Belief and beauty

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The organization Faith and Beauty was part of the Association of German Girls (BDM) and thus the Hitler Youth . It was therefore part of the National Socialist education system . The task of the organization was to close the time gap between the upper age limit of the BDM (18 years) and the admission age of the Nazi women (21 years) and to prevent this age group from slipping away from the access of state and party to private life.

The organization

Faith and Beauty was only founded in 1938 by the Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach after consultation with the Reich Secretary of the BDM Jutta Rüdiger . The Reich Youth Leader appointed Clementine zu Castell-Rüdenhausen as the representative for the BDM plant .

Faith and Beauty , like their superordinate organizations BDM and HJ, was organized according to Gauen and was run according to the Führer principle . According to the law, membership was voluntary, but in fact entire cohorts were taken over from the BDM in Faith and Beauty , leaving people and their parents (the age of majority was 21) suspected of opposition. The overlapping of the membership age with the imperial labor service of female youth, which was compulsory from September 4, 1939, increased the pressure on the youth not to evade the organization.

Content of the training

The substantive work of Faith and Beauty was aligned with the political purpose of the organization. It was carried out in working groups that took place once a week outside the working hours of trainees in order to enable them to participate. Sport, dance or courses on personal hygiene should keep the young women healthy as future “mothers of German offspring”. Working groups that imparted knowledge in the health service, intelligence or air raid protection prepared the young women to take on appropriate activities in the event of war in order to release men for military service.

resolution

The organization Faith and Beauty , as a subdivision of the Hitler Youth, was banned and dissolved by the Control Council Act No. 2 after the end of the war , and its assets were confiscated.

literature

  • Sabine Hering , Kurt Schilde : The BDM work “Faith and Beauty”. The organization of young women under National Socialism . Metropol, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-932482-37-9 . (Further editions)
  • Alexandra Offermanns: “They knew what we like”: aesthetic manipulation and seduction under National Socialism, illustrated in the BDM work “Faith and Beauty” (= texts on the theory and history of education , volume 22). Lit, Münster © 2004, ISBN 978-3-8258-7832-0 (Dissertation University of Wuppertal 2003, 254 pages).
  • Klaus Martin: Girls in the Hitler Youth: the upbringing to become a “German woman” (= Pahl-Rugenstein-Hochschulschriften Gesellschafts- und Naturwissenschaften , Volume 15: Series Fascism Studies ). Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1980, ISBN 3-7609-5014-0 .

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