German women for empire, 1884-1945 / Lora Wildenthal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wildenthal, Lora, 1965-

Series:

Politics, history, and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Germany--History--19th century.

Women.

Germany.

History.

Women--Germany--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

xi, 336 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press, 2001.

Summary:

When Germany annexed colonies in Africa and the Pacific beginning in the 1880s, many German women were enthusiastic. At the same time, however, they found themselves excluded from what they saw as a great nationalistic endeavor. In German Women for Empire, 1884-1945, Lora Wildenthal untangles the varied strands of racism, feminism, and nationalism that threaded through German women's efforts to participate in this episode of overseas colonization.

In confrontation and sometimes cooperation with men over their place in the colonial project, German women launched nationalist and colonialist campaigns for increased settlement and new state policies. Wildenthal analyzes recently accessible Colonial Office archives as well as mission society records, periodicals, women's memoirs, and fiction to show how these women created niches for themselves in the colonics. They emphasized their unique importance for white racial "purity" and the inculcation of German culture in the family. While pressing for career opportunities for themselves, these women also campaigned against interracial marriage and circulated an image of African and Pacific women as sexually promiscuous and inferior. As Wildenthal discusses, the German colonial imaginary persisted even after the German colonial empire was no longer a reality. The women's colonial movement continued into the Nazi era, combining with other movements to help turn the racialist thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries into the hierarchical evaluation of German citizens as well as colonial subjects.

Contents:

1. Colonial Nursing as the First Realm of Colonialist Women's Activism, 1885-1907 13

2. The Feminine Radical Nationalism of Frieda von Bulow 54

3. A New Colonial Masculinity: The Men's Debate over "Race Mixing" in the Colonies 79

4. A New Colonial Femininity: Feminism, Race Purity, and Domesticity, 1898-1914 131

5. The Woman Citizen and the Lost Colonial Empire in Weimar and Nazi Germany 172

Appendix Colonialist and Women's Organizations 203.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [287]-324) and index.

ISBN:

0822328070

0822328194

OCLC:

47161616