A Case Study Of Local Feminist Mobilization in Eastern Germany, 1990-2000

This paper examines the development of the Beginenhof, a women's center in the eastern German city, Rostock, in the years since German reunification in 1990. The recent history of the center, and of the city's women's movement, point to the ways in which feminists engage with the stateand how different branches of the state offer diverse, and often contradictory, opportunities and constraints for feminists working towards improved social services for womenand for more secure rights over their bodies. Furthermore, the experiences of the women involved in the center problematize how women define themselves as citizens and how citizens respond to dramatic and unforeseeable changes in the state and the economy.

Germanunification has had profound effects for eastern German women. In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), women hadenjoyed a significantly higher degree of economic independence from men than women in West Germany and were able to combine full-time paid employment and motherhood relatively easily. In large part because of simultaneous labor shortages and population decreases, the GDR haddeveloped a series of policies intended to keep women in the work force while also encouraging them to become mothers. In the late 1980s, East German women's income comprised 40 percentof the total income in households with both male and female earners; in the West, women's income contributed only 18 percent to total household income. ¹ Although the East German gender regime was by no means entirely equitable, especially in that women were responsible for most household work, unification with West Germany brought new disadvantagesto women in the former GDR. The dissolution of state services that support women's activity at work and at home, new restrictions on reproductive rights, and women's disproportionate unemployment relative to men are but a few indicators of how unification has decreased women's social protections while simultaneously offering them increased democratic freedoms.

Rostock has certainly not been immune to the overwhelming changes accompanying unification, but feminist activists have also found fertile ground for their cause there. Rostock is an old German city with proud roots in the Hanseatic League, a trading union of port cities first established in the Middle Ages. During the GDR years, Rostock served as the capital of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and emerged as the largest port city east of the Elbe River. Large portions of the maritime sector were shut down following unification in 1990, such that unemployment in the years 1993-1997 hovered between 17 and 20 percent. ² The largest proportion of jobs lost was in shipping, fishing, and agriculture and women represented 63 percent of unemployed adults in 1998. ³

During the final months of the GDR and the early unification period between 1989 and 1990, women from Rostock were involved in the national level movements that led to the collapse of the GDR. But the demand for a reformed socialism that better recognized and included women's contributions went unmet as unification with the West became inevitable. After several failed attempts at national level mobilization, women in Rostock came to perceive the national state apparatus as hostile to both women and easterners and instead turned to opportunities for organization in their immediate community. ⁴ Women active at the Beginenhof consistently describe the local government in terms like "a bastion of sanity in a crazy world," "a safe haven for women," "responsive and responsible," and "the only level of government that accomplishes anything." ⁵

Because of the city's political orientation, which features a Red-Green coalition of political foes from the GDR years now working amicably together, ⁶ the Beginenhof has been the grateful recipient of city funds and public support. Born through a loosely knit coalition of women activists in 1990, the Beginenhof found its first home in an old barracks. In 1993, the city offered the Beginenhof a former day care center at a severely reduced rent...