‘An unbroken family’? Gertrud Bäumer and the German Women’s movement’s return to international work in the 1920s

At the end of the First World War, the international women’s organisations presented a unified face to the world, claiming to have emerged from the conflict as an ‘unbroken family’. However, the return to internationalism was not as straightforward as this suggests and there were many barriers to re-establishing the links that had been interrupted by the conflict. Reintegration into the international community was particularly challenging for women in defeated nations, especially for those who had engaged in patriotic war work and identified strongly with the bitter fate of their nation. By exploring the difficult return of the German women’s leader, Gertrud Bäumer, to working with the international organisations, this article will highlight some of the obstacles and ambiguities they faced in their project of restoring the ‘imagined community’ of international women activists in the aftermath of a brutal conflict that had established war and peace as matters of vital feminist concern.