976). "Women in Germany, 1925-1940: Family, Welfare and Work. Part I.". History Workshop. 1: 74–113. doi:10.1093/hwj/1.1.74.
Nelson, Cortney. "Our Weapon is the Wooden Spoon:" Motherhood, Racism, and War: The Diverse Roles of Women in Nazi Germany." (2014).
Stephenson, Jill. Women in Nazi Germany. Routledge, 2014.
Stibbe, Matthew. Women in the Third Reich, 2003, 208 pp.
Historiography
Hagemann, Karen, and Jean H. Quataert, eds. Gendering Modern German History: Rewriting Historiography (2008)
Hagemann, Karen (2007). "From the Margins to the Mainstream? Women's and Gender History in Germany". Journal of Women's History. 19 (1): 193–199. doi:10.1353/jowh.2007.0014. S2CID143068850.
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Gisela of Swabia, was queen of Germany from 1024 to 1039 and empress of the Holy Roman Empire from 1027 to 1039 by her third marriage with Emperor Conrad II. She was the mother of Emperor Henry III. She was regent of Swabia for her minor son Duke Ernest II of Swabia in 1015, although it seems at that time her husband Conrad was the one who held the reins of government, leading to the enmity between stepfather and stepson.
Matilda, also known as Mathilda and Mathilde, was a German regent, and the first Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg. She served as regent of Germany for her brother during his absence in 967, and as regent during the minority of her nephew from 984.
Women's history is the study of the role that women have played in history and the methods required to do so. It includes the study of the history of the growth of woman's rights throughout recorded history, personal achievements over a period of time, the examination of individual and groups of women of historical significance, and the effect that historical events have had on women. Inherent in the study of women's history is the belief that more traditional recordings of history have minimised or ignored the contributions of women to different fields and the effect that historical events had on women as a whole; in this respect, women's history is often a form of historical revisionism, seeking to challenge or expand the traditional historical consensus.
In Russia, feminism originated in the 18th century, influenced by the Age of Enlightenment in Western Europe and mostly confined to the aristocracy. Throughout the 19th century, the idea of feminism remained closely tied to revolutionary politics and to social reform. In the 20th century Russian feminists, inspired by socialist doctrine, shifted their focus from philanthropic works to labor organizing among peasants and factory workers. After the February Revolution of 1917, feminist lobbying gained suffrage, alongside general equality for women in society. Through this period, the concern with feminism varied depending on demographics and economic status.
Feminism in Italy originated during the Italian Renaissance period, beginning in the late 13th century. Italian writers such as Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, and others developed the theoretical ideas behind gender equality. In contrast to feminist movements in France and United Kingdom, early women's rights advocates in Italy emphasized women's education and improvement in social conditions.
Feminism in Germany as a modern movement began during the Wilhelmine period (1888–1918) with individual women and women's rights groups pressuring a range of traditional institutions, from universities to government, to open their doors to women. This movement culminated in women's suffrage in 1919. Later waves of feminist activists pushed to expand women's rights.
The roles of German women have changed throughout history, as the culture and society in which they lived had undergone various transformations. Historically, as well as presently, the situation of women differed between German regions, notably during the 20th century, when there was a different political and socioeconomic organization in West Germany compared to East Germany. In addition, Southern Germany has a history of strong Roman Catholic influence.
The feminist movement, also known as the women's movement, refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for radical and liberal reforms on women's issues created by inequality between men and women. Such issues are women's liberation, reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women's suffrage, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. The movement's priorities have expanded since its beginning in the 1800s, and vary among nations and communities. Priorities range from opposition to female genital mutilation in one country, to opposition to the glass ceiling in another.
The emergence of second-wave feminism was a key component of feminism in Germany. The second wave was heavily influenced by the policies of the Third Reich and its attitudes towards gender roles, and those of the postwar era.
Bertha "Betsy" Bakker-Nort was a Dutch lawyer and politician who served as a member of the House of Representatives for the Free-thinking Democratic League (VDB) from 1922 to 1942.
Adelaide of Italy was an important medieval ruler and holy figure, having been called "the most important woman of her century", "the most powerful of Ottonian women" and one of the most powerful queens of the entire Middle Age. As princess of Burgundy, queen of Italy and later Holy Roman empress, she had deep connections to many European regions. Having supported the Church greatly during her lifetime, she was canonized soon after her death. Historically the subject of numerous religious, artistic and scholarly works, she is now explored by modern historiography primarily as a political figure.
Theophanu (955–991) was a Byzantine princess who became Holy Roman Empress through marriage to Emperor Otto II. As the trusted political partner of her husband and later the regent of her young son Otto III, she left a remarkable legacy as one of the most powerful female rulers of the Ottonian era as well as of the Holy Roman Empire's history in general. Her reign is associated with the exchange of political, religious and cultural ideas and international activities between the Western Empire and the East, including the Byzantine Empire as well as the Slavic countries. Although the empress's personal role in some aspects of these processes is a subject of debate, she is often depicted in historiography and artistic portrayals as a cultured, spirited woman who had to adapt to a difficult situation after her husband's death and whose political vision was unfulfilled due to the early deaths of herself and her son. This image is also influenced by the masculine posture she adopted in her lifetime as coimperatrix and even imperator.
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Matilda of Ringelheim, the first Ottonian queen
Cross of Otto and Mathilde, commissioned by Mathilde, Abbess of Essen, a powerful kingmaker of the Ottonian time
The eleventh century Hitda Codex, commissioned by Hitda, abbess of Meschede
Uta Codex , commissioned by Abbess Uta von Niedermünster
Hortus deliciarum , presided over by Herrad of Landsberg
Gisela of Swabia, Salian empress
Codex Gisle, created by the artist Gisela of Kerzenbroeck
Ambraser Heldenbuch , Fol. 149. Kudrun
