West Berlin women's center

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The West Berlin Women's Center was the first women's center to be a spatial starting point for the New Women's Movement in Germany.

In the early 1970s, autonomous, grassroots women's centers formed the development centers of the second autonomous women's movement in the Federal Republic. Women formed working groups and organized feminist professional groups on topics that were previously taboo, such as contraception , gynecology , sexual violence , domestic violence and psychiatry . Twenty women's projects started from the women's center in West Berlin within five years. In contrast to the orthodox left, the autonomous women's movement was a grassroots education movement that advocated diversity of opinion and self-education instead of training. The anti-nuclear movement subsequently developed along these structures . Like the environmental movement , this autonomous women's movement profoundly changed Western European society within a few years.

history

Initiated by women homosexuals Action West Berlin (HAW) came in November 1972 in West Berlin because of an advertisement in Sponti -Blatt " Hundred Flowers ", the first eighty women to prepare a women's center in the Socialist center in the Stephanstraße 60. They formed the first working groups and a registered association that opened the women's center in a shop at Hornstrasse 2 in March 1973 . In 1977 the women's center moved to Stresemannstrasse 40, where it existed for a few years.

The first generation in the women's center was made up of working women (educators, teachers, employees) and students, many of whom only reached university after working on their second educational path and some of whom had already been married. Many came as lesbians or became "movement lesbians"; Lesbians were a driving force in all women's projects of the time.

In 1973 the majority of the left in West Germany was organized in an Orthodox Communist manner: 98,000 in the DKP and 12,000 in Maoist organizations. The founders of the women's center, on the other hand, came from the undogmatic left, a group of 5,500 people (nationwide).

The founders of the Frauenzentrum Berlin included: Gisela Bock (historian) , Roswitha Burgard, Anke Wolf-Graf, Barbara Kavemann, Cristina Perincioli , Cäcilia "Cillie" Rentmeister , Renate Richter, Monika Schmid, Dagmar Schultz , Waltraut Siepert, Beatrice Stammer, Christiane Ewert.

structure

The Berlin women's center always remained autonomous , i.e. without state funding, independent of parties or other interest groups and grassroots democracy :

“Every week all women from the subgroups come to the plenary. There, group experiences are communicated and actions proposed by the subgroups are discussed and decided by everyone. In this way, we jointly and continuously develop the self-image of the women's center. So we don't have a self-image on paper, we learn together. Every Thursday delegates from each working group come to the shop group, where the organizational matters are taken care of and pending problems for the plenum are discussed in advance. After that at 8 p.m. there is an information evening for the newcomers every week. We don't sympathize with any party. But we support the district work, the " Red Aid " and the gay women ".

The form of association was necessary in order to be able to rent commercial space, the board of directors had no instruction function. Joint actions were discussed in plenary until consensus was reached. The plenary had to regularly defend itself against men who force participation and against women from communist groups who tried to control the rapidly growing women's movement.

Before the plenary session, a group prepared organizational matters and answered questions from the newcomers. These formed their own self-awareness groups - also called CR groups according to the consciousness raising method - in which each presented their experiences as a woman and the others tried to name the system behind it. In the course of these meetings, the wish often arose from this to devote oneself to one of these topics as a group or to join existing working groups.

Topics of the working groups

In 1974, one year after it was founded, a list shows these 24 working groups:

Professionally oriented specialist groups

  • 'University group': seminars on the situation as students and lecturers
  • 'Women's rock group' Flying Lesbians
  • 'Media group' with outstanding representatives from all media
  • 'Healthcare'
  • 'Psychotherapy, Psychiatry'
  • 'Art history'
  • 'School / Educators'
  • 'BIFF - Women's Advice Center' for educational, legal and medical questions is prepared by psychologists and sociologists.

Working method

In contrast to the dogmatic groups of the 1970s , no political line was explicitly given.

“The women refrained from knowing the right way to revolution , or from striving for revolution at all. They just wanted to tackle what was on their minds. (...) All of these groups did theoretical and practical work and self-reflection. There were strategy discussions only on the basis of successes or failures we had experienced ourselves and not based on writings from the 19th century , as was usual with the Socialist Women's Association West Berlin (SFB) and the other dogmatic left groups. "

In 1974 Anja Jovic described her experience at the women's center in Berlin as follows:

“What became clear to me on that first evening was that the women in the women's center had not already worked out a fixed theory and wanted to impose it on us, but that they would immediately support us 'newcomers' as we were with our experiences fully took. "

The autonomous women's movement did not provide training, but education through the means of self-exposure (self-accusation, abortion on television, making sexual abuse public); Unsustainable conditions are brought to light and taboos are broken. Much like the citizens' initiatives, they are an information movement. These “break through and destroy ideologies protected by thought taboos. (...) They reveal secrets - e.g. B. the disaster plans for nuclear power plants - and the inaccessible accessible. "

Twenty projects in five years

Women from the Women's Center and the Lesbian Action Center West Berlin (LAZ) founded twenty projects within five years, some of which are still working in the 21st century:

1974

  • Distribution of women's books until 1987.
  • BIFF - advice and information for women.
  • Self-publishing for women, later sub rosa, then Orlanda-Verlag.
  • Feminist women's health center FFGZ since 1974.
  • Flying Lesbians - 1st women's rock band in Europe 1974–1977.

1975

1976

  • Courage - monthly magazine 1976–1984.
  • Schwarze Botin (magazine) 1976–1987.
  • Amazonenverlag 1976–1984: first publisher in Europe with mainly lesbian

Literature.

  • Berlin Summer University for Women 1976–1983 with up to 10,000 participants each.
  • Self-defense for women since 1976.
  • Women's bookstore Lilith until 1998.
  • Foundation of the first German women's shelter in Berlin. This is supported by the state.

1977

  • Emergency call for raped women.

1978

  • FFBZ women's research, education and information center.

Publications of the women's center

The brochures produced with simple means were used to make the findings of working groups quickly accessible to others (also in West Germany):

  • Women's Center Info 1973; Brochure on the start of the Berlin women's center.
  • Women's newspaper 1973–1976; The editorial team changes between the women's center in Berlin and those in the Federal Republic.

Translated and published by women from the women's center:

  • Anne Koedt: The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm. 1973.
  • "Beginnings of a Feminist Therapy", West Berlin 1975
  • “Women against violence”, working groups from the women's center document cases of violence against women in marriage, psychiatry, gynecology, rape; Job. Plus the translation of "The Politics of Rape" by Susan Griffin . A brochure in preparation for the International Tribunal on Violence against Women in Brussels 1976 organized by Diana EH Russel (English).

It is important to take into account that the activists of the second, the “New Women's Movement” had little knowledge of the first, the “Old Women's Movement” (except for Clara Zetkin , Helene Lange or “ Suffragette ” as a dirty word). The texts and deeds of the First Women's Movement in Germany were lost in the Third Reich , they were only rediscovered by feminists in the 1970s. At the beginning, the New Women's Movement was almost theoretically devoid of theory (apart from August Bebel and Friedrich Engels ) and looked in all directions for texts that could advance it. These books were rediscovered by the women's center and published as pirated prints in 1974:

Both texts opened a glimpse of historical as well as some modern matriarchal forms of society. They showed that patriarchy and feminine secondary importance are not natural and universal.

Public performances

Like the projects, all public appearances of the women's center were realized without outside funding.

  • One week hunger strike in the women's center in support of the hunger strike in the women's prison in Lehrter Strasse, Berlin, October 1973.
  • 1st women's festival “Tanz in den Mai” May 11th 1974, foundation of the 1st women's rock band Flying Lesbians .
  • Go-in at Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) in 1974 after the NDR NDR Panorama contribution by Alice Schwarzer about gentle methods of abortion was discontinued .
  • Protest in the cinema and advertisement against the porn film " Geschichte der O ", which was financed with funds from the film subsidy.
  • Tribunal on violence against women February 19, 1976 in the TU Mensa with karate demonstration and dance with the Flying Lesbians .
  • “Women, we will take back the night!” After women were murdered, spontaneous night demos occurred - forerunners of the “Walpugis Night”.
  • Seven women's summer universities from 1976–83 at the Free University and the Technical University , initially organized by the "Lecturer Group" and in subsequent years by groups from the women's center, once also by the Lesbian Action Center West Berlin .

Cooperations

Cooperation among non-dogmatic groups - such as women's center and district groups - was easy, since the usual dispute about the "right line" and claim to leadership played no role here:

The group "Bread and Roses" wrote the women's handbook No. 1 in 1972 and was subsequently overrun by women seeking advice on pregnancy. The small group could only advise one day a week, the other appointments were handled by §218 groups in the women's center.

Many lesbians - although not affected themselves - worked in the §218 groups. Even the lesbians organized in the homosexual campaign West Berlin emphasized their support in the fight against §218 with a leaflet: “Gay women are primarily women. And §218 affects all women. He incapacitates all women. ”At a demonstration by the women's center in 1973, they carried the banner“ Being gay is better ”. Conversely, the heterosexual women in the women's centers felt the same way about the agitation of the Springer press against lesbians: "I warn all women against lesbian love" ( Quick ), "When women love women, a crime often occurs" ( BILD February 2, 1973 ) The Springer press fired with identical slogans for weeks, especially at the time when feminist centers were emerging everywhere. In the literature on the New Women's Movement, this collaboration between lesbians and heterosexual feminists is sometimes seen as a danger because it would discredit the women's movement.

The Itzehoe Murder Trial in 1974 mobilized the murder trial against Marion Ihn's and Judy Andersen lesbian groups and women's centers throughout West Germany. “Both women are sentenced to life imprisonment for the contract murder of Marion Ihns' husband. The story of women - the rape of both of them in childhood, the mistreatment of Marion Ihns by her husband - are not taken into account in the verdict of German media history - 136 female and 36 female journalists at the German Press Council. He pronounces a reprimand. ”This signature campaign was initiated by the media group of the Berlin women's center.

In that murder trial, previously taboo forms of violence against women were discussed for the first time: domestic violence , rape in marriage, sexual abuse of children . The autonomous, feminist movement now took on these issues and subsequently created the first women's refuge, the first emergency number for raped women and, a little later, the first advice center for sexually abused girls: Whitewater.

Self-image

Three key topics of debate for the autonomous self-image of the women's movement were:

  • Separatism and Autonomy?
  • Equal Rights or Emancipation?
  • Is Patriarchy Universal?

Delimitations

Many members of the women's center had completed “capital training” in left-wing groups, were involved in left-wing party initiatives and district groups, and some had also done business work. before joining the women's center. If they protested vehemently against the Socialist Women's Association West Berlin (SFB) or an appropriation by the Communist League , it was because they knew their political strategy and goals well.

Socialist women's groups, for their part, decidedly differentiated themselves from the autonomous feminists of the women's centers: Their engagement was "politically inconsequential" because "absolutely theoretical", although they founded women's centers and limited themselves to "a little action" and "spectacular violence forums". Doormann continues: “The turning away from the political realities of the radical feminist groups and their almost exclusive turn to the private, individual, personal sphere - of all things, at a time of acute social crisis, which was not least carried out on the back of a large part of their co-workers - I have to accuse these groups. ”Doormann names the magazines Courage and Emma , the book publisher Frauenoffensive , the women's calendar, women's shelters, emergency calls for raped women, women's health centers and feminist therapy groups as achievements of the new women's movement . So exclusively projects by those autonomous feminists who have no theory or consequences. An article in Spiegel No. 16/1979 summarizes the content of Doormann's book.

Analysis of the differences

In a dispute between Cristina Perincioli and Frigga Haug , a leader of the Socialist Women's Association West Berlin (SFB), they both described, looking back over 25 years, what differentiated the Socialist Women's Association West Berlin (SFB) and the women's center:

Frigga Haug: “It is correct that we considered women to be in deficit - and that we wanted to change this quickly, to act in a compensatory way, so to speak. (...) We followed the avant-garde concept , as was common in the student movement back then: We were really great and wanted to tell the others where we were going. (...) The training program lasted about a year. (...) Ten pages from Engels "The Origin of the Family." Marx: "Wages, Prices, Profit" and from Lenin "What to Do?" "

Cristina Perincioli: One might ask, why do women have to go through political training of this kind before they can deal with their concerns? All of the citizens' initiatives that followed also became active first and learned politics in the process.

Frigga Haug: But our aspiration was much greater - you could say more insane - we didn't want to change something on a very small point, if so, then the whole society.

Cristina Perincioli: We (in the women's center) lacked the teaching element. For us, the projects were about creating spaces for women. The women came to the women's center beaten blue, so we couldn't say we hadn't thought it through yet, we'll come back later. (...) If I start from my stomach, I come to new, own solutions. These surprising solutions are more exciting than if I were to say something against the unemployment of women on the basis of Bebel and Lenin. By explaining to people how to think, you inhibit their own creativity.

Frigga Haug: I would doubt that. In truth, we tried to learn from the history of fighting and then develop our own strategies. (...) Certainly we had no health center, no psychological counseling center and neither did we have the idea to do that. At that time, I seriously argued that it was wrong to set up women's shelters because it would take work off the government - and possibly even without money! I learned very late how much one learns about the structure of a society in these struggles for reforms. As in the case of the demand that the next vacant position at the university be given to a woman, the patriarchy defends itself with incredible tenacity and reproduces it across party lines. We always asked: is the goal also socialist? (...) You lose sight of the path if you only look at the goal. It is like the quota, it cannot be the goal, but it can be a tremendous fight to fight it. "

Closure of the women's center

At the end of the 1970s, the women's center lost its function as an incubator: Now new women were directly involved in women's projects, the summer universities replaced the plenum, and women were now discussing in their thousands. For information, contacts about the projects and new knowledge, one could fall back on two feminist monthly magazines: Courage and EMMA . After the reunification, many new "women's centers" emerged - also in the new federal states - as service providers for women and girls (advice, culture, sport, contact and help), this time subsidized by the state.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Formerly the seat of Commune I, then the meeting place for the Proletarischer Linke / Party Initiative (Pl / PI) and Red Aid, among others
  2. ↑ Group sizes from: Gerd Langguth: Protest Movement: Development - Decline - Renaissance. Die Neue Linke since 1968. Cologne 1983, ISBN 3-8046-8617-6 , pp. 57–58.
  3. ↑ Self-portrait of the women's center 1973, quoted from Cristina Perincioli: Berlin is becoming feminist. The best that remained of the 1968 movement. Querverlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89656-232-6 , pp. 89, 90.
  4. ↑ See chronicle of the new women's movement on the website of the women's media tower, under March 23, 1974: “The first 'women's seminar' begins at the Free University of Berlin. It was initiated by the university group of the women's center. Title: 'On the situation of female students and lecturers in the FRG and West Berlin'. The first women's university newspaper emerged from the women's seminar: secondary contradiction. The self-deprecating title is explained by the fact that in the left-wing discourse the gender question in capitalism was always referred to as a negligible 'secondary contradiction' - in contrast to the 'main contradiction' between the classes. The newspaper, which appears until 1978, documents women's initiatives in the higher education sector . " Frauenmediaturm.de ( Memento of the original from January 30, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.frauenmediaturm.de
  5. ↑ The members: the journalists Alice Schwarzer , Lea Rosh ( NDR ), Sophie Behr ( Der Spiegel ), Johanna Schickentanz (ZDF), Christel Sudau ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ), Magdalena Kemper ( SFB / rbb ) Monika Mengel ( Spandauer Volksblatt / WDR ) , Ricky Matheyka ( Der Abend (Germany) ), Gesine Strempel , the filmmakers Helke Sander , Cristina Perincioli and Ricky Hachfeld, the writer Ingeborg Drewitz .
  6. ↑ Article for the US sociologist Marcia Keller on the status of the women's movement in East and West Berlin Cillie Rentmeister and Cristina Perincioli 1974 quoted from Cristina Perincioli: Berlin is becoming feminist. The best that remained of the 1968 movement. Querverlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89656-232-6 , p. 93.
  7. ↑ Cristina Perincioli : Berlin is becoming feminist. The best that remained of the 1968 movement . Querverlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89656-232-6 , p. 92.
  8. ↑ Anja Jovic: I was separated from myself ... In: Lothar Binger: Verkehrformen. Volume 2: Emancipation in the group and the "costs" of solidarity. (= Course book 37 ). Rowohlt, Berlin 1974, p. 75.
  9. ↑ Thomas Kuby, Christian Marzahn: Learning in citizens' initiatives against nuclear facilities. In: Ten years later. (= Course book 48 ). Berlin 1977, p. 161.
  10. ↑ Annette Kuhn (Ed.): The Chronicle of Women. Dortmund 1992, ISBN 3-611-00195-3 , p. 590.
  11. ↑ Annette Kuhn (Ed.): The Chronicle of Women. Dortmund 1992, ISBN 3-611-00195-3 , p. 588.
  12. ↑ Hogie Wyckoff: problem-solving groups for women. In: Radical Therapy. Vol. I, 1/15/1973. Motto: "Therapy is change - not adaptation". Quote: “Instead of expressing our righteous anger over the violation of our rights, we pity ourselves and others and look to ourselves to blame.” P. 5 The text was the working basis of the BIFF advisory group. The group postulated “Our invisible oppression, the oppression within ourselves, is the result of patriarchal-capitalist and -socialist ideology. (...) Therefore it is necessary for every woman to find her own identity as a woman. "
  13. ↑ See chronicle of the new women's movement on the website of the women's media tower, under 8.-11. March 1976. Frauenmediaturm.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.frauenmediaturm.de  
  14. ↑ They provided arguments against, among others, Simone de Beauvoir's assertion: "This world has always belonged to men ...", quoted. according to Cillie Rentmeister: women's worlds - distant, past, strange? The Matriarchy Debate and the New Women's Movement. In: Ina-Maria Greverus et al. (Hrsg.): Kulturkontakt, Kulturkonflikt: To the experience of the foreign. Volume 2, Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 446. Well-known feminist authors such as Marielouise Janssen-Jurreit and Ute Gerhard immediately warned against assumed matriarchal escapism , but without giving further historical research time or taking into account those on contemporary matrilineal societies, ibid. , P. 449.
  15. ↑ Cristina Perincioli: Berlin is becoming feminist. The best that remained of the 1968 movement. Querverlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89656-232-6 , p. 110.
  16. ↑ Annette Kuhn (Ed.): The Chronicle of Women. Dortmund 1992, ISBN 3-611-00195-3 , p. 592.
  17. ↑ See the chronicle of the new women's movement on the women's media tower website, under March 11, 1974 Panorama article Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 30, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.frauenmediaturm.de
  18. ↑ See chronicle of the new women's movement on the website of the women's media tower, under November 1975. Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.frauenmediaturm.de
  19. ↑ See the chronicle of the new women's movement on the women's media tower website, under March 1, 1977 Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.frauenmediaturm.de
  20. ↑ Chronicle of the new women's movement on the women's media tower website, under August 1972 Archived copy ( memento of the original from February 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.frauenmediaturm.de
  21. ↑ Rosemarie Nave-Herz sees the reputation of the women's movement endangered by “the public commitment to homosexuality”. For those who did not know the new women's movement from their own experience, it sometimes led to an equation of feminism and lesbianism and thus to a blanket labeling and rejection of the new women's movement. Rosemarie Nave-Herz: The History of the Women's Movement in Germany. Opladen 1994, p. 76. (First edition Hannover 1982)
  22. ↑ Barbara Sommerhoff complains: This gave parts of the population the wrong impression that feminism was identical with lesbianism. With their predecessors, the lesbians shared the mockery that they had heard 150 years ago that they couldn't find men because of their ugly appearance and were therefore inevitably homosexual. In: Barbara Sommerhoff: Women's Movement. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 3-499-16372-1 .
  23. ↑ Chronicle of the new women's movement on the website of the women's media tower, under October 1, 1974 Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 30, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. with photos of the action @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.frauenmediaturm.de
  24. ↑ They are mentioned in the leaflets for the trial; They can be found compiled in Ilse Lenz (Ed.): The New Women's Movement in Germany. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-17436-5 , pp. 245-250.
  25. ↑ Cillie Rentmeister: Women's Worlds - Far, Past, Alien? The Matriarchy Debate and the New Women's Movement. In: Ina-Maria Greverus et al. (Hrsg.): Kulturkontakt, Kulturkonflikt: To the experience of the foreign. Volume 2, Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 445.
  26. ↑ Sigrid Fronius : AStA chairwoman of the Free University of Berlin , member of the Argument Club , operational work at Robert Bosch GmbH and Siemens , co-founder of the Proletarian Party Initiative / Proletarian Left (PL / PI)
  27. ↑ Sibylle Plogstedt was a member of the Socialist German Student Union and later in the Trotskyist group International Marxists (GIM)
  28. ↑ At the beginning of June a meeting - to the horror of all "old" women in the women's center - took place in the plenary room of the women's center in Stresemannstrasse. 40 the Socialist Women's Association West Berlin (SFB). Ten center women who called together were initially able to clarify that this was a one-off visit that was made possible by ignorance of the differences. In: Courage . August 1978.
  29. ↑ Lottemi Doormann (ed.): Nobody pushes us away. Interim balance sheet of the women's movement in the Federal Republic. Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 1979, ISBN 3-407-83019-X , pp. 53, 56 and 58.
  30. ↑ Lottemi Doormann (ed.): Nobody pushes us away. Interim balance sheet of the women's movement in the Federal Republic. Weinheim / Basel 1979, p. 61.
  31. ↑ magazin.spiegel.de
  32. ↑ This avant-garde, which brought the revolutionary ideas to the workers from outside, was necessary after Lenin because the proletarians were only interested in union struggle and not in revolution on their own initiative (Lenin: Was tun? In: Werke. Volume 5 , P. 386). This doctrine justified the party's dictatorship over the workers. "
  33. ↑ Cristina Perincioli: Berlin is becoming feminist. The best that remained of the 1968 movement. Querverlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89656-232-6 , pp. 165–167.