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Honour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2023

Ute Frevert
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin
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Summary

Honour is an emotion unfamiliar to many these days. In post-war West Germany, honour was rarely mentioned, let alone felt, though it bravely hung on when children (and sometimes adults) promised their ‘word of honour’. Around 1900, however, the term honour had ‘a very strong sentimental value’, German men still ‘possessed’ honour and felt it ‘in their bodies’. Not incidentally, the motto emblazoned on the belt buckles of SS uniforms since 1932 read ‘my honour is loyalty’. This chapter explains how female honour differs from this, what – allegedly – puts it in danger, and how, in turn, women are endangered by it, not least through the phenomenon of so-called ‘honour killings’. The chapter shows the increasing tendency to replace honour with dignity, which has the advantage of being fundamentally inclusive because it was granted without discrimination to all. This made it a more suitable concept than honour for modern societies that considered themselves egalitarian.

Keywords

Type
Chapter
Information
The Power of Emotions
A History of Germany from 1900 to the Present
, pp. 194 - 208
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Honour
  • Ute Frevert, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin
  • Book: The Power of Emotions
  • Online publication: 14 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009376792.012
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  • Honour
  • Ute Frevert, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin
  • Book: The Power of Emotions
  • Online publication: 14 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009376792.012
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Honour
  • Ute Frevert, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin
  • Book: The Power of Emotions
  • Online publication: 14 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009376792.012
Available formats
×