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CHAPTER 3 Ideology and Practice of Organizing Girls in the League of German Girls Between Tradition and Progress: The League’s Ideology of Femininity Where human beings are nothing but a function , they have to be young.1 Writing in 1937 in a key publication that was to in›uence the ideology of the League of German Girls, Trude Bürkner, Reich representative of the league, summarized the guiding ideals of National Socialist “education for girls.” The work of the BDM is framed by two pedagogical slogans given to us by the Führer himself and the leader of German youth, Baldur v. Schirach. Speaking at the youth rally in Berlin on May 1, 1936, the Führer handed us our brief: “And you in the BDM, educate the girls—make them for me into strong and brave women!” And at the beginning of our work, our Reich youth leader once formulated the task before us in these words: “In the BDM, the girls should be molded into champions of the National Socialist world view.” These two sentences, so simple in formulation, summarize our entire educational work with all of German girlhood.2 The programmatic pronouncements on the pedagogical goals of the League of German Girls rarely contain anything profound. Rather, their distinguishing mark is a rhetorical pathos behind which the con41 1. Karl Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit (Berlin and New York, 1979), 44. 2. Bürkner, Der Bund Deutscher Mädel, 7. tours of a pedagogical concept can be dimly discerned. The only concrete element that repeatedly reoccurs in the pedagogical postulates is the self-evident character of motherhood as an integral component of female existence. The scienti‹c proof commonly mustered for the importance of motherhood in National Socialist education for girls is Hitler’s famous dictum: “The unshakable aim of female education must be the coming mother.”3 It would seem only natural to seek the educational goals of the league in these articulated ideals.4 National Socialist emphasis on motherhood as the meaning of female existence is quite evident, as are the measures for promoting marriage and the family. But can we assume this exhausts the National Socialist conception of the woman? There are two objections to any such conclusion. First, empirical studies show that women, generally speaking, were not nudged out of the job market and ushered back into the bosom of the reproductive family.5 Second, within the concept of motherhood, side by side with its being a natural given fact, there is always a secondary substantive interpretation: here anthropological dimensions are necessarily supplemented by historical and cultural aspects. The notion that motherhood should be an essential part of a woman’s life was widespread: National Socialism shared the view not just with other political groups but also with many girls and women themselves. We should thus try to pinpoint the content in the National Socialist concept of motherhood that is distinctive. More recent research indicates that there was no wish for children “at any price”; rather, the paragon of an ideal mother was bound to the 42 Growing Up Female in Nazi Germany 3. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. The First Complete and Unexpurgated Edition Published in the English Language (New York, 1939), 401. 4. See Hans-Jochen Gamm, Führung und Verführung. Pädagogik im Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1964), 38 ff.; Margret Lück, Die Frau im Männerstaat. Die gesellschaftliche Stellung der Frau im Nationalsozialismus. Eine Analyse aus pädagogischer Sicht (Frankfurt a.M., 1979), 86; Dorothee Klinksiek, Die Frau im NS-Staat [= Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgechichte, No. 44] (Stuttgart, 1982), 50; Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 49; Michael H. Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge, Mass., 2004; published in German as Hitler-Jugend [Darmstadt , 2005]; citations are to the German translation), 67. 5. Space here precludes any detailed examination of female employment under National Socialism. See Stefan Bajohr, Die Hälfte der Fabrik. Geschichte der Frauenarbeit in Deutschland 1914–1945 (Marburg, 1979); Timothy Mason, “Zur Lage der Frauen in Deutschland 1930–1940. Wohlfahrt, Arbeit und Familie,” in Gesellschaft. Beiträge zur Marxschen Theorie , vol. 6 (Frankfurt a.M., 1976), 118–93; Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War; Carola Sachse, Siemens, der Nationalsozialismus und die moderne Familie. Eine Untersuchung zur sozialen Rationalisierung in Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert (Hamburg, 1990); Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society; Annemarie Tröger, “Die Frau im wesensgemäßen Einsatz,” in Frauengruppe Faschismusforschung, ed., Mutterkreus und Arbeitsbuch, 246; Dörte Winkler, Frauenarbeit im “Dritten Reich” (Hamburg, 1977). [18.225...

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