‘A foolish dream of sisterhood’: anti-pacifist debates in the German women’s movement 1914-1919.

In 1914, the dominant discourse within the women’s organisations was of the natural pacifism and the international solidarity of all women, especially among those who were working in their own nations to improve their social, professional and political situation. In all combatant nations, the majority of organised women supported the war policies of their government and suspended their international contacts, while a small minority of women in each nation opposed the war and retained or even strengthened international contacts. In Germany, the two poles were represented by the women of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF), notably Gertud Bäumer, who organised women’s work in support of the war and Lida Gustava Heymann and Anita Augspurg, members of Germany’s most radical suffrage organisation, who were active in working for peace. It was in the interests of both groups of women to distance themselves from the ideas and attitudes of the other. For the women of the BDF, association with the highly negative elements suffrage, internationalism and pacifism threatened to undermine their own unstated war aims, tacitly geared towards demonstrating a fitness for involvement in the life of the state and full acceptance in the national community. For the pacifist women, the existence of a warlike majority undermined their view of the innate pacifism of women on which their own claims to full female citizenship rested. This paper will look at three key, interlinked ideas: pacifism, internationalism and suffrage in the following areas: • The differing responses of the BDF and German pacifist women to the war; • The context in which the women were operating as reflected in contemporary press reports; • The strategies the BDF employed to distance themselves from the activities of German pacifists and the women’s international congress at The Hague.