National women's service
The National Women's Service (NFD) was a state-recognized German women's organization during the First World War , which saw its work as the female equivalent of service at the front.
history
Even before the outbreak of World War I, it was Gertrud Bäumer , chairwoman of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF), when the war clouds were gathering more and more heavily and threateningly over our fatherland ... immediately took the initiative to set up a large organization encompassing all of Germany To call life so that the BDF would be prepared when the fateful hour strikes . On July 31, 1914, the BDF chairwoman and Hedwig Heyl founded the NFD, also known as Frauendank , in Berlin . Its task was, as opposed to the Red Cross (which was responsible for nursing the sick), to win over all available women for the educational work, the food supply, the war welfare and the job placement . Gertrud Bäumer saw the work in the NFD as a homeland service , as the war translation of the word 'women's movement' . Anna von Gierke u. a. Chairwoman of the Charlottenburg Housewives Association , founded in 1915 , wrote in retrospect about her motivation to work for the NFD:
- The happiness of the work lay first in the fulfilled urge to help and work, but then also in the certainty that he was now properly accepted and integrated into the struggle of the fatherland .
Within a few days, local groups of the NFD emerged all over the country, which carried out the program drawn up by the BDF and worked with the responsible municipal offices and municipal administrations, with the Red Cross, patriotic women's associations, the German-Catholic women's association and the like. a. local associations worked together. For example, the NFD set up 23 aid commissions in Berlin. In the merger approved by the Ministry of the Interior, the various political, denominational and non-partisan women's organizations, welfare associations and trade unions united at local and national level. The self-organized women's network worked closely with the government and local authorities. That is why it received a seat and vote in the war committees.
In addition to providing for the people by collecting money and clothing for the needy as well as caring for female workers, who increasingly took over the tasks of men, the NFD saw its main task in informing the population about war-related special regulations to ensure the food supply job placement and procurement (as many women were due to the change in industrial production of war goods suddenly unemployed), training courses for women and young people, nutrition counseling, cooking classes, Wöchnerinnen- and infant care, legal advice, provide information of any kind and in caring for distressed war widows and families of drafted soldiers. In addition, there were information points for women who had lost contact with their husbands, package campaigns for soldiers at the front, and the collection of donations in kind. In the second half of the war, recruiting women for the armaments industry was a particular focus of the NFD.
Many important women of the women's movement were involved in the NFD, who, for example, headed local war offices such as Alice Salomon and Agnes von Zahn-Harnack in Berlin, Dorothee von Velsen in Breslau and Hildegard von Gierke in Magdeburg. Alice Salomon, the founder of the social women's profession in Germany, wrote about the motivation to get involved with the NFD:
- "We want to serve, just as you serve." This is not just the expression of our feelings about war. That has always been the leitmotif of all modern female animations ... Perhaps a generation of women has never been more actively involved in a war than ours. From the very first hour, from the days of mobilization, we knew that we would not only be in strong but passive suffering and tolerance, not only in the upright bearing of the pain of separation - also of saying goodbye to our loved ones forever, if necessary - have to bear our burden of war. We knew that we had to be active, to fight with you - albeit with different weapons - to help defend the fatherland .
Advice for housewives of the National Women's Service 1918
Poster on the recycling of kitchen waste by the National Women's Service
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literature
- Gertrud Bäumer: The war and the woman. Stuttgart / Berlin 1914.
- Alice Salomon: National Women's Service. Separate printing. Cassel 1915.
- War work of the Coblenz women united in the National Women's Service: 1914–1918, Koblenz 1918 digitized
- Anna von Gierke: National women's service in the war. In: The woman. 1933/34, pp. 676-695.
- Hans Muthesius (Ed.): Alice Salomon, the founder of the social women's profession in Germany. Heymann, Cologne / Berlin 1958.
- Ute Gerhard: Unheard of. The history of the German women's movement. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-499-18377-3 .
- Caroline Hopf: Women's movement and education - Gertrud Bäumer, for example. Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 1997, ISBN 3-7815-0889-7 .
- Daniela Weiland: History of women's emancipation in Germany and Austria. Econ, Düsseldorf 1983, ISBN 3-612-10025-4 , pp. 178-182.
- Angelika Schaser: Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer. A political community. 2., through and act. Edition. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-412-09100-6 .