Action Council for the Liberation of Women

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The Action Council for the Liberation of Women was a feminist group that emerged in West Berlin in 1968 within the extra-parliamentary opposition . With the commitment of this group, the beginning of the women's movement in the Federal Republic of Germany is dated.

The group was best known for throwing tomatoes at Hans-Jürgen Krahl , who was a well-known personality from the Socialist German Student Union (SDS) , and for setting up children's shops .

The premises of the Republican Club were used as the location for the weekly meetings of the Action Council .

Creation of children's shops

The establishment of the Action Council is closely related to the establishment of children's shops . The first children's shop was created on the initiative of Monika Seifert in the vicinity of the SDS in September 1967 in Frankfurt am Main. Monika Seifert came up with the idea of ​​founding a children's shop through Wilhelm Reich's writings on the self-regulation of children. At the same time, in another university town, Berlin, there were similar efforts to found children's shops. The initiative here came from Helke Sander , who was influenced by Alexander Neill's concept of the free Summerhill School and was faced with the conflict of combining her political activities with looking after her child. Together with other women she wrote a leaflet which was distributed in January 1968 at the Free University of Berlin. Then there was a gathering of 80 to 100 women and a few men who wanted to continue to meet regularly. The Action Council for the Liberation of Women emerged from these meetings . During the meeting, the foundation for the creation of five children's shops in Berlin was laid.

Helke Sander's speech and the tomato toss

Helke Sander's speech

During a speech at the 23rd delegates' conference of the SDS on September 13, 1968, Sander presented the concept of the action council Action Council also the two currents in the SDS:

“We speak here because we know that we can only do our work in conjunction with other progressive organizations and, in our opinion, this only includes the SDS today. The prerequisite for cooperation, however, is that the association understands the specific problems faced by women, which means nothing other than finally articulating within the association the conflicts that have been suppressed for years. In doing so, we are expanding the dispute between the anti-authoritarians and the CP faction and at the same time opposing both camps, since we have both camps against us in practice, even if not theoretically. "

In the speech she criticized the separation between the political and the private , which also prevails in the SDS , which conceals the exploitation of women. Sander criticized

“[...] that one separates a certain area of ​​life from social life, making it taboo by giving it the name private life. In this taboo, the SDS differs in no way from the trade unions and the existing parties. As a result of this taboo, the specific relationship of exploitation under which women stand is repressed, which ensures that men do not yet have to give up their old patriarchal identity. Women are granted freedom of speech, but no investigation is made into the reasons why they are doing so badly, why they are passive, why they are in a position to help implement the association's policy but are unable to do so determine."

It was criticized that some of the few men secured management positions in their commitment to children's shops and wanted to establish the children's shops in working-class neighborhoods:

“The attempt to please other sections of the population with our children's shops as quickly as possible may be due to the fact that the men still refuse to articulate their own conflicts. At the moment we have nothing to offer the workers. We cannot take working-class children into our children's shops where they learn behavior that they will be punished for at home. The prerequisites for this must first be created for the workers. "

The work of the Action Council presented by Sander included five points:

  1. "For the time being we have limited our work to questions of upbringing and everything related to it."
  2. "At the moment, all the money is going to the children's shops and the necessary preparatory work."
  3. "We take time for the preparatory work and the politicization of private life."
  4. "If the models of children's shops seem practicable to us, we will concentrate on the schools."
  5. "In addition, of course, theoretical work is done that argues in larger contexts."

At the end there was a declaration of war to the men in the SDS:

“Comrades, if you are not ready for this discussion, which has to be conducted in terms of content, then we must admittedly state that the SDS is nothing more than an inflated counterrevolutionary yeast dough. The comrades will then know how to draw the consequences. "

The tomato throw

There had already been resistance in the run-up to the fact that Helke Sander was given a delegate place at the SDS for the Action Council for the Liberation of Women . Sigrid Damm-Rüger on the mood during the speech:

“The resistance of the Berlin comrades gave us an idea of ​​the reactions we could expect at the delegates' conference. They would let us talk once and then go back to business. First of all there was a debate about whether we could talk because we had not prepared the subject or the male comrades were not prepared for the subject. But after a heated debate, a vote showed that we should talk and Helke Sander gave a speech. "

When the committee, which was exclusively made up of men, wanted to move on to other topics without discussing Sander's lecture, the Romance studies student Sigrid Rüger threw it out - allegedly with the words: “Comrade Krahl! You are objectively a counter-revolutionary and an agent of the class enemy too! ”- the famous tomato on the SDS theorist Hans-Jürgen Krahl . It is controversial whether the attack was planned.

Looking back, Sigrid Damm-Rüger remarked on the further course:

“The delegates 'conference could not go back to business, the women problem was discussed further on the basis of an overnight resolution and the delegates' conference had to be adjourned. The media perceived the event as an uprising by the comrades against their comrades, and what happened next should be known. Action or women's councils have been founded in many university towns in the Federal Republic of Germany. "

In the journal Konkret (No. 12, 1968) Ulrike Meinhof criticized the reactions of male reporters to the scandal:

“The reaction of the men at the conference of delegates and that of the still benevolent reporters showed that whole freight trains still have to be burned with tomatoes before something dawns. The consequence from Frankfurt can only be that more women think about their problems, organize themselves, learn to work up and formulate their cause and at first ask nothing of their husbands other than that they leave them alone on this matter and their tomato-stained shirts wash alone, maybe because she is currently having an action council meeting to free women. "

In the wake of the scandal, there were student-feminist women's councils in various university towns , which consisted exclusively of women. During the 24th delegates' meeting of the SDS from November 17 to 19, 1968 in Hanover, the tone intensified. A leaflet ("Accountability Report") circulated with the demand: "Free the socialist eminences from their bourgeois tails!"

Kindergarten teachers strike

The first kindergarten teachers' strike was planned for June 20, 1969, under the organizational leadership of the Action Council. A large part of Berlin's economy was to stand still for a day because the working mothers could not have gone to work. This was intended to draw attention to the neglected situation in kindergartens , but also to effectively demonstrate the power and economic contribution of women. Initially, the responsible trade unions approved the action council's plans, but later prevented joint action through lengthy tactics. As a result, the action disintegrated: while the unions called for a warning strike on June 13, the Action Council postponed its action to September 13 of that year.

See also

literature

  • Action Council for the Liberation of Women: Flyer 1967/68 .
  • Hille Jan Breiteneicher, Rolf Mauff, Manfred Triebe and the Lankwitz author collective: Children's shops. Revolution of Education or Education for Revolution? Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg April 1971, ISBN 3-499-11340-6 .
  • Ulrike Meinhof 1968: The women in the SDS or In my own cause , in: Ulrike Meinhof: The dignity of the human being is touchable. Essays and Polemics . With an afterword by Klaus Wagenbach. Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin March 2004, ISBN 3-8031-2491-3 , pp. 149–153.
  • Kristina Schulz: The long breath of provocation. The women's movement in the Federal Republic and France 1968-1976 (= history and gender , volume 40). Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York, NY 2002, ISBN 3-593-37110-3 (Dissertation Bielefeld University and University VII Paris 2002, 273 pages).
  • Helke Sander (Action Council for the Liberation of Women) (September 13, 1968). In: Ilse Lenz (Ed.): The new women's movement in Germany. Farewell to the small difference. Selected sources. 2nd updated edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften , Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-17436-5 , pp. 57-61.
  • Self-image of the Action Council for the Liberation of Women (1968). In: Ilse Lenz (Ed.): The new women's movement in Germany. Farewell to the small difference. Selected sources. 2nd updated edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften , Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-17436-5 , p. 63/64.
  • Ute Kätzel (Ed.): The women of 68. Portrait of a rebellious generation of women. Ulrike Helmer Verlag , Königstein / Taunus 2008, ISBN 978-3-89741-274-3 (contains, among other things, reminders of those involved in the action council).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helke Sander in: Ute Kätzel (Ed.): Die 68erinnen. Portrait of a rebellious generation of women. Ulrike Helmer Verlag , Königstein / Taunus 2008, ISBN 978-3-89741-274-3 . P. 166.
  2. ↑ a b Children's shops history ( Memento from June 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ a b c d e Speech by Helke Sander (Action Council for the Liberation of Women) at the 23rd delegate conference of the “Socialist German Student Union” (SDS) in September 1968 in Frankfurt / Main
  4. ↑ a b Discussion: “Anti-authoritarian claim and women's emancipation - The revolt in the revolt”. Participants: Sylvia Bovenschen, Sigrid Damm-Rüger and Sybille Plogstedt Chair of the discussion: Halina Bendkowski
  5. ↑ Gabriela Hauch: We who have many stories. On the genesis of historical women's studies in a social and scientific context , p. 22 ( Memento from July 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 536 kB)
  6. ↑ Ulrike Meinhof: The women in the SDS or In our own cause , Konkret No. 12, 1968
  7. ↑ "Accountability report", left page ( Memento from August 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  8. ↑ a b Ute Kätzel (ed.): The women of 68. Portrait of a rebellious generation of women. Ulrike Helmer Verlag , Königstein / Taunus 2008, ISBN 978-3-89741-274-3 . P. 310/311 (glossary).