Geschlechtergeschichte und die erforschung des Ersten Weltkrieges in Deutschland: entwicklungen und perspektiven

This article offers an overview of existing research from the last two decades into the German experience of the First World War from a gender perspective. It argues that the history of the war has previously privileged the experience of male combatants and that there is ground to make up in offering a differentiated account of German women’s wartime activities and responses. The article shows how the concept of heroism, although problematic in the German context, can offer an insight into changing attitudes to military masculinity, and how alternatives to an anachronistic vision of military heroism have been used by anti-war campaigners to challenge hegemonic masculinities. It is argued that, while the inclusion of a gender perspective has become mainstream in recent publications, there is still a tendency to present women’s wartime experiences as more homogenous than that of men. Within military history, masculinity is often still viewed as a natural rather than a constructed