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The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 27 (2004) 64-84



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Combating Misogyny?
Responses to Nietzsche by Turn-of-the-Century German Feminists

Barbara Helm 1
Institute for Philosophy, University of Tübingen,
and Max-Planck Research Centre for Ornithology, Andechs, Germany


Feminist Reception of Nietzsche, Twice

When feminist writers reintroduced Nietzsche's name in the late1970s, 2 many of their readers responded with surprise, skepticism, and anger, unaware of the historical links between his philosophy and the women's movement. Nietzsche carried a twofold stigma: because his work had been embraced by National Socialist ideologists, he had been unpopular to begin with, but among feminists, it seemed, Nietzsche was utterly unacceptable. He had a reputation of epitomizing misogyny in philosophy. Following the appearance of his works in the 1880s, Nietzsche was publicly accused of being a "hater of women" ("Frauenhasser"), "despiser of women" ("Frauenverächter"), "enemy of women" ("Frauenfeind"), and "Antifeminist." 3 Feminist literature has habitually referred to him as such, and males, too, debated Nietzsche's misogyny, taking sides with or against women. 4 Collections of his quotations concerning women can still be unsettling, 5 although some of his most polemical remarks are now interpreted as puns, metaphors, or perspectival experiments. 6 Yet, feminist philosophers have clearly been able to find plenty of resources in Nietzsche's writing. In the last two decades, their interest in his philosophy has increased and become more diverse. Via French deconstructivist thinking, Nietzsche's philosophy returned to the fields of political theory, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, and embodied philosophy. 7 Simultaneously, the historical relations between women and Nietzsche have received renewed attention, 8 reminding today's readers that feminist ambivalence toward Nietzsche is no invention of our time.

This article focuses on the historical female reception of Nietzsche in Germanophone countries, 9 where even the earliest "Nietzsche circles" comprised [End Page 64] "socialists and young women." 10 In contrast to today, German universities were almost inaccessible to women until 1908. Some privileged females received education abroad, but most of the sources used here were written by "self-made" women and published in women's journals and pamphlets that have slipped into oblivion. By the turn of the century, Nietzsche was so popular among women that he was regarded as "philosopher of women" (Weiberphilosoph). 11 In prewar Germany, Nietzschean arguments dominated debates over women's sexuality. Women who bobbed their hair and held allegedly "nihilistic views" were called "Nietzscheanerin." References compiled by Krummel indicate how widespread his thought was: while embroidering, bourgeois women asked bystanders to read from his books; girls in cooking classes cited Nietzsche in each other's poesy books. The author Gabriele Reuter reports that she learned about him from an older woman in a Catholic convent, and that for her, as for many women, Nietzsche's writing came as a revelation. 12 Contemporary critics of both sexes found this reception paradoxical. Marie Hecht wrote that female adherents of Nietzsche "make credible the . . . [passage of the whip] as a recommendation full of deep psychological insight. They reverently kiss the seams of the attire of him who has swung the whip so emphatically above them." 13

The course of history did not allow feminist discourse to resolve its ambivalence toward Nietzsche. With the beginning of World War I, his philosophy was increasingly employed to "serve the Fatherland," 14 while feminism was replaced by a fascist ideology of motherhood. 15 The early feminist reception of Nietzsche became historically isolated from the current one and, along with its literature, was mostly forgotten. Today, critics often claim that contemporary women have failed to come to terms with Nietzsche's misogyny or accuse them of having turned it against themselves. 16 Although this has happened occasionally, such a generalization reflects the typical fate of historical female writing: most text material has been ignored or forgotten; in retrospect, the lack of tradition is held against women, and their discrimination is thereby repeated. I intend a critical reappraisal of the historical response of women to Nietzsche's alleged misogyny, following an introduction to German feminism at...

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