A German Women's Movement

336 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 4 halftones, 15 tables, notes, bibl., index

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-4525-7
Published: August 1995
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8078-6401-2
Published: November 2000
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-6877-0
Published: November 2000

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Nancy Reagin analyzes the rhetoric, strategies, and programs of more than eighty bourgeois women's associations in Hanover, a large provincial capital, from the Imperial period to the Nazi seizure of power. She examines the social and demographic foundations of the Hanoverian women's movement, interweaving local history with developments on the national level. Using the German experience as a case study, Reagin explores the links between political conservatism and a feminist agenda based on a belief in innate gender differences.

Reagin's analysis encompasses a wide variety of women's organizations--feminist, nationalist, religious, philanthropic, political, and professional. It focuses on the ways in which bourgeois women's class background and political socialization, and their support of the idea of 'spiritual motherhood,' combined within an antidemocratic climate to produce a conservative, maternalist approach to women's issues and other political matters. According to Reagin, the fact that the women's movement evolved in this way helps to explain why so many middle-class women found National Socialism appealing.

About the Author

Nancy R. Reagin is assistant professor of history at Pace University in New York City.

For more information about Nancy R. Reagin, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"A sophisticated work of feminist and urban history."--Choice

"A pioneering work that links the development of the women's movement to the history of the German right before 1933."--German Studies Review

"Reagin's book is a major contribution to the literature on middle-class society and politics in the Kaiserreich and Weimar."--Central European History

"Carefully researched and thoughtfully argued. . . . Fills a crucial gap."--American Historical Review

"Reagin's careful delineation of the varied strands of the women's movement in Hanover during the Imperial and Weimar eras provides not only a valuable local perspective on the issue of female mobilization, but also a thoughtful reconsideration of the ideal of spiritual motherhood."--Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee, George Washington University

"In 1933 large segments of the German women's movement supported the Nazi regime. Nancy Reagin's fascinating study of Hanover women clarifies and analyzes this event. By weaving archival research into a very readable account of a German women's movement's 'special path,' Reagin has made an important contribution to both German history and women's history."--Bonnie S. Anderson, coauthor of A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present