Repositorium für die Geschlechterforschung Herrenmoral : Anna Pappritz and abolitionism in Germany Wolff, Kerstin 2008 https://doi.org/10.25595/152 Veröffentlichungsversion / published version Zeitschriftenartikel / journal article Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Wolff, Kerstin: Herrenmoral : Anna Pappritz and abolitionism in Germany, in: Women's history review, Jg. 17 (2008) Nr. 2, 225-237. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25595/152. Erstmalig hier erschienen / Initial publication here: https://doi.org/10.1080/09612020701707258 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY 4.0 Lizenz (Namensnennung) This document is made available under a CC BY 4.0 License zur Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu dieser Lizenz finden (Attribution). For more information see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.de www.genderopen.de Women’s History Review Vol. 17, No. 2, April 2008, pp. 225–237 Herrenmoral: Anna Pappritz and abolitionism in Germany1 Kerstin Wolff ThisTaylorRHWR_A_270619.sgm10.1080/09612020701707258Women’[email protected] KerstinWolff and Article History (print)/1747-583XFrancis & 2008 Francis Review article (online) focuses on the situation of abolitionism in Germany under the leadership of Anna Pappritz. The history of abolitionism in Germany is not yet written but it is possible to indicate some rough outlines. The main question is: why did abolitionism make its way to Germany so late? Hitherto the following answer has been given: the German women’s movement was too conservative for these ideas. This article shows the specific situation of abolitionism in Germany, where the Protestant church, as well as the socialist movement— both partners for abolitionism on the international scene—did not support abolitionism. Thus the German women’s movement—after Anna Pappritz had established abolitionistic views there after 1900—had to agitate for abolitionism in isolation. Nowadays the word abolitionism is incomprehensible to German people—and also very hard to pronounce. Maybe this linguistic discrepancy creates a distance from its meaning and its history. Little research on the Wilhelmine and Weimar eras discusses the topic, and there are virtually no publications concerning either the most famous activists or the movement as a whole.2 But the situation in Germany in 1900 was very different. In this period abolitionism was synonymous with a liberal view on prostitution and the issue of ‘Sittlichkeit’.3 Abolitionism was in fact part of a progressive discourse and a 1908 article linked it—I think very typically—with liberal Protestantism, socialism, vegetarianism, traditional healing and the women’s movement.4 Kerstin Wolff works for the Foundation: Archive of the German Women’s Movement in Kassel. Her research interests focus on the history of the German women’s movement between 1860 and 1933. Her latest project is about the situation of abolitionism in Germany and the leader of the abolition movement in Germany after 1900: Anna Pappritz. Her latest publications include: ‘Alle Jahre wieder … Der Internationale Frauentag: ein Feiertag für die Frauenbewegung?’, Ariadne, 50, 2006, pp. 66–72; ‘Herrenmoral’: Die Abolitionistin Anna Pappritz und ihr Kampf gegen das männliche Wissen um die Prostitution, Wissen und Geschlecht (forthcoming, 2007). Correspondence to: Kerstin Wolff, Stiftung Archiv der deutschen Frauenbewegung, Gottschalkstr. 57, 34127 Kassel, Germany. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0961–2025 (print)/ISSN 1747–583X (online)/08/020225–13 © 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09612020701707258 226 K. Wolff My focus and interest in abolitionism emerged from searching for documents about Josephine Butler, during which I came across the name of a German abolitionist who had tried to establish Butler’s ideas in Germany—Anna Pappritz. In fact, Pappritz was already known to me as a figure from the history of the German women’s movement. But the ideas and the political path of abolitionism in Germany between 1900 and 1933 were quite unfamiliar. I therefore started to read Pappritz’s writings: first her novels,5 then her political and social statements. Even though a personal archive of Anna Pappritz does exist, no modern biography has been published.6 So, I asked, who was Anna Pappritz and how was it possible for her to promote abolitionist ideas? Where did she come in contact with these ideas and why was she successful? In this article I will describe the situation of abolitionism in Germany between 1895 and 1914. The first part will be a short description of the situation in Germany around 1900 and the significance of discussions about purity. Then follows a short summary of Anna Pappritz’s life before she came in contact with the women’s movement and abolitionist ideas in Britain in 1895. The second part will show how she promoted the ideas of abolitionism in Germany. Finally, I will try to make clear where these ideas found their place in German society before the First World War. The Situation in Germany When Anna Pappritz began her work for abolitionism in Germany the Protestant purity movement had been active since the middle of the nineteenth century. John C. Foult describes this as a ‘male movement’, because the members of the different Prot- estant purity movements declared that this was work for men (especially husbands), not for women; and most members were men.7 A strongly Christian, marriage-focused point of view dominated. Prostitution was regarded as ‘illness’ and the prostitute defined as an immoral, dishonest subject, a ‘plague-spot’ of bourgeois society. The regulation of prostitution finally established in the Preußisches Allgemeines Landrecht (Prussian Common Law) in 1794 was generally accepted and championed by these movements. Regulation was seen as the only way to control both evils—prostitution and the prostitute.8 Alongside the Protestant movement, a medical discourse and a new ‘science’— sexology—began to reflect the situation of prostitution in the large cities.9 First, a heated debate about venereal diseases arose. Prostitution was regarded as the main source of infection. Prostitution as an occupation for underclass or working women increased in the late nineteenth century and was considered an urgent matter for the rest of society. This general background must be taken into consideration when discussing Anna Pappritz and her fight against regulation. Hitherto it has been thought that the German women’s movement was too conservative to discuss these problems earlier and that for this reason a first abolitionist attempt in the 1880s broke down. I believe that activism alone cannot arouse interest in a political or social theme if society as a whole is not yet able to absorb the problem. New discussions and a search for new answers to an ‘old’ question were needed before the women’s movement could recommence the abolitionist debate. Women’s History Review 227 Anna Pappritz’s Life and Her First Contact with Abolitionist Ideas Anna Pappritz was born at Radach in Mark Brandenburg (Prussia, today Poland) in 1861. After her father’s death she moved to Berlin, which then became her living and working place. Pappritz says of herself that until she turned thirty-four she had neither known anything about a women’s movement in Germany nor made contact with it. In the end, her experience of enlightenment did not take place in Germany but in Britain, where she had travelled for health reasons in 1895. An autobiographical manuscript relates how for the first time she visited a women’s club in London and women’s colleges in Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. She was positively and pleasantly surprised by the friendly tone of relations she witnessed between young women and men. Finally, she met Mrs Thripthrop, or Thripthorp,10 who was a theosophist. This lady’s questions about the campaign against regulation in Germany prodded Anna Pappritz to consider a problem that would become her later field of work. Pappritz wrote about this experience: I didn’t understand this question at all and told her that I didn’t know what she meant by regulation of prostitution. So she informed me and this explanation affected me like a crushing blow. I can’t describe the feelings overwhelming me. I didn’t know anything about these circumstances.11 Thus it was an Englishwoman—about whom, unfortunately, nothing more is presently known—who introduced Anna Pappritz to the ideas of abolitionism. After this incident Pappritz managed within a short time to get in contact with the German women’s movement. However, she soon came to realise that abolitionist views were not dominant within the bourgeois women’s movement and that questions concerning prostitution were instead answered with restrictive policies. The Bund deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF) (Federation of German Women’s Associations)12 under the leadership of Hanna Bieber-Böhm demanded the criminal prosecution of prostitutes. The social and economic contexts of prostitution were not taken into consideration. This moderate—perhaps ‘unmodern’—response may have been a reaction against the politics of the 1880s. This was the time of the anti-socialist law, when Gertrud Guillaume-Schack tried to establish the ideas of Josephine Butler within the German Empire. In 1880 Guillaume-Schack founded the Deutscher Kulturbund (German Association for Culture), the first association to be concerned with questions of purity and abolitionism. It seems that it was too early for these new ideas because Guillaume- Schack’s association did not grow. Disappointed by the lack of interest within bour- geois society, she tried to establish her ideas within the socialist movement. This was a fatal step, because the ideas of abolitionism were now linked with an illegal movement. In this hopeless situation Gertrud Guillaume-Schack decided to emigrate in 1885 to England, where she died in 1903. This first episode shows very clearly that a new idea does not only need a voice, it also needs a place to be effective.