Demonstration drive for women's suffrage

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The demonstration car ride, in the picture on the left Anita Augspurg (marked with x), photo report (1912)

On September 24, 1912, a demonstration trip for women's suffrage took place in Munich , which is an exception to the forms of agitation used by the bourgeois women's movement for women's suffrage . The participants of the general assembly of the Bavarian State Association for Women's Suffrage took part in the trip with 18 Landauers .

prehistory

The march the Women's Sunday June 21, 1908 Hyde Park, London, with Emmeline Pankhurst and Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy at the top

On June 21, 1908, a mass rally for women's suffrage took place in Hyde Park , London , which became known as " Women's Sunday ". It was organized by the militant women 's suffrage organization Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) to get the British government to support women's suffrage. The rally, which was attended by up to half a million people, is considered to be the largest demonstration that had taken place in Great Britain until then. Anita Augspurg and her partner Lida Gustava Heymann , then chairwoman and second chairwoman of the German Association for Women's Suffrage , took part in this rally with 30 other German women. Back in Germany, they suggested that the German voting rights movement adopt such forms of agitation, but this was not accepted. A street demonstration by (bourgeois) women contradicted the common constructions of femininity and was also difficult to realize under the prevailing political conditions, as would be shown later.

A year later, the 5th International Voting Rights Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance took place in London . The German women's rights activists, including Frieda Radel and Regine Deutsch , were impressed by the methods of the moderate, so-called “constitutional” English women's suffrage movement: the singing of the international women's freedom song, badges, banners, parades and car parades. They were able to witness this for themselves at a demonstration of 1000 conference participants. However, they did not consider these methods transferable. Regine Deutsch said in her report for the Berliner Volks-Zeitung : "Of course, what can be called 'moderate' here would still be the height of an unheard-of offense for us in Germany."

After the London Conference, the German bourgeois women's suffrage movement began to use some of the British movement's propaganda tools, such as: B. colored ribbons and banners and a common symbol for brooches, banners and educational material. A demonstration in Berlin was also planned to take place on the occasion of the opening of the Reichstag in 1909. There should also be a car ride at the Munich General Assembly of the German Association for Women's Suffrage in the same year. But both plans were ultimately not implemented, on the one hand because the police objected, on the other hand because the chairman of the Berlin voting rights association, Minna Cauer , blocked the "unfortunate plan" of the "Radaumacher". There were reservations in the bourgeois suffrage movement, as street demonstrations were the social democrats' preferred weapon , from whom they wanted to distance themselves. In addition, the bourgeois movement could not rely on mass mobilization for an impressive march.

After a meeting of the Berlin Association for Women's Suffrage on February 15, 1910, a spontaneous demonstration against Prussian suffrage took place. 400 people marched from the Arminhallen on Kommandantenstrasse, where the meeting was held, through Schützenstrasse to the Chancellery, sang the Marsellaise , shouted “Away with Bethmann Hollweg !” (The then Reich Chancellor ) and demanded universal suffrage. However, it was suspected that this demonstration by the women's suffrage movement only came about because the meeting had taken place in a less bourgeois area and the political atmosphere in Berlin was very tense at the time. Two days earlier, the SPD had held mass demonstrations for universal suffrage across Germany. There were many more demonstrations in the days that followed. The next meeting of the Berlin Association took place under police surveillance, so the incident did not repeat itself.

International Women's Day , launched by the Social Democrats in 1911 , then turned out to be particularly spectacular and successful under the slogan “Out with women's suffrage!”. Nevertheless, the organs of the moderate women's movement (from the Centralblatt des Bundes Deutscher Frauenvereine to Neue Bahnen and Die Frau ) refrained from mentioning the mass demonstrations. Augspurg, too, was reluctant to comment on her in the magazine for women's suffrage. Only Minna Cauer expressed her sympathy and enthusiasm for the campaign in her women's movement magazine .

The demonstration drive

The participants before the start of the demonstration car ride, in the foreground Anita Augspurg (marked with an x), photo report in Illustrirte Zeitung of October 3, 1912
Group picture at the General Assembly, picture report in the Rhine and Düssel dated October 5, 1912

On the occasion of the general assembly of the Bavarian State Association for Women's Suffrage in 1912, the idea of ​​a demonstration was taken up again. The chairmen of the state association, Augspurg and Heymann, repeatedly initiated imaginative and spectacular actions. On the morning of September 24th, the participants of the General Assembly met in front of the “Großer Wirt” in Schwabing . A column, consisting of 18 landauers, who were decorated with "colorful autumn garlands", with boards in the club colors and the inscription "Frauenstimmrecht", drove through the streets of Munich. The end of the train was the Chinese Tower in the English Garden.

The course of the journey was described as "harmless", "happy" and "enjoyable". The procession was partly amused and partly admired. There was also no lack of mocking shouts: "They are those who have never got a husband!" A worker addressed the travelers with the words: "How nice it is that the rich ladies want to work for us now!" replied that the voters were also working women who wanted to stand up for their less well-off “sisters”. At the breakfast that followed, Augspurg thanked the Munich police for their cooperation.

Adele Schreiber's report from the trip in the organ of the Association for Women's Suffrage shows what a step this demonstration represented for bourgeois women: "The unheard-of became reality - we dared - the first propaganda trip through a major German city!"

Effect and reception

Adele Schreiber had expressed hope in her report: “But this trip has certainly induced thousands to grapple with the concept of women's suffrage for the first time, even if only out of curiosity.” Lida Gustava Heymann spoke almost thirty years later in her memories of the "tremendous stir" that caused the trip.

The report in the Berliner Tageblatt spoke of an effective demonstration, the Münchner Allgemeine Zeitung called it a “successful cap ride”. Augspurg's biographer Susanne Kinnebrock assessed the press reaction as lively overall, but said that according to these reports, the passers-by who experienced the trip did not really understand the concerns of the women's rights activists. From Ulla Wischermann's point of view , however, the press hardly noticed the trip. Cauer, for example, did not mention the move either in the women's movement or in the magazine for women's suffrage. From their point of view, the bourgeois women did not want to risk the public's trust through more militant forms of action. According to the historian Richard J. Evans , the effect of the demonstration drive was limited.

Until after the First World War, this remained the only women's suffrage demonstration of the bourgeois women's movement. It was not until November 1918 that civil and social democratic women's organizations jointly called for mass demonstrations for women's suffrage.

literature

  • Richard J. Evans: The feminist movement in Germany 1894-1933 (=  Sage studies in 20th century history . Volume 6 ). Sage Publications, London 1976, ISBN 0-8039-9951-8 , pp. 88-91 .
  • Ulla Wischermann: Women's movements and publics around 1900. Networks - counter-publics - protest stagings (=  Frankfurt Feminist Texts / Social Sciences . Volume 4 ). Helmer, Königstein 2003, ISBN 3-89741-121-0 , p. 245-249 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sandra Stanley Holton: Feminism and democracy. Women's suffrage and reform politics in Britain, 1900-1918 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986, ISBN 0-521-32855-1 , pp. 46 .
  2. ↑ The presentation of this article follows, unless otherwise stated, Evans 1976, pp. 88-91.
  3. ^ A b Lida Gustava Heymann : Experienced - Viewed. German women fight for freedom, justice and peace, 1850–1940 . in collaboration with Anita Augspurg . Ed .: Margrit Twellmann . Helmer, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-927164-43-7 , p. 121 (first edition: 1972).
  4. ↑ Barbara Greven-Aschoff: The bourgeois women's movement in Germany 1894–1933 (=  critical studies on historical science . Volume 46 ). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981, ISBN 3-525-35704-4 , pp. 251 , urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb00052495-9 .
  5. ↑ Wischermann 2003, p. 245.
  6. ^ A b Regine Deutsch : The World Federation for Women's Suffrage in London . In: Berliner Volks-Zeitung . May 5, 1909, p. 1–2 ( staatsbibliothek-berlin.de [accessed October 18, 2018]).
  7. ^ Frieda Radel: The Suffragettes in the London Voting Week . In: Journal for Women's Suffrage . tape 3 , no. 6 , 1909, pp. 24-25 .
  8. ^ The street demonstration of women's rights activists . In: Berliner Volks-Zeitung (evening edition) . September 29, 1909, p. 2 ( staatsbibliothek-berlin.de [accessed on October 18, 2018]).
  9. ↑ a b c d e Adele Schreiber: The Women's Suffrage Congress Munich 1912 . In: Women's Suffrage . tape 1 , no. October 7 , 1912, p. 138-143, here 140-141 .
  10. ↑ Rundschau. Domestic . In: Journal for Women's Suffrage . tape 3 , no. 9 , 1909, pp. 39 .
  11. ↑ a b Susanne Kinnebrock: Anita Augspurg (1857–1943). Feminist and pacifist between journalism and politics. A communication- historical biography (=  women in history and society . Volume 39 ). Centaurus, Herbolzheim 2005, ISBN 3-8255-0393-3 , p. 335-336 .
  12. ^ Dieter Groh: Negative Integration and Revolutionary Attentism. German social democracy on the eve of the First World War. Propylaea, Berlin 1973, ISBN 3-549-07281-3 , pp. 140-142 .
  13. ^ Suffrage struggle and police state . In: Berliner Volks-Zeitung . March 23, 1910, p. 2 ( staatsbibliothek-berlin.de [accessed on October 18, 2018]).
  14. ↑ Wischermann 2003, pp. 246–248.
  15. ↑ a b c A. P. ( Anna Plothow ): Congress of Women's Suffrage in Munich . In: Berliner Tageblatt . No. 491 , September 26, 1912, 2nd supplement ( staatsbibliothek-berlin.de [accessed October 15, 2018]).
  16. ↑ a b Celestine: women's right to vote . In: Allgemeine Zeitung (Munich) . October 5, 1912, p. 715-716, here 715 .
  17. ↑ Wischermann 2003, pp. 248–249.
  18. ↑ Ulrike Ley: On the one hand and on the other hand - the dilemma of liberal women's rights activists in politics. Regarding the conditions of political participation of women in the German Empire (=  Forum Politics & Gender Relations . No. 1 ). Centaurus, Pfaffenweiler 1999, ISBN 3-8255-0229-5 , p. 128 .