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Combating Misogyny? Responses to Nietzsche by Turn-Of-The-Century German Feminists Author(S): Barbara Helm Source: Journal of Nietzsche Studies, No

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Combating Misogyny? Responses to Nietzsche by Turn-Of-The-Century German Feminists Author(S): Barbara Helm Source: Journal of Nietzsche Studies, No Combating Misogyny? Responses to Nietzsche by Turn-of-the-Century German Feminists Author(s): Barbara Helm Source: Journal of Nietzsche Studies, No. 27 (SPRING 2004), pp. 64-84 Published by: Penn State University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20717831 Accessed: 17-01-2019 17:00 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20717831?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Nietzsche Studies This content downloaded from 37.205.58.146 on Thu, 17 Jan 2019 17:00:09 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Combating Misogyny? Responses to Nietzsche by Turn-of-the-Century German Feminists Barbara Helm1 Feminist Reception of Nietzsche, Twice hen feminist writers reintroduced Nietzsche's name in the latel970s,2 many of their readers responded with surprise, skepticism, and anger, unaware of the historical links between his philosophy and the women's move ment. 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" ("Frauenver?chter"), "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 polem ical remarks are now interpreted as puns, metaphors, or perspectival experi ments.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 deconstruc tivist thinking, Nietzsche's philosophy returned to the fields of political the ory, 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" com Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 27, 2004 Copyright ? 2004 The Friedrich Nietzsche Society. 64 This content downloaded from 37.205.58.146 on Thu, 17 Jan 2019 17:00:09 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Combating Misogyny 65 prised "socialists and young women."10 In contrast to today, German univer sities 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 com piled by Kr?mmel indicate how widespread his thought was: while embroi dering, 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 writ ing 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 ambiva lence 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 con temporary 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 his torical female writing: most text material has been ignored or forgotten; in retrospect, the lack of tradition is held against women, and their discrimina tion 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 the time. I will follow along central questions of femi nist approaches to the history of philosophy:17 1. When responding to patriarchal writing, did women identify misogy nous elements? 2. If so, did they take issue with such positions? 3. What were their reasons for pursuing a philosophy that contributed to their discrimination? 4. Did women inadvertently transport misogyny in or through their writing? This content downloaded from 37.205.58.146 on Thu, 17 Jan 2019 17:00:09 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 66 Barbara Helm Setting the Scene: Feminism in Turn-of-the-Century Germany At the beginning of the twentieth century, German feminists belonged to sev eral factions.18 The main divide was between a socialist and a bourgeois wing. Socialist feminists were part of the worker's movement (SPD) and hence de emphasized gender-specific approaches to the liberation of women. According to the official line pursued by such proponents as Clara Zetkin, editor of the socialist women's journal Die Gleichheit, the sexes were naturally equal. Engels and Bebel had both claimed that the subjection of women was a con sequence of capitalism.19 Most socialist feminists were determined to fight together with males for a revolution that would automatically abolish every kind of oppression. Because class solidarity was championed over gender solidarity, there was a programmatically "clear division" from the bourgeois women's movement.20 However, around the turn of the century Bismarck's social legislation had begun to show effect. "Reform" started to replace "rev olution" as primary goal on the agenda, and debates about a socialist future took up issues of gender.21 Simultaneously, the ascending "revisionist" social ism was open toward Nietzsche's philosophy whereas his writing had earlier been condemned as inhumane and aristocratic by the party line set out by Franz Mehring.22 The two developments led to a rapprochement of apostates of the socialist and bourgeois feminist camps.23 In contrast to the socialist party doctrine, most bourgeois feminists had replaced earlier arguments for emancipation based on social and natural rights with a specifically feminine approach grounded on allegedly natural differ ences of the sexes.24 The great majority believed that women's liberation would be enhanced by cultivating classical feminine virtues as advanced by German idealists (most importantly, Goethe)25 or the churches. These con servatives among feminists claimed that by observing virtue, women would "earn" themselves additional freedoms. In turn, the nation as a whole would profit from their improved education, careers in social fields, and possibly from suffrage. In contrast, a small faction of "radical" bourgeois feminists gave gendered thinking a decidedly worldly and bodily turn.26 They argued that it was precisely religious and moral obligations that enforced oppression of women's bodies and souls. Radical women envisioned that far-reaching reforms would lead to the emergence of a liberated, completely "new mankind," and, in particular, "new woman." The debates among feminists reflected the pervasiveness of three impor tant contemporary topics. One was the "social question" of proletarian impov erishment and its possible solution via reform or revolution.27 The second was the impact of evolutionism. Social and political thought had absorbed popular forms of Darwinism and blended these with Lamarckian ideas of This content downloaded from 37.205.58.146 on Thu, 17 Jan 2019 17:00:09 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Combating Misogyny 67 inheritance of acquired qualities. Around the turn of the century, evolution ism was predominantly optimistic, and biological improvements of humankind were generally expected.28 The third topic, related to the second,29 was the progressive "deployment" of "sexuality."30 Various interest groups discussed female sexuality, often in the context of what Foucault called "biopower,"31 and feminists of all camps contributed to the debates.32 The controversy about ethics and sexuality culminated in the years after 1905 and led to a split of the bourgeois women's movement into a conservative and a radical wing.33 1. Did Nietzsche's Philosophy Contain Identifiable Misogyny, and If So Was It Noticed? As outlined above, Nietzsche's alleged misogyny was already publicly debated during his lifetime.
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