Martial spirit and mobilization myths

bourgeois women and the "ideas of 1914" in Germany

Claudia Siebrecht

pp. 38-52

in: Alison S. Fell, Ingrid Sharp (eds), The women's movement in wartime, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007

Abstract

This extract from a war pamphlet written by Gertrud Bäumer, leader of the "Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine" (BDF), the umbrella organization of the German women's movement, illustrates a reaction to the outbreak of war in August 1914 that was both emphatic and patriotic. The elevated language conveys an intense emotional response that was characteristic of the majority of women's publications of the time. Leading members of the German women's movement, among them, as well as Bäumer herself, Dr Agnes von Harnack, Dr Hanna Hellmann, Dr Elisabeth Altmann-Gottheiner and Helene Lange, invested much thought and effort into defining the relationship between women and war and explaining its historical dimension, generally concluding that women were indispensable to the war effort (Harnack 1915; Hellmann 1917; Lange 1914).

Cited authors

Hellmann Hanna