Commitment and Professionalisation - Käthe Schirmacher (1865-1930)

Around 1900 many young middle class women in Europe and North America reached for new positions in their societies. They entered the labour markets and rejected traditional trajectories. This development was due to the dramatic economic changes and crises the developing industrial societies underwent. It did not go unnoticed: differing political positions concerning the issue where discussed under the topos of the "women`s question," and concepts such as the "modern woman" reflected the search for new models of female individuality, a concept that was initially discussed by women`s rights activists, but soon resonated in society at large. This project will take the biographical example of Danzig-born Käthe Schirmacher journalist, women`s rights activist and later German nationalist politician to discuss the discourses and conflicts surrounding the fight for a transformation of the hegemonic concept of female subjectivity. Our case study will provide relevant and innovative insight in several research contexts. Schirmacher was one of the first German women to obtain a doctorate, and she earned her living as an author of books and as a journalist. Discussing her case, we will contribute to the history of women`s integration into higher education and the professions. In particular, we will be able to develop differentiated theses on the gender history of journalism. We will also contribute considerably to the international history of women`s movements and to the analysis of nationalist movements in Germany in the early 20th century. With the analysis of Schirmacher`s extensive academic, literary and journalistic writings, we will make visible and discuss specific frames and patterns of interpretation provided in her respective political milieus. The main aim of our project will be to analyse gender concepts and the different formulations of the "women`s question" in different political milieus, and the increasing importance of nationalism and racism in public discourses before World War I. In addition to these thematic aspects, our project will reflect on the theory and methodology of interdisciplinary biographical research. We will take up newest developments of biographical research, and complicate them with Women`s and Gender History perspectives. We will further argue for a theoretically sound inclusion of biographical perspectives in fields of research such as the history of social movements and the history of education. Methodologically, we will follow a recent proposition to connect discourse analysis and biographical research, and develop and propose an approach that systematically links the analysis of self-inventions and autobiographical texts with a special attention for different concepts and perspectives of temporality. By discussing theoretical and methodological questions of biographical research in interdisciplinary contexts, our project will open up new ways of biographical writing.

The project Commitment and Professionalization. Käthe Schirmacher (1865-1930) deals with discourses and fields of conflict that were negotiated around 1900 under the topos of the womens question. Using the example of Käthe Schirmacher, a transnational womens rights activist and later völkisch nationalist, it examines demands for equal political and social participation by women as well as new models of female individuality. The examination of the Danzig-born writer, travelling lecturer and politician also opens up perspectives on the history of sexuality as well as on the history of education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and permits conceptual and theoretical developments in the fields of womens and gender history of social and political movements, biographical research and nationalism studies. The project explores specific constellations in which Käthe Schirmacher designed herself as a modern woman and examines the path of a young teacher from a middle-class family who was looking for education and career development opportunities by not only studying in Paris and Zurich, but also becoming a transnationally known agitator for womens educational rights. The project explores the networks, relationships and practices that have shaped Schirmachers life, focusing on family contexts as well as broad transnational connections. A particular focus is on the transgression of hegemonic relationship patterns. Schirmacher, who lived in intimate relationships with women, was one of the few activists from the womens movement who publicly expressed her views on homosexuality. Käthe Schirmachers political actions, her changing positions and her strategies as a publicist and speaker are examined on several levels. On the one hand, the focus is on arenas of the womens movement and fields of agitation such as the fight against prostitution, womens work or (womens) suffrage. On the other hand, the project addresses nationalist arenas and discusses Schirmachers activities in the ultra-nationalist war goal movement during the First World War, as well as her anti-democratic activism in the Weimar Republic. In addition to Käthe Schirmachers numerous literary, scientific and journalistic publications, her extensive papers kept in the University Library of Rostock form a central basis not only for research on her biography, but also for a variety of further studies on the history of the womens movement, the history of nationalism, and a number of other fields of research. Biographical research has held that autobiographers as well as archivists of ones own personal papers are key contributors to any biographical work about them. Following on from this the project develops an innovative cooperative approach to working with auto/biographical sources. Its methodological and biographical-theoretical reflections contribute to the development of new concepts of biographical research in the historical sciences.