Gender & Germanness: Female (Collective) Biographies

The project "Gender & Germanness: Female (Collective) Biographies of German Nationalist Women in the Habsburg Monarchy and in Austria" deals with the impact of discursive constructions of German Nationalist gender identity on the social practice and the life-experience of German Nationalist activists between the 1890ies and the 1960ies, considering the `Schutzverein` Südmark (after World War Two, Alpendländischer Kulturverband Südmark) as an example. Starting from an analysis of those measures of the Südmark, which served to mobilise women for their political concepts, the effects of German Nationalist gender codes are revealed by compiling a (collective) biography of female Südmark-activists. These life-stories are discussed within the framework of four main questions: (1) Institutionalisation: Since World War One, the Südmark society tried to consolidate its ideologies by establishing institutions like youth helpdesks, employment bureaus, girls-asylums etc. Women and girls were the clientele of these institutions as well as decisively involved in their build-up. The conditions of development of those gender relevant institutions is revealed, their aims and activities as well as those women who were engaged in the institutions. (2) Politicization: In the period between the two world wars, male Südmark-functionaries were members of different political parties, but many of them then turned to the NSDAP. The project will focus on the `political careers` of Südmark-women in German Nationalist parties or within the National Socialists and pursue their potential political re-integration after 1945. (3) Diffusion: The project will analyse, if and to what extent the Südmark society, which was a bourgeois phenomenon until 1918, changed its social structure in the interwar period and opened itself to other classes. This means also asking about the transferability of Südmark ideologies from urban to rural contexts and to describe the gender specificity of these processes. (4) Culturalisation: The presentation of German Nationalist everyday-life was defined almost exclusively as a specifically female field of activity. In the range of the project it will be analysed, if and how female Südmark-activists attended to the `cultural field` in everyday life, in `cultural heritage` or in university research of a nationalised `cultural history`. It is the aim of the project to compile a collective biography of female German Nationalist Südmark-activists of three generations (birth age-groups 1850-1880, 1880-1910, 1910-).