NARRATING THE SELF – WOMEN IN THE PROFESSIONS IN GERMANY 1900-1945 By SARAH ALICIA GUEST A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham For the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of German Studies College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham June 2011 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT Women’s perception of university education and professional life during the period 1900 to 1945 is the focus of this study. In order to examine these perceptions, the thesis undertakes a close textual analysis of autobiographical writings by two medical doctors, Rahel Straus (1880-1963) and Charlotte Wolff (1897-1986) and the aviator Elly Beinhorn (1907-2007). The images employed in these texts indicate the intricate ways that individual women in the professions define their sense of who they are in relation to their surroundings and how that sense may shift in different settings and at different times, or may ostensibly not shift at all. I have developed a differentiated language for the purposes of articulating the fluidity. This language allows me to take apart narrative levels and to examine the importance that is attached to gender in relation to religion, race, nationality, sexuality and professional identities. Through differentiating between narrative levels I am able to juxtapose life experiences that at first glance seem unconnected and to show this can be done without imposing binary classifications such as ‘emancipated’ or ‘un-emancipated’, as ‘political’ or ‘apolitical’ or ‘victim’ or ‘perpetrator’. The language that I have developed enables me to explore the articulation of self where it cannot be classified and where self should not be judged. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I should like to express my sincere gratitude to the Department of German Studies for their generous financial support which enabled me to complete this project. A travel grant from the Conference of University Teachers of German in Great Britain helped to fund a research trip to Berlin in 2005 and for this I am most grateful. The librarians and archivists at the University of Birmingham, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Leipzig, provided invaluable assistance in the course of my research. Opportunities to present my research to the postgraduate community at Birmingham were of enormous help in developing my thesis. I would like to thank my examiners Dr Angela Kershaw, University of Birmingham and Dr Caroline Bland, University of Sheffield for their insightful comments and for their interest in my work. Particular thanks go to Dr Ruth Whittle for her endless patience, encouragement and support throughout the course of my research. Finally I wish to express my enormous gratitude to my family, friends and work colleagues for their interest in my research, for their reassurance and for never doubting that I could achieve this. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTERS AND SECTIONS PAGE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 The Question of Authenticity and the ‘Voice’ in the Text 7 1.2 Resisting the Political: The Historical Period in the Narrative 14 1.3 ‘Positionings’ and the Narration of Communities 19 2. METHODOLOGIES OF CATEGORISATION AND 27 THEIR PROBLEMS: DEFINING WOMEN 2.1 Constructions of ‘Womanhood’ The Debate about 31 ‘Frauenstudium’ 1872-1930 2.2 Questions about Female Emancipation – Setting the 47 Terminology 2.3 Conclusion 57 2. “NOT AN ESSENCE BUT A POSITIONING” 59 (HAMMEL) - REFLECTIONS ON BEING A WOMAN IN RELATION TO STUDENT LIFE AND CAREER 3.1 Narratives of Self at School and 59 University in Rahel Straus’s Wir Lebten in Deutschland 3.2 Narratives of the Self in Relation to University Studies and 79 Medical Practice during the Weimar Republic in Hindsight by Charlotte Wolff 3.3 The Flying Machine as a Narrative Position in Elly 98 Beinhorn’s Alleinflug. Mein Leben 3.4 Conclusion 126 4. “WIR WAREN GANZ SELBSTVERSTÄNDLICH 130 BEGEISTERTE DEUTSCHE MIT GROßER LIEBE FÜR DAS VATERLAND” (STRAUS) – CONSTRUCTIONS OF GERMANNESS AND JEWISHNESS 4.1. Narratives of Belonging in the German Reich 131 4.2. Narratives of Self in Relation to the Construction of 147 Jewishness 4.3 Conclusion 171 5. THE DYNAMICS OF COMMUNITY – THE 173 NARRATION OF MOVEMENT BETWEEN COMMUNITIES AT HOME AND ABROAD AND DEFINING AND REDEFINING A SENSE OF GERMANNESS 5.1. Narratives of Germanness in the Wilderness – the Depiction 174 of Elly Beinhorn’s Flights 5.2. Narratives of Preserving Germanness in Palestine in Wir 196 Lebten in Deutschland 5.3. Narratives of Germanness during Emigration to France in 216 Hindsight 5.4 Conclusion 235 6. CONCLUSIONS 238 BIBLIOGRAPHY 246 ILLUSTRATION 1 Photograph withdrawn pending clarification of copyright. Elly Beinhorn, 180 Stunden über Afrika (Berlin: Scherl, 1933) ILLUSTRATION 2 Photograph withdrawn pending clarification of copyright. Elly Beinhorn, Alleinflug. Mein Leben (Munich: Herbig, 2007) ILLUSTRATION 3 Photograph withdrawn pending clarification of copyright. Elly Beinhorn, Alleinflug. Mein Leben (Munich: Herbig, 2007) ILLUSTRATION 4 Photograph withdrawn pending clarification of copyright. Elly Beinhorn, Alleinflug. Mein Leben (Munich: Herbig, 2007) ILLUSTRATION 5 Photograph withdrawn pending clarification of copyright. Elly Beinhorn, Alleinflug. Mein Leben (Munich: Herbig, 2007) 1 1. INTRODUCTION Ich denke mit Freude an unsere Abende zurück, die fast immer anregend waren, in denen wir mit den interessantesten Frauen zusammensaßen, beteiligt am Aufbau eines neuen Frauendaseins1. This quotation from Rahel Straus‟s autobiography Wir lebten in Deutschland, published in 1961 is a comment on her experiences in the first „Studentinnenverein‟ at the University of Heidelberg where in 1900 she was one of the first women students. The university is portrayed in the text as an institution where female students could negotiate the process of creating a new sense of what it meant to be a woman in the context of the academic opportunities which were opening up to them. I understand the term „negotiate‟ to signify the discussion and debate undertaken by the women. Women‟s perception of university education and professional life during the period 1900 to 1945 is the focus of this study. In order to examine these perceptions, the thesis undertakes a close textual analysis of autobiographical writings by two medical doctors, Rahel Straus (1880-1963) and Charlotte Wolff (1897-1986) and the aviator Elly Beinhorn (1907-2007). The texts I have chosen to analyse are Rahel Straus, Wir lebten in Deutschland. Erinnerungen einer deutschen Jüdin 1880-1933, Charlotte Wolff, Hindsight2 and Elly Beinhorn, Alleinflug. Mein Leben.3 I compare the aviator‟s 1 Rahel Straus, Wir lebten in Deutschland. Erinnerungen einer deutschen Jüdin 1880-1933 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1961), p.94. 2 Charlotte Wolff, Hindsight (London: Quartet, 1980). 3 Elly Beinhorn, Alleinflug. Mein Leben (Munich: Herbig, 2007). The autobiography was first published in 1977 and republished in 2007 to commemorate the author‟s hundredth birthday. Apart from some structural rearrangement and the addition of a foreword and new cover the 2007 edition remains unchanged from the editions published in 1977 and 1981. The thesis refers to the 2007 edition. 2 autobiography with her travel accounts published during the Weimar and National Socialist period. These are Ein Mädchen fliegt um die Welt 4 and 180 Stunden über Afrika5. I will also examine specific episodes from the biography she wrote of her husband, who was an acclaimed racing driver during the Third Reich, in which she depicts her experiences and feelings during the marriage6. The images employed in these texts indicate the complex ways that education and professional life are depicted within the texts. These images invite close textual reading because they contribute to our understanding of how individual women in the professions define their sense of who they are in relation to their surroundings and how that sense may shift in different settings and at different times, or may ostensibly not shift at all. Within each of the texts „womanhood‟ is defined and redefined in different settings and in ways that refute attempts to categorise women by profession and by the period when they entered these professions. The thesis acknowledges the limitations of the term womanhood because of the essentialist connotations that it suggests. The thesis is concerned with finding an appropriate set of terms to differentiate between senses of self, whilst recognising that the language that is available to me remains fallible. The term womanhood is understood in my context as a fluid concept because firstly, women are not identical. Secondly, the images employed in the texts demonstrate that womanhood is not constituted simply by reflection on subjects traditionally related to gender such as career, marriage and children7. Analysis of the dynamics of reflection will aim to show how thoughts on the above intersect with thoughts on religion, 4 Elly Beinhorn, Ein Mädchen fliegt