The women's movement in the Weimar Republic was characterized by various traditions, including the Enlightenment salons from pre-democratic times, which were continued in the bourgeois women's (educational) associations of the 19th century. Another line of tradition was the prewar struggles, especially of the socialist camp, for political recognition and suffrage for women. Suffrage was the key aspect for the women's movement throughout Europe until the First World War, because only a few nations (such as some Scandinavian countries) had previously granted women suffrage. The female suffrage movement was characterized by international unity.
Two women from Munich, feminists radical for their time, Anita Augspurg and her life partner Lida Gustava Heymann, founded the Deutsches Verein für Frauenstimmrecht (German Association for Women's Suffrage) in Hamburg in 1902 and were heavily involved in this international activism. Together with women in other countries, they endeavored to foster international peace and understanding during the war and in 1919 they were involved in establishing the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, which still exists today. Anita Augspurg headed up the German wing of the organization, which was headquartered in Leuchtenberg Palace in Munich and adopted the name ‘Internationale Frauenliga für Frieden und Freiheit’ (International Women's League for Peace and Freedom, IFFF). Prior to this institutionalization, the women's peace movement in Munich, like everywhere else, had operated in conspiratorial conditions and was hampered by myriad government interventions. However, even during the Weimar Republic, women who campaigned for peace and international understanding had many enemies among the bourgeoisie and in 'better society,' especially if they too stemmed from such sections of society, as did the neighbor of Thomas Mann in the Bogenhausen district of Munich, the pacifist Constanze Hallgarten.
Nonetheless, women's rights activism did not blend seamlessly with pacifist activism. Particularly in light of the 1914 'Burgfrieden' (political truce), women too were keen to join the great patriotic movement and in many cases rivaled men in their unbridled enthusiasm for the war. They thought that the "project of 'war'" which "transcended sex and class" (Frevert, p. 147) had the capacity to produce a new society in which they too would be given their rightful place. Bourgeois women’s organizations–above all the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (Federation of German Women's Associations, BDF) under the leadership of Gertrud Bäumer–initially participated in the 'mobilization' of women on the 'home front,' and then later in summoning the 'will to persevere' and the defamation of their fellow women's peace efforts. Vast swathes of the bourgeois women's movement were laboring under a similar illusion in the early 1930s, believing that the rise of National Socialism was a movement of salvation for the German people.
Towards the end of the First World War, however, with defeat looming over the nation and in anticipation of a political reshuffle, there were initiatives to unite the bourgeois and socialist women's camps in the interests of the common cause. Hence a broad coalition encompassing figures ranging from Lida G. Heymann (German Women's Committee for Lasting Peace) to Marie Juchacz (SPD) to Helene Lange (Progressive People's Party) and Gertrud Bäumer (BDF) signed a missive on October 25, 1918 calling on the new Reich Chancellor Max von Baden to put the political equality of women on the agenda for the democratization of public life.
In reality, women were granted the right to vote by the Rat der Volksbeauftragten (Council of People's Deputies) in November 1918, which unleashed considerable mobilization tendencies. Nigh on ninety percent of women used their new right in the elections for the National Assembly in January 1919–a percentage that has not since been surpassed. The proportion of female representatives in the National Assembly was almost ten percent, yet failed to rise in the following Reichstag elections and had fallen to just seven percent in 1930. Women active in party politics remained a small minority in the Weimar Republic. They were more likely to get involved in associations and community work, although such involvement quite often had political undertones. The BDF, for example, was closely intertwined with the DDP, while Marie Juchacz and other social democratic women founded the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (Workers' Welfare Association) in 1919 to give them a foothold in 'maternal politics,' which was largely the preserve of the middle class. They therefore shared the view held by the BDF and many of their male contemporaries that women were particularly well suited to social welfare work and education.
The Weimar Constitution granted men and women not only universal suffrage but also "the same civil rights and duties in principle" (Article 109). Article 119 explicitly stated that marriage was based on "equality of the sexes." But these constitutional provisions formed a program that was not honored and which was in fact undermined by the continuation of patriarchal family law. The husband's right to decide in all matters pertaining to the marriage, his authority to terminate his wife's employment at any time, or the father's primacy when it came to parental authority—all of these provisions of the German Civil Code remained intact until the equal rights legislation of the 1950s and were still valid in part, albeit in modified form, until the 1970s.
No less abidingly patchy than the political and legal emancipation was women's new economic and professional autonomy. The war had, of course, encouraged the employment of women within industry and services, and despite plenty of layoffs during demobilization, this modernizing trend did not abate. That said, work outside the home for the most part remained accepted for young, single women, whereas the model vision of the homemaking wife and mother remained firmly entrenched. What a contemporary emancipation discourse dubbed 'the new woman,' and what we still regard as a cliché today, was a much rarer phenomenon in the social reality of the Weimar Republic than the classic housewife. But what was particularly striking to contemporaries was that some women were also blurring boundaries between the sexes in terms of outward appearance by having bobbed hair and trousers, or by permitting themselves new freedoms by wearing casual clothing and smoking in public. Even in the arts, in the entertainment industry, or in literature, more and more women were daring to come out into the open. The law permitted women to work in academia (with admission to university being possible even before the war, and progression to 'Habilitation' level being possible thereafter). In practice, however, women in academia were defamed as 'moonlighters' or 'enemies of the people' who were costing male breadwinners their livelihoods and ought to be kept out of the academic job market if at all possible. By contrast, the new 'women’s professions'–such as stenographer, office clerk, or store assistant–enjoyed a greater degree of acceptance.
The National Socialists did not limit themselves to opposing the involvement of women in academia on an informal level; they also instigated real campaigns against the 'moonlighters.' Nonetheless, driven by the armament and war policy, they soon began to withdraw this ideologically motivated anti-feminism in favor of attracting women to the labor market and to courses of study such as medical science. Excluding women from all levels of political decision-making remained significant for the Nazi dictatorship, however.
