Little Miss Typist: the Representation of White-Collar Women in Weimar Germany
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LITTLE MISS TYPIST: THE REPRESENTATION OF WHITE-COLLAR WOMEN IN WEIMAR GERMANY MARY MACFARLANE PHD THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE SEPTEMBER 2007 Abstract This thesis takes the figure of the typist as the starting point for an exploration of the intersections of gender, modernity, technology and class in the Weimar Republic, drawing together the unique German discourse of Angestelltenliteratur, which developed out of a class- based sociology analysis, and feminist examinations of the New Woman. I argue that, although ultimately conservative, popular culture may offer lower-middle class women more opportunities for liberation and resistance than explicitly socially-critical discourses produced by elite men. In Chapter One I summarise the sociological understanding of the white-collar workers, and show that gender begins to operate as the discourse moves into mainstream media. I argue that Kracauer uses white-collar female characters in his socially-critical journalism to represent the white-collar class as feminised and passive, in contrast to an authentically masculine and virile working-class. In Chapters Two and Three, I explore the representation of the typist in three popular romance novels and six films (early romantic comedies). I trace the origins of the secretary/boss romance, which draws the apparently liberated working woman back into the framework of bourgeois marriage. In the films, I find that the dramatic conventions of disguise and mistaken identity are used to equate a secretary’s role with a wife’s, and therefore part of women’s ‘natural’ function. Despite this conservatism, I show both films and novels are fascinated with the New Woman’s freedoms. In Chapter Four, I read four novels which explicitly reject the ‘marriage’ ending, and show how they draw on the conventions established in the earlier works. I end with Irmgard Keun’s Weimar novels, arguing that they achieve the critical relationship to modernity and mass culture that Kracauer was striving for, without patronising or condescending to the white-collar women they represent. 2 Table of Contents ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................................2 TABLE OF CONTENTS......................................................................................................................3 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS................................................................................................................6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.....................................................................................................................7 DECLARATION....................................................................................................................................9 CRÈME MOUSON IMAGE..............................................................................................................10 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................ 11 Crème Mouson....................................................................................................................................... 11 Outside Germany: typing and women...................................................................................................12 The Typist in the Weimar Republic......................................................................................................15 Angestellten discourse............................................................................................................................19 Popular culture and Women..................................................................................................................21 Thesis statement.....................................................................................................................................25 CHAPTER ONE...................................................................................................................................30 The Salaried Mass: Literary sociology and sociological literature.....................................................30 Introduction........................................................................................................................................30 Social change and the rise of the employee.....................................................................................34 • Emil Lederer: Die Privatangestellten in der Modernen Wirtschaftsentwicklung.........................37 Ein Stehkragen-Proletariat............................................................................................................37 The Twenties.................................................................................................................................43 Hans Speier: ‘Die Angestellten’........................................................................................................45 ‘Ein Gespenst droht den Angestellten’........................................................................................45 Siegfried Kracauer: The Salaried Mass........................................................................................... 53 Aus dem neuesten Deutschland................................................................................................... 53 3 Conclusion 65 CHAPTER TWO.................................................................................................................................67 Girl meets Boss: Popular Romantic Fiction.........................................................................................67 Introduction........................................................................................................................................67 Adolf Sommerfeld, Das Fräulein vom Spittelmarkt: Lebensroman einer Stenotypistin............. 73 Rationalism and Romance............................................................................................................73 The City as 'Mordmachine’......................................................................................................... 76 Fedor von Zobeltitz, Dagmar springt in die Freiheit..................................................................... 82 Social strata...................................................................................................................................82 The Paradies..................................................................................................................................89 Rothberg, Grete, Seine kleine Sekretärin.........................................................................................96 Moving to the city.........................................................................................................................96 ... and back to the country............................................................................................................98 Conclusion........................................................................................................................................101 CHAPTER THREE........................................................................................................................... 103 Girls on Film: Cinema and Genre........................................................................................................103 Introduction.......................................................................................................................................103 Ein Mann mit Herz (1932)..............................................................................................................111 Ein bißchen Liebe für Dich (1932)...............................................................................................1 18 Americanism................................................................................................................................118 Family...........................................................................................................................................123 Adaptation....................................................................................................................................125 Human as Machine...........................................................................................................................128 Keine Angst vor Liebe (1933).....................................................................................................129 Liebe muss verstanden sein (1933).............................................................................................132 Conclusion: Genre and Tradition....................................................................................................137 Postscript: The Secretary in Nazi-era film..........................................................................................139 Der Herrscher (1937)...................................................................................................................... 139 CHAPTER FOUR.............................................................................................................................. 145 Little Ms Typist: Political and Literary Responses to Popular Culture............................................145 Introduction.......................................................................................................................................145