Birth of a new woman

Cover of Fliegende Blätter, 1930

The First World War was a decisive turning point for many women. Women took on new responsibilities in society and in the labour force. Due to the absence of men at the front, a major shift in sexual morale had taken place, at least in large cities. After the end of the war, the new spirit did not disappear. The number of divorces rose sharply in 1919, the most affected being the hastily arranged wartime marriages, but also other couples had distanced emotionally from each other by the prolonged separation.

After the end of the war and the return of the soldiers, the majority of women were pushed back from the public life. However, with the introduction of the right to vote for women at the beginning of the Weimar Republic – a major political demand of the movement for women’s rights – came true. Changing moral concepts provided the basis for the emergence of the so-called New Woman in everyday urban life.

 

Foto: hemlinequarterly.wordpress.com

A small, elite group of the female population, mostly academics born around 1900, journalists, writers, artists, dancers, were the protagonists of this New Woman phenomenon. Living primarily in the big cities, they broke with the lifestyle of their mothers. They wanted to practice a profession and live in an "equal relationship" with their partners, which in no way excluded marriage or the desire for a family. For them, the radical women's movement seemed old-fashioned now. Rather, they focused on modeling a new image of women in the new Germany that the Weimar Republic was shaping.

The New Woman came most often from upper middle-class, as only they had the financial means to lead a different lifestyle and participate in the consumption of the latest fashion as well as in cultural, entertainment and leisure activities. Practicing tennis or golf, sports imported from the Anglo-American sphere, gave them a new perception of their own body. 

 

But the image of the New Woman reached beyond the educated elite. It was mostly the female office employees who sought to emulate the trendsetters. A good example is Charlotte Ritter, the young protagonist of the TV-series Babylon Berlin.

Bobbed hair, a cigarette in her lips and knee-length skirts became the marks of a new kind of mass culture, especially in the Golden Twenties. However, with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 and its social consequences, the image of the independent New Woman increasingly lost its shine. As a cultural phenomenon, it disappeared from everyday life just as quickly as it had come up.

See: Lebendiges Museum Online. The text above is a resumé of an article by Susanne Herzog, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, 2002. 

 

 

 

Taxi driver, 1931