Gender, citizenship, and the welfare state: Social work and the politics of femininity in the Weimar Republic

Central European History

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 1-24

  Hong, Young Sun ^a  

^a STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0040931775     PISSN: 00089389     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0008938900013339     Document Type: Review

References (98)

1. Untitled talk, 20 September 1918, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin 51/W VI a. However, Bäumer contended that the war had broadened the horizons of German women and extended them beyond the individual family to embrace the entire national community
2. Bäumer, "Politik und Frauenbewegung," Frauenfrage 21, no. 4 (1 April 1919): 26-27
3. and Bäumer, "Auf neuem Boden," Die Frauenfrage 21, no. 9 (1 September 1919): 66
4. For a broader theoretical discussion, see Anne Phillips, Democracy and Differences (University Park, 1993), 107-8
5. Carole Pateman, The Disorder of Women. Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (Stanford, 1989), 179-209
6. and Anne Showstack Sassoon, "Women's New Social Role: Contradictions of the Welfare State," in Women and the State, ed. Anne Showstack Sassoon (London, 1987), 158-88
7. For recent comparative studies on gender and the welfare state, see, Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (London, 1993)
8. Gisela Bock and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare State, 1880s-1950s (London, 1991)
9. Linda Gordon, ed., Women, the State, and Welfare (Madison, 1990)
10. and Koven and Michel, "Womanly Duties, Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, 1880-1920," American Historical Review 95 (October 1990): 1076-108
11. Alice Salomon, "Der Völkerbundsgedanke und die Frauen," Frauenfrage 21, no. 5 (1 May 1991): 35
12. See also Bäumer, "Die alte und die neue Macht der Frauen," Die Frau 28, no. 5 (February 1921): 137-39
13. and Rosa Kempf, "Frauenbefreiung und Mannesmut," Die Frau 29, no. 4 (January 1992): 115-18
14. Verhandlungen der Nationalversammlung, 11th session, 19 February 1919, 178. See also Juchacz, "Die Aufgaben der sozialdemokratischen Frauenbewegung," Bericht über die Frauenkonferenz der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Berlin, 1919), 461
15. Schöfer, "Soziale Frauenarbeit in der Gemeinde," in SPD Frauenkonferenz (1921), 20
16. Ute Frevert, Women in German History (New York, 1993), 170-71
17. For an excellent survey of this issue, see Sylvia Paletschek, "Das Dilemma von Gleichheit und Differenz," Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 33 (1993): 548-69
18. On the centrality of social work for the development of the bourgeois women's movement in the Kaiserreich, see Dietlinde Peters, Mütterlichkeit im Kaiserreich: Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung und der soziale Beruf der Frau (Bielefeld, 1984)
19. Christopher Sachsse, Mütterlichkeit als Beruf: Sozialarbeit, Sozialreform, und Frauenbewegung 1871-1929 (Frankfurt, 1986)
20. Young-Sun Hong, "Femininity as a Vocation: Gender and Class Conflict in the Professionalization of German Social Work," in German Professions, 1800-1950, ed. Geoffrey Cocks and Konrad Jarausch (Oxford, 1990), 232-51
21. and Iris Schröder, "Wohlfahrt, Frauenfrage und Geschlechterpolitik," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 21 (1995): 368-90
22. See also Elizabeth Harvey, "The Failure of Feminism? Young Women and the Bourgeois Feminist Movement - Weimar Germany 1918-1933," Central European History 28, no. 1 (1995): 1-28
23. For more on these developments, see Young-Sun Hong, "The Contradictions of Modernization in the German Welfare State: Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform in First World War Germany," Social History 17, no. 2 (May 1992): 251-70
24. Since Detlev Peukert's pioneering work, Grenzen der Sozialdisziplinierung: Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Jugendfürsorge von 1878 bis 1932 (Cologne, 1986), historians have focused more on the question of social discipline as well as on the role of gender and religion in the making of the welfare state than on class relations
25. See Cornelie Usborne, The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany: Women's Reproductive Rights and Duties (Houndmills, 1992)
26. Elizabeth Harvey, Youth and the Welfare State in Weimar Germany (Oxford, 1993)
27. Marcus Gläser, Der blockierte Wohlfahrtsstaat: Unterschichtjugend und Jugendfürsorge in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen, 1995)
28. Atina Grossman, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950 (Oxford, 1995)
29. and Edward Ross Dickinson, State, Family and Society in Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1996)
30. See also Young-Sun Hong, The Contradictions of Modernity and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Welfare, Citizenship and the Formation of the Weimar State, 1919-1933 (Princeton University Press, forthcoming)
31. Alice Salomon, a leading social work educator believed that this therapeutic turn represented a decisive break with social policy, which idolized the beneficial omnipotence of instrumental reason and the manipulation of the external environment: "To educate does not only mean to create a favorable milieu, but also to strengthen the will of the young person, through which he [sic] can overcome the influences of the milieu." Salomon, "Die inneren Grundlagen der Jugendwohlfahrtspflege," Soziale Berufsarbeit (SBA) 2, nos. 5-6 (October/November 1992): 17-18
32. Hans Achinger, "Zur Theorie der Fürsorge," Fürsorge als Persönliche Hilfe, ed. Wilhelm Polligkeit, Hans Scherpner, and Heinrich Webler (Berlin, 1929), 1-24
33. See Rolf Heinze and Thomas Olk, "Die Wohlfahrtsverbände im System sozialer Dienstleistungsproduktion: Zur Entstehung und Struktur der bundesrepublikanischen Verbändewohlfahrt," Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 33 (1981): 94-113
34. and Alfred Rinken, Das Öffentliche als verfassungstheoretisches Problem (Berlin, 1971)
35. For more on the contemporary debate on corporatism, see Suzanne Berger, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism and the Transformation of Politics (Cambridge, 1981)
36. and Robert Alford and Roger Friedland, Powers of Theory: Capitalism, the State, and Democracy (Cambridge, 1985), 161-268
37. Reichsgesetzblatt (RGBl) 1(1923): 494-506, especially 505, and "Entwurf vorläufiger Richtlinien für die Verwendung der Vorschüsse zur Unterstützung von Anstalten und Einrichtungen der Wohlfahrtspflege auf Grund des §61 des Finanzausgleichgesetzes," (no date) Archiv des Deutschen Caritasverbandes (ADCV [Freiburg]), CA XX 49. These seven Spitzenverbände were the Caritasverband, the Inner Mission, the Central Welfare Bureau for German Jewry, Workers' Welfare, the Central Welfare Committee for Christian Workers, the German Red Cross, and the Fifth Welfare League
38. "Die Gründung eines allgemeinen Wohlfahrtspflegeverbandes 'Humanitas,'" Soziale Praxis (SPr) 33, no. 46 (1924): col. 979
39. and Anna von Gierke, "Humanitas," Mitteilungen des Deutschen Verbandes des Sozialbeamtinnen 4, no. 3 (August 1924): 174
40. Stadtarchiv Düsseldorf (StADf), XX 388. Gierke feared that the establishment of welfare Spitzenverbände along particularistic religious and political lines and the aggressive expansionism of the Catholic and Protestant welfare Spitzenverbände were hollowing out the broader idea of humanitarian charity
41. Gierke, "Der Fünfte Verband und seine Bedeutung im Rahmen der Wohlfahrtspflege," (no date), Helene Lange Archiv (HLA [Berlin]), 1-4/1, circular to BDF members (2 September 1924), HLA, 6-29/3, and Bäumer to Fifth Welfare League (22 January 1925), Bundesarchiv Potsdam (BAP), RAM 9149. Although these organizations had originally considered affiliating with the Red Cross, they rejected this idea partly because of the conservative, patriarchal nature of the Red Cross. "Niederschrift über die 1. Verwaltungsratssitzung [of Humanitas]" (4 October 1924), HLA, 6-29/3
42. Langstein to Labor Ministry (no date), BAF RAM 9149. This claim was dropped from the final version of the statutes
43. On the tentative agreement between the two organizations and the claims advanced by Langstein, see Langstein to Gierke and Wronsky, 16 July 1924, cited in Langstein to Labor Ministry (no date), BAP, RAM 9149, and Niederschrift der Landes- und Provinzialvertreter des Fünften Wohlfahrtverbandes, 27 April 1924, StADf, XX 469. The official publication of Humanitas was Die Frau in der sozialen Arbeit
44. Minutes of the conference of the Fünfter Wohlfahrtsverband, 27 April 1924, and Niederschrift der Landes- und Provinzialvertreter des Fünften Wohlfahrtverbandes (27 April 1924), both StADf, XX 469. It also changed its name to the Association of German Voluntary, Non-Profit Welfare Institutions (Vereinigung der freien gemeinnützigen Wohlfahrtseinrichtungen Deutschlands) to reflect these broader ambitions
45. Humanitas to Labor Ministry, 4 July 1924, Archiv des Diakonischen Werkes in Berlin (ADW), CA 1184, and Gierke to Labor Ministry, 25 October 1924, BAP, RAM 9149. This request was repeated several times in the following months
46. Ernst Ranft, the director of the Saxon branch of the Fünfter Wohlfahrtsverband, to Langstein, 24 February 1925, BAP, RAM 9149
47. Wölz to Hannes Kaufmann of the Hamburgische Gesellschaft für Wohltätigkeit, 2 & 11 August 1924, BAP, RAM 9149, and Humanitas to Langstein, 8 July 1924, cited in undated letter from Langstein to Labor Ministry, BAP, RAM 9149. This opposition to Humanitas by Langstein was reinforced by the confessional welfare organizations, who were concerned about the anticonfessional orientation of Humanitas. In contrast, Langstein had repeatedly confessed his willingness to work closely with these religious organizations. See Berlin Caritas director van Acken to Kreutz, 29 November 1924, ADCV, 460.1
48. Langstein to Labor Ministry (no date), BAP, RAM 9149. See also his critical letter to Martha Dönhoff, the chair of the Rheinish- Westfälischer Frauenverband and delegate to the Prussian Landtag, 4 February 1925, BAP, RAM 9149
49. Circular from Langstein to the state and provincial directors of the Fünfter Wohlfahrsverband, 24 March 1925, StADf, XX 471
50. The organization adopted this colorless name because it was generally named fifth - after the three confessional organization and the Red Cross - in any listing of the welfare Spitzenverbände. In 1932 the name of the Fifth Welfare League was changed to its present Deutscher Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband. For the final negotiations between the two organizations, see the minutes of the meeting, 9 February 1925, and minutes of the special joint committee, 7 March 1925, both in StADf, XX 469
51. See Munich Stadträtin Kiesselbach to the Rhenish branch of the Fünfter Wohlfahrtsverband, 21 September 1927, StADf, XX 471 and Langstein to Labor Ministry, 23 April 1927, BAP, RAM 9149
52. Wolf, "Entwicklungstendenzen in der kommunalen Frauenarbeit, Die Frau 30, no. 11 (August 1923): 340
53. Kempf, "Lehrplankonferenz der Wohlfahrtsschulen im Preussischen Wohlfahrtsministerium," and Hertha Kraus, "Gedanken zur sozialen Frauen-Arbeit," Die Frau 40, no. 6 (March 1933): 370-77
54. Marie Baum, Familienfürsorge, Schriften des Deutschen Vereins für öffentliche und private Fürsorge (SDV) N.F. 12, 2d ed. (1928), 119
55. Social workers had varying degrees of autonomy. While social workers were voting members of district welfare committees in Breslau, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, and Nuremberg, in numerous other cities they had only consultative rights. Baum, a bourgeois feminist welfare reformer, demanded that the case worker be responsible for every significant aspect of the case from beginning to end and that she be permitted to participate in all decisions which were direcdy related to the case work. Baum, "Fürsorge und Verwaltung," Soziale Arbeit 7, no. 1 (1930)
56. cited in Susanne Zeller, Volksmütter: Frauen im Wohlfahrtswesen der zwanziger Jahre (Düsseldorf, 1987), 144
57. "Ein Beitrag zu der Frage 'Innen- und Aussendienst in der Wohlfahrtspflege,' " SBA 7, nos. 5-6 (May/June, 1927): 6-7
58. Dr. Jourdan's address to the 1924/1925 DVS conference, cited in Beerensson, "Warum ist die Wohlfahrtspflege nicht volkstümlich?" Die Fürsorge 2, no. 12 (20 June 1925): 180-83
59. S. L., "Zur Frage der Oberfürsorgerin," SBA 8, no. 5-6 (May/June 1928): 4
60. Dr. Jacobi, "Familienfürsorge in der Amtshauptmannschaft Dresden-Altstadt," SPr 30, no. 52 (1921): col. 1349
61. Emilie Zadow, Kinder des Staates (Hamburg, 1929), 17
62. Hedwig Stieve, Tagebuch einer Fürsorgerin (Berlin, 1925), 123
63. Baum, Familienfürsorge, 94
64. Bäumer, "Die sozialpädagogische Erzieherschaft und ihre Ausbildung," Handbuch der Pädagogik, ed. Hermann Nohl/Ludwig Pallat, 5 vols. (Langensalza, 1929), 5:209-26
65. and Bäumer, "Die Fürsorgerin in der öffentlichen Meinung," SBA 10, no. 3 (March 1930): 1-2
66. Anna von Gierke, "Gemeinsame Kündigung aller Gubener Fürsorgerinnen," Soziale Arbeit 6, no. 33 (24 August 1929): 2-3
67. Hedwig Wachenheim, "Guben," Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AW) 5, no. 3 (February 1930): 90-92
68. and Wachenheim, "Guben," AW 5, no. 5 (March 1930): 156-57
69. Statistik des Deutschen Reiches, vol. 421: Die öffentliche Fürsorge im Deutschen Reich in den Rechnungsjahren 1927 bis 1931 (Berlin, 1933), 237
70. Verhandlungen des Deutschen Vereins, SDV N.F. 7 (1926), and Adele Beerensson, "Zehn Jahre soziale Berufsarbeit," SPr 35, no. 19 (1926): cols. 481-85
71. See the survey of social worker compensation, Zur Besoldungsreform, SBA 8, nos. 3-4 (March/April 1928): 6-10
72. and E. R., "Berufsschwierigkeiten der Wohlfahrtspflegerinnen in Bayern," SBA 9, nos. 1-2 (January/February 1929): 9-10
73. Nor could it be said that there was a clear trend toward granting social workers civil servant status. "Berufsfragen in der Wohlfahrtspflege," Deutsche Zeitschrift für Wohlfahrtspflege (DZW) 1, no. 3 (June 1925): 122
74. Bäumer, "Die Fürsorgerin in der öffentlichen Meinung," 2
75. Salomon, "Hat die Frau die Wohlfahrtspflege überspannt und verweichlicht?" Freie Wohlfahrtspflege (FW) 6, no. 2 (May 1931): 69-70
76. Bäumer, Die Frau im deutschen Staat (Berlin, 1932), 70
77. It has been suggested that the Social Democratic Workers' Welfare lacked a distinctly socialist conception of social work and that its own intellectual bankruptcy was reflected in an uncritical adherence to the ideas of the bourgeois women's movement centered on motherhood and women's separate sphere. However, the organization underwent a process of intellectual maturation and generational change during the second half of the 1920s. Workers' Welfare harbored a deep antipathy toward existing social work organizations because it categorically rejected that bracketing of politics through which the bourgeois and church welfare groups had attempted to constitute a purely affective sphere of community
78. See the two excellent studies of the social work profession in the 1920s by Richard Münchmeier, Zugänge zur Geschichte der sozialen Arbeit (Weinheim, 1981)
79. and Peter Dudek, Leitbild: Kamerad und Helfer, Sozialpädagogische Bewegung in der Weimarer Republik am Beispiel der "Gilde Soziale Arbeit" (Frankfurt am Main, 1988)
80. Uwe Lohalm, "Die Wohlfahrtskrise 1930-1933: Vom ökonomischen Notprogram zur rassenhygienischen Neubestimmung," in Zivilisation und Barbarei: Die widersprüchlichen Potentiale der Moderne ed. Frank Bajohr, Werner Johe, and Uwe Lohalm (Hamburg, 1991), 193-225
81. David Crew, "'Eine Elternschaft zu Dritt' - staatliche Eltern? Jugendwohlfahrt und Kontrolle der Familie in der Weimarer Republik 1919-1933," in Sicherheit und Wohlfahrt: Polizei, Gesellschaft und Herrschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert ed. Alf Lüdtke (Frankfurt am Main, 1992), 267-94
82. Aloys Fischer, "Die Problematik des Sozialbeamtentums," in Leben und Werk vols. 3/4, (Munich, n.d.), 322-23
83. Kempf, "Massennot und Wohlfahrtsarbeit," SBA 5, nos. 5-6 (May/June 1925): 1-2, from which the following citations are taken
84. Salomon, "Der Einfluss des Fürsorgers auf den 'Klienten,'" FW 1, no. 3 (June 1926): 105-9, citation 107-8
85. Zillken, "Berufsideal und Berufsschwierigkeiten der Wohlfahrtspflegerin," in Ungelöste Fragen der Wohlfahrtspflege, ed. Helene Weber, Veröffentlichungen des Vereins katholischer deutscher Sozialbeamtinnen, 1(1929): 51-55
86. Ulrich, "Fürsorge und Seelsorge," in Fürsorge und Seelsorge, ed. Friedrich Ulrich (Berlin, 1928), 86-94
87. Steinweg, "Fürsorge und Seelsorge," Die Innere Mission 22, no. 1 (January 1927): 1-5
88. and Wilhelm Wiesen, "Christliche Liebestätigkeit und Proletariat," Caritas 32, no. 3 (March 1927): 71-76
89. Solltmann, "Die Wohfahrtspflege als Beruf und die Frau," FW 1, nos. 6-7 (1926): 255
90. Solltmann, "Sollen und können weltanschauliche Kräfte und Überzeugungen in der Familienfürsorge wirksam werden?," in Ungelöste Fragen der Wohlfahrtspflege, ed., Weber, 14-38
91. Joachim Beckmann, "Wohlfahrtspflege und Kirche im Weltanschauungskampf der Gegenwart," Gesundheitspflege 10, no. 5 (1931)
92. Adolf Stahl, "Evangelische Liebestätigkeit im Wandel der Wohlfahrtspflege," Die Innere Mission 27 (1932)
93. and Leo Baeck, "Neutralität," Blätter des Deutschen Roten Kreuzes 8, no. 12 (December 1929): 1-6
94. Salomon, "Typenwandel der Sozialbeamtinnen und Struktur des sozialen Berufs," FW 5, no. 1 (April 1930): 1-8, from which the following citations are taken
95. Sachsse, Mütterlichkeit als Beruf, 306-7
96. The Akademie's publications included monographs by Bäumer, Hilde Lion, and Marianne Weber, and the research series "Bestand und Erschütterung der Familie in der Gegenwart," which included 13 volumes up to 1933. For an overview of this project, see Salomon's introduction to Alice Salomon and Marie Baum, eds., Das Familienleben in der Gegenwart. 182 Familienmonographien (Berlin, 1930)
97. Bäumer, Familienpolitik: Probleme, Ziele, und Wege (Berlin, 1933)
98. Bäumer, Familienpolitik, 73