Marktordnung and autarkic housekeeping: Housewives and private consumption under the four-year plan, 1936-1939

German History

Volumn 19, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 162-184

  Reagin, Nancy R ^a  

^a PACE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33846146750     PISSN: 02663554     EISSN: 1477089X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1191/026635501678771619     Document Type: Review

References (58)

1. Many oral histories and Alltagsgeschichten of the mid- to late 1930s include the general sense that the late 1930s were a 'better' time, at least compared to the years that preceded and followed the late 1930s: the Depression, and the immediate post-war period. See, for example, vol. I of Lutz Niethammer's collection 'Die Jahre weiß man nicht, wo man die heute hinsetzen soll': Faschismuserfahrungen im Ruhrgebiet (Berlin and Bonn, 1983)
2. See also Ulrich Herbert, 'Good Times, Bad Times: Memories of the Third Reich', in Richard Bessel (ed.), Life in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987), pp. 97-110
3. See Eric Rentschier, The Ministry of Illusion. Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife (Cambridge, Mass., 1996). Rentschler persuasively argues that although these entertainments were usually escapist and not overtly politicized, they nevertheless functioned as 'a psychotechnology designed to channel the flow of information and impressions ... [entertaining] while functioning within a larger program': p. 21
4. Victoria de Grazia notes that this goal was shared by other governments of the period, as well. See her 'Nationalizing Women. The Competition between Fascist and Commercial Cultural Models in Mussolini's Italy', in Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough (eds.), The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996), pp
5. See Richard J. Overy, The Nazi Economic Recovery 1932-1938 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 25-8
6. Indeed, restrictions on imports had begun to be imposed already in 1932. See also Avraham Barkai, Nazi Economics. Ideology, Theory and Policy (New Haven and Oxford, 1990)
7. and R. J. Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1994)
8. Overy, The Nazi Economic Recovery, p. 31
9. and Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich, pp. 7-14
10. See Wolfram Fischer, Deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik, 1918-1945 (Opladen, 1968), p. 82
11. For similar arguments, see Timothy Mason, Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich (Opladen, 1977)
12. See Barkai, Nazi Economics
13. Several important works have recently appeared on the position of West German consumers after 1948, which offer a sharp contrast to the position of German citizens under autarky. See, for example, Michael Wildt, Am Beginn der 'Konsumgesellschaft': Mangelerfahrung, Lebenshaltung, Wohlstandshoffnung in Westdeutschland in den fünfziger Jahren (Hamburg, 1994)
14. Arne Andersen, Der Traum vom guten Leben. Alltags- und Konsumgeschichte vom Wirtschaftswunder bis heute (Frankfurt/Main and New York, 1997)
15. Erica Carter, How German Is She? Postwar West Germnan Reconstruction and the Consuming Woman (Ann Arbor, 1997)
16. See Nancy Reagin, "The Imagined Hausfrau: National Identity Among Bourgeois Women in Imperial Germany', Journal of Modern History (forthcoming)
17. and Reagin, 'Comparing Apples and Oranges: Housewives and the Politics of Consumption in Interwar Germany', in Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern and Matthias Judt (eds.), Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century (Washington, D.C., 1998)
18. see also Renate Bridenthal, 'Organized Rural Women in the Conservative Mobilization of the German Countryside in the Weimar Republic', in Larry E. Jones and James N. Retallack (eds.), Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance. Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945 (New York, 1993), pp. 375-405
19. Bridenthal, '"Professional Housewives": Stepsisters of the Women's Movement', in Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann and Marion Kaplan (eds.), When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York, 1984), pp. 153-73
20. For an intelligent and often droll discussion of the bureaucratic structure and politics of the Deutsches Frauenwerk (DFW) during this period, and its attempts to influence housewives through propaganda, see Stephenson, 'Propaganda, Autarky, and the German Housewife', in David Welch (ed.), Nazi Propaganda. The Power and the Limitations (London, 1983), pp. 117-42
21. See also Jill Stephenson, The Nazi Organization of Women (London, 1980)
22. and Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society (London, 1975). I would also like to thank Alison Owings, who gave me a copy of the transcript of her interview with Regina Frankenfeld. Frankenfeld was in charge of the advice centres run for housewives under the Reichsnährstand, and worked closely with the Volkswirtschaft/Hauswirtschaft division of the DFW
23. Kate Lacey, Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio, and the Public Sphere, 1923-1945 (Ann Arbor, 1996), p. 180
24. Victoria de Grazia notes that in Fascist Italy, too, women were much more difficult for the régime to organize than were men. See de Grazia, 'Nationalizing Women', p. 342
25. Margarete Adelung, 'Der "Kampf dem Verderb" im Haushalt mit sparsamen Mittlen', Ph.D. Dissertation, Munich, 1940, p. 26
26. See Reagin, 'Apples and Oranges'
27. and Bridenthal, 'Professional Housewives'
28. See also Kirsten Schlegel-Matthies, 'Im Haus und am Herd. ' Der Wandel des Hausfrauenbildes und der Hausarbeit 1880-1930 (Stuttgart, 1995)
29. See Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill, 2000)
30. and Anne Roerkohl, Hungerblockade und Heimatfront (Stuttgart, 1991)
31. See the interview with Frankenfeld in Alison Owings, Frauen. German Women Recall the Third Reich (New Brunswick, 1995), pp. 387-111
32. and vol. 2 (1933/4), p. 90
33. For an article that touted a new label for clothing made only by 'Aryan' producers, see Die Deutsche Hausfrau, 20 (1935), p. 103. The local NSF (NS Frauenfront) attempted to organize boycotts by members of NS organizations in every Gau; see, for example, the records of the Westphalian Gau NSF in the Nordrhein-Westfälisches Staatsarchiv Münster (hereafter NWSM), Bestand NS-Frauenschaft Westfalen-Nord, No. 326, 'Boykottanordnungen'. But the reports from the various Kreise also note that it was repeatedly necessary to admonish female party members to refrain from buying from Jewish merchants, which makes one sceptical about the success of these efforts
34. For promotion of Quark by the Catholic Housewives' Union during the Weimar period, see the correspondence in the Archive of the Catholic German Women's League (hereafter AKDFB), file 1-70-2. For an example of one of the articles that housewives' magazines ran to publicize its use see Frauenland, 24 (1931), p. 131
35. For national consumption levels of fish, see Walther Hoffmann, Das Wachstum der deutschen Wirtschaft seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1965), pp. 624 and 632
36. See Nancy Reagin, A German Women's Movement. Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880-1933 (Chapel Hill, 1995), p. 233
37. See the discussion on thrift as a domestic value in Reagin, 'Imagined Hausfrau'
38. also Marion Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class. Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York, 1991)
39. and Ute Frevert, 'Fürsorgliche Belagerung. Hygienebewegung und Arbeiterfrauen im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert', Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 11 (1985), pp. 420-46
40. Thrift as a leitmotif throughout the socialization and actual practice of bourgeois housewives is abundantly documented in Bärbel Kuhn, Haus-Frauen-Arbeit 1915-1965. Erinnerungen aus finfzig Jahren Haushaltsgeschichte (St Ingbert, 1994)
41. See the 'letter from a reader' in NS Frauenwarte, 5 (1936/7), p. 130
42. Pellkartoffeln were endlessly promoted; for a particularly difficult recipe, designed to use up left-over boiled potatoes, see Deutsche Hauswirtschaft, 20 (1935), p. 123
43. 'Neue Stoffe, neues Denken', in Deutsche Hauswirtschaft, 22 (1937), p. 120
44. 'Kunstseide und Zellwolle, die Spinnstoffe der Neuzeit', in Deutsche Hauswirtschaft, 23 (1938), p. 53
45. See William Bayles, Postmarked Berlin (London, 1942), p. 106
46. See Else Vorwerck's memoir, 'Hauswirtschaft in Selbstverwaltung. Ein erster großer Versuch, 1934-1945' (typewritten MS, 1948), regarding the war-time allocation of fabric production to fabric stores vs. its delegation to manufacturers of ready-made clothing. My thanks to Dr Kirsten Schlegel-Matthies, who shared her copy of this MS with me
47. 'Das "Ich" und "Wir" der Hausfrauen', in Deutsche Hausfrau, 19 (1934), p. 51
48. See the interviews done with women who married during this period (and who used marriage loan coupons to acquire new kitchen furniture and utensils, or who received baby clothes, etc., from party organizations) in Anne-Katrin Einfeldt, 'Auskommen - Durchkommen - Weiterkommen. Weibliche Arbeitserfahrungen in der Bergarbeiterkolonie', in Niethammer, Die Jahre weiß man nicht, vol. I, pp. 267-98
49. See Vorwerck, 'Hauswirtschaft in Selbstverwaltung'
50. and 'Über die deutsche Volksemährung', in Deutsche Hauswirtschaft, 21 (1936), p. 129, which concluded that 'the digestive process and biochemistry is different for each race'
51. See Robert Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton, 1999), especially pp. 120-72
52. See also Stephenson, 'Propaganda', p. 132
53. See also Thea Wever, 'Forschungen im städtischen Haushalt', Hauswirtschaftliche Jahrbücher, 11 (1940), pp. 57-62
54. BA NS 44/45, Rundschreiben FW 96/37, 20 Oct. 1937
55. Bayles, Postmarked Berlin, p. 25. The translation is that of Bayles. The original saying in the first instance was undoubtedly Negerschweiß, which would be better translated as 'Negro sweat'
56. Lacey, Feminine Frequencies, p. 191
57. See Walther Herbert, 'Die Hausfrau spart!', Hauswirtschaftliche Jahrbücher, 11 (1940), pp. 97-100, who concluded that because women's thrift made reductions in consumption possible, then 'resources ... [can instead be used] to build western fortifications, which gives the Führer greater freedom in diplomatic negotiations'
58. For the ways in which consumer deprivation sparked street riots and undermined the government's legitimacy during World War I, see Davis, Home Fires Burning