German Evangelical Women's Association

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German Evangelical Women's Federation
(DEF)
legal form registered association
founding June 7, 1899 in Kassel
Seat Hanover
main emphasis Protestant women's organization
Chair Dietlinde Kunad
Website www.def-bundesverband.de

The German Evangelical Women's Association (DEF), until 1969: German-Evangelical Women's Association (DEFB), is a Protestant women's organization. It was founded on June 7, 1899 in Kassel and was the only group within the Christian women's movement with an independent organizational structure and was the first to be entered in the register of associations on September 18, 1901 . The seat has been in Hanover since then . The federal association has nine regional associations with around 100 local and affiliate associations and around 10,000 members.

The DEF is considered the only Protestant women's organization that consciously saw itself as part of the bourgeois women's movement , exerted socio-political influence and contributed to a modernization of the image of women in the Protestant church .

history

Beginnings of the women's association

DEFB badge from 1915

The association was founded during the period of industrialization with its economic and social upheavals. While the proletarian movement was concerned with obtaining correspondingly high wages for men, which should enable them, as heads of households, to feed women and children - women should no longer have to work, but should devote themselves entirely to the household and children according to the bourgeois model can - the majority of the members of the German-Evangelical Women's Association, who mostly come from a middle-class background, advocate equal access to education and work for girls and women. At that time, the education of girls was primarily aimed at preparing them for existence as wives and mothers. The paths to a self-determined life and participation in public life were practically closed to women. The German-Evangelical Women's Association, on the other hand, campaigned for women to vote in the church and local community as early as 1903 .

In 1908 the DEF joined the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF). Some of the associations represented in the BDF advocate general women's suffrage . The accession took place on condition that the BDF accepted the dissenting position on the question of the right to vote, namely to behave neutrally. For the German-Evangelical Women's Association, other problems were more in focus. With practical help one tried to alleviate the social hardship of large parts of the population. The DEFB initiated projects for people who have committed criminal offenses, alcohol addicts and their families. An attempt was made to set minimum standards and reduce exploitation by founding a placement agency for young women working in the household. Education for women, free choice of occupation and exercising it in order to secure financial existence were further goals of the DEFB. In the DEFB's view, the introduction of women's suffrage was only an option for universal, equal and secret political suffrage for both sexes. The political maturity of the potential voters was assessed as not yet given due to the internal political situation. Other members of the Frauenbund saw it differently and demanded general political voting rights for women . This was especially true for teachers in poor and orphan care , who advocate a direct influence of women in the parliamentary decision-making process. Since no agreement could be reached, the German Evangelical Women's Association took a neutral position and spoke out in the BDF against active advertising for women's suffrage. The federal labor force would be paralyzed internally and externally, wrote Paula Mueller (1st chairwoman from 1901 to 1934) to the secretary of the BDF, Alice Bensheimer , on the decision of the DEFB to leave the BDF on March 14, 1918.

Weimar Republic and National Socialism

Having been in the Weimar Republic , the women's suffrage was introduced, leading members were the Women's Federation, who had been involved in politics even before the Weimar Republic, not in politics. For example, the first chairwoman, Paula Mueller, was a member of the Reichstag for twelve years .

The German Evangelical Women's Association does not deal with social issues at the political level, but tries to achieve improvements for women in special emergency situations in committed social projects. Women in the DEFB took on numerous social hot spots that were often ignored by the social majority. For example, committed women set up so-called "rescue houses" in many places in Germany. Unmarried and pregnant - that was considered a shame until the early 1970s. Single girls and women "in other circumstances" were largely socially ostracized and often did not know where to take refuge. In the rescue houses they could have their children under medical supervision and plan the time afterwards. The city of Hanover, for example, provided the Hanover local association with a piece of land and some money for the mother and baby home, which could then be built thanks to additional donations.

In 1905, the Federal Association founded the Social Christian women's seminar (CSF), in Hanover , the first training center for social workers ( social workers ) in Germany. In 1924, the training branch for church welfare workers (community helpers) was added. In the 1970s, as part of the university reform , the Christian Social Women's School was integrated with other works of the Evangelical University of Applied Sciences in Hanover , which today forms a faculty of the University of Hanover .

After the National Socialists took over the government , the DEFB joined the church's women's work in order to avoid integration into the Nazi women's group or its dissolution. After 1938 the "local groups" of the women's association were no longer allowed to use this name, and in the course of deconfessionalization , the DEFB had to give up one practical area after another after 1939.

After 1945

In 1945 the German-Evangelical Women's Association was reconstituted as an independent association and resumed its focus on educational work and social tasks. In 1949, the local groups in the GDR were renamed the Working Group of Evangelical Women of the GDR under state pressure . In 1953 the girls' dormitory Haus Eilenriede in Hanover was inaugurated. It served as a dormitory for underage girls who had come to the city to complete an education.

With the name change in 1969, new committee functions, fields of work and key topics were added, including the Working Group of Evangelical Housewives (AEH), media monitoring and membership in broadcasting councils, the working group of Christian women of the DEF and the KDFB ( Catholic German Women's Association ) to promote the ecumenical process Environmental and consumer policy as well as the focus on demographic change . In addition, there are the respective focal points of the work of the regional and local associations, which take regional requirements into account.

The Evangelical Women's Association is a member of the German Housekeeping Council .

Federal Chairperson

Personalities

  • Adelheid von Bennigsen (1861–1938), one of the leading personalities of the DEFB, also at the federal level
  • Elisabeth Consbruch (1863–1938), member of the five-person main board when the federal government was founded, educator, women's rights activist and in 1919 one of the first six women city councilors in Kassel.
  • Auguste Jorns (1877–1966), from 1917 to 1942 director of the Christian Social Women's Seminar

literature

  • Foundation Archive of the German Women's Movement (Ed.): Ariadne. In the name of the gentleman? Confessional women's associations 1890–1933 , Issue 35, Kassel 1999.
  • “Therefore dare, sisters…” Women's research project on the history of women theologians , Göttingen; On the history of Protestant theologians in Germany, published in the series: Historisch-Theologische Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Vol. 7, 2nd edition, Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1994.
  • Sabine Doering:  MUELLER [-OTFRIED], Paula . In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 6, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-044-1 , Sp. 308-309.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive  on 2007-06-29)
  • Meta Eyl : What is the German-Evangelical Women's Association? In: Eyl, Meta / Winnecke, Hedwig (Hrsg.): Evangelische Frauenzeitung. Journal for the evangelical world of women. Organ of the German-Evangelical Women's Association, 37th year, Hanover 1935, pp. 1–4.
  • Kappeller, Gertrud: responsibility. Answer to the challenge of the times. 75 years of the German Evangelical Women's Association 1899–1974 , Hanover 1974.
  • Koonz, Claudia: Mothers in the Fatherland. Women in the Third Reich , Kore Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1991.
  • Koonz, Claudia: Mothers in the Fatherland. Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics , Methuen, London 1988.
  • Krause, Ulrike / Kuhn, Halgard / Exner, Horst (eds.): Responsibility for helping to shape the social in society. Festschrift for the establishment of the Christian-Social Women's School of the German Evangelical Women's Association (DEF) a hundred years ago , Hanover 2005.
  • Kuhn, Annette (Ed.): Women in the Church. Evangelical women's associations in the area of ​​tension between church and society 1890–1945 . Sources and materials, Schwann, Düsseldorf 1985.
  • Mager, Inge (Ed.): Women profiles of Lutheranism. Life stories in the 20th century , Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2005.
  • Maier, Hugo (Ed.): Who is who of social work , Lambertus-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1998.
  • Schlolaut, Dubravka: The beginnings of the German-Evangelical Women's Association in: Guidelines Take responsibility for yourself and others 100 years of the German Evangelical Women's Association, Hanover, 1999
  • Schroeder, Hiltrud: (Ed.): Sophie & Co. Important women of Hanover. Biographical portraits , Fackelträger-Verlag, Hanover 1991.
  • Addicting trailer, Andrea: The “conscience of the nation”. National engagement and political action of conservative women's organizations 1900–1937 , Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 2002.
  • Weiland, Daniela: History of women's emancipation in Germany and Austria. Biographies, programs, organizations , ECON Taschenbuchverlag, Düsseldorf 1983.
  • We heard the call. Fiftieth anniversary of the German Evangelical Women's Association in 1949. 1949.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ http://www.def-bundesverband.de/ueber-uns/geschichte-des-def/
  2. ↑ http://www.def-bundesverband.de/ueber-uns/vorstand/
  3. ↑ http://www.def-bundesverband.de/ueber-uns/satzung/
  4. ↑ List of members on www.hauswirtschaftsrat.de (Link checked on May 21, 2018)
  5. ↑ http://www.def-bundesverband.de/ueber-uns/vorstand/
  6. ↑ Dirk Böttcher : Bennigsen, (1) Adelheid von. In: Dirk Böttcher, Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 49; online through google books .
  7. ↑ Consbruch, Elisabeth, in: Hessische Biographie (LAGIS)
  8. ↑ Dirk Böttcher: Jorns, (1) Auguste. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon , p. 189 and others; online through google books.