Beyond Kinder, Küche, Kirche: Weimar Women at Work

Abstract

It is a commonplace that the National Socialist assumption of power in Germany in 1933 was to a large extent made possible by a clever manipulation of irrational fears provoked by the economic, social, and political tensions of the time. More than once since the Frankfurt School's famous study on authority and the family it has been suggested that the authoritarianism of the German family contributed to the susceptibility of the population to the siren call of the leadership principle and that threats to the traditional structure of society, especially the family, made people fearful and desperate enough to see a savior in Hitler. Certainly his call for women to return to hearth and home found a responsive audience. The Kinder, Küche, Kirche issue in Nazi propaganda implied that women were deserting their homes, their children, and their morality, challenging men's authority by asserting their independence and by flooding the labor market to such an extent that honest Familienväter found themselves without “work or bread,” to use the compassionate terms of the otherwise dispassionate 1933 census. Carl Gustav Jung, in his pamphlet Die Frau in Europa, was only one of the more distinguished spokesmen for the widely held view that women's emancipation was responsible for endangering not only the institution of marriage but also the whole spiritual balance between the masculine and feminine principles.