Character Dolls: Consumer Culture and Debates over Femininity in Late Imperial Germany (1900–1918)

In his 2007 book Work and Play: The Production and Consumption of Toys in Germany, 1870–1914, David Hamlin argued that miniatures helped Germans define themselves as modern citizens of a nation-state. He reasoned that changes in the adult understanding of childhood after 1870, specifically the notion that children could be molded into good citizens of the modern nation, created new opportunities to market playthings such as dolls to a mass audience. Although the desires of ordinary citizens to develop an ideal modern nation created these new possibilities for mass consumption, Hamlin believes that Imperial Germany's business and academic elites manipulated these desires and told consumers what to think. As a result, their goal of turning Germany into a utopia via consumption collapsed due to "friction" and "outright contradiction."¹ For example, Hamlin concluded that despite the increasing technical proficiency of producers and the deep engagement of public intellectuals, doll consumption did not transform the condition of women even though producers promised to liberate them from the drudgery of the household by teaching modern techniques of management. Figurines for girls suggested that the only acceptable female role was that of a domestic manager in the middle-class home. A closer look at the evidence suggests more complexity, however. In imperial Germany mass consumption created networks along which consumers, producers, and commentators constantly jockeyed for position. Subversive ideas could rapidly penetrate the market and then be adapted and assimilated in a remarkably short period of time. To explore this dynamic system, I examine the case of Käthe Kruse (1883–1968). A maternal feminist, she re-imagined both the shape and social function of dolls after 1910 in an effort to create a new public space for women as artistic nurturers who had special insights into toy design not available to men. The positive press coverage her dolls received caught factory owners flat-footed and forced them to adapt. Nonetheless, the marketplace proved remarkably adept at re-assimilating her back into the mainstream. Like almost everyone else in Germany during World War I, Kruse rallied to the flag. Most of her dolls turned into boys, grew up, and put on uniforms. This fascinating story of subversion, assimilation, and submersion tells us a great deal about how consumer culture disseminated maternal feminism in imperial Germany.²

Before 1900, most public intellectuals, many childhood experts, and all entrepreneurs envisioned women's ideal role in modern society as the domestic manager of a middle-class home. They assumed girls required accurately miniaturized dolls and kitchen equipment (designed by men) to prepare them for their future roles raising children. Prior to 1800 most adults deemed dolls appropriate for both sexes. By the 1870s, dolls came to be associated primarily with young girls. They also became more "realistic"—displaying human hair, closing eyes, movable joints, and designer clothes. Parents could buy complete kitchen sets to go with them, including working gas ovens. These toys enjoyed success; there is voluminous evidence that many little girls and their mothers accepted the message that the ideal woman functioned as a domestic manager wholesale.³ However, the same consumer culture that facilitated the dissemination of this vision of female gender roles also enabled its subversion. Kruse was the most effective champion of an alternative. She brought this new vision to the market by redesigning doll shapes and thus the social messages attached to them. Eschewing mass-produced dolls with standardized features, she hand-produced individualized and gender-neutral toys. Aside from unique faces, they had only the most generic features. These "character" or "reform" dolls now cast women's ideal role in the modern nation-state as cultivators of young citizens—with the idea that women possessed insights into childhood unavailable to men. Despite the fact that male toy producers operated from a position of hegemonic dominance, consumer culture permitted the entrance of a subversive discourse. Kruse wanted to translate women's dominance in childcare into greater social and public power. She told girls and women that they had more value to the nation as nurturers of future...