The Women’s Movement of the 1970s and ’80s in Relation to Nazi Perpetrators

The Kellermann Case

On November 21, 1985, during one of a series of lectures organized by the women’s studies department of the university of Hamburg, an older woman, Dr. Ruth Kellermann, took to the lectern. But before she could begin her lecture, a woman in the audience yelled, “you sent my family to a camp!” 1<p>Strobl, Ingrid: Die nette alte Dame, in: EMMA, 1986, no. 1, 22: <a href="https://www.emma.de/lesesaal/45240#pages/21" target="_blank" title="open article in a new browser tab">https://www.emma.de/lesesaal/45240#pages/21</a>.</p&gt; 
That woman was Genovana Steinbach of Germany’s RCU organization of Roma and Sinti.2<p>Roma and Sinti Union in Hamburg: https://www.rcu-info.de.&nbsp;</p&gt; She told the shocked audience that during the Nazi era, Kellermann had worked with the ‘Rassenhygienischen und bevölkerungsbiologischen Forschungsstelle’ (Racial Hygiene Research Unit, RHF) in Berlin, which contributed to the ‘final solution to the gypsy issue’. Research by Kellermann and others at the RHF led to the process of selecting from the Sinti and Roma ‘people to preserve and to exterminate’, as the Nazis put it, as well as to their forced sterilization. Kellermann examined, questioned, and classified Sinti and Roma, at the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück, among other places. She later said in an interview: “Every day I undertook four or six of them.”3<p>Behrens,&nbsp;Paul:&nbsp;Vollzigeuner“ und „Mischlinge.&nbsp;Die ehemalige Rassenforscherin Ruth Kellermann verteidigt ihren Ruf, Die ZEIT, Feb 7, 1986:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.zeit.de/1986/07/vollzigeuner-und-mischlinge">https://www.zeit.de/1986/07/vollzigeuner-und-mischlinge</a>.</p&gt; She was involved in “gypsy research” as the Germans called it, even after 1945, and on behalf of the police as well. The RCU pressed charges of murder against her.4<p>Ibid.</p>

What particularly bothered the younger feminists was that Kellermann was a familiar figure. She was a member of the ‘Deutsche Akademikerinnenbund’ (German Women Academics Union, DAB) and offered courses at the DENKträume women’s educational center that actively and critically addressed the Nazi era. How was it possible that Kellermann was able to move and operate within feminist circles with such ease? At issue was whether the movement should have taken a closer look at older women’s roles during the Nazi era. The question was whether the younger feminists simply made a mistake and suppressed the issue.

Shocked members of DENKtRÄUME formulated a paper calling for public debate of those issues. It referred to ‘desk murderers’ and posited that not only male, but also female murderers are among us (based on a title of an early postwar German film). Kellermann promptly sued the RCU and the center’s legal sponsor, the nonprofit association ‘Frauen lernen gemeinsam’ (women learning together), for slander. The civil court rejected Kellermann’s suit against the RCU. But a different court found in favor of Kellermann in her suit against ‘Frauen lernen gemeinsam’ and forbade the association from further distribution of the appeal paper under threat of a fine of 100,000 marks. The association had to pay 10,000 marks in court costs, a sum high enough to jeopardize its existence.
 

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“What Did Our Mothers Have to Do with Auschwitz?”

The Kellermann case shows how the courts at the time dealt with Nazi perpetrators, particularly when it came to Sinti and Roma, who were recognized as Nazi victims quite late. It also highlights a rupture in the era’s feminist convictions, because if a woman like Kellermann considered herself a feminist, what did that mean for the women’s movement?

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During the student revolts of 1968, the question of the participants’ fathers’ roles during the Nazi era was an important issue, but nobody questioned what the mothers might have done. Historical research up to that point had largely blocked out women, or was firmly mired in stereotypical gender clichés. Thus, the first feminist researchers began examining the gaps and blank spaces in the male-dominated historiography—an undertaking largely smirked at in academic circles and not conducive to career advancement. But for the feminist self-image, the question of how deeply women were enmeshed in the Nazi system played an important role. Would the women’s movement be able to keep alluding to its earlier sisters in an unconditionally positive manner? Or was the collective ‘we’ of all women for which they strove an illusion?5<p>Herkommer, Christina: Frauen im Nationalsozialismus – Opfer oder Täterinnen? Eine Kontroverse der Frauenforschung im Spiegel feministischer Theoriebildung und der allgemeinen historischen Aufarbeitung der NS-Vergangenheit, Reihe Forum deutsche Geschichte 9, München 2005.</p>

Did Women Bring Hitler to Power?

Well into the 1970s, the tabloid media was fond of running photographs of ‘hysterically’ shrieking Hitler devotees that implied that the mass enthusiasm of women helped the Nazis achieve success. The first to protest that narrative was Annemarie Tröger, a sociologist and co-founder of the first Berlin Summer University for Women conference in 1976, as well as the first women’s group for research into fascism at Berlin’s Free University..6<p>See Othmer, Regine/Reese, Dagmar / Sachse, Carola (Eds.): Annemarie Tröger. Kampf um feministische Geschichten. Texte und Kontexte 1970–1990, Göttingen 2021.</p> Tröger considered the clichéd image of the masochistic-submissive Hitler admirer a “leftist stab-in-the-back myth”7<p>Tröger, Annemarie: Die Dolchstosslegende der Linken – Frauen haben Hitler an die Macht gebracht, in: Frauen und Wissenschaft. Beiträge zur Berliner Sommeruniversität für Frauen – Juli 1976, Berlin 1977, 324‒55.</p> that revealed the misogyny of both conservative and left-leaning historians. She proved that during the Weimar Era, women voted in much lower numbers than men for the Nazi Party. English historian Jill Stephenson came to similar conclusions. In her 1975 book, Women in Nazi Society8<p>Stephenson, Jill: The Nazi Organization of Women London 1981, 202.</p>, she asserted that women were significantly more resistant to the Nazis than men. She attributed that to the fact that the Nazis largely kept women out of the sphere of political influence.9<p>Ibid.</p>

Is Antisemitism a “Male Disease”?

Yet there can be no denying that women were also involved in the Nazi system. The question is why they would support a misogynist, patriarchal, and homicidal system? 

The psychoanalyst Margarete Mitscherlich explored the manipulative psychological strategies used by the Germans during the Nazi era and in 1983 posited that acceptance of the Nazi system grew from the repressive situation of women at the time. Her theory was that because, over the course of a patriarchal history, men had barred women from any kind of political influence, antisemitism or a susceptibility to Nazi ideology could only be interpreted as a “male disease”.10<p>Mitscherlich-Nielsen, Margarete: Antisemitismus ‒ eine Männerkrankheit?, in: Psyche 37, 1983, no. 1, 41 f.</p> According to her thesis, the only thing women could be accused of, given their impotent position, was identifying with the dominant male prejudices. Mitscherlich did not intend to release women from moral responsibility, but her explanatory approach did not answer the question of specifically female blame for the Nazi dictatorship.

Women as Victims and Accomplices

In 1983, the sociologist Christina Thürmer-Rohr introduced the term ‘complicity’ into the feminist discussion. She was referring to the fact that women were not just victims of patriarchal history, but also always contributed to perpetuating the repressive system. Her theory was that only seeing women as victims further robbed them of their agency.11<p>Thürmer-Rohr, Christina: Aus der Täuschung in die Ent-täuschung. Zur Mittäterschaft von Frauen, in: Beiträge zur feministischen Theorie und Praxis vol. 6, 1983, no. 8, 88.</p> If the women’s movement took women seriously as autonomous beings, she believed, then it would have to recognize them as accomplices in their own repression. Thürmer-Rohr’s criticism was not directly linked to the historical Nazi period, but it succeeded in introducing a third element into the polarized concept of victim-perpetrator: the accomplice.

Racism and Sexism in National Socialist Policy

In her 1986 study Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik12Bock, Gisela: Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik, Opladen 1986. the German historian Gisela Bock broke with the accepted wisdom that the Nazis glorified women as mothers. Instead, Bock showed that the family and population policies of the Nazis were not generally aimed at fostering increased childbirth, but rather at a form of antisemitic, racist, anti-Romani, and social Darwinist selection. Jewish women, Sinti and Roma women, and women deemed ‘asocial’ were banned from motherhood. They were subjected to compulsory sterilization or forced into abortions as an early form of genocide. Bock was one of the first researchers to point out the close links between sexism and antisemitism, racism, and anti-Romani sentiment. She made it clear that the ‘collective subject women’ was split by antisemitism and racism of all kinds.

Women and Mothers in the Fatherland: Accomplices of the Nazi Dictatorship?

In that same year, 1986, American historian Claudia Koonz published Mothers in the Fatherland13<p>Koonz, Claudia: Mothers in the Fatherland. Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics, London 1986 (Dt.: Mütter im Vaterland. Frauen im Dritten Reich, Freiburg 1991).</p>, where she illustrated that the majority of German women during the Nazi era accepted without question the ideological division of life into public-male and private-female spheres. But in the allegedly separate sphere of the family, or in the large Nazi women’s and girls’ organizations, the women were in no way uninvolved or inculpable in Nazi crimes. By perpetuating the everyday routines of the Nazi dictatorship, uncomplainingly producing young soldiers, indoctrinating their children, or spouting chin-up shibboleths during the war, women made themselves just as guilty as men. Their silent support was what made the men’s violent acts possible. Koonz argued that the ‘refugium of family’ was highly political and the counterpart of mass murder and war because the Nazi dictatorship wanted to assert its ideology in the private sphere as well, and for this it needed the support of women.

The ‘Female Historians’ or ‘Feminist’ Dispute

After the two studies were published, a hefty dispute— dubbed the “historians” or sometimes “feminists” dispute—erupted between Bock and Koonz, with other researchers jumping into the fray14<p>Bock,&nbsp;Gisela:&nbsp;Ein Historikerinnenstreit, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft, vol. 18, 1992, no. 3, 400–404; Koonz, Claudia: Erwiderung auf Gisela Bocks Rezension von ‘Mothers in the Fatherland,’ ibid.,&nbsp;394–99.</p>. The intensity of the dispute could be traced not least of all to the different political positions of the researchers.

Bock, who had done research on the invisible and unpaid reproductive work of women, was involved in the international movement Wages for Housework, which campaigned for remuneration for all home and caring work.15<p>Bock, Gisela / Duden, Barbara: Arbeit aus Liebe, Liebe als Arbeit. Zur Entstehung der Hausarbeit im Kapitalismus, in: Frauen und Wissenschaft. Beiträge zur Berliner Sommeruniversität für Frauen – Juli 1976, Berlin 1977, 118 – 99; see also Scharfsinn und Provokation – Kontinuität und Diskontinuität, an interview with Gisela Bock, Die vielen Biographien der Käthe Schirmacher – eine virtuelle Konferenz: <a href="http://schirmacherproject.univie.ac.at/die-vielen-biographien-der-kaeth…" target="_blank" title="open link in a new browser tab">http://schirmacherproject.univie.ac.at/die-vielen-biographien-der-kaeth…; Because Koonz assessed women’s reproductive work as complicity in the Nazi regime, Bock’s opinion was that she was denouncing “love as a source of hate, motherhood as a source of death.”16<p>Bock,&nbsp;Gisela:&nbsp;Die Frauen und der Nationalsozialismus.&nbsp;Bemerkungen zu einem Buch von Claudia Koonz, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft, vol. 15, 1989, no. 4,&nbsp;564.</p>

For her part, Koonz took a strict gender-equality approach and saw Bock as a proponent of difference feminism, which assumed a fundamental difference between men and women. Consequently, she accused Bock of only considering women in their role as victims and ignoring the fact that, in that role, they became accomplices to the Nazi reign of terror.17<p>Koonz, Claudia: Erwiderung auf Gisela Bocks Rezension von „Mothers in the Fatherland“, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Vol. 18, 1992, no. 3, 394‒399.</p>

The End of the Political Identity ‘We Women’?

Despite their differences, the studies by both Bock and Koonz greatly advanced research about the Nazi era, and the historians’ dispute contributed to clarifying political positions within the women’s movement. But the question remains why what was basically an academic disagreement between feminists turned into such a polemic dispute, especially considering that there was much common ground between the two feminists. Both started from the patriarchy theory of the women’s movement and the assumption of a ‘collective subject women’ political identity. But they also both contributed to differentiating those basic assumptions. Bock did so by pointing out the role of antisemitism, racism, and social Darwinism, which split women; Koonz by demonstrating that the classic female role included complicity in the patriarchy. 

In terms of women’s politics, however, they advocated opposing strategies. Bock wanted the hidden work of women to be valued (with, among other things, wages for housework), while Koonz advocated absolute equality as the only answer. The situation was aggravated by the demand of the women’s movement at the time that feminist research should be directly applicable to practice. In the feminist view of identity, feminist theory and feminist practice belonged hand in hand. The need for feminist academics to deliver specific guidelines for action freighted academic differences with political meaning.

In addition, and particularly in the early days of the women’s movement, the theoretical interpretation of the patriarchy was limited to mutually exclusive polar opposite categories (such as women/men, victim/perpetrator). That point of view led to the construction of a ‘we’ political identity and to the mobilization of women all over the world, but also led to unsustainable generalizations and contradictions that could not be resolved. So, the historians’ dispute contributed to feminist research loosening its close links to the political movement and going on to develop into academic gender research, among other things.

That politically and morally charged dispute was followed by numerous individual studies that answered the question of women’s involvement in the Nazi dictatorship in varying ways, depending on their situations.18<p>Ebbinghaus, Angelika (Ed.): Opfer und Täterinnen. Frauenbiographien des Nationalsozialismus. Nördlingen 1987.</p> The variety of answers made it clear why the question of how someone like Kellermann could consider herself a feminist could not be answered within the framework of binary categories. The women’s movement had to free itself of the belief in a simple ‘we’ as a political identity and open itself up to other forms of repression. That was a long process that the DENKtRÄUME women’s educational center—having learned from the crisis—spurred on significantly over the years that followed, with women’s movement political debates on issues such as transsexuality, disability, and migration.